# Alpine vs Wanderlust

- Alpine: Menu-driven terminal email client descended from Pine, with built-in help, setup screens and native Windows builds.
- Wanderlust: Mail and news reader for Emacs, written in Emacs Lisp, with built-in IMAP, POP3, NNTP and SMTP support.

## Differences

- Alpine is a full-screen terminal client; Wanderlust is a mail client that runs inside Emacs.
- Only Alpine has built-in mbox.
- Only Wanderlust has built-in Maildir.
- On Windows, Alpine runs natively and Wanderlust runs through WSL.
- Alpine has calendar support; Wanderlust does not.
- Alpine has S/MIME; Wanderlust does not.
- Alpine is written in C; Wanderlust in Emacs Lisp.
- Configuration: Alpine uses built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc, and Wanderlust uses Emacs Lisp in ~/.wl, folder list in ~/.folders.

## Side by side

| | Alpine | Wanderlust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Interface | Full-screen terminal interface | Runs inside Emacs |
| Language | C | Emacs Lisp |
| License | Apache 2.0 | GPL 2.0 or later |
| Linux | Native | Native |
| macOS | Native | Native |
| Windows | Native | Through WSL |
| BSD | Native | Native |
| Android | Through Termux | Through Termux |
| IMAP | Yes | Yes |
| POP3 | Yes | Yes |
| SMTP | Yes | Yes |
| JMAP | No | No |
| Maildir | No | Yes |
| mbox | Yes | No |
| notmuch | No | Through a separate tool |
| OpenPGP | via plugin | Yes |
| S/MIME | Yes | No |
| OAuth2 sign-in | Yes | via oauth2.el |
| Threads | Yes | Yes |
| Search | built-in search and message selection; server-side for IMAP | IMAP server-side search; local search via mu, notmuch, grep or namazu |
| HTML mail | built-in HTML-to-text rendering | via mime-w3m (emacs-w3m) |
| Mouse | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple accounts | Yes | Yes |
| Offline use | No | message cache and disconnected operation |
| Calendar | Yes | No |
| Contacts | built-in address book; LDAP lookup | built-in address book |
| Vim-style keys | No | No |
| Configuration | built-in setup screens, stored in .pinerc | Emacs Lisp in ~/.wl, folder list in ~/.folders |

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