anyone have sucess using a gmail account with simplemail ? mine wont connect to the server. is there any other mail clients I could use that does work ?

Have you already tried YAM?

I'm using (and been using for a long time) SimpleMail with gmail and it works fine.

First, do you have amissl v1 installed? SimpleMail needs it for secure connections, which at least I am using with gmail.

My config for receive settings is:
POP3, pop.gmail.com, port 995, whole email address for login. Active, avoid duplicates and secure selected.
And for sending:
smtp.gmail.com, port 587, login&pw. Use SMTP AUTH, secure and log into pop3 server first selected.

Simplemail works fine. But I had to do weird stuff installing AmiSSL. I remember I installed v3, then v1, v2, v3... and then it worked