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Percentages Of E-mail Clients By OS And By Feature?

Posted by Cliff on from the getting-a-look-at-the-forest dept.

Krotus asks: "I've been looking for information on user shares of popular e-mail clients, and am really surprised at how hard it is to find anything beyond vague speculations. I suspect that lots of us could use these numbers, but has anyone been able to find out about what percentages of users are using Eudora, Outlook's various versions, mutt, pine, mh, Notes, etc.? Almost as useful would be numbers on what percentage of clients can parse HTML, vs. plaintext or something proprietary. Forrester, Jupiter, and IDC have all come up blank. The question has been asked at Abuzz with no luck. Maybe the collective knowledge of Slashdot will be more fruitful?"

26 comments

  1. Email review by pleitner · · Score: 3
    I currently work at a University in Australia that will remain unnamed. We have recently commissioned an email review in an attempt to standardise things a bit more than the scarey mess that is out there at the moment.

    Despite the fact that the review process was very flawed and a total con (typical of consultants), it very clearly outlined that there is a huge mix of both email clients and email servers out there and that we really should look at standardising the clients and consolidating the servers.

    Part of the process was a survey of current usage across campus. The client side results were (from memory, in no order and staff only):

    • elm/pine: 10% - mostly the UNIX-centric areas such as Comp Sci and some of the other Science areas.
    • Pegasus: 10% - mostly legacy, but you know how academics are.
    • Outlook: 20% - this is (unfortunately) the way we are moving.
    • Groupwise: 30% - we have a large NDS infrastructure and, for better or worse, this is the way we were going before the email review said otherwise.
    • Eudora: 30% - this is historical and is being replaced with Outlook just because the email review said so.

    The students mostly use Eudora, although the use of our internal student webmail system is starting to increase quite dramatically.

    There is also quite extensive use of free web based email (such as hotmail), but I don't have any stats on this. We are actively discouraging its use, but the Uni doesn't have any real balls when it comes to making policy about it.

    The really sad bit about all this is that the review process somehow decided that Exchange is the best server solution. Can anyone say Linux box running SMTP/POP/IMAP?

    1. Re:Email review by unitron · · Score: 1
      "I currently work at a University in Australia that will remain unnamed."

      That blank space at the top must make the diplomas look strange, or do they use the symbol that Prince recently ceased to need?

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  2. Why the surprise? by penguinboy · · Score: 1

    Why are you surprised that it's hard to find any numbers? It's not like webservers, or even web browsers, where you can query the server or look at log files. Emails pretty much go straight from user-to-user. AFAIK, mail servers don't bother logging X-Mailer headers. Really, the only way to find out what clients are in use is to actually ask people in a survey, which probably wouldn't cover too many users.

    1. Re:Why the surprise? by YASD · · Score: 1

      Really, the only way to find out what clients are in use is to actually ask people in a survey, which probably wouldn't cover too many users.

      I agree, this is probably the only good way to find out. Why not ask /. to run a poll? Granted, it's hardly a random sample, but at least it's a large sample and it's better than nothing.

      ------

      --

      ------
      You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
    2. Re:Why the surprise? by BJH · · Score: 1


      Slashdot already did that one.

    3. Re:Why the surprise? by YASD · · Score: 1

      Arrgh. I only checked a few pages worth. A search form would be nice.

      Still, I see they've repeated the "how many email addresses do you have" one, so why not this one too? It was almost a year ago.

      ------

      --

      ------
      You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
  3. info gathering idea by griffjon · · Score: 2

    hey! the problem is unlike the web it's hard to gather stats on email clients, right? So, let's just like send this email around asking people to put their email client on the list at the top, and forward it on, and every hundredth can cc it to a central location....

    ...waitaminute. ;)

    Seriously, tho, you could get rough numbers on Outlook users from the LoveBug stories I'd wager.

    --
    Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
    1. Re:info gathering idea by ThatGuy47 · · Score: 1

      Seriously, tho, you could get rough numbers on Outlook users from the LoveBug stories I'd wager.

      ...and get the number of pine users from the smug replies and evil cackling.

      --
      I don't dress this way to be scary. I dress like this because it's easier to sort my laundry. "...black...black...blac
  4. BeOS Mail by babbitt · · Score: 1

    I personally use BeOS's own BeMail and it's database-like directory struc for everything important to me...though there are other clients availabe (some Outlook-like), I much prefer the simplistic approach.

    --
    "AOL, CIA, NSA, whatever, they all collect information, and they are all out to screw the american public"
  5. What email clients are in use by lomion · · Score: 1

    Well at my place of business we use Eudora, but due to bug problems we may be moving to Netscape Mail. In alot of corporate Environments NEtscape Mail is still popular.

    Many people i deal with end up using Outlook Express because it comes with Windows, at least form a windows persepctive. It's fine for base needs.

