That’s a tough field to compete against and any email client would have to offer something unique to the user. It does not necessarily have to be a feature that no one else has, it can also be great support or great automatism or anything else that is seen by a user as something that makes the software invaluable.

The Bat is a professional email client. This becomes obvious for the first time during installation where you will be asked where you want to store the account data which should not be confused with the installation directory of the email client. Every account can be placed in a different location. Support are POP3, IMAP4 and MAPI protocols.

One of the most important aspects of email clients is the ability to import settings and emails from other clients. The Bat provides an extensive set of import and export options. It can import email messages from generic eml, msg or unix mailboxes but also from specific email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Office Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express. Extensive import options are also available for the Address Book which can import contact information directly from Microsoft products and various other formats like LDIF (Thunderbird can export into this format), vCards or plain text.

You need to add the email accounts manually on the other hand. Most settings however are automatically filled by The Bat. It is for instance possible to add a new Gmail account in a few easy steps with minimal user interaction.

The Bat has been designed for power users and professionals. Yes, regular users can make use of the email client as well and they will be perfectly happy with it but its options to automate and configure excel most – if not all – other email clients.

Here is but one example. Each mail folder in The Bat can be configured with its own unique properties. This can be email templates but more importantly a unique identity. It is possible to set a From Name and From Address for every folder in the bat so this is always being used for mail in that folder. (no more having to remember to picking the right email account before sending the mail)

Email templates are another interesting feature. Unlike signatures email templates can be used to fill out parts of emails that are used regularly. The Bat comes with a few predesigned templates for replying, forwarding or reading confirmations but also with the means of creating sophisticated email templates for virtually any purpose.

What else do you get?

• Hardware Tokens: The Bat! Professional is an email client that offers secure authentication on POP3/SMTP servers using hardware tokens and transparent, on-the-fly encryption of the email message base, address books and configuration files.
• Built-In Backup and Restore: Automated email backups can be configured in the email client.
• Plugins: Plugins expand the functionality of the email client further.
• Internal PGP implementation based on OpenSSL.
• Anti-virus defense: The bat does not start scripts automatically and uses its own html rendering engine.
• Smart Sorting Office: A powerful filtering system.
• Message Parking: Protect messages so that they can not be deleted.
• Microsoft Exchange Connectivity

The Bat offers a wealth of features that you cannot find in other email clients. It is highly configurable and can automate many processes to aid the user in his daily routine.

You can download a free fully working trial version of The Bat (Home or Professional) from the company’s website. This is probably the best way to test the client to see if it suits your needs. My bet? It will.

You can win one of five licenses for The Bat Professional by writing a comment. Let us know which email client you are using currently.

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I do use MozBackup to backup the data in Thunderbird regularly but what if you use another client ? Amic Email Backup can create backups of the data of nine popular email clients including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft outlook Express, Opera Mail, Pegasus Mail and The Bat. The user can choose the identities, some would call it profiles, and the data that should be backed up from those profiles. By default everything is selected which means backups are created of account settings, mail folders, message rules, signatures, address books and stationery.

Backups can be password protected for increased security and scheduled so that they are created on a regular basis. It is also possible to define the amount of backups that you want to keep which would mean that older backups will be deleted eventually. Backups that are to large can be split so that they fit on a floppy disk, zip drive or CD.

The restore function can be used to restore the email account on another computer as well which is great if you have purchased a new computer or want to migrate your emails to another one. I’m not sure if the backups are compressed at all because I lack a mail program that is supported by Amic Email Backup [via Shell Extension City].

The main feature that is missing is in my opinion support for Thunderbird which is definitely one of the most popular email programs in my opinion. A way to import email backups of one program into all the other programs would be awesome as well. It’s a nice tool that is especially useful for users who do not know how to backup their emails manually and don’t want to learn how to do it.

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