I use
Thunderbird for my work email and am thinking about creating an account for my personal email as well. That way, some third party wouldn't be controlling my account. I'm getting tired of web-based email clients and their shenanigans.
Edited to say:
Well, that was odd. I decided to add my gmail account to Thunderbird. Took 3 seconds because -- as you'd expect with Google world domination -- there's a custom option for gmail so you don't even have to enter your mail server info. Just type your gmail address and poof. But here's the weird part; after I created my account, about 300 messages started flooding my inbox, things I'd received from back as far as 2007. It was a random assortment, I must say. Now where the heck have those been stored all these years, and why those out of the probably 10K plus I've sent/received.