12 ms·

So, That’s It For Thunderbird

192 points by hornokplease 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
madrona 14y ago
Bah. What's a good alternative native email reader?
- smacktoward 14y ago
  Mutt? In seriousness, I'm not sure there is one.
- rhizome 14y ago
  Native to what?
  - ngokevin 14y ago
    I think he meant as a desktop client.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      For what OS?
      - iso8859-1 14y ago
        Any. If the e-mail client is good enough, I'll run the required OS in a VM.
- ngokevin 14y ago
  Why switch now? It's not like they're deleting it off the Internet.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  Outlook ?
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  My own preference is mutt, and I'm deadly serious about that. KMail / Kontact is actually a very nice client / integrated suite (and it will happily play either way). I consider it the best general PIM I've encountered on any platform. Balsa and Thunderbird (GNOME).
  - icebraining 14y ago
    I prefer Sup to mutt. Labels instead of folders, indexing for super fast searching, it's awesome.
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      I've been meaning to try that. Ah ... it's in Debian repos now: sup-mail. From what I recall and read: sup is the ruby-based implementation of mutt. I believe there are also forks of the mainstream mutt which incorporate indexing, tags, and notmuch.
    - iso8859-1 14y ago
      Homepage: http://sup.rubyforge.org/ http://sup.rubyforge.org/ Note: No built-in IMAP (use fetchmail). Uses Xapian for searching. Handles multiple SMTP servers well (unlike TBird)
- ghshephard 14y ago
  I run Apple's Mail.app and Outlook (for calendaring) side-by side on OS X 10.7 reading from a Gmail IMAP account and an Exchange Account. I prefer Apple's Mail.app - thought I had my doubts for the first few releases of 10.7 when it crashed continuously and got hung up on the Exchange Server with a "constant activity" task. As of 10.7.4 it's (mostly) returned to 10.6.8 stability. It's a viable alternative to Thunderbird/Outlook for mail reading on OS X. Though, honestly, if you are happy with thunderbird, I'm sure it will be many years before you need to consider alternatives.
- Arelius 14y ago
  Is there a good non-native one that's not tied to a specific provider either?
- justauser 14y ago
  Clawsmail or it's ancestor, Sylpheed. If you're one for a beautiful and flashy UI then these options are not for you.
- Avshalom 14y ago
  Opera's built in mail client is excellent. It's unfortunately baked into the browser, so while still pretty light (Opera's what 10-15 Mb) it's got a bit of irrelevent UI laying about in email mode. Still excellent though.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- leif 14y ago
  Used to use alpine, never could make the ui switch to mutt. Now I'm on offlineimap+notmuch+notmuch.el+postfix and I frigging love it.
  - osener 14y ago
    My favorite combination is offlineimap+mu+mu4e. Mu is really fast, mu4e is a great reader and its interface is similar to Wanderlust (another great Emacs based mail reader) which is why I prefer it to notmuch.el. http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html
- leif 14y ago
  Used to use alpine, never could make the ui switch to mutt. Now I'm on offlineimap+notmuch+notmuch.el+postfix and I frigging love it.
- ta12121 14y ago
  pine (alpine)
  - ibotty 14y ago
    dead unfortunately. (and some things are very hard to integrated nicely)
- mseepgood 14y ago
  On Linux: Evolution
  - jeltz 14y ago
    Has evolution improved much lately? When I last used it about 2 years ago it was quite buggy.
    - iso8859-1 14y ago
      According to this [1] article, it is the best client after Thunderbird. [1]: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-linux-email-client-5-reviewed-and-rated-1041236/page:2#articleContent http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-lin...
      - phaylon 14y ago
        I actually switched from Thunderbird to Evolution because the former couldn't handle some of my larger IMAP mailboxes. It also makes me happy because Calendar works nicely (in my case at least) with Google Calendars.
ssheth 14y ago
I guess I will have to shift to Postbox .. which is a private variation on Thunderbird.
ecaron 14y ago
This is rather interesting, given that Mozilla had recently adopted the lead developer from the Mozilla-based IM client Instantbird to incorporate chat into TB15. Knowing the software is deadpooled, I wonder in hindsight if that was a last-ditch effort to stay relevant or if that effort helped highlight the inevitable decline/futility of desktop-based email.
dredmorbius 14y ago
Long live mutt :) In the "who's the user, whose the product" dynamic, I'm a bit confused over what's what in the Mozilla empire. And while no, I wasn't a user, Thunderbird's among the better and more complete email clients out there, I don't see this as a good thing.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Erm, "who's the product". Apostrophe miscue.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
Thunderbird is(was?) pretty good for what it did and was a good competitor for Outlook about 5 or 6 years ago, but the POP and IMAP protocols and the servers that implemented them were no good and never came up to the level of Exchange. Thunderbird simply didn't have the other half of the equation, Exchange clones failed to live up to their promise and Thunderbird floundered with the introduction of Gmail. With a powerful Exchange replacement on the server side, it could've flourished as the client of choice. Not to mention that Thunderbird did not have a source of revenue like Firefox did.
- lifeguard 14y ago
  I have been using IMAP on Thunderbird for at least the past 5 years and it has worked well. I even used to use Netscape's email client back int the day and it worked well, too. Open source email software is vastly superior to MS offerings. Outlook is good group ware, who needs it on today's social web? Exchange + Outlook are horrible and mostly used due to the power of Microsoft's monopoly. PS - I am an MCP and have administered Exchange in the past.
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    >Outlook is good group ware, who needs it on today's social web? Almost all companies do? Or do you propose they use the public social web instead of groupware like Exchange or Google Apps? >Exchange + Outlook are horrible and mostly used due to the power of Microsoft's monopoly. What's horrible about them? Also, you don't need Outlook to communicate with someone using Outlook, so I don't see much of a monopoly effect unlike with Word or Excel. If there's an alternative server and client software that costs much less than Exchange and is easier to administer but has similar or more features, why won't people switch? The lack of such server software is what killed Thunderbird. After all, some are moving to Google Apps.
    - lifeguard 14y ago
      I will light a candle rather than curse your darkness! (I am not trolling and welcome this discussion !) >>Almost all companies do? Or do you propose they use the public social web instead of groupware like Exchange or Google Apps? Odd you equate google apps w/ exchange. Most companies have an intranet that includes a wiki, evernote, or forum. Also, many source code control systems include a knowedge base, wiki, and comment system. Google docs + hosted domain gmail is easy to use, more secure, more robust, and lower cost than Exchange + Outlook. The reason large companies don't do this is they have sunk costs in Exchange and an admin who likes it -- why change? But for start-ups and new companies it is a no brainer. Licensing alone of Exchange (plus windows server with active directory) is prohibitive. Most users have IM accounts on AIM, Skype, or Gmail to use for chatting. >>What's horrible about them? UI, stability, security, documentation, user license agreement, required system resources, remote exploits that grant admin rights. I'll run out of space to list them all! >>I don't see much of a monopoly effect unlike with Word Good point, for example MS is appealing the verdict that it in fact abused its monopoly position with Word vs. Wordperfect. It is more subtle when it comes to Outlook. For example, the only workstations Dell sells come with a MS operating system, that includes IE and Outlook (but you must pay for Outlook/office after 2 months or something). Or staples. Or Office Depot. >>why won't people switch The power of mono-culture aka monopoly. It is well documented in the public record that microsoft repeated abused their monopoly position. This is beyond the scope of email clients, but look into: Novel Networking (IPX), 3COM lanman licensing, Sysbase & MS SQL server, Apple's UI lawsuit vs win95 that MS settled, IE & Netscape, Real media vs windows media player, The Samba group trying to get docs , Word & Wordperfect, >> The lack of such server software is what killed Thunderbird Wow, ummm, no.
