Apple Mail vs Microsoft Outlook: Which Is Better?

Apple Mail (also known as Mac Mail) and Microsoft Outlook are two leading email clients for Apple devices. Each offers its own application with different features. Depending on your communication needs, you may consider certain attributes of each app as an advantage or a disadvantage.

In this article, we’ll look at these two email services in detail and find out which one is the best email client for you.

Apple Mail vs. Microsoft Outlook: First Impressions

Right off the bat, it seems like Microsoft Outlook has more to offer. With MS Outlook as your email client, you get an entire set of tools within Microsoft 365. These Microsoft Office products include Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, and Access (Publisher and Access are available to Windows users only). That way, aside from an excellent mail client, you also get a number of top-notch MS Office programs.

Apple Mail app has been the standard and default email client application for macOS since OS X 10.0. It’s a free app that comes pre-installed on your Mac and is easy to use if you want to be more organized and spend less time on your emails. Mac users also get Pages, which is the equivalent of Word.

The two main MS power tools are Excel and PowerPoint. Mac users get Numbers (an Excel equivalent) and Keynote (a PowerPoint equivalent). However, Numbers is a more simplified tool compared to Excel, and if you need to create complex spreadsheets, you won’t be able to do it as effortlessly as you would using Excel.

Compared to PowerPoint, Keynote is a more sophisticated application which allows you to create slides that are more techy and look better design-wise. At the same time, the app is more complicated than MS PowerPoint, and if you don’t have any previous experience creating presentations, you’ll have to go through a bit of a learning curve first.

All things considered, Microsoft Outlook wins over Mac Mail when we talk about capabilities. But what about functionality?

Functionality & Features

Apple Mail is a simple email application that you can use to send and receive emails. There are plenty of customization options to choose from if you want to change themes, fonts, colors, and the overall appearance of the app.

Aside from the basic customization options, Apple Mail includes some advanced features like flagging your emails. You can add flags to your emails and change their colors to organize your email list.

Another option you can use to keep your emails organized is the VIP feature. You can make any of your contacts VIP, which in turn will help you track the emails from and to recipients who are important to you. You can choose up to 100 VIPs, and Apple Mail will prioritize your email communication with them and send notifications when you receive a message from a VIP sender.

Mac Mail supports IMAP, POP3, and SMTP email protocols. The app has all the features you need to send, receive, and organize your emails, but that’s all it can offer. There’s no support for add-ins or third-party integration.

At the same time, MS Outlook has productivity features that you can use to make your work more efficient. For example, Outlook has a built-in calendar that you can use to schedule meetings and keep up with any upcoming events. Thanks to notes, you can create to-do lists and add reminders for important meetings and follow-up emails to keep not just your email account but your whole life organized.

Outlook also allows Exchange server users to set up their profile in Cached Exchange Mode, so they can access their emails even when the system is offline. Outlook is well-integrated with other Microsoft apps and tools, such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. If you ever decide to switch from Outlook to a different email client, migration and backup are also accessible. You can export your emails from Outlook to PST format and save your emails in portable formats, like TXT, MSG, and HTML.

Interface and Ease of Use

When it comes to the user interface, the two apps are entirely different. Apple Mail is a simple app with an intuitive interface – a great option for beginner users who don’t want to go through a learning curve before they feel confident using the app. As a typical Apple product, the Mail app is definitely an ergonomic app that fits well among other parts of your macOS system.

However, while Apple Mail can be considered more user-friendly in terms of complexity if you’re after additional features and a more effective UI, MS Outlook would be a better pick for you.

The Outlook app looks bigger and more complicated, but it’s packed with additional features. The built-in Calendar feature is displayed in the column layout view so that you can keep on top of your plans and upcoming events at all times. This also makes MS Outlook a better option for working within a big team and for people with tight schedules.

Outlook also supports third-party add-ins in case you’re missing some functionality within the app.

