I initially tried neomutt before moving to aerc and haven't looked back since. My memory of neomutt is pretty hazy, but I feel aerc has a much simpler setup process (it has built-in SMTP support) and a less steep learning curve. aerc's defaults feel more sane, particularly as a Vim user.

For reference, my setup is having offlineimap sync mail to/from my local maildir. aerc fills the rest of gaps with viewing, composing, and sending mail.