codesuela 14y ago
Ihmo there isn't so much left to innovate in an email client and Thunderbird is already a solid client so personally this message won't deter me from using it
- jemka 14y ago
  Completely agree. I'll admit I immediately starting worrying about alternatives, but so long as they keep pushing out security patches, I don't see any reason for an alternative.
- flatline3 14y ago
  I disagree -- nobody has of yet come close to matching Apple's Mail app. It does a simple job exceedingly well, with a minimally impeding user interface. The alternatives -- including Thunderbird -- are bulky and poorly designed. I believe the wide migration to gmail is in no small part due to the extremely poor showing of e-mail clients on Linux and Windows.
  - morsch 14y ago
    I'd kill for a desktop client that was as good as Gmail. I'm surprised nobody has done a straight copy of the UI in a desktop deployment. Heck, you could do it in Javascript+HTML in an embedded gecko/webkit.
    - awfabian2 14y ago
      The last time I played with Opera's built-in mail client, it was pretty similar.
    - danneu 14y ago
      Agreed, that's why I use Mailplane (OSX). It's just a wrapper around Gmail giving me easy account management and OS-level notifications while still letting me use Gmail.
      - fromhet 14y ago
ABS 14y ago
someone please explain to the author what Open Source means and why Mozilla pulling their own people off an Open source project doesn't prevent that project from continuing
- wmf 14y ago
  Someone please explain to ABS that open source isn't magic and in many cases the community does not have enough resources or will to continue development of a product (see Camino).
  - ABS 14y ago
    You are missing the point. It's quite possible no one will pick it up but that's completely different from saying, sarcastically, "But it’s not stopping? Right". What the above is is ignorance of what it means to develop open source code. EDIT: an please let's try and stop this trend here on HN of replying to comments ignoring half of them. I wrote "doesn't prevent that project from continuing" not "it will definitely find other people to carry on"
    - pooriaazimi 14y ago
      It's TechCrunch, don't expect them to know about software (not that any other major tech publication, except maybe Ars, is any better than TC. Almost none of their writers have the slightest clue about the software).
      - ibotty 14y ago
        there is lwn and (to a much lesser degree) heise.
        pooriaazimi 14y ago
        Thanks. I didn't know about them and must check them out. But now that I think about it again, I think I was a little harsh. There are plenty of good news sites about Open Source software and community.
Silhouette 14y ago
I'm not sure why this is a problem, really. E-mail is e-mail, and the great thing about it is that it's been e-mail for years and it will still be e-mail in many years' time. Thunderbird is a decent native e-mail client. It does its job well enough already. IME, it's been stable and robust for a while now. Lightning is fine for basic calendar needs these days, too. Mozilla have hardly done anything significant to this whole area for a long time anyway, and short of some new protocol being developed or something like signed/encrypted mail becoming the norm, I don't see that the tools require a lot of ongoing development either. I'd be far more interested in improvements to Firefox or, if we're talking about messaging, in having some kind of lightweight Exchange replacement with the same kind of ease-of-use so I don't have to configure a million text files on a Linux box to get a basic mail/calendar/contacts store set up. Personally, I trust the likes of Google (or any other data-driven/ad-funded freebie service) about as far as I can throw them, and they'll host my e-mail when they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands. :-)
- dfc 14y ago
  Evolution can replace Exchange on the client side.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - sneak 14y ago
    Mail.app on both OS X as well as iOS is pretty fantastic, though not being cross-platform isn't a "keeper-honest-er". You seem to also forget mutt, which, while substantially less useful, quite clearly does not suck.
    - smsm42 14y ago
      Mail.app is way behind Thunderbird. On TB, I can do tags, I can do message flags, I can do search folders, I have 9000 ways of searching, I can add quick folders, I have great antispam engine... Mail.app is ok if you receive 1-2 emails per day and never need them afterwards. If you receive 300 and need to be able to find each of them years since, it is not even close to being adequate, let alone fantastic.
lifeguard 14y ago
That's fine, Thunderbird is complete. Great features like labels, filters, and tabs. As an added bonus of FOSS, the code base can be forked into a new project and continued by those who are interested.
- jorgem 14y ago
  TB Search does suck, though.
  - lifeguard 14y ago
    No, it works fine. Why specificly do you think it sucks?
    - 2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
      Really doesn't. My pet peeve is that there are 2 search bars. Search and Quick Search. The main search doesn't really work well when you want to say, search for emails sent by co-worker X. You type in their name/email and you get this separate tab (so many tabs). There are things like To Me, From Me, Attachment, People, Starred and a bunch of statistics at the top. You can see a screen shot here: http://www.dagorret.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/thunderbird_result_search.jpg http://www.dagorret.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/thunderbi... The regular search could be good for advanced searches. There are probably a bunch of options for it somewhere. But for most searches you really want the Quick Search which is some menu bar option. Not sure what kind of design decision this is either. In Mail.app except for saved searches, I usually try a simp search, if that fails, then there is an option to try and refine it.
mrich 14y ago
Funny, after a couple years of webmail I have just installed Thunderbird again today since I wanted to have more powerful features. I was positively surprised that it had improved quite bit.
- fromhet 14y ago
  I also found that out the same way, and it was owerwhelmingly great! Only that it was soulcrushingly slow. Firefox is quite snappy theese days (especially with pentadactyl, mmhm sweet jezuz) but TB was always a hog.
mosburger 14y ago
I'm pretty sure Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/) is based on Thunderbird's source, no? I wonder that this means for them?
- wmf 14y ago
  I guess now they'll have to do all their development. But if they want to hire programmers with Thunderbird experience I know where they can find some...
  - wccrawford 14y ago
    It would be ironic if they scrapped TB to have more people working on FireFox, and then lost all their ex-TB employees to other companies.
StavrosK 14y ago
I just noticed today that Thunderbird was using 300 MB of my RAM, and was surprised at how bloated it had gotten. I was going to blog about how my 2012 computer feels as snappy as my 2002 computer because of these sorts of things, but I didn't get around to it. There must be a good case to be made about light, responsive software. From the other posters here, I take it there's no light alternative to Thunderbird, and I'll keep using it, but 300 MB of RAM for an email client is a bit ridiculous.
- heretohelp 14y ago
  Is a native, snappy email client something you'd pay for? $20? $50? What operating systems? Is there anything specific features/aspects/licensing that would push you to $50? If neither, (I assume free or close to it) why? How much time do you spend in an email interface? How much is your time worth? Cheers!
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    This is a rare case on HN where someone's username is quite relevant.
    - heretohelp 14y ago