Organizing Your Emails

Apple Mail makes organizing your emails easy. Besides the standard email mailboxes, you get a number of advanced email search options. For example, you can search for unread emails, emails from a specific date (using smart mailboxes), and emails that contain attachments. You can also use different color flags to mark different types of emails and then use the flags to search for these emails in the app.

Outlook has even more options when it comes to organizing your emails. You can create theme-specific folders for easy access to your emails, use Outlook rules to automatically sort your emails for you, use labels to categorize your mail (similar to flags in Apple Mail), block spam, and find lost emails.

Once you get the hang of it, you can explore the more advanced features and add-ons in Outlook to take your email productivity to a new level. Outlook offers an option to ignore entire email conversations if you don’t feel like they’re important to you. It gives you access to My Templates which you can use to draft similar emails faster and automate routine, repetitive tasks like forwarding emails using Quick Steps.

If you also take into account Microsoft Calendar and Microsoft To Do, it becomes clear that Outlook is a superior app in terms of organizing your emails and making your workflow more efficient.

CPU Usage

Another important factor to consider when choosing between the two email clients is CPU resource usage. If you don’t have a lot of it, you have to think of task management before anything else, and since you’ll likely use your email service every day, it’s important to make the right choice here.

Microsoft Outlook is a big system that’s also a part of Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365), so it takes a lot of CPU to run. On the other hand, Apple Mail is pretty basic software. If you only use it to send emails and see the emails you receive, the application doesn’t do any complicated calculations. Unlike MS Outlook. Plus, Mail by Apple is integrated within the macOS system, and because of that, it doesn’t take as much CPU and is generally much lighter.

Platform Compatibility

Apple Mail is made for Apple users and can only be used on Apple products (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Mac). You can also install the Apple Mail app on a Windows computer, but it’s a more complicated process, and you’ll need an iCloud account to do that. Apple Mail is compatible with all products and applications from Apple, making it easier to communicate with other Apple users.

Apple users can also freely install Outlook for Mac on their devices. You can run MS Outlook on any system – Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, or in your web browser. If you correspond more with other Outlook users and tend to use other Microsoft products like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, then this app is a better choice for you.

At the same time, if you’re used to Apple software like Pages and Mac’s presentation apps, it’s best to choose Apple Mail to avoid compatibility problems. For example, you won’t be able to just open a Pages document in Microsoft Word, you have to convert it to the right format first. Your email client follows the same principle.

Pricing

At first glance, the pricing situation seems obvious for both contestants – Apple Mail is free, and Microsoft Outlook subscription costs money. But it’s not that simple.

It’s true that Apple Mail is free and comes pre-installed on your Apple device. However, if you need more iCloud storage than the standard free 5GB, the storage plans start at $0.99 for 50GB and go up to $9.99 per month for 2TB.

Things are not that straightforward with MS Outlook either. The cheapest plan for Microsoft Outlook is $69.99 per year or $6.99 per month. However, you also get 1TB of storage and a whole set of other Microsoft apps. You can also get a Microsoft Office for Windows and Mac called Office Home and Student 2021 for a fixed price of $150 with no subscription, which makes getting MS Outlook on your Apple device an even more viable option.

With all that in mind, it’s fair to say that pricing doesn’t play the main role when it comes to choosing one email client over the other. Apple Mail is an easy-to-use app that offers integration with other Apple products, and you don’t have to buy it separately. On the other hand, Outlook offers more than just a simple email service and comes with a bundle of features and tools which will be worth the money for some people.

Apple Mail vs. Microsoft Outlook: Which One Should You Choose?

Ultimately, Apple Mail or Mac Mail is more of a straightforward send-and-receive mail application. It’s simple, free, and makes your email communication effortless in a lot of ways.

Microsoft Outlook is a more complex application, especially for first-time users. It has a lot to offer if you’re after better productivity and a more professional platform. However, it also requires buying a subscription and some getting used to it.

If, after all, you cannot make a choice between the two apps, have a look at alternative email clients, such as Gmail, Thunderbird, or Blue Mail.