Alrighty vs MailMate
Alrighty vs MailMate for Mac mail, as of November 2026. IMAP accounts, Gmail sign-in, price, search, junk, AI, and how actively each app ships.
By Emmett Miller
Pick MailMate if you want a keyboard-driven IMAP client with smart mailboxes, Markdown, tags and OpenPGP or S/MIME, and your accounts include Fastmail, Yahoo or your own IMAP server. Pick Alrighty if your accounts are iCloud, Gmail and Outlook, and you want one inbox that stops unwanted senders, search that finds what you mean, and your own AI working in your mail.
MailMate runs only on the Mac, and Alrighty runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. Both keep your mail on your computer. They're built for different people. MailMate gives a power user exact control over every message and search. Alrighty takes work off your hands, partly with AI. Facts below come from each vendor's own pages, as of November 2026. Alrighty is our app.
How do Alrighty and MailMate compare?
| Alrighty | MailMate | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Mac (Apple silicon), Windows, Linux | Mac, macOS 10.12 or newer (beta) |
| Accounts | iCloud, Gmail, Outlook.com, Microsoft 365 | Any IMAP account |
| Can't add | Yahoo, Fastmail, other IMAP | Exchange without IMAP, POP |
| Gmail sign-in | Sign in with Google, Gmail API | IMAP with OAuth2, which its developer says "might cease to work" |
| Price | 14-day trial with no card, then Free or Pro | $10 every 3 months; Free Mode with a header on your mail |
| Where your mail is kept | Your computer, and your provider | Your Mac, and your provider |
| Search | By meaning and words, on your computer | Advanced search conditions, smart mailboxes |
| Unwanted mail | Stop mail, Clean up, Filters | Not described on its pages |
| AI | Reply drafts, questions, your own AI over MCP | None described |
| Encryption | No OpenPGP or S/MIME | OpenPGP and S/MIME |
| Track record | New app | Stable 1.13.2 is "more than 4 year old"; new work ships as betas |
Does MailMate work with Gmail, iCloud and Outlook?
Yes, all three, through IMAP, with caveats. MailMate is "an IMAP email client for macOS" (MailMate), so it reads any account that offers IMAP.
- Gmail. MailMate signs in to Gmail with OAuth2. In its July 2025 beta notes, the developer wrote "it's unfortunately possible that the OAuth2 support for Gmail might cease to work, but as the saying goes, 'we'll cross that bridge when we get there'" (blog).
- iCloud. You set up an app-specific password, as for any third-party app. MailMate's 2017 post walks through it.
- Outlook. MailMate's manual says it supports "IMAP and IMAP only for incoming email," and that "outlook.com is a notable exception for which MailMate does work with IMAP and OAuth2." A work Exchange server without IMAP can't be added, and a Microsoft 365 account may need your IT team's approval.
The developer has also written that Google, Microsoft and Apple each have a "kill switch" for MailMate (blog, December 2024), which is the risk any small IMAP client carries with the big providers.
Alrighty adds these three kinds of account and no others. Gmail connects through Sign in with Google and the Gmail API. Outlook.com and Microsoft 365 connect through Sign in with Microsoft and Microsoft Graph. iCloud uses an app-specific password over IMAP. All of them land in one inbox.
The other side: MailMate takes Fastmail, Yahoo and any IMAP host, and its July 2025 beta added OAuth2 for Fastmail and Yahoo. Alrighty can't add any of them.
Is MailMate free?
Not for everyone. MailMate's pricing page describes three modes:
- Trial Mode has no feature limits and runs for "currently 14 days of active use."
- Paid Mode is "$10 every 3 months," plus any VAT. Businesses must use it.
- Free Mode starts when a subscription ends and keeps every feature, but it "is not intended to be used by all users," and your outgoing mail names the client "MailMate Free Mode." Non-profit use doesn't need Paid Mode.
So a person using MailMate at home can keep using it for free, with that line in the headers of every message they send. Alrighty has a 14-day trial with no card, then a Free plan or Pro. Free has a small monthly AI allowance and no sorting into groups, and it adds nothing to the mail you send.
Is MailMate still being developed?
Yes, but slowly and in betas. Its download page offers MailMate 1.13.2 as "The more than 4 year old public release," which "should now mainly be used by existing users still on macOS 10.10-10.15." Everyone else gets the 2.0 beta, which "requires macOS 10.12+." The newest post on its blog when we checked was the July 2, 2025 beta.
Alrighty is new, and that cuts the other way: it has no long track record, while MailMate's blog goes back more than a decade.
Which has better search, Alrighty or MailMate?
