Software Gadgets

As a webmaster with multiple domains, I get a lot of email. Unfortunately, even with server-side spam filtering, I still get email that I really do not want to receive. For years I've used Magic Mail Monitor to check my various POP3 email accounts and delete obvious spam and virus messages while they are still on the server, before they have the chance to reach my machine. MMM is not very fancy, but it did the job. I tried a few other email monitors over the years, but never found one I liked better -- until now.

My search started when my wife did a reformat of her Windows 2000 machine a week or so ago. She had been using an old version of Mail Inspector to check her email accounts, but when she went to download it, she discovered that the newer version of freeware edition had been limited to one mail account. Since a email monitor is not something we are willing to pay for, I pointed her to the Magic Mail Monitor web page, but said I'd look around and see what else I could find.

I quickly stumbled on Pop Peeper, a freeware mail monitor that I had never seen before. It's description caught my eye because in addition to handling POP3 accounts, it also handles Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, Mail.com, MyWay, Excite, Lycos.com, or RediffMail webmail accounts. I downloaded it and was very impressed. After a few days, Mail Mail Monitor made an exit from the Windows side of my machine.

Pop Peeper does everything I expect from an email monitor. It lives in my system tray where its tray icon lets me know if I have mail (other notification option are also available). Clicking on the tray icon pops up the main window where you can see what emails one has on which accounts and delete any that you don't want to bother reading -- even off of webmail accounts.

You can also view an emails (leaving it on the server for your regular email program to download later) if you wish. Unfortunately, Pop Peeper defaults to an HTML view displayed via IE which means viewing an email opens you up to any viruses that might be in the email. Fortunately, you can set Pop Peeper to display viewed email safely -- in plain text. (Do this in the "Default Message Viewing Preference" item in the General tab of the Options dialog.)

The help file that comes with the program provides most of the information one needs to use this program effectively. Unfortunately, however, a few key functions seem to only be covered in the FAQ page on the Pop Peeper web site.

Pop Peeper is the best freeware POP3 (and webmail) mail monitor I've tried. If you are looking for a mail monitor program, give Pop Peeper a try.

Rating: 4.5 Stars
Operating System: Windows
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Reviewed: 2.4
Web Site: http://www.poppeeper.com/
See Screenshots

[Originally posted Summer 2005]