# Cone vs Sup

- Cone: Full-screen console mail client and newsreader from the Courier mail server project.
- Sup: Curses email client in Ruby built around threads, labels and fast full-text search over local mail.

## Differences

- Only Cone has built-in IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.
- On Linux, Cone builds from source and Sup runs natively.
- On macOS, Cone is not available and Sup runs natively.
- On BSD, Cone runs natively and Sup builds from source.
- Sup has Vim-style keys; Cone does not.
- Cone is written in C++; Sup in Ruby.
- Configuration: Cone uses interactive setup screens; settings saved under ~/.cone, and Sup uses ~/.sup/config.yaml and ~/.sup/sources.yaml, plus Ruby hooks.

## Side by side

| | Cone | Sup |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Interface | Full-screen terminal interface | Full-screen terminal interface |
| Language | C++ | Ruby |
| License | GPL 3.0 | GPL 2.0 or later |
| Linux | Build from source | Native |
| macOS | Not supported | Native |
| Windows | Through WSL | Through WSL |
| BSD | Native | Build from source |
| Android | Not supported | Not supported |
| IMAP | Yes | No |
| POP3 | Yes | No |
| SMTP | Yes | Through a separate tool |
| JMAP | No | No |
| Maildir | Yes | Yes |
| mbox | Yes | Yes |
| notmuch | No | No |
| OpenPGP | Yes | Yes |
| S/MIME | No | No |
| OAuth2 sign-in | No | No |
| Threads | Yes | Yes |
| Search | built-in folder search; server-side on IMAP | Xapian full-text index with a query language |
| HTML mail | built-in HTML renderer | via the mime-decode hook and an external viewer such as w3m |
| Mouse | No | No |
| Multiple accounts | Yes | Yes |
| Offline use | No | reads local Maildir or mbox; sync with isync or OfflineIMAP |
| Calendar | No | No |
| Contacts | built-in address books, stored locally, in an IMAP folder, or on LDAP | tracks recent contacts automatically |
| Vim-style keys | No | Yes |
| Configuration | interactive setup screens; settings saved under ~/.cone | ~/.sup/config.yaml and ~/.sup/sources.yaml, plus Ruby hooks |

Pages: [Cone](https://terminalemail.com/clients/cone/index.md), [Sup](https://terminalemail.com/clients/sup/index.md)