# Alpine vs mblaze

- Alpine: Menu-driven terminal email client descended from Pine, with built-in help, setup screens and native Windows builds.
- mblaze: Set of small Unix utilities for reading, searching, threading and composing mail stored in Maildir folders.

## Differences

- Alpine is a full-screen terminal client; mblaze is a command-line program.
- Only Alpine has built-in IMAP, POP3, SMTP and mbox.
- Only mblaze has built-in Maildir.
- On Windows, Alpine runs natively and mblaze runs through WSL.
- On Android, Alpine runs through Termux and mblaze is not available.
- Alpine has mouse support; mblaze does not.
- Alpine has calendar support; mblaze does not.
- Alpine has S/MIME; mblaze does not.
- Alpine has OAuth2 sign-in; mblaze does not.
- Configuration: Alpine uses built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc, and mblaze uses ~/.mblaze/profile (header-style key: value lines).

## Side by side

| | Alpine | mblaze |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Interface | Full-screen terminal interface | Command-line tools and prompts |
| Language | C | C |
| License | Apache 2.0 | CC0 1.0 and MIT |
| Linux | Native | Native |
| macOS | Native | Native |
| Windows | Native | Through WSL |
| BSD | Native | Native |
| Android | Through Termux | Not supported |
| IMAP | Yes | Through a separate tool |
| POP3 | Yes | Through a separate tool |
| SMTP | Yes | Through a separate tool |
| JMAP | No | No |
| Maildir | No | Yes |
| mbox | Yes | No |
| notmuch | No | No |
| OpenPGP | via plugin | via contrib scripts |
| S/MIME | Yes | No |
| OAuth2 sign-in | Yes | No |
| Threads | Yes | Yes |
| Search | built-in search and message selection; server-side for IMAP | mpick and magrep filter messages by headers, flags and content |
| HTML mail | built-in HTML-to-text rendering | via a filter command in ~/.mblaze/filter used by mshow |
| Mouse | Yes | No |
| Multiple accounts | Yes | via separate Maildirs and profile settings |
| Offline use | No | full; works only on local Maildir |
| Calendar | Yes | No |
| Contacts | built-in address book; LDAP lookup | No |
| Vim-style keys | No | No |
| Configuration | built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc | ~/.mblaze/profile (header-style key: value lines) |

Pages: [Alpine](https://terminalemail.com/clients/alpine/index.md), [mblaze](https://terminalemail.com/clients/mblaze/index.md)