Review of Thunderbird

• Pros
o Interface with tabs.
o Panel for preview.
o Manages several accounts.
o At email account setup, automatically determines server settings.
o Utilizes online services to manage bulky attachments.
o Produces a customized email account.
o Email “cards” for notification.
• Cons
o Calendar and Tasks is a distinct Lightning extension installation.
o Microsoft Exchange Server is not fully supported.

When choosing a desktop email client, Mozilla Thunderbird (free) is difficult to match if cost or platform support are among your priorities. It will work for a wide range of users with a wide range of diverse email scenarios, from those with bespoke server-based mail to webmail users, even though it can’t quite match all the glitzy features of Microsoft Outlook and that application’s full support for Microsoft Exchange mail servers. In reality, Thunderbird enables you to create an email account even if you don’t have one at all using a variety of partner services. For a membership price, these services even allow you to create an email with your last name as the domain name, such as [email protected] That will definitely impress everyone you know!
A free email program with a lot of amazing features, Thunderbird is simple to set up and configure. Thunderbird improves email for you by combining speed, privacy, and cutting-edge technology. Forget about complication and concentrate on what matters. You may feel secure knowing that a variety of measures, like integrated Do Not Track and remote content blocking, are working to protect your privacy and safety. The look and feel of Thunderbird may be instantly changed with the help of add-ons (extensions & themes) and many other capabilities. Create a calendar that is completely connected with your Thunderbird email account to organize your schedule and life’s essential events. Create a daily to-do list, invite friends to events, manage multiple calendars, and subscribe to public calendars. Because Thunderbird is an open source project, anyone can contribute designs, ideas, code, and time to assist other users.

Features
Many tools are available in Thunderbird to aid users in managing their messages. They consist of:
The Thunderbird app allows you to manage several email accounts from a single location. Gmail, GMX Mail, and Outlook are the three email services that are supported. You only need to visit Thunderbird’s login page and enter the proper information if you have an email account with any of these services. You must give Thunderbird permission on the domain of your email provider after being redirected there. You are then ready to leave.
To Thunderbird, you can add as many email accounts as you like. As a result, you no longer need to open numerous websites in your browser to read emails. You only need to open the Thunderbird app to see all of your emails.
The same features that you might anticipate from your email service are available in Thunderbird. You can respond to emails from the app or forward them to different addresses. Emails can be deleted and placed in the Trash or archived to be retrieved later.
Thunderbird’s additional email filtering features, which include a Bayesian spam filter, a whitelist based on your address book, or classifications by server-based filters like SpamAssassin, are one of its benefits. These features significantly increase consumers’ protection from shady emails.
Tabbed email is a special feature that sets Thunderbird apart. When responding to an email and referencing an earlier email, you can rapidly switch between emails that are loaded in different tabs. It’s similar to having several open tabs in a browser. Without a doubt, the Mozilla Firefox web browser served as an inspiration for this feature.
Any open tabs will be saved when you close Thunderbird, and you can restore them when you reopen the program.
Since Thunderbird is an open-source program, any enthusiastic developer can create add-ons to offer other functionality. Go to the Add-ons Manager in the Thunderbird program to download them. You can download the add-ons you prefer from something akin to an app store, complete with ratings, suggestions, descriptions, and screenshots of the add-ons.

A few examples of common add-ons are Quicktext, which enables you to build templates for your emails, ThunderHTMLedit, which adds a tab to the email composition window so you can view and edit the message’s HTML source code, and WebTranslate, which enables you to convert text between languages.
Due to the virtually endless variety of functionalities they can offer, add-ons are perhaps Thunderbird’s best feature. Only the built-in capabilities are available to users in most email clients, however Thunderbird has an ecosystem of outside developers who add more capability for users.
The dashboard for Thunderbird can be modified in terms of appearance and feel. Both bright and dark themes are included with the app, and more ones may be purchased as add-ons. The dark mode will do if you’re working at night, and you can return to light mode in the morning.
Thunderbird has a 4GB file size limit, therefore attaching huge files can take a long time. Instead of attaching the file directly to your message, you may make it simpler by using ThunderBird’s Filelink feature to upload the content to cloud storage and provide a link.
This technique speeds up email delivery and prevents message rejections when sending huge files to recipients whose email servers can’t handle them.
Thunderbird checks to see if you’re running the most recent version and alerts you when any security updates are available using an automated update system. These updates are typically quick to download and install because they are only 200KB to 700KB in size.

