# Alpine vs meli

- Alpine: Menu-driven terminal email client descended from Pine, with built-in help, setup screens and native Windows builds.
- meli: Terminal email client written in Rust with IMAP, JMAP, notmuch, Maildir, mbox and NNTP backends and TOML configuration.

## Differences

- Only Alpine has built-in POP3.
- Only meli has built-in JMAP, Maildir and notmuch.
- On Windows, Alpine runs natively and meli is not available.
- On Android, Alpine runs through Termux and meli is not available.
- Alpine has calendar support; meli does not.
- Alpine has S/MIME; meli does not.
- meli has Vim-style keys; Alpine does not.
- Alpine is written in C; meli in Rust.
- Configuration: Alpine uses built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc, and meli uses TOML file (config.toml).

## Side by side

| | Alpine | meli |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Interface | Full-screen terminal interface | Full-screen terminal interface |
| Language | C | Rust |
| License | Apache 2.0 | EUPL 1.2 or GPL 3.0 or later |
| Linux | Native | Native |
| macOS | Native | Native |
| Windows | Native | Not supported |
| BSD | Native | Native |
| Android | Through Termux | Not supported |
| IMAP | Yes | Yes |
| POP3 | Yes | No |
| SMTP | Yes | Yes |
| JMAP | No | Yes |
| Maildir | No | Yes |
| mbox | Yes | Yes |
| notmuch | No | Yes |
| OpenPGP | via plugin | Yes |
| S/MIME | Yes | No |
| OAuth2 sign-in | Yes | via script |
| Threads | Yes | Yes |
| Search | built-in search and message selection; server-side for IMAP | built-in; sqlite3 index by default; notmuch queries |
| HTML mail | built-in HTML-to-text rendering | via filter command, w3m by default |
| Mouse | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple accounts | Yes | Yes |
| Offline use | No | IMAP header cache in sqlite3; full offline use with Maildir and mbsync |
| Calendar | Yes | No |
| Contacts | built-in address book; LDAP lookup | built-in contact list; reads vCard and mutt alias files |
| Vim-style keys | No | Yes |
| Configuration | built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc | TOML file (config.toml) |

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