Mozilla chairperson Mitchell Baker:
Therefore I believe Thunderbird should would thrive best by separating itself from reliance on Mozilla development systems and in some cases, Mozilla technology. The current setting isn’t stable, and we should start actively looking into how we can transition in an orderly way to a future where Thunderbird and Firefox are un-coupled. I don’t know what this will look like, or how it will work yet. I do know that it needs to happen, for both Firefox and Thunderbird’s sake. This is a big job, and may require expertise that the Thunderbird team doesn’t yet have. Mozilla can provide various forms of assistance to the Thunderbird team via a set of the Mozilla Foundation’s capabilities.
Are there still any Thunderbird users left? It’s been in maintenance mode for a while, and there’s several great alternatives (some of them even based on Thunderbird). That being said, having Thunderbird as a separate entity from Firefox, that can make its own decisions, could benefit the open source project greatly.
Ah? What are they?
Edited 2015-12-01 21:58 UTC
That depends. Which operating system do you use?
Linux.
Actually, I’d like to know too. Windows 7
Have you tried evolution, kmail or claws-mail?
Evolution is nice, but more than mail, which not everybody likes. I do not know Kmail, but it is tied to the KDE libs. On my PC it draws 300MB of dependencies on my disk.
And claws still does not support html messages, which a nerd could get away with 10 years ago. But plaintext mail has died. In the same way, Balsa did not make it into the 21th century.
Therefor, thunderbird still deserves a place under the sun. But there is a new kid on the block: geary.
Edited 2015-12-03 22:15 UTC
This
https://www.postbox-inc.com/
is the only thing I could find that’s significantly different from Thunderbird itself. (FossaMail doesn’t count since as far as I can tell it’s just a rebranded Thunderbird.)
Just tried it on Mac and it at least looks a lot more native than Thunderbird ever did. I guess if you want a real “Thunderbird for Mac” and you hate Apple Mail (probably with good reason) then this is a possibility.
Setup was not quite as easy as Apple Mail – it doesn’t automatically set the right ports for the e-mail protocol settings you choose, but other than that give it a shot. It “only” costs 14 cash-units, which compared to Thunderbird is a lot but for Mac software not so much.
PS There is a free trial – you have to scroll almost to the bottom and there is a link underneath the Buy Now button – “Still undecided? Try Postbox for free!”
Edited 2015-12-01 22:38 UTC
I guess we all agree that “thunderbird great alternatives” should be open-source and free, not closed-source paid software
maybe… depends on the audience I guess. Mac users are used to paying a bit more, I’d guess
Me too, though it’s mostly just because I don’t know of any other good e-mail clients for Windows. I did try googling once, but I just found closed-source crap that either costs money or spies on you, or both, and just gave up since Thunderbird still works fine.
Totally agree. Thunderbird may be aged, look aged, and not active, but it works and it works well for multiple accounts and gigs of mail.
Nylas N1.
From their FAQ
Why doesn’t this connect directly via IMAP & SMTP?
One of the key reasons we were able to develop this app quickly was that it uses the Nylas Platform APIs, powered by our open source sync engine. This moves the complexity of mailsync to the server infrastructure. N1 is compatible with the same providers as the Nylas Platform, including Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, and hundreds of others.
No thanks.
Seriously there are no other worthy cross platform email clients.
RTFFAQ
“I don’t trust anyone with my email. Can I run N1 and the API server myself?
Yes! See the README for full instructions on setting up the sync engine, API, and N1 on your local machine. You can run everything locally and even develop plugins without using a single Nylas Platform service.”
Seriously, “geeks” these days…
Have you read the relevant instructions?
https://github.com/nylas/N1/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#running-agai…
does it sound to you that anybody would like to replace their email client with 2-3 separate things that they need to configure and run on top of the email client? Pure bullshit.
Maybe the FAQ isn’t up to date because the version I have has an adoption for setting up SMTP/IMAP. Haven’t tried it but there’s nothing stopping you from downloading and trying it. It’s free, ya know.
Either way, it works better for me than Thunderbird ever did.
I like <a href=”https://www.zimbra.com/downloads/“>Zimbra myself. Sold around a bit from Yahoo, VMWare and now synacore
Edited 2015-12-02 11:51 UTC
This way Mozilla can focus on its Chrome Singularity without the distractions.