      I chose this name consciously as a reminder to be constructive, inquisitive, and helpful (where I have anything to contribute). This is not my first tricycle ride around the HN block.
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      Eh, I wouldn't necessarily call such a thing rare... Anyway, I'm starting to get to the point where I don't trust a piece of proprietary software to not try stealing my data, so that's a non-starter for me.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    I would pay if it were something amazing (i.e. not just a bit faster than Thunderbird), probably around $20. I don't spend that much time on email, but I hate the small annoyances of Thunderbird (when I delete messages a new, empty one appears that can't be removed, it has no tray icon, it starts up maximized and I have to close it every time, it has no decent "send later" functionality, etc). These are all things that Thunderbird doesn't get right. Also, search is completely broken.
ww520 14y ago
Is there a good web-based email client? Like a html/javascript email client that can talk POP3 & SMTP or IMAP. It's like a Thunderbird on the web. Note I don't mean Gmail/YahooMail/Hotmail. Just a web-based email client that can talk to multiple accounts using standard protocols. Some light server storage support for buffering the POP3 mails would be great.
- andreasvc 14y ago
  There's RoundCube. I don't think it does multiple accounts though.
  - ww520 14y ago
    Excellent. Looks very nice.
- MitziMoto 14y ago
  I've been dying for something like this. My ideal client is basically a clone of gmail, but one that connects through my local internet connection. I know gmail can do POP and IMAP, but it cannot connect to my workplace VPN. RoundCube definitely looks like a good start, I will check it out.
simonbrown 14y ago
Is there a good free/paid webmail service that can be used with a custom domain and has good security? As far as I know, GMail can only be used with a custom domain if you convert your account to Google Apps, which prevents you from using some Google services.
- thelibrarian 14y ago
  I use Fastmail.fm for my email hosting (using my own domain), and recommend them. They don't have two-factor authentication, but do have others, such as one-time passwords. They have a lot of features over and above GMail too (such as aliases and personalities), and much prefer them to GMail.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Google Apps has aliases and catch-all.
- thrownaway2424 14y ago
  You can use fastmail.fm with your own domains.
- estebank 14y ago
  I'm not sure what services you are referring to, and I recall that being the case in the past, but I can't think of any Google product that doesn't work with Google Apps accounts.
- sp332 14y ago
  You can create a new account with your new domain. Switching among google accounts is pretty easy now, it's just a dropdown in the upper right. You can load Google Docs or email or whatever just by picking an account from a menu.
- icebraining 14y ago
  When I used Apps, I just created a new account and used a different browser window (in Incognito) to access Gmail.
webwanderings 14y ago
As an average user, there's just too much overhead in maintaining the desktop client for personal email.
malkia 14y ago
It's my favourite newsgroup reader. What are the other alternatives (I'm using it on OSX, Windows and Linux)
- gecko 14y ago
  On OS X, your best bet for a newsgroup reader is Unison (http://panic.com/unison/ http://panic.com/unison/), which quite honestly beat the snot out of Thunderbird for that purpose a long time ago. I don't have good recommendations for the other two systems, though, sadly.
wslh 14y ago
Our article about exporting e-mails from Thunderbird to Outlook has been one of the most successful blog posts since 2009: http://blog.nektra.com/main/2009/04/14/export-messages-and-folders-from-thunderbird-to-outlook-outlook-express/ http://blog.nektra.com/main/2009/04/14/export-messages-and-f... What triggered the article was the unresponsiveness from the Thunderbird team about ugly bugs we reported and they removed!
TimJRobinson 14y ago
So what do you guys use for managing multiple email accounts well? I love gmail.com but it still doesn't have an easy way to add multiple accounts to the same interface so I'm stuck with the problem of constantly switching between 3 google accounts just to read my email. I used thunderbird for a while but it doesn't show or work with conversation threads as well as gmail and it's search functionality is terrible (I always had to open up gmail to find old email)
- ohgodthecat3 14y ago
  I use thunderbird but you can do what you asked in gmail. The steps I believe are: 1. Forward All Email to 1 email address (you can use a filter to even forward the spam if you don't want false positives getting stuck in an email account you don't log in with often. 2. Set up the ability to send mail as all the email accounts on your main account (this is done in settings, i think it was under identities or something) 3. Select the option to (on reply) send email from the address it was sent to With this you will also be able to send from any email account from your main one.
  - TimJRobinson 14y ago
    Thanks for the information, unfortunately one is a Gmail account (personal) and the other 2 are Google apps accounts (startup and side project) and I don't think you can send mail looking like a user at a Google Apps address. Also I don't really want all my email from these 3 services mashed together into the one inbox as it'd be almost impossible to undo and it'll get messy really quick. All I really want is a side pane in Gmail similar to Thunderbird / outlook which shows the 3 accounts and their folders with how much mail is in each folder, then I can easily click on any folder to navigate to it straight away.
    - robbfitzsimmons 14y ago
      Google has the capacity to make this really easy; the fact that they haven't makes me wonder how difficult it is to aggregate search and other data into one user profile, as that seems like the primary argument against easy Gmail (and thus Google) account mashups. By far my biggest frustration as a 5-account, 3-OS (plus mobile) GMail and Apps user is the client. Two personal accounts, an academic and side project, and a professional one. Oy. Thunderbird provided some cross-platform consistency, but was far too clunky to last in my workflow - not surprised it died. What I've done for the last six months (before recently experimenting again) was keeping the six accounts completely separate and using Sparrow on OSX/iOS as the primary means of access. It kept headers from getting all effed up with Gmail aliasing, but was a real pain when I would occasionally have to log in via web (signing in/out multiple times to check inboxes, etc.). I've now decided to keep all non mission-critical forwarded to the same account (for me 5 Gmail/Apps accounts, for you would be your personal and side project accounts) and the professional account (Apps) separate. With Google allowing a max of Gmail and one Apps account at the same time, this works fine, so long as I'm willing to have my headers display stupid "sent by [me] on behalf of [my other email]" text. Which I am at this point for a little simplicity. Agreed that an aggregator/navigator plugin would be killer (even if it just forwarded you to an incognito tab with your mailbox, to keep you from having to sign out of your main Google account) but the implementation details are onerous/likely impossible.
ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
