Microsoft made its Mail & Calendar app inoperable this month in an effort to migrate people to the new Outlook. Our Senior Editor Zac Bowden covered the end of support for Mail & Calendar and the fact that the app can no longer send or receive emails through the application. That left me with the question, "now what?" I don't like the new Outlook app, and I know I'm not alone in that opinion. Luckily, a third-party developer has come in to save the day with Wino Mail.
To paraphrase Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, if I had a nickel for each time I had to suggest a third-party app to replicate functionality Windows once had built-in, I'd have two nickels — which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Right?
I don't want to make recommending apps that replace gaps left by Microsoft a habit, but at this point I may have to. I highlighted Calendar Flyout, which replicates the calendar flyout from Windows 10, last week. Now, I'm doing the same for Wino Mail.
Burak Kaan Köse, the developer of Wino Mail, is clear that the app is based on Mail & Calendar. "Wino Mail, built-in Mail app clone for Windows device families," reads the app's description. "Wino is not a web wrapper. It's a native mail client that works with all Windows device families."
The app being native is what is key here. The new Outlook is a web wrapper. It's clearly not native to Windows 11 and its performance and design suffer for it. Bowden outlined the issues last year:
"I genuinely think the new Outlook for Windows is the worst built-in OS email client of any OS platform on the market right now. Samsung Email is better than this. Gmail is better than this. Apple Mail is better than this. Why? Because all of those apps are built using native UI frameworks that integrate with the OSs they're built for."
Wino Mail has none of those issues. The app is native to Windows 11, and it shows. The app has offline support as well, which is handy and likely expected from anyone who used Mail & Calendar.
I've only tested the app for a brief time, but it's been reliable and performed well in that period. I'll keep using it as my daily email client and share my experience. The are some limitations at the moment, such as the app only checking for notifications every three minutes. Hopefully that time can be reduced in the future.
You can use Wino Mail for free with up to three accounts. If you'd like to use more than three accounts, you need to pay for the app. The unlimited version of the app costs £8.39 in the UK. I'm still confirming US pricing.
