During the height of bulletin board system popularity, several dozen offline mail readers supported the QWK format.
Again, these individual steps are typically automated to a degree, meaning that the user simply has to invoke the door software on the BBS, wait for the download to complete, and then run the client.
QWK placed replies in a .REP file (again, typically with the BBS's "id" as the name) that was exchanged automatically the next time the user called in.
QWK clients varied widely in functionality, but all of them offered basic e-mail and public forum support.
Prior to the introduction of QWK and similar systems, it was not uncommon for users with large message volumes to set up their own FidoNet node to quickly gather their mail, but QWK dramatically reduced the required setup, and greatly increased the number of users of offline mail.