I've been a HEAVY user of Thunderbird for 8 years now and I am very saddened by this decision but I do support it. :( One part of me saw this while reading the letter: "Google Chrome is whooping our FireFox browser's ass and we need all men at their battle stations, including people from the Thunderbird team. We've been neglecting Thunderbird for so long that it's not like anyone's going to notice. After all, it took us 10 years to get Sunbird (Mozilla's Standalone Calendar Client) to version 1.0." And the other part of me saw this while reading the letter: "The era of desktop software is coming to an end. Most people have smart phones, multiple computers, and use web-mail to keep it all in sync and accessible across all of their devices. Desktop email client users make up a small percentage of users and there's no reason for us to keep spending money and resources on something that will one day be emulated by a web interface." === Things Wrong With Thunderbird That Will Probably Never Get Fixed (too expensive / not worth it) === - The biggest problem with Thunderbird is that it tries to be a bare-bones email client with poorly integrated functionality in the form of third party add-ons. What really makes email clients shine is when a lot of usable features are tightly integrated with a very intuitive and snappy interface. Thunderbird out of the box comes with so few features that it can't compete well with web mail and when you do add on much needed features, they just get generically "bolted on" to the interface. Sometimes in ways that just seem unintuitive and backwards. And every time you update Thunderbird, ALL of your add-ons are rendered useless and you have to wait days/weeks/indefinitely for the addon to be updated. This is the biggest downfall of Thunderbird in my eyes. You'd have to redesign Thunderbird and that isn't happening, it isn't worth it. - By default Thunderbird tries to send all my outgoing mail through 1 smtp account. This alone causes so many problems. Each email account should send emails from its own stmp. Not doing so can mark your "from" field incorrectly (has happened to me many times), trigger red flags (happened to me before) and make other email clients mark your email as "Gmail thinks this message is a scam". - The SPAM filter in Thunderbird is A.W.F.U.L. Let me repeat that A-W-F-U-L. Despite training it for years it routinely misses the same spam, with the same title, and the same content, while sometimes marking very important emails as junk. - The time and date selector for Lightning is just atrocious to the point where I hate having to use it. It FORCES me to set everything in military time and makes date selection more cumbersome than it needs to be. - The tasks todo list for Lightning has never worked for me. Never. - Thunderbird is stuck to one device (desktop). Technically you can have Thunderbird across a lot of computers by using IMAP instead of POP3 but that slows down and cancels out a lot of your speed benefits. === Why Mozilla Should Fix Them === - Originally I had typed up a HUGE list of things that desktop email clients can do that web mail clients cannot. Upon further inspection I found that a LOT of those features, everything from multiple accounts being displayed in one stream and searching across multiple accounts is now available in gmail. - Email Clients allow me to have full control over my email inboxes and contacts without having to feed them into gmail. - Email Clients give me a lot of options in how I can display, index, read, and write email. - Email Clients allow me to search emails and contacts from across ALL my email accounts (gmail currently has a limit of 5 accounts). - Email Clients allow you instant one click access to all your email accounts with powerful and expandable features, an intuitive and lightning fast interface, and god-like control over massive amounts of email accounts. For business people, entrepreneurs, assistants, community organizers, and domain owners email clients are a necessity. - The same way power-users like using Seesmic for twitter and facebook, and people like downloading and using native apps over web based ones, the speed and control of software is what's keeping me with Email Clients at the moment. - As soon as you have more than 5 email accounts to manage on a daily basis, the speed of an Email Client wins out. Gmail only allows 5 multiple accounts to be imported into your stream. === Why Mozilla Will NOT Fix Them And Instead Leave Thunderbird === - Everything I mentioned above is slowly getting emulated by web mail. At the moment gmail is the winner when it comes to email client emulation but in a few years I can see an elegant php+mysql web based email client that not only does exactly what Thunderbird does, but does it across all your devices. And without breaking all your addons after every update. TLDR: The end is near for Outlook + Thunderbird + Mail + Evolution + The Others...
larrys 14y ago
Highly recommend this and one reason I'd be super upset if Thunderbird ever vanishes: http://extensions.hesslow.se/extension/4/Quicktext/ http://extensions.hesslow.se/extension/4/Quicktext/ Allows you to do all sorts of templating within emails. A huge time saver. Great for customer service any any type of standard replies. (Anyone know of any other way to do this should TB ever vanish? Can you write extensions for other email clients?)
corford 14y ago
Well that sucks :( I've used Thunderbird exclusively for all of my IMAP accounts (8 of them) for years. I cache all my mail locally so I can get to it with or without an internet connection and if I'm on the road and haven't got my laptop with me, I can still get to all my mail via a web interface. It's the perfect setup. I will be a very unhappy bunny if Thunderbird dies on the vine and all I'm left with is Outlook or Windows Mail (neither of which have decent IMAP support). Damn you Mozilla!
nyar 14y ago
Too bad, all the Thunderbird features they've been implementing have been really positive. I can't say the same for Firefox... Last time I tried the nightlies Thunderbird was coming together as a great "Messaging" client - with IM, IRC, Facebook, GTalk support, filelink for sending big files with dropbox. It's just too bad, I don't find any of the new features in Firefox nearly as exciting as those. Without addons it is still set up and functions pretty much like phoenix does the way I have it configured. I never liked insert tab after current - which is copied from chrome, never liked tab previews which slow down ctrl+tabbing, despise the autoupdate service firefox installs now - they're pretty much jamming firefox with all these useless and copied features and stopping true innovation with Thunderbird.
jcurbo 14y ago
Too bad really, but probably coming for a while now. I use Tbird on Windows (and Mail.app on OS X) with my email hosted at pobox.com. I have a gmail account but I've never been a fan of webmail at all. I miss Eudora :( Now that was a simple, fast, clean email client.
- wanderr 14y ago
  Me too! Lightning fast. I actually run it still in XP Mode in Windows 7 (couldn't get it working natively) for my personal email (Thunderbird for work, like to have a clean separation), even with that layer of emulation it's the fastest thing ever. I also love the ability to alt-click on any field and have the messages grouped by that. Closest I've found in Thunderbird (penelope extension is awful) is the Nostalgy extension, set up so that ` toggles between grouping messages by sender or subject based on the email you have selected. Not as awesome and not as fast, but still super handy.
  - jcurbo 14y ago
    I would use it but I worry about using programs that are not being actively maintained because of the risk of security vulnerabilities. Especially in email where you can have a lot of risky inputs (spam, phishing attempts etc) - even though I have great spam protection (thanks pobox) there is still a risk. I'm not sure what I'm going to do on Windows yet... I'm trying Postbox and it's nice.
jpswade 14y ago
* CampaignMonitor[1] reports just 1.21% usage * litmus[2] reports 2.4% Not the huge market share that you'd expect. [1] http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/email-clients/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/email-... [2]http://litmus.com/resources/email-client-stats http://litmus.com/resources/email-client-stats
jvdh 14y ago
Hopefully this will open up some breathing space for serious open-source mail client alternatives. I'm hoping for a revival of Letters.app (https://github.com/ccgus/letters https://github.com/ccgus/letters)
conradfr 14y ago
We use it at work. For sure, there are bugs never fixed and some features that would need polish. I hope support will continue for some time.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
damian2000 14y ago
Damn. I just finished importing 18,922 messages from my old email app (the dire windows mail). I've been running Thunderbird (Portable Apps edition) for the past week... it's been excellent so far.
beagle3 14y ago
The thing that has kept me with thunderbird are the AdBlockPlus and VirtualIdentity plugin. Does mail.app / opera mail / any other Linux client have something comparable? (Virtual Identity is a godsend when you have a domain; it lets you set up identities on the fly while writing an email, and manages them beautifully and helpfully for you)

