March 20, 2005

Try FuseMail For Mail Away from Home

Written by roy

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Product Review

Ever been stranded in a Starbucks or other Wi-Fi hot-spot and can’t get your email, because your copy of Outlook is configured on your PC at home? Or maybe your address book is on your other laptop, not the one you brought with you?

This is the kind of problem that FuseMail might solve. If you’re frequently on the road, this is an excellent email client, enabling you to maintain contact with your family or with your business.

By using the IMAP protocol, you can keep your email on FuseMail’s servers, and then access it anywhere in the world by going to their web site. Their data center resides at the world-wide facilities of Equinix, a leading provider of high-security datacenters.

It’s easy to set up. You can configure the client to download your email onto your laptop in about ten minutes. This can include your home account, your work account, Hotmail, or any other accounts you might have. Next, you set up the FuseMail folders on your PC’s or laptop’s email client and you’re finished.

FuseMail has all the other features most email clients have: import/export, spellcheck, and spam filters. There are even folders for RSS downloads and a desktop notification client. You can also view your calendar, notes, journal, and task list from any PC in the world. The same is true for address books: You can conveniently keep just one centralized address book folder on the server.

If you really like to “take charge” of your email, you can also configure your own rules and save them on the server. If you get a new PC, you will not need to set up these rules again or worry about importing them from a previous email client. FuseMail can also host the DNS for your domain, or you can set up a custom MX record on the domain to deliver mail to your account.

There are also some advanced caching and optimization tools. Many email clients such as MS Outlook and Mozilla Thuderbird perform unnecessary repetitive operations. By caching their operations, FuseMail can improve their overall speed.

Marketing and business tools are also available, including autoresponders, branding utilities and auto-updates. The branding utility allows you to post your own logo onto your mail.

Customer support is provided by a users’ forum, or you can contact the company directly.

After using this client myself, I noticed only one problem: Sometimes the download is slow, which usually means the servers are being overworked. Other than that, however, I find FuseMail to be a practical and portable utility that any laptop or PDA should have.

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