    --
    this space for rent
    1. Re:What email clients are in use by unitron · · Score: 1
      "It's fine for base needs."

      Would that be like the needs I suspect were being addressed by the unsolicited e-mails I recently got about "hot escorts"?

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

    2. Re:What email clients are in use by Tower · · Score: 1

      I've been using Eudora since Pro v1... and versions 3 and 4 are *far* more stable on NT than on 95/8... It doesn't crash anymore. Netscape Mail has been going downhill in Netscape4. Netscape 3 had a far superior Mail and News interface. I hate when they ruin good things... Like the new Eudora Pro 4.3. Upgraded my 4.2 (backed up first), and now it's some whack version that streams ads while I'm reading e-mail, and requires me to register/pay *again*. Hello? This is still version *4*, right? So... copy it back over, and I'm running happily at 4.2.2 (or something like that)...

      I used Microsft Mail (when 95 first came out). That sucked. Then it became Outlook... even worse - they took away Schedule+ and combined it. Now Outlook is even worse than Lotus Notes...

      On my linux box, I use Pine and Kmail (not overly impressed). I'll probably try to get Eudora running in Wine. If it is stable, that's one less thing I need to hold on to Windows for (MS Money - believe it or not - is another. A rather nice program).

      --
      "It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
    3. Re:What email clients are in use by wierdo · · Score: 1

      RTFM on Qualcomm's site. If you already have Eudora Pro installed on your system, you can disable the ads. By default, 4.3 will do one of 3 things: Be Like Eudora Pro, if you pay money or already had Pro, Be adware if you want the features of Pro without paying, or it will be Eudora Light, with Light functionality and without the ads. It's your choice. BTW, all of our clients use Eudora Pro, an e-mail client that doesn't suck.

      --
      Care about freedom?
      Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
    4. Re:What email clients are in use by Tower · · Score: 1

      That's just it, I upgraded my Eudora Pro, and it blasted it to ad city... did't work the way it was supposed to. Not that there's anything in 4.3 that was that much of an improvement anyway. Nobody should be sending out HTML styled e-mail, from any client...

      --
      "It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
    5. Re:What email clients are in use by AdamJ · · Score: 1

      It defaults to the advertising based mode when installing. I'm not at my home computer right now so I can't talk you through the exact procedure, but there's a menu item under the Help menu for changing your registration mode - go to "paid" mode and type in your name/serial, and if you don't have it handy (Like I didn't, as I didn't bother to register it when I bought it), you'll get a prompt to toss your CD in, it will verify that it's a legit copy, connect to eudora.com and register itself for you. I don't believe the website mentions the CD fix anywhere, btw.

      Adam

    6. Re:What email clients are in use by Tower · · Score: 1

      I'll have to give that a try. I had Pro 1 to start, and didn't have another physical copy until 3.x, and it's been net upgrades since... (the 3.x to 4.1 updater, etc...). Guess I'll have to dig out that 3.x CD.

      --
      "It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
    7. Re:What email clients are in use by shippo · · Score: 1
      Regarding HTML mail, I subscribe to a manually collated specialist mailing list which sends me an HTML mail message daily.

      Due to the nature of the content, plain text won't really work, as it can contain tables. Unfortunatly last time I looked at the source of such a message, it was generated with a variant of Outlook, so it contains some MS specific tags.

      Is there any decent Linux mail client that can handle HTML mail properly? Netscape Communicator fails to handle some of the tags at all.

  6. Outlook Would have to lead by 1DeepThought · · Score: 1
    After the recent major outbreaks of Melissa and LoveBug it would seem that some version of outlook is in the majority. With the problems these worms caused can there be any doubt that Outlook in one flavour or another is dominant?

    --

    "Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember

  7. You could find out with an e-mail worm... by DanPeng · · Score: 2

    Why not write a cross-platform network worm that spreads via e-mail? Every time it hits a client, it tells a central server what program it finds. It could spread automatically if it finds an Outlook client, and spread on the honor system for anything else. Just ask people to run this EXE file or shell script or visit this web site and see what you get. ;-)

    --

    Daniel J. Peng

  8. Possible solution -- logging. by willis · · Score: 1

    I don't understand why people don't configure an email server with logging to figure this out -- like so:

    1. Find population that you're interested (say mit.edu addresses)
    2. have the SMTP damon on mit.edu save the X-mailer headers, devoid of any personal data.
    3. Make statistics...

    I mean, granted lots of people may use different smtp servers (you'll miss some of the CS folk) but at least it'd be realatively accurate...