192 points by hornokplease 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

madrona 14y ago

Bah. What's a good alternative native email reader?

smacktoward 14y ago
Mutt? In seriousness, I'm not sure there is one.
rhizome 14y ago
Native to what?
- ngokevin 14y ago
  I think he meant as a desktop client.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    For what OS?
    - iso8859-1 14y ago
      Any. If the e-mail client is good enough, I'll run the required OS in a VM.
ngokevin 14y ago
Why switch now? It's not like they're deleting it off the Internet.
cooldeal 14y ago
Outlook ?
dredmorbius 14y ago
My own preference is mutt, and I'm deadly serious about that. KMail / Kontact is actually a very nice client / integrated suite (and it will happily play either way). I consider it the best general PIM I've encountered on any platform. Balsa and Thunderbird (GNOME).
- icebraining 14y ago
  I prefer Sup to mutt. Labels instead of folders, indexing for super fast searching, it's awesome.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    I've been meaning to try that. Ah ... it's in Debian repos now: sup-mail. From what I recall and read: sup is the ruby-based implementation of mutt. I believe there are also forks of the mainstream mutt which incorporate indexing, tags, and notmuch.
  - iso8859-1 14y ago
    Homepage: http://sup.rubyforge.org/ http://sup.rubyforge.org/ Note: No built-in IMAP (use fetchmail). Uses Xapian for searching. Handles multiple SMTP servers well (unlike TBird)
ghshephard 14y ago
I run Apple's Mail.app and Outlook (for calendaring) side-by side on OS X 10.7 reading from a Gmail IMAP account and an Exchange Account. I prefer Apple's Mail.app - thought I had my doubts for the first few releases of 10.7 when it crashed continuously and got hung up on the Exchange Server with a "constant activity" task. As of 10.7.4 it's (mostly) returned to 10.6.8 stability. It's a viable alternative to Thunderbird/Outlook for mail reading on OS X. Though, honestly, if you are happy with thunderbird, I'm sure it will be many years before you need to consider alternatives.
Arelius 14y ago
Is there a good non-native one that's not tied to a specific provider either?
justauser 14y ago
Clawsmail or it's ancestor, Sylpheed. If you're one for a beautiful and flashy UI then these options are not for you.
Avshalom 14y ago
Opera's built in mail client is excellent. It's unfortunately baked into the browser, so while still pretty light (Opera's what 10-15 Mb) it's got a bit of irrelevent UI laying about in email mode. Still excellent though.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
leif 14y ago
Used to use alpine, never could make the ui switch to mutt. Now I'm on offlineimap+notmuch+notmuch.el+postfix and I frigging love it.
- osener 14y ago
  My favorite combination is offlineimap+mu+mu4e. Mu is really fast, mu4e is a great reader and its interface is similar to Wanderlust (another great Emacs based mail reader) which is why I prefer it to notmuch.el. http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html
leif 14y ago
Used to use alpine, never could make the ui switch to mutt. Now I'm on offlineimap+notmuch+notmuch.el+postfix and I frigging love it.
ta12121 14y ago
pine (alpine)
- ibotty 14y ago
  dead unfortunately. (and some things are very hard to integrated nicely)
mseepgood 14y ago
On Linux: Evolution
- jeltz 14y ago
  Has evolution improved much lately? When I last used it about 2 years ago it was quite buggy.
  - iso8859-1 14y ago
    According to this [1] article, it is the best client after Thunderbird. [1]: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-linux-email-client-5-reviewed-and-rated-1041236/page:2#articleContent http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-lin...
    - phaylon 14y ago
      I actually switched from Thunderbird to Evolution because the former couldn't handle some of my larger IMAP mailboxes. It also makes me happy because Calendar works nicely (in my case at least) with Google Calendars.

ssheth 14y ago

I guess I will have to shift to Postbox .. which is a private variation on Thunderbird.

ecaron 14y ago

This is rather interesting, given that Mozilla had recently adopted the lead developer from the Mozilla-based IM client Instantbird to incorporate chat into TB15. Knowing the software is deadpooled, I wonder in hindsight if that was a last-ditch effort to stay relevant or if that effort helped highlight the inevitable decline/futility of desktop-based email.

dredmorbius 14y ago

Long live mutt :) In the "who's the user, whose the product" dynamic, I'm a bit confused over what's what in the Mozilla empire. And while no, I wasn't a user, Thunderbird's among the better and more complete email clients out there, I don't see this as a good thing.

dredmorbius 14y ago
Erm, "who's the product". Apostrophe miscue.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

Thunderbird is(was?) pretty good for what it did and was a good competitor for Outlook about 5 or 6 years ago, but the POP and IMAP protocols and the servers that implemented them were no good and never came up to the level of Exchange. Thunderbird simply didn't have the other half of the equation, Exchange clones failed to live up to their promise and Thunderbird floundered with the introduction of Gmail. With a powerful Exchange replacement on the server side, it could've flourished as the client of choice. Not to mention that Thunderbird did not have a source of revenue like Firefox did.

lifeguard 14y ago
I have been using IMAP on Thunderbird for at least the past 5 years and it has worked well. I even used to use Netscape's email client back int the day and it worked well, too. Open source email software is vastly superior to MS offerings. Outlook is good group ware, who needs it on today's social web? Exchange + Outlook are horrible and mostly used due to the power of Microsoft's monopoly. PS - I am an MCP and have administered Exchange in the past.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  >Outlook is good group ware, who needs it on today's social web? Almost all companies do? Or do you propose they use the public social web instead of groupware like Exchange or Google Apps? >Exchange + Outlook are horrible and mostly used due to the power of Microsoft's monopoly. What's horrible about them? Also, you don't need Outlook to communicate with someone using Outlook, so I don't see much of a monopoly effect unlike with Word or Excel. If there's an alternative server and client software that costs much less than Exchange and is easier to administer but has similar or more features, why won't people switch? The lack of such server software is what killed Thunderbird. After all, some are moving to Google Apps.
  - lifeguard 14y ago
    I will light a candle rather than curse your darkness! (I am not trolling and welcome this discussion !) >>Almost all companies do? Or do you propose they use the public social web instead of groupware like Exchange or Google Apps? Odd you equate google apps w/ exchange. Most companies have an intranet that includes a wiki, evernote, or forum. Also, many source code control systems include a knowedge base, wiki, and comment system. Google docs + hosted domain gmail is easy to use, more secure, more robust, and lower cost than Exchange + Outlook. The reason large companies don't do this is they have sunk costs in Exchange and an admin who likes it -- why change? But for start-ups and new companies it is a no brainer. Licensing alone of Exchange (plus windows server with active directory) is prohibitive. Most users have IM accounts on AIM, Skype, or Gmail to use for chatting. >>What's horrible about them? UI, stability, security, documentation, user license agreement, required system resources, remote exploits that grant admin rights. I'll run out of space to list them all! >>I don't see much of a monopoly effect unlike with Word Good point, for example MS is appealing the verdict that it in fact abused its monopoly position with Word vs. Wordperfect. It is more subtle when it comes to Outlook. For example, the only workstations Dell sells come with a MS operating system, that includes IE and Outlook (but you must pay for Outlook/office after 2 months or something). Or staples. Or Office Depot. >>why won't people switch The power of mono-culture aka monopoly. It is well documented in the public record that microsoft repeated abused their monopoly position. This is beyond the scope of email clients, but look into: Novel Networking (IPX), 3COM lanman licensing, Sysbase & MS SQL server, Apple's UI lawsuit vs win95 that MS settled, IE & Netscape, Real media vs windows media player, The Samba group trying to get docs , Word & Wordperfect, >> The lack of such server software is what killed Thunderbird Wow, ummm, no.

