Alternatives to mac mail?

ready to throw in the towel. i have business i need to conduct.
is TB on my macs the answer here? GM on the cloud?
i have two computers and an iPhone and use IMAP.
TIA

hi eric.
thanks for the always really thoughtful and really helpful response here. i will read each of these links tomorrow AM.
would you mind helping me strategize here a bit and let me ask you a couple questions now? i am trying to /streamline/ things up better for business now that i am no longer a newbie. and i am having an issue with mail getting stuck in the outbox (i think in sparrow on my iphone), but i am also constantly having outgoing email problems on my computers (probably due to something dumb going on with incoming or outgoing mailservers but i am tired of trying to troubleshoot this) - and basically between two computers and an iphone and my various accounts this has all become unmanageable.
i mean, my /domains/ went down because my autopay stopped when i changed cards and it took me like two weeks to figure out that the fact that i was not getting email was due to the DOMAIN SIDE and not something to do with mac mail. this is no longer possible to maintain.
here's the lowdown:
1. i have a couple GMail accounts (each with App Specific Password enabled which is acatually pain managing in and of itself), a me.com address, one website with one domain based email address and another website with about twelve domain based email addresses. actually it is a bit more complicated than that since i have an /old/ domain URL that has twelve domain based email addresses and i have a new domain URL (that i am migrating to when i setup a new site) and i am forwarding the old email addresses to the new email addresses - basically so i don't have to enter 24 email addresses in 3 different email clients on 3 different devices.
2. i have Mail and Thunderbird loaded on my computers. i have OUTLOOK loaded to my computers but i am not using it yet.
3. i have Mail, Sparrow, Mailbox, Gmail all loaded on my iPhone
4. i /have/ been using Mail Signatures to make various signatures as well as to store and send information i have to provide periodically to colleagues - like access to FTP accounts - but this is probably more easily stored in dropbox since i have to try to remember to EMAIL the signature to myself, get on my other device, add this information to the signature pane of the other device and i am not actually sure if i can even get this to my iphone in this manner so this all breaks down very badly. but even keeping signatures up to date is a big pain.
5. i /did/ like Thunderbird quite a lot but i moved to mail because the migration of mail was sort of very DOS and a big pain and hard for me to manage when i was on PC. i also used to use Outlook Express a long time ago when on a PC and i am starting to think i should move back to both.
other info:
when i change a single email address in mac mail on the iphone or on my computers i have about 12 different settings i have to enter and if i have to do something with 12 addresses this is basically a lot of work - not to mention i might have to do it on 3 devices. also, since i am still having problems after 4 years i am starting to think this is an unhealthy relationship and i should stop imagining there is something i can do to fix it.
do you have any thoughts about what i would /lose/ if i simply forward all my domain based email from the DOMAIN SIDE to one of my google accounts and just access/setup this one google account on the email clients of my various devices? i mean, i read up on this awhile back in a couple of articles in lifehacker but i think they were accessing the mail from the GMail web app and one issue seemed to be whether/how you would/could send mail from an individual account with an individual signature.
anyway, is there a radical way to cut bait?
what about setting up Outlook? a good idea?
maybe forwarding everything to GMail and just adding the GMail address to my email clients and try that for awhile...?
i realize that since i am using IMAP i can access email from anywhere, and i also realize i have a lot of email clients loaded but in some cases i am not seeing mail for one email address on one client which i see on another but also some clients like sparrow load lightning fast whereas mail takes a very long time on my iphone.

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