There aren’t many good cross-platform mail clients and even fewer good Open Source ones out there. I’m surprised, though, that Mozilla has completely ignored the Android and iOS platforms for Thunderbird, especially now that Firefox is available for both.
I particularly like the extensions you can get for Thunderbird (e.g. Quicktext to inline embed a text file and Lightning for those Outlook-generated meeting invitations) which really do add to the customisibility/functionality of the mail client.
Splitting Thunderbird away from Firefox will take a lot of work and, to me at least, would only make sense if there was also a commitment to resume development work on Thunderbird after the split.
Edited 2015-12-01 23:00 UTC
Yes, this is concerning. I guess it remains to be seen, which direction things will go.
Please tell us who the thunderbird great alternatives for Windows 7 and Mac are? I guess everybody here tried at least once to find them with no result
Edited 2015-12-01 23:00 UTC
Same/same. I don’t care if it’s paid or not, since I don’t think developers should have to work for free.
I was curious, too, and found this list of mail clients based on Thunderbird:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Email_clients_based_on_Thunderbird
There are only 2 that are not in some way Thunderbird and are still actively developed. One of them, if you don’t mind it being closed-source, seems pretty decent:
https://www.postbox-inc.com
For me, it’s not about it having to be free or not, it’s more about it being worth the asking price. I use e.g. AquaMail Pro on both of my Android-devices and the Pro-version isn’t free; it just happens to be so gosh darn powerful and useable, a properly-full-featured e-mail-client for Android!
On the desktop, though? We already have Thunderbird and the likes, so for a client to be worth the asking-price it has to be cheap and it has to be able to offer something very compelling over Thunderbird (or the likes.) I have yet to find anything such.
Assuming you’re on Windows, have you tried TheBat? It’s a bit more than what I’m looking for, but if you’re looking for something full-featured, it has a pretty powerful filtering system.
Edited 2015-12-02 05:58 UTC
Wasn’t Mozilla discontinuing Thunderbird quite some time ago by only providing security fixes to it? The rest was just handed over to open source community.
It was when Mozilla was focusing on releasing Firefox OS for the public and other nice services for mobile (Thimble is one nice example).
Email has moved to the cloud quite some time ago. Even businesses made this switch or are in process of doing this. Mozilla doesn’t have the required money behind to stand in this market unfortunately.
They’ve been very ambivalent. As you mention they did announce they were basically putting it on the back burner (http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/06/so-thats-it-for-thunderbird/), but more recently they seem to be interested in giving it new life (http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/thunderbird-36…). So who knows what the future holds for Thunderbird.
I normally use Claws Mail on Slackware, and Apple’s Mail app on the Mac. But I do use Thunderbird for one specific task: It makes it dead simple to migrate one IMAP account to another without errors, simply set up both accounts and drag and drop the mail one folder at a time.
Of course, the times I’ve had to do that in the past five years are exactly two, but hey, right tool for the job!
What are good alternatives to Thunderbird?
Thunderbird all the way. What would you have me use, Outlook? 🙂
Did they ever fix the PST files? I would like to flog someone at Microsoft for the problems with those stupid files…
Edited 2015-12-04 07:26 UTC
All computers in our household use Thunderbird, for many many years, and hope to continue using it. We have our own cloud, but anyway, I think the features of Thunderbird are the best.
Although I certainly would like to see better import/export options, the fact that Thunderbird has just been in maintenance mode hasn’t been a problem. It’s already got tons of great features. I certainly hope the Mozilla Foundation doesn’t give it to someone who’ll let it stagnate entirely.
FWIW, under Linux, I’d say that KMail or Evolution are good alternatives depending on your preferred level of options and shiny.
Thunderbird is my email client on every machine I go near, always has been, plus all my family and friends. One of its main selling points, closeness to Firefox.
Tools work the same on both. Stupid decision.
I migrated back to SeaMonkey last weekend. I was a laggard, had to be pulled, kicking and screaming, into using a separate Firefox + Thunderbird, and finally switched away from the suite full time about 7-8 years ago.
All of the recent regressions in the browser UI made me pine for the traditional interface, so I installed Seamonkey for the first time in years. As a consequence, I started using Seamonkey Mail again, and it had no trouble at all pulling in Thunderbird settings. One thing that I forgot I even missed: new e-mail messages pop up in a separate window. In fact, I don’t think Seamonkey mail even supports tabs.