codesuela 14y ago

Ihmo there isn't so much left to innovate in an email client and Thunderbird is already a solid client so personally this message won't deter me from using it

jemka 14y ago
Completely agree. I'll admit I immediately starting worrying about alternatives, but so long as they keep pushing out security patches, I don't see any reason for an alternative.
flatline3 14y ago
I disagree -- nobody has of yet come close to matching Apple's Mail app. It does a simple job exceedingly well, with a minimally impeding user interface. The alternatives -- including Thunderbird -- are bulky and poorly designed. I believe the wide migration to gmail is in no small part due to the extremely poor showing of e-mail clients on Linux and Windows.
- morsch 14y ago
  I'd kill for a desktop client that was as good as Gmail. I'm surprised nobody has done a straight copy of the UI in a desktop deployment. Heck, you could do it in Javascript+HTML in an embedded gecko/webkit.
  - awfabian2 14y ago
    The last time I played with Opera's built-in mail client, it was pretty similar.
  - danneu 14y ago
    Agreed, that's why I use Mailplane (OSX). It's just a wrapper around Gmail giving me easy account management and OS-level notifications while still letting me use Gmail.
    - fromhet 14y ago

ABS 14y ago

someone please explain to the author what Open Source means and why Mozilla pulling their own people off an Open source project doesn't prevent that project from continuing

wmf 14y ago
Someone please explain to ABS that open source isn't magic and in many cases the community does not have enough resources or will to continue development of a product (see Camino).
- ABS 14y ago
  You are missing the point. It's quite possible no one will pick it up but that's completely different from saying, sarcastically, "But it’s not stopping? Right". What the above is is ignorance of what it means to develop open source code. EDIT: an please let's try and stop this trend here on HN of replying to comments ignoring half of them. I wrote "doesn't prevent that project from continuing" not "it will definitely find other people to carry on"
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    It's TechCrunch, don't expect them to know about software (not that any other major tech publication, except maybe Ars, is any better than TC. Almost none of their writers have the slightest clue about the software).
    - ibotty 14y ago
      there is lwn and (to a much lesser degree) heise.
      - pooriaazimi 14y ago
        Thanks. I didn't know about them and must check them out. But now that I think about it again, I think I was a little harsh. There are plenty of good news sites about Open Source software and community.

Silhouette 14y ago

I'm not sure why this is a problem, really. E-mail is e-mail, and the great thing about it is that it's been e-mail for years and it will still be e-mail in many years' time. Thunderbird is a decent native e-mail client. It does its job well enough already. IME, it's been stable and robust for a while now. Lightning is fine for basic calendar needs these days, too. Mozilla have hardly done anything significant to this whole area for a long time anyway, and short of some new protocol being developed or something like signed/encrypted mail becoming the norm, I don't see that the tools require a lot of ongoing development either. I'd be far more interested in improvements to Firefox or, if we're talking about messaging, in having some kind of lightweight Exchange replacement with the same kind of ease-of-use so I don't have to configure a million text files on a Linux box to get a basic mail/calendar/contacts store set up. Personally, I trust the likes of Google (or any other data-driven/ad-funded freebie service) about as far as I can throw them, and they'll host my e-mail when they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands. :-)

dfc 14y ago
Evolution can replace Exchange on the client side.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- sneak 14y ago
  Mail.app on both OS X as well as iOS is pretty fantastic, though not being cross-platform isn't a "keeper-honest-er". You seem to also forget mutt, which, while substantially less useful, quite clearly does not suck.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    Mail.app is way behind Thunderbird. On TB, I can do tags, I can do message flags, I can do search folders, I have 9000 ways of searching, I can add quick folders, I have great antispam engine... Mail.app is ok if you receive 1-2 emails per day and never need them afterwards. If you receive 300 and need to be able to find each of them years since, it is not even close to being adequate, let alone fantastic.

lifeguard 14y ago

That's fine, Thunderbird is complete. Great features like labels, filters, and tabs. As an added bonus of FOSS, the code base can be forked into a new project and continued by those who are interested.

jorgem 14y ago
TB Search does suck, though.
- lifeguard 14y ago
  No, it works fine. Why specificly do you think it sucks?
  - 2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
    Really doesn't. My pet peeve is that there are 2 search bars. Search and Quick Search. The main search doesn't really work well when you want to say, search for emails sent by co-worker X. You type in their name/email and you get this separate tab (so many tabs). There are things like To Me, From Me, Attachment, People, Starred and a bunch of statistics at the top. You can see a screen shot here: http://www.dagorret.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/thunderbird_result_search.jpg http://www.dagorret.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/thunderbi... The regular search could be good for advanced searches. There are probably a bunch of options for it somewhere. But for most searches you really want the Quick Search which is some menu bar option. Not sure what kind of design decision this is either. In Mail.app except for saved searches, I usually try a simp search, if that fails, then there is an option to try and refine it.

mrich 14y ago

Funny, after a couple years of webmail I have just installed Thunderbird again today since I wanted to have more powerful features. I was positively surprised that it had improved quite bit.

fromhet 14y ago
I also found that out the same way, and it was owerwhelmingly great! Only that it was soulcrushingly slow. Firefox is quite snappy theese days (especially with pentadactyl, mmhm sweet jezuz) but TB was always a hog.

mosburger 14y ago

I'm pretty sure Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/) is based on Thunderbird's source, no? I wonder that this means for them?

wmf 14y ago
I guess now they'll have to do all their development. But if they want to hire programmers with Thunderbird experience I know where they can find some...
- wccrawford 14y ago
  It would be ironic if they scrapped TB to have more people working on FireFox, and then lost all their ex-TB employees to other companies.