    Why doesn't forester or some other research group partner with @home, pacbell, and some of the other bigg'o providers and log for a couple of days...

    comments?
    willis

    --

    there is no thing
    what else could you want?
    1. Re:Possible solution -- logging. by Alien54 · · Score: 1
      This would probably be best with one of the mail routers on the backbone, or something, although so far net searches have not found anyone doing that kind of tracking. Unfortunately, tracking at any one ISP or comapny would only reflect what that company had handed out, and it would not be representive.

      one method out be do some sort of usenet search, but this might not representative either, since not all email users are on usenet, and the usenet population seem to be more experienced in that sort of thing. That may bias results.

      Remember when sending out spam, the lowest common denominator of plain text is readable by the most people.

      :)

      --
      "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  9. aol, hotmail, yahoo by willis · · Score: 1

    I was just thinking -- Eudora, et al are probably really popular, but doesn't AOL have something like 23 million users? (is that users? or accounts). Hotmail and Yahoo also have some crazy numbers as well -- not to mention a lot of other similar webmails (usa.net?) that are probably a bit smaller.

    I'm sure in business outlook is pretty big -- but most of the students I know use Eudora or plain'ol webmail... (I myself use pine).

    yeah...

    willis.

    --

    there is no thing
    what else could you want?
  10. original intent & grep -h "X-Mailer" ~/Mail/* by willis · · Score: 1

    check it out, yo.

    The reason why you'd want to check the X-Mailer is to see who is sending the message... but the overall goal is figuring out who READS the message with WHAT client. Therefore, things like your scripts, etc. should be tossed out from the get-go -- they give no useful information about what a particular person is using to READ the message.

    (i.e. if I send mail from hotmail, then I probably read it from there too... I probably don't read mail from /bin/usr/mail, and if I do, I'm just a player then and I don't need to be counted....)

    >I have used several e-mail clients, and NONE of them have ever put their name in the headers.

    grep -h "X-Mailer" ~/Mail/* | sort -u >foo

    X-Mailer: Web Mail 3.5.1.4
    X-Mailer: Allaire ColdFusion Application Server
    X-Mailer: Juno 1.49
    X-Mailer: Kana Customer Messaging System 3.0
    X-Mailer::1.0 (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/)
    X-Mailer: AOL NetMail version 2.0
    X-Mailer: Becky! ver 1.25.07
    X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows sub 30
    X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster
    X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (M3.0.0.70)
    X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300
    X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58
    X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
    X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook CWS, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)
    X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL34 (25)]
    X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
    X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.117)

    there are a bunch more, too. Notice how some of these don't represent a mail client that somebody's actually using (a coldfusion client? sounds like a form to me) and thus shouldn't be counted...

    Also, some things clients might need to be teased out (pine, hotmail, aol (v5?), etc.) but they probably all have unique fingerprints like below...

    Received: from 12.73.227.x by www.hotmail.com with HTTP
    Received: from imo-d09.mx.aol.com

    Message-ID:

    the only thing that I didn't get a fingerprint on was /usr/bin/mail -- and that might be a fingerprint as well...

    (I don't think I know anybody who uses Pegasus -- that might be why there's no peg. client listed. I'm sure there's a fingerprint lurking in its headers as well, same with MUTT, etc.)

    willis

    --

    there is no thing
    what else could you want?
  11. Percentages by mmack · · Score: 1

    I am looking for the same info. I could only find mid 1998 data (besides the Slashdot poll showing 25% pine usage.)

    Client Server Survival Guide, 3rd Edition. Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey, Jeri Edwards. page 408
    Derived from data from IDC, Dataquest and EMMS

    Other- 19.5% (29.9 M)
    Notes 14.3% (21.9 M)
    Eudora 11.8% (18.0 M)
    cc:Mail 9.8% (15.0 M)
    Exchange 9.8% (15.0 M)
    Groupwise 8.1% (12.4 M)
    Hotmail 6.6% (10.0 M)
    Software.com 6.6% (10.0 M)
    MS Mail 3.9% ( 6.0 M)
    HP OpenMail 3.5% ( 5.4 M)
    Suitespot 3.4% ( 5.2 M)
    FirstClass 2.7% ( 4.2 M)

  12. IDC or Ferris.com by dalewj · · Score: 1

    Are the biggest and berst in this area. I know ferris had some data out last year, but it didnt go into each of the imap/pop clients. Plus his data came from the vendors who consider Purchased to mean used. Thats why Notes shows over 25Million seats even though I can only count about 6Million thru my clients. I would be very interested in helping, some of the corporate biggies might give me access to numbers faster then they would to people they don't know, I deal with about 20% of the lan based messaging world. -D_ale> www.jconsult.com

  13. Found some useful data by Krotus · · Score: 1

    I've continued looking in the week since I posted this question, and finally managed to find a place with good extensive data, albeit rather old (October 1998). They've apparently been doing these surveys for years at Georgia Tech. See GVU's WWW User Surveys for the whole thing, and specifically the Technology Demographics section for direct information on my question.