No idea how tightly coupled Seamonkey is to Firefox source these days, nor am I aware of how self-sufficient Seamonkey’s development team would be if Firefox dropped XUL and Gecko altogether. Even early on, in the 1.x days, it followed the lead of Firefox changes. But for now, there’s Seamonkey to hold us over. Hell, I even think that a separate Thunderbird community fork would be duplication of effort at this point.
Seamonkey user here, mail supports tabs of course
I just kinda don’t have use for them but that’s probably just me.
The wrong thing to do.
Thunderbird should be re-engineered to be a Firefox add-on. Less dependence on maintaining your own code base is better. The problem with Thunderbird as it stands is too much of what little engineering there is, is being wasted on maintaining an effective fork of Firefox.
And shame on Mozilla for believing that users don’t need an e-mail solution. Webmail sucks and Mozilla should be championing a better mail experience.
I use Thunderbird precisely because it’s open source and available across platforms. I’ve had enough trouble migrating mail stores across platforms and systems and Thuderbird is the only option that makes that possible. The last thing I want to do is to go back to tearing my hair out trying to move my mail just from one program to another on the same system, let alone between platforms.
You suck Mozilla.
are the reasons I use Thunderbird.
1. My main machine uses Windows (plus dual-boot to Linux), my old emergency spare machine uses Linux. With Thunderbird, cross-platform migration consists of picking up the profile folder and dropping it onto the new platform, then pointing the program at that profile.
2. IIUC, Thunderbird uses the most standard mailbox format around. Except for attachments, it’s all straight text, so it’s easy to scavenge remaining info even when dealing with some seriously broken old mailbox. I’ve heard enough stories about broken Outlook databases, and database updates linked to program updates, that I’m *very* unwilling to use Outlook or anything else which has even the faintest whiff of vendor lock-in.
Count me in as another thunderbird user.
I used to use outlook, and it used to be good but I absolutely can’t stand the UI on any of the office suite programs out of redmond these days. It just seems like MS were trying to drive users away.
I have webmail available, but I only use it when I don’t have access to thunderbird. I find that working with attachments is easier with seemless drag and drop.
I monitor half a dozen email accounts, Thunderbird makes this a breeze.
While it’s rare that I work away from my desk, I do make use of offline emails when I am and having a local mail client is useful.
And I know this seems trivial, but it’s very nice to get email notifications right away in the icon tray without having to have a webpage open.
There are some ways it could be better, it has some synchronization bugs that cause TLS detection to fail, which I wish were fixed.
Kicking Thunderbird out from under the mozilla support umbrella will likely be harmful to the thunderbird project. Personally I wish it could remain in maintenance mode rather than be severed, but at the same it’s hard to blame mozilla for not wanting to support it. They’re just not getting a return on investment. I would be hard pressed to replace Thunderbird with something else as good and cross platform
Edited 2015-12-02 06:38 UTC
For quite a while (quite some years ago actually) I’ve been using it on a dual booting machine (win&lnx) with its profile folders on a shared fat32 partition so the win&lnx TB versions used the same folders. It was a very nice solution for keeping and accessing all my work mail accounts from both OSes.
I have been using it since the Netscape days.
I am yet to find a native email/newsgroups client with such a nice combination of shortcuts, supported email protocols and automatic colorization of email messages.
Webmail is just for a quick fix when forced to go to a cyber cafe.
I use Thunderbird. Nowadays it’s mostly to have a local copy of my gmail content.
plus it runs on Windows, OSX and Linux.
Simple to move from one to the other.
Don’t need much else.
As someone who has to suffer Lookout for my work email, TB is an absolute pleasure. Been using it for well over a decade.
So Thom, come on. Please tell us why you asked if there were any users out there. The fact that there are is obvious by the replies so far.
So what do YOU use then?
Oh, and I’ve never opened Apple Mail on my Mac. No need with TB just a simple Download away.
I still use Thunderbird, even if way less now after I changed my career out of the IT field and my email usage decreased dramatically.
If I would go back to dealing with 500+ emails a day, I would go back to having T-bird open 24×7.
My guess is you are talking about Microsoft Outlook here. There does not seem to be any other comparable alternatives.
Email is my main method of communication and Thunderbird is the least sucking MUA with a consistent, familiar UI on a variety of platforms in my view.
