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The BlackBerry was made for email, so it may seem odd to want an alternative, third party email application on the BlackBerry device. But here are several reasons why you might need one:

You might want an inbox seperate from your business one; you may wish to set up accounts that aren’t pushed to your cell phone and, if you use Gmail, access features not supported by the BlackBerry Internet Service or BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or you may want to redirect your email traffic through a non-BlackBerry data plan, which can save you money and give you more storage. Here are the few alternatives:

GMail Mobile:

This is one of the most popular third-party email applications and, if you visit m.google.com in your BlackBerry browser, you will get a web page with a link to download the Gmail client. The application installs in the downloads folder. Gmail mobile gives you access to you, but it won’t notify you when you receive an email. However, checking is so fast, it shouldn’t bother you too much.

Yahoo Mobile

Whatever Google can do, Yahoo can do better- or so it likes to think. It, too has a mail client for BlackBerry and you can get it by going to http://blackberry.com/yahoo/mail via your phone’s browser or by visiting http://mobile.yahoo.com on your PC and putting in your cell number - you will then be sent a link via sms. All the main features are supported, but you will need to have BIS activated on your handset to use the client.

Logicmail For BlackBerry

Head to www.logicprobe.org/proj/logicmail and you’ll find a web page, a wworld away from the slick sites of Google and Yahoo, that offers a typically open-source approach. If you want to contribute to contribute to the coding of your favourite email application, this is the one for you. You can download the application directly to yourhandset, over the air (OTA), by going to http://logicmail/org/ota. This application supports the IMAP protocol and, in typical open-source fashion is simple and effective.

Beejive Jivetalk

If you like to use multiple IM accounts, the best solutions is to use a client that allows you hook into several at the same time. One such client is Jive Talk, which can be pulled on to your BlackBerry from www.beejive.com/download. It costs$19.95, but you can try it out for free for 30 days. JiveTalk is a very well featured application that has a good user interface, starts up quickly and lets you view past conversations easily. You’ll also be running just the one client, rather than several, which help to conserve battery life.

ICQ

This is the original instant messaging service and was bought by AOL a few years ago. Rather than just shut it down, AOL kept it going alongside AIM and, pleasingly, it’s available for BlackBerry too.

BlackBerry Instant Messaging

You need a BlackBerry data plan for this to work. To activate and use BlackBerry instant messaging, you have to add contacts via BlackBerry PIN which is a unique number assigned to your handset that can be found by selecting ‘Options’ from the menu and scrolling down to ‘Status’. Add it in, send someone a message and, once they have accepted you, the identifier will change from the PIN number into their name. Once you have built up a contact database, you will be able to send  message to multiple contacts at the same time.