Register and Set Up
Compared to Outlook 2013, which can only be used with Windows 7 and Windows 8, Thunderbird is accessible for a lot more operating systems. Thunderbird also works with older versions of Windows, such as Vista and XP, as well as Mac OS X and Linux. For enterprises that don’t want automatic upgrades to disrupt their corporate software configurations, an Extended Support Release (ESR), similar to the one offered for Mozilla’s Firefox browser, is also available.
Thunderbird can be connected to POP3 or IMAP servers even though it cannot be configured to fully utilize an Exchange server. So, for instance, if you use AOL Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, or even the new Outlook.com, you may configure Thunderbird to be your mail client program. The POP3 or IMAP server addresses as well as the SMPT (for outgoing email) server addresses are listed on the help pages for each of these services. You won’t see advertisements if you use Thunderbird instead of the Web versions. Users of Yahoo Mail must, regrettably, upgrade to the $19.99/year Mail Plus version in order to gain server access.
The program can automatically calculate your required server addresses and settings for the main mail providers, just like Outlook 2013 can. If you know the server addresses and configurations, you can also manually configure new accounts using the new account wizard. You can transmit and receive messages that are digitally signed and encrypted using a more sophisticated method, but this requires working certificates. You can still benefit from SSL and TLS security without them.
Select on Local Folders, the first option in your folder list, and then click Create a new account under Accounts to start a personalized email account. My options for providers were gandi.net and hover.com after clicking this. Look up email matches using your first and last name; Hover could actually set up [email protected] for me for $20 a year.
You can import your contact list into Thunderbird if you’re moving from Outlook. It only requires that you open the Address Book and select Tools | Import. You can import your account settings and mail folders in the same process.

Interface
As with every email client, you’ll see the inbox, a panel of accounts and folders on the left, and an optional email preview pane below it. If you prefer Outlook’s most recent layout, the preview will be on the right (under Options | Layout). However, unlike Outlook, you cannot get the brief preview of a few lines inside the inbox items. Each panel can be resized entirely. The standard menu options, such as File, Edit, and so on, can be hidden or displayed, but you’ll probably use the button bar below that more frequently, among other things for creating new emails, sending replies, and refreshing the inbox. Like in Firefox, you can choose which buttons appear where; fortunately, the default options weren’t what I was used to. That is, I changed Thunderbird’s default Get Mail button to a Write (also known as Compose) button at the upper left.
Like Firefox, Thunderbird’s primary interface distinguishing feature is tabs. I love tabs in email, therefore I’m glad they’re present in Yahoo’s webmail interface. It’s convenient to have your inbox, a search page, and an email you’re writing all open in separate tabs at the same time. You have an Unread button to display just fresh emails in your inbox, similar to Outlook 2013.
Using a column of markers to show which emails are included in discussions, the program does enable conversation view. The conversation is expanded when you click on the marker, but Outlook makes talks considerably clearer by identifying them with a triangle arrow and by indenting them when you click on the arrow to expand them.
The card-like notifications that appear at the bottom of the screen when a new email arrives is another of Outlook’s most helpful features. It accomplishes this via a system tray icon, but unlike Outlook, you can’t immediately remove or mark incoming emails as spam. Automated vacation responses are one feature that is not included out of the “box,” but it is possible to add this functionality with an add-on.
While the majority of mail systems have their own spam filters, Thunderbird, like Outlook, provides a local tool for getting rid of spam. Thunderbird’s “adaptive junk mail controls” allow you to teach it to recognize unwanted messages. To mark an email as junk, simply check the icon in the “Junk” column next to it or click the “Junk” button in the message preview pane. When you enable this function, the application marks suspected junk mail; however, you can and should inform it if it is marked as legitimate mail to help with detection. I discovered that while this method was effective at identifying useless emails, Outlook’s equivalent function gave me greater control by allowing me to filter emails at several levels, such as “just the most evident spam” and by utilizing “safe lists only.”

Writing an email
You have the complete range of font, size, and color options when creating an email, just like you would in any messaging program. However, plain text is also an option, and you can even force it for certain domains.
I could simultaneously write several emails in various windows, just like in Outlook. In certain webmail programs, like Gmail, this is feasible, although it is less evident and organic. By default, Thunderbird saves your drafts automatically every five minutes; you can change this frequency to suit your preferences.
Large attachments are another benefit that mail providers like Outlook.com address. With its Filelink function, Thunderbird is also participating in this. When you attempt to attach a large file to an email, this is activated. To accommodate the large files, it employs the file-hosting services Box, Ubuntu One, and YouSendIt. The size restriction that prevents your file attachment from being uploaded to the service you set up with your credentials might be specified.

Support
Since Thunderbird is a free program, there is no support staff you may contact if you encounter problems. But if you need assistance using the platform, the official support page on the Mozilla website is a useful tool with comprehensive user manuals. Additionally, there is an official support forum where people may converse and share fixes for their issues.
The contest.
Mailbird Lite (opens in new tab), Hiri (opens in new tab) (for Outlook emails only), and eM Client are popular Thunderbird substitutes (opens in new tab). Thanks to its add-ons, Thunderbird offers many more capabilities than these rivals, yet unlike them, it is absolutely free to use. These substitutes, in contrast to Thunderbird, have a considerably more straightforward user interface.
Final judgment
We can suggest Thunderbird as a desktop email client all day long. Despite being free, it gives consumers a wide range of features. The platform may be customized in an infinite number of ways because it is open-source, which makes it stand out from the competitors. Its biggest flaw is that it’s somewhat challenging to use, making technical users its greatest target market.