StavrosK 14y ago

I just noticed today that Thunderbird was using 300 MB of my RAM, and was surprised at how bloated it had gotten. I was going to blog about how my 2012 computer feels as snappy as my 2002 computer because of these sorts of things, but I didn't get around to it. There must be a good case to be made about light, responsive software. From the other posters here, I take it there's no light alternative to Thunderbird, and I'll keep using it, but 300 MB of RAM for an email client is a bit ridiculous.

heretohelp 14y ago
Is a native, snappy email client something you'd pay for? $20? $50? What operating systems? Is there anything specific features/aspects/licensing that would push you to $50? If neither, (I assume free or close to it) why? How much time do you spend in an email interface? How much is your time worth? Cheers!
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  This is a rare case on HN where someone's username is quite relevant.
  - heretohelp 14y ago
    I chose this name consciously as a reminder to be constructive, inquisitive, and helpful (where I have anything to contribute). This is not my first tricycle ride around the HN block.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    Eh, I wouldn't necessarily call such a thing rare... Anyway, I'm starting to get to the point where I don't trust a piece of proprietary software to not try stealing my data, so that's a non-starter for me.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  I would pay if it were something amazing (i.e. not just a bit faster than Thunderbird), probably around $20. I don't spend that much time on email, but I hate the small annoyances of Thunderbird (when I delete messages a new, empty one appears that can't be removed, it has no tray icon, it starts up maximized and I have to close it every time, it has no decent "send later" functionality, etc). These are all things that Thunderbird doesn't get right. Also, search is completely broken.

ww520 14y ago

Is there a good web-based email client? Like a html/javascript email client that can talk POP3 & SMTP or IMAP. It's like a Thunderbird on the web. Note I don't mean Gmail/YahooMail/Hotmail. Just a web-based email client that can talk to multiple accounts using standard protocols. Some light server storage support for buffering the POP3 mails would be great.

andreasvc 14y ago
There's RoundCube. I don't think it does multiple accounts though.
- ww520 14y ago
  Excellent. Looks very nice.
MitziMoto 14y ago
I've been dying for something like this. My ideal client is basically a clone of gmail, but one that connects through my local internet connection. I know gmail can do POP and IMAP, but it cannot connect to my workplace VPN. RoundCube definitely looks like a good start, I will check it out.

simonbrown 14y ago

Is there a good free/paid webmail service that can be used with a custom domain and has good security? As far as I know, GMail can only be used with a custom domain if you convert your account to Google Apps, which prevents you from using some Google services.

thelibrarian 14y ago
I use Fastmail.fm for my email hosting (using my own domain), and recommend them. They don't have two-factor authentication, but do have others, such as one-time passwords. They have a lot of features over and above GMail too (such as aliases and personalities), and much prefer them to GMail.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Google Apps has aliases and catch-all.
thrownaway2424 14y ago
You can use fastmail.fm with your own domains.
estebank 14y ago
I'm not sure what services you are referring to, and I recall that being the case in the past, but I can't think of any Google product that doesn't work with Google Apps accounts.
sp332 14y ago
You can create a new account with your new domain. Switching among google accounts is pretty easy now, it's just a dropdown in the upper right. You can load Google Docs or email or whatever just by picking an account from a menu.
icebraining 14y ago
When I used Apps, I just created a new account and used a different browser window (in Incognito) to access Gmail.

webwanderings 14y ago

As an average user, there's just too much overhead in maintaining the desktop client for personal email.

malkia 14y ago

It's my favourite newsgroup reader. What are the other alternatives (I'm using it on OSX, Windows and Linux)

gecko 14y ago
On OS X, your best bet for a newsgroup reader is Unison (http://panic.com/unison/ http://panic.com/unison/), which quite honestly beat the snot out of Thunderbird for that purpose a long time ago. I don't have good recommendations for the other two systems, though, sadly.

wslh 14y ago

Our article about exporting e-mails from Thunderbird to Outlook has been one of the most successful blog posts since 2009: http://blog.nektra.com/main/2009/04/14/export-messages-and-folders-from-thunderbird-to-outlook-outlook-express/ http://blog.nektra.com/main/2009/04/14/export-messages-and-f... What triggered the article was the unresponsiveness from the Thunderbird team about ugly bugs we reported and they removed!

TimJRobinson 14y ago

So what do you guys use for managing multiple email accounts well? I love gmail.com but it still doesn't have an easy way to add multiple accounts to the same interface so I'm stuck with the problem of constantly switching between 3 google accounts just to read my email. I used thunderbird for a while but it doesn't show or work with conversation threads as well as gmail and it's search functionality is terrible (I always had to open up gmail to find old email)

ohgodthecat3 14y ago
I use thunderbird but you can do what you asked in gmail. The steps I believe are: 1. Forward All Email to 1 email address (you can use a filter to even forward the spam if you don't want false positives getting stuck in an email account you don't log in with often. 2. Set up the ability to send mail as all the email accounts on your main account (this is done in settings, i think it was under identities or something) 3. Select the option to (on reply) send email from the address it was sent to With this you will also be able to send from any email account from your main one.
- TimJRobinson 14y ago
  Thanks for the information, unfortunately one is a Gmail account (personal) and the other 2 are Google apps accounts (startup and side project) and I don't think you can send mail looking like a user at a Google Apps address. Also I don't really want all my email from these 3 services mashed together into the one inbox as it'd be almost impossible to undo and it'll get messy really quick. All I really want is a side pane in Gmail similar to Thunderbird / outlook which shows the 3 accounts and their folders with how much mail is in each folder, then I can easily click on any folder to navigate to it straight away.
  - robbfitzsimmons 14y ago
    Google has the capacity to make this really easy; the fact that they haven't makes me wonder how difficult it is to aggregate search and other data into one user profile, as that seems like the primary argument against easy Gmail (and thus Google) account mashups. By far my biggest frustration as a 5-account, 3-OS (plus mobile) GMail and Apps user is the client. Two personal accounts, an academic and side project, and a professional one. Oy. Thunderbird provided some cross-platform consistency, but was far too clunky to last in my workflow - not surprised it died. What I've done for the last six months (before recently experimenting again) was keeping the six accounts completely separate and using Sparrow on OSX/iOS as the primary means of access. It kept headers from getting all effed up with Gmail aliasing, but was a real pain when I would occasionally have to log in via web (signing in/out multiple times to check inboxes, etc.). I've now decided to keep all non mission-critical forwarded to the same account (for me 5 Gmail/Apps accounts, for you would be your personal and side project accounts) and the professional account (Apps) separate. With Google allowing a max of Gmail and one Apps account at the same time, this works fine, so long as I'm willing to have my headers display stupid "sent by [me] on behalf of [my other email]" text. Which I am at this point for a little simplicity. Agreed that an aggregator/navigator plugin would be killer (even if it just forwarded you to an incognito tab with your mailbox, to keep you from having to sign out of your main Google account) but the implementation details are onerous/likely impossible.

