Email Notifiers

This is a list of the best email notifiers (aka email checkers) available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. Email notifiers vary, some of them are POP only, some do IMAP too, and some concentrate on web email services. Most of them are free, but some do cost a few bucks.

Windows

MailBell notifies you about new email without interrupting you when you type or work with the mouse in other programs. This program checks one or multiple Email accounts (POP3, IMAP, IMAP-SSL, MAPI, Hotmail) and indicates new email via sound or window.

ePrompter automatically and simultaneously checks and retrieves your email messages from up to sixteen password protected email accounts AND lets you read, delete and respond to any of your messages with a simple click on the account of your choice - without ever having to launch your email program or go to your webmail's site.

POP Peeper is an email notifier that runs in your Windows task bar and alerts you when you have new email on any of your POP3, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, Mail.com, MyWay, Excite, Lycos.com, or RediffMail accounts. You can also use POP Peeper to read and delete your email. POP Peeper supports HTML email, so you can see your email the same way as you would in your email client. Several options are available that will decrease or eliminate the risks of reading your email (viruses, javascript, webbugs, etc). If you share your computer, you can password-protect your accounts or password-protect access to POP Peeper.

FastCheck is a mail notifier for FastMail.FM. This is the best checker around, too bad it only works with Fastmail. Although, with the two combined you get the best email experience ever.

Linux

gnubiff is a powerful mail notification program for Linux that checks for mail and displays headers when new mail has arrived.

KShowmail is a POP3 mail checker for Linux (KDE) with these features: show number, size and more information about mails on pop3 servers in a list view, show the mail headers or complete mails, delete unwanted mail from server by configurable filters.

KBiff is a "biff" or new mail notification utility for KDE. It is highly configurable but very easy to use and setup. It tries to combine the best of the features of most of the "other" biff programs out there. KBiff supports all major mailbox formats: mbox (Berkely style), maildir, mh, POP3, IMAP4, and NNTP. As of 3.7, it also supports POP3 and IMAP4 with SSL.

Mac

Mail Beacon is both a mail checker and online email client. Mail Beacon checks an unlimited number of POP3,IMAP, and Hotmail accounts, and instantly notifies you of new messages. You can then read, reply, and delete email on server without downloading a single message. What this means to you is no more wasted time downloading spam or unwanted attachments. You open Mail Beacon, clean out any spam and quickly respond to important messages, all before opening your regular bulky email client and downloading your messages to disk.

MacBiff is a GPL'd Mac OS X IMAP only "Biff" Program. It periodically checks your IMAP server for new email, and reports where in your folder hierarchy your new mail resides.

Cross Platform

FreePOPs is an open source, cross platform, easily extensible program, which allows access to the most varied resources through the POP3 protocol. Mainly, it can be used to download mail from the most famous webmails, but it could also be used as an aggregator for RSS feeds and much more. This way it is possible to get all your messages in your favorite email client.

Gmail Notifier is an open source Linux/Windows alternative for the notifier program released by Google, it is written in Python and provides an attractive and simple way to check for new mail messages.