They solve different problems. MailMate is for people who know exactly what they're looking for. Its home page lists "advanced search conditions and drill-down search links" and "equally advanced smart mailboxes" (MailMate), so you can save a search built from exact conditions and come back to it.
Alrighty is for people who remember roughly what an email said. Its search runs on your computer and matches meaning as well as words: "when is my flight" finds the airline's confirmation even if it never says "flight." One search covers every account. You can also ask a question, such as "what time does the plumber come," and get the answer with the emails it came from. That answer doesn't stay on your computer: the emails it reads go through Alrighty's server to OpenAI.
If you build smart mailboxes from exact conditions, MailMate does more. If you type half-remembered words and hope, Alrighty's search is the one built for that.
Does MailMate have AI?
None that its pages describe. Its home page, pricing page and recent blog posts don't mention AI. If you want a mail app with no AI at all, that's a real point in MailMate's favor. Our email apps without AI page lists more.
Alrighty has AI, and some of it starts by itself. When you're signed in, opening a reply starts a suggested draft in your voice, written from up to 12 of your sent emails, and Clean up sorts senders on Alrighty's server in the background. Those send the emails they read through Alrighty's server to OpenAI and TypeSafe AI. Connecting your own AI, such as Claude, ChatGPT's desktop app or a local model, is off until you turn it on with Connect AI. Once on, it can read and search your mail and work in a window you watch, and nothing sends until you click Send. Signed out, nothing goes to Alrighty's server.
How does each app deal with junk and newsletters?
MailMate's pages don't describe an unsubscribe or junk tool. You'd use your provider's spam filter and MailMate's rules and smart mailboxes to move mail you don't want.
Alrighty is built around stopping it. Stop mail unsubscribes every way the message offers (one-click, an email to the list, or the list's page), archives the mail you already have from that sender, and moves their new mail out as it arrives. It only contacts senders whose mail passed DMARC and wasn't marked spam, so a scammer never learns your address is live. Clean up lists the senders you probably don't want, so you can stop them all at once. Filters move a kind of mail that comes from a new sender each time, like cold sales, and never touch mail from people you've written to. Stopped mail goes to Archive, not Junk, and Alrighty doesn't screen first-time senders.
What does MailMate do better?
- Any IMAP account, including Fastmail, Yahoo and your own domain's host.
- Encryption. OpenPGP and S/MIME are built in. Alrighty has neither.
- The keyboard and Markdown. MailMate offers "extensive keyboard control" and "Markdown integrated email composition."
- Exact search. Detailed search conditions, drill-down links and smart mailboxes.
- Older Macs. The beta runs on macOS 10.12 or newer. On a Mac, Alrighty needs Apple silicon.
- No AI, for people who don't want any.
What does Alrighty do better?
- Gmail and Microsoft 365 through Google's and Microsoft's own APIs, not IMAP, in one inbox with iCloud.
- Stopping unwanted mail in one click, and finding the senders to stop.
- Search by meaning, and answers to questions about your mail.
- Your own AI in your mail, with you on the Send button.
- A Free plan that adds nothing to your outgoing mail.
Which should you pick?
- iCloud, Gmail and Outlook in one inbox, with junk stopped: Alrighty.
- Search that finds an email from what you half remember: Alrighty.
- Claude or ChatGPT working in your mail: Alrighty.
- Fastmail, Yahoo or your own IMAP server: MailMate.
- OpenPGP or S/MIME, Markdown, and a keyboard for everything: MailMate.
- An Intel Mac, or no AI at all: MailMate.
If you came from Postbox, our Postbox alternatives page covers MailMate for its keyboard users. The best email app for Mac list compares both with Apple Mail and others, and there are more comparisons.
Questions
Does MailMate run on Apple silicon?
MailMate's download page doesn't say. Its blog announced a "Universal test release of MailMate" in 2021, and the current beta needs macOS 10.12 or newer. Alrighty runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, and on a Mac it needs Apple silicon.
Can I use MailMate's Free Mode for work?
No. MailMate's pricing page says businesses must use Paid Mode, at $10 every 3 months. Non-profit use doesn't require it.
Can I import my MailMate smart mailboxes into Alrighty?
No. Alrighty has no smart mailboxes. Your mail itself stays on your IMAP server, Gmail or Microsoft, so adding the account in Alrighty brings it in. Filters and groups in Alrighty cover some of the same sorting, in your own words.
Does MailMate block tracking images?
MailMate's pages we read don't describe how it loads remote images. Alrighty loads them through a cookieless proxy, so the sender never sees your computer's address, though a tracking pixel still shows the mail was opened.