ChrisNorstrom 14y ago

I've been a HEAVY user of Thunderbird for 8 years now and I am very saddened by this decision but I do support it. :( One part of me saw this while reading the letter: "Google Chrome is whooping our FireFox browser's ass and we need all men at their battle stations, including people from the Thunderbird team. We've been neglecting Thunderbird for so long that it's not like anyone's going to notice. After all, it took us 10 years to get Sunbird (Mozilla's Standalone Calendar Client) to version 1.0." And the other part of me saw this while reading the letter: "The era of desktop software is coming to an end. Most people have smart phones, multiple computers, and use web-mail to keep it all in sync and accessible across all of their devices. Desktop email client users make up a small percentage of users and there's no reason for us to keep spending money and resources on something that will one day be emulated by a web interface." === Things Wrong With Thunderbird That Will Probably Never Get Fixed (too expensive / not worth it) === - The biggest problem with Thunderbird is that it tries to be a bare-bones email client with poorly integrated functionality in the form of third party add-ons. What really makes email clients shine is when a lot of usable features are tightly integrated with a very intuitive and snappy interface. Thunderbird out of the box comes with so few features that it can't compete well with web mail and when you do add on much needed features, they just get generically "bolted on" to the interface. Sometimes in ways that just seem unintuitive and backwards. And every time you update Thunderbird, ALL of your add-ons are rendered useless and you have to wait days/weeks/indefinitely for the addon to be updated. This is the biggest downfall of Thunderbird in my eyes. You'd have to redesign Thunderbird and that isn't happening, it isn't worth it. - By default Thunderbird tries to send all my outgoing mail through 1 smtp account. This alone causes so many problems. Each email account should send emails from its own stmp. Not doing so can mark your "from" field incorrectly (has happened to me many times), trigger red flags (happened to me before) and make other email clients mark your email as "Gmail thinks this message is a scam". - The SPAM filter in Thunderbird is A.W.F.U.L. Let me repeat that A-W-F-U-L. Despite training it for years it routinely misses the same spam, with the same title, and the same content, while sometimes marking very important emails as junk. - The time and date selector for Lightning is just atrocious to the point where I hate having to use it. It FORCES me to set everything in military time and makes date selection more cumbersome than it needs to be. - The tasks todo list for Lightning has never worked for me. Never. - Thunderbird is stuck to one device (desktop). Technically you can have Thunderbird across a lot of computers by using IMAP instead of POP3 but that slows down and cancels out a lot of your speed benefits. === Why Mozilla Should Fix Them === - Originally I had typed up a HUGE list of things that desktop email clients can do that web mail clients cannot. Upon further inspection I found that a LOT of those features, everything from multiple accounts being displayed in one stream and searching across multiple accounts is now available in gmail. - Email Clients allow me to have full control over my email inboxes and contacts without having to feed them into gmail. - Email Clients give me a lot of options in how I can display, index, read, and write email. - Email Clients allow me to search emails and contacts from across ALL my email accounts (gmail currently has a limit of 5 accounts). - Email Clients allow you instant one click access to all your email accounts with powerful and expandable features, an intuitive and lightning fast interface, and god-like control over massive amounts of email accounts. For business people, entrepreneurs, assistants, community organizers, and domain owners email clients are a necessity. - The same way power-users like using Seesmic for twitter and facebook, and people like downloading and using native apps over web based ones, the speed and control of software is what's keeping me with Email Clients at the moment. - As soon as you have more than 5 email accounts to manage on a daily basis, the speed of an Email Client wins out. Gmail only allows 5 multiple accounts to be imported into your stream. === Why Mozilla Will NOT Fix Them And Instead Leave Thunderbird === - Everything I mentioned above is slowly getting emulated by web mail. At the moment gmail is the winner when it comes to email client emulation but in a few years I can see an elegant php+mysql web based email client that not only does exactly what Thunderbird does, but does it across all your devices. And without breaking all your addons after every update. TLDR: The end is near for Outlook + Thunderbird + Mail + Evolution + The Others...

larrys 14y ago

Highly recommend this and one reason I'd be super upset if Thunderbird ever vanishes: http://extensions.hesslow.se/extension/4/Quicktext/ http://extensions.hesslow.se/extension/4/Quicktext/ Allows you to do all sorts of templating within emails. A huge time saver. Great for customer service any any type of standard replies. (Anyone know of any other way to do this should TB ever vanish? Can you write extensions for other email clients?)

corford 14y ago

Well that sucks :( I've used Thunderbird exclusively for all of my IMAP accounts (8 of them) for years. I cache all my mail locally so I can get to it with or without an internet connection and if I'm on the road and haven't got my laptop with me, I can still get to all my mail via a web interface. It's the perfect setup. I will be a very unhappy bunny if Thunderbird dies on the vine and all I'm left with is Outlook or Windows Mail (neither of which have decent IMAP support). Damn you Mozilla!

nyar 14y ago

Too bad, all the Thunderbird features they've been implementing have been really positive. I can't say the same for Firefox... Last time I tried the nightlies Thunderbird was coming together as a great "Messaging" client - with IM, IRC, Facebook, GTalk support, filelink for sending big files with dropbox. It's just too bad, I don't find any of the new features in Firefox nearly as exciting as those. Without addons it is still set up and functions pretty much like phoenix does the way I have it configured. I never liked insert tab after current - which is copied from chrome, never liked tab previews which slow down ctrl+tabbing, despise the autoupdate service firefox installs now - they're pretty much jamming firefox with all these useless and copied features and stopping true innovation with Thunderbird.

jcurbo 14y ago

Too bad really, but probably coming for a while now. I use Tbird on Windows (and Mail.app on OS X) with my email hosted at pobox.com. I have a gmail account but I've never been a fan of webmail at all. I miss Eudora :( Now that was a simple, fast, clean email client.

wanderr 14y ago
Me too! Lightning fast. I actually run it still in XP Mode in Windows 7 (couldn't get it working natively) for my personal email (Thunderbird for work, like to have a clean separation), even with that layer of emulation it's the fastest thing ever. I also love the ability to alt-click on any field and have the messages grouped by that. Closest I've found in Thunderbird (penelope extension is awful) is the Nostalgy extension, set up so that ` toggles between grouping messages by sender or subject based on the email you have selected. Not as awesome and not as fast, but still super handy.
- jcurbo 14y ago
  I would use it but I worry about using programs that are not being actively maintained because of the risk of security vulnerabilities. Especially in email where you can have a lot of risky inputs (spam, phishing attempts etc) - even though I have great spam protection (thanks pobox) there is still a risk. I'm not sure what I'm going to do on Windows yet... I'm trying Postbox and it's nice.

jpswade 14y ago

* CampaignMonitor[1] reports just 1.21% usage * litmus[2] reports 2.4% Not the huge market share that you'd expect. [1] http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/email-clients/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/email-... [2]http://litmus.com/resources/email-client-stats http://litmus.com/resources/email-client-stats

jvdh 14y ago

Hopefully this will open up some breathing space for serious open-source mail client alternatives. I'm hoping for a revival of Letters.app (https://github.com/ccgus/letters https://github.com/ccgus/letters)

conradfr 14y ago

We use it at work. For sure, there are bugs never fixed and some features that would need polish. I hope support will continue for some time.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

damian2000 14y ago

Damn. I just finished importing 18,922 messages from my old email app (the dire windows mail). I've been running Thunderbird (Portable Apps edition) for the past week... it's been excellent so far.

beagle3 14y ago

The thing that has kept me with thunderbird are the AdBlockPlus and VirtualIdentity plugin. Does mail.app / opera mail / any other Linux client have something comparable? (Virtual Identity is a godsend when you have a domain; it lets you set up identities on the fly while writing an email, and manages them beautifully and helpfully for you)