The development of Thunderbird has been completed many versions ago. There is no need to add more functionality to an email client, period. I believe that separating Thunderbird from Mozilla will prevent further defacement of the user interface (Which actually happened already but it isn’t all that bad…) for the sake of bling and therefore I approve.
Oh yes. I’ve been using it for many years now, the portable version on an external hdd I take with me everywhere (with periodic backups), for a bunch of pop&imap accounts and I’d really hate to see it go.
It should be obvious that thunderbird does not need new development. It is a stable email client that is supported. That is ALL we need. No GUI changes like Microdolts tries to foist upon us and pretend it is new software. It does EMAIL. Thunderbird is great.
Add me to the list of (happy) TB users as well.
My office workstation is running Linux and so I use Thunderbird with the Exchange EWS provider to integrate with the corporate mail/calendar/addressbook Exchange system.
Count me also in the list of happy users using Thunderbird!
🙂
I drops what was a very important email client in the past. Meanwhile it wastes time and money in shits like Firefox OS.
Probably they don’t see e-mail client as profitable as mobile OS could be. It’s not about what users want, it’s about making profit.
It´s a non-profit foundation that “promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet”. But you are right that´s bullshit.
I am using it daily at work as an Outlook replacement on my linux workstation (together with Exchange EWS provider plugin)
Well, I am still using Thunderbird. It may be in maintainance mode, but that’s the best mode, really. It is a mature, fully-fledged e-mail client with a huge array of extensions. And while not getting extra basic functionality (it needs no more) it is still kept up to date. Among Linux users Thunderbird is probably the main e-mail client.
Our company uses Thunderbird heavily. It is a fantastic email client. Despite the fact that Mozilla will no longer be adding new features, we have zero plans to stop using it.
People need to get past the notion that software ought to be continually enhanced. There comes a time when a software product is feature complete. The Mozilla group made the right call.
Thunderbird does everything we want out of an email client, so why the heck do we need to get on another train?
A couple of Windows free close source alternatives are:
em Client (http://www.emclient.com/): Very good replacement client that works well and supports CalDAV and CardDAV natively. Setup is easy and the CalDav and CardDAV support is easier to setup and use then the Thunderbird plug-ins. Outlook doesn’t support CalDAV/CardDAV natively, it requires a paid plug-in for this functionality.
MailBird (https://www.getmailbird.com/): Has good support for plug-ins to different things like Facebook and Dropbox. Does not have native calendar or contact sync. Interesting interface.
Personally on my Mac I use Mac Mail (IMAP), iCal (CalDav), iContacts (CardDAV). I am not sure of all the hate towards Mac Mail, I personally like it. Probably fastest email client I have used. If you have it syncing against a good IMAP server, it works well overall. On Windows I use Thunderbird (IMAP), Lighting plug-in (CalDAV), and sogo connector (CardDAV). On Android devices I suggest K-9 Mail for mail, and native active sync for Calendar and Contacts. All these have worked very well for me overall.
When it comes to searching emails, I have only found that Outlook and Mac Mail email clients will search inside offline email attachments of Word and Adobe PDF types. All the other desktop email clients seem to not index the text inside of an attached DOC or PDF (including PostBox).
Edited 2015-12-02 20:35 UTC
Just popping in to thank you for the mention! We are constantly working on updates and new features that our community brings to our attention, and sync is absolutely on the list.
Just a suggestion, but http://alternativeto.net/software/mozilla-thunderbird/ is another great place to start looking for alternatives to Thunderbird.
If you add native Calendar (CalDAV), Contacts (CardDAV), Tasks (CalDAV), and Tags stored using IMAP Flags (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Tags), then I would definitely consider moving to Mailbird as my main email client (and even purchase it) from Thunderbird. I will be looking out for those features to hopefully be added in a future version.
Edited 2015-12-03 19:30 UTC
Just to punctuate how supported Thunderbird is, we had an update today… and I picked up all my emails using its slick, functional interface.
What do those alternatives offer that Thunderbird does not? I don’t see any reason to switch mail client.
Mozilla is to me an example of classic greedy mismanagement of success. Rather than continue to innovate in the way that generated their big success, or even rather than spinning off that success, they dismantle the organization that created the success so it has zero chance of ever creating a new success, and will inevitably dissolve when their one hit falters.
It’s not Mozilla anymore if all it does is Firefox. It’s Firefox. And it has a limited shelf life. Imagine Microsoft renamed DOS. Or Research in Motion renamed BlackBerry. Oh