Opera Mail is a new and free full-fledged email and chat client offered by Opera. Opera Mail integrates itself into the interface of your browser so that you can access your email and instant messaging contacts more easily, right from your favorite web browser while surfing the internet. To use this new email client you’re gonna have to install the browser, since it’s built into it and isn’t available separately.
You may also read our featured post on Free Email Clients For Windows.
The new option for mail and chat is built into the latest Opera web browser and you can access it if you open up the main menu which is similarly to Firefox, located in the Opera button in the top left corner of the screen. Notice the Mail and Chat Accounts option, well that’s exactly what’s new in the latest version of Opera, and with the help of Opera Mail you can easily combine web surfing with email and chat management.
Key Features of Opera Mail:
- Combine and manage all emails from Opera – POP3, IMAP are supported.
- Supported email providers include Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others.
- Download and read updates in your favorite newsgroups.
- Built-in spam filter for incoming email is very effective and precise.
- Offline access, messages can be accessed even when not online.
- Attachment download and management is available.
If you’re hosting your own email you can easily add that too, as long as one of the above mentioned protocols are available. IRC chat can also be configured and used with Opera Mail, here’s how.
Setting Up and Using Opera Mail
When you click on the newly available option for mail and chat in the main Opera menu, you’re gonna be greeted with the window which can be seen in the image above. Setup is simple, just enter your email address, password and select the type of email protocol that’s gonna be used POP or IMAP.
You need to go through the same setup for every other service that this free email client offers like newsgroups, IRC, etc. Once that you setup everything and click OK, Opera Mail is gonna automatically download messages, as you can see in the image above. Email client will be opened in a new tab, and as you can see it’s very feature rich. Contacts can be managed and various different email management tools are available, like for example labels.
Conclusion
Opera Mail offers a great way of how you can combine both web browsing and email management all into a single application. Integration is very good, and you can easily switch between the Opera web browser and the Opera email client. To check messages you just need to click on the Opera tab and select the Mail option. That will open a new Opera Mail tab where you will be able to see if someone has sent any new messages and if you want you can access old ones, even if you’re not connected to the internet. Messages are gonna be downloaded and stored locally, which is very useful when you’re on the go and not able to connect to the internet. Click here to try it absolutely free.
