Comment by mmooss
2 days ago
I hope for the best but plan for the worst:
I don't think people want to change email addresses very often. How do I know Mozilla will still be doing this in 5-10 years? (Edit: Others have pointed out that, if we can bring our own domains, technical users can retain their address. However, for non-technical users that's not an option.)
Also, I'm not sure about charging a fee at the start (except for TB contributors) and providing a free tier later - reverse of the usual way of launching a product. Maybe this is a soft launch to shake out the bugs and build a little momentum, and you can pay if you want to take part?
Mozilla could do something awesome here. I hate to say it, but here is a chance to start fresh and make big, legacy-breaking changes to Thunderbird. The new audience - which should become the vast majority if they are successful - won't care if it's not like the old Thunderbird (possibly unlike many on HN). Here is a chance to do something special and the mail client is all most users see or understand.
> I'm not sure about charging a fee at the start and providing a free tier later
I think this is a smart move. Email isn't a platform where you need to conquer the world to be successful. Hey has been doing great business with an only-paid model. Might as well serve the paying customers first and build up revenue.
Also, whenever you're launching something new, you generally need to limit onboarding. Google did it with Gmail, Bluesky did it with their service. You can't have a flood of 10 million new users all at once before you've had a chance to scale things. Seems reasonable to let paying users in first given that email doesn't have network lock-in effects.
I think there is reasonable skepticism around how committed Mozilla is to this. However, I think that starting with the paid tiers is a smart move given that they'd have to limit signups initially anyway.
I think it shows real maturity to take this approach and makes me feel more comfortable that they'll be sustainable.
> Hey has been doing great business with an only-paid model.
[citation needed]
From the perspective of an end user, I subscribe to hey, have done so since public launch, and I am quite happy with it.
Plus when I'm paying I know that I'm the customer, not the product.
> I don't think people want to change email addresses very often.
You probably know this already, but people should have their own domain. Then they can change provider without changing the address.
> You probably know this already, but people should have their own domain.
Until they forget or unable to renew. And then their PII is in the hands of the person who gets the domain.
That happened to me, but fortunately it didn't end up being a huge deal.
I had forgotten to renew my domain from Gandi, it expired, and I stopped getting emails. I also could not find my password for Gandi, and I couldn't get the password reset to work, so I panicked, but fortunately Gandi will let you renew someone else's domain. Not a transfer, just if account A wants to pay to renew account B's domain without any change of ownership, they allowed that, so I made a quick throwaway account, and renewed everything for eight years.
I mean, sure, but I and probably 99% of other folks have a credit card set up to autorenew. This is a security problem, but not a very serious one.
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Taking over a domain is not particularly connected to access to PII.
You own/control the name, not the set of files on a hosting service somewhere.
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If you're going to buy a domain for this, don't get fancy with the TLD. I made the mistake of choosing a .io domain for this purpose and with the future of the TLD uncertain, I have been moving away from it, so I'm not left in a bad spot if things go sideways.
Never go for ccTLDs for anything critical, since you're practically at the whims of the government controlling it (see: .af ccTLD that the Taliban took over)
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Yeah even sensible looking decisions can backfire. Am in the UK. Had to scrap my .eu domain due to brexit.
wait what? Is .io going away?
I have a .app domain for my email, and have had it since like 2018. Now I'm wondering if that was a mistake.
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People should, but is the existing process simple enough even any laymen can do is the question.
To be fair, most people I know that are competent to do it just don't. So there is probably another reason, like "people can't be arsed to do it".
The average person is not intelligent enough to have their own domain.
Getting a domain is no more difficult than selecting some "easy web hosting and email" bundle on a site and paying for it with bank transfer, credit card or whatever. There's an entire industry around this. I've met plenty of people who are largely clueless about PCs, doctors, lawyers, artists, etc who have their own domain. It's actually extremely common, because conducting business from a Gmail account is a bit unprofessional and sketchy, particularly here in Germany.
> The average person is not intelligent enough to have their own domain.
You think that that skill (maintaining own domain for email) is an indicator of intelligence?
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I said "own your domain", not "self-host your email server".
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Or they have better things to do vs fighting Route53 MX records errors.
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Sounds like a business opportunity.
I'm deeply skeptical as well.
If firefox doesn't have enough compelling ideas and features in its primary domain of the browser, then how are they going to develop a new mail competency in such a complete way that they can take on gmail?
Whether they succeed or fail, this will sap resources from the browser team. And it seems overwhelmingly likely to fail.
I don't think it's so much that they don't have ideas it's that they're competing with Alphabet's Chrome, who are coincidentally owners of Android, Gmail, YouTube and Google which are internet keystones. I think it's solely by coincidence that I use Firefox rather than Chrome and if I'd started using the Internet a few years later it would have been Chrome.
Also isn't a huge proportion of internet activity mobile users, and outside the US the majority of phones are Android, and most people leave things default, thus Firefox is condemned have a minor share essentially since Chrome is packaged natively with Android?
Anyways I hope they can dislodge some of the Google train. I abhor using Gmail. Better yet if they can compete with Outlook to some extent. Mozilla actually produces software I trust enough, which has enough utility that I'll install it.
At least in Germany, Firefox users are very vocal, and will tell other people all the time that they should switch to Firefox on their PC and laptop if they see them using in particular Chrome, but also Edge.
Indeed, Firefox' market share in Germany is larger than in many other countries.
Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation, Thunderbird is developed by MZLA. They're both subsidiaries of the same non-profit, but they don't share funds or employees, so it's not clear to me how this could "sap resources".
> how are they going to develop a new mail competency in such a complete way that they can take on gmail?
They're likely not taking on Gmail, they're taking on Mailbox.org, Proton and Tuta.
GP here: I'm not deeply skeptical; I'm just wondering about these issues.
Do people still use Thunderbird client? I would guess 99% of people use their browser.
> Do people still use Thunderbird client? I would guess 99% of people use their browser.
Count me as one. It's nice to have a single local application that is set up for around 5 different accounts on two different providers.
I also like the immediacy of search on the local data. When I search for something I don't want to see a spinning busy-beachball indicator.
I use it and feel like it's...fine. A tad slow, and doesn't have some basic features I'd like. But I haven't found any other non-browser clients that I like better than Thunderbird.
I think it's definitely a minority.
I use it to follow three Gmail accounts in parallel, since the web version is a PITA to deal with that scenario. Getting access to my local archive is a bonus point.
I use it for my email. It does exactly what I need it to, works across several platforms. Is Open Source.
Virtually nobody uses mail via web browser on phones, the primary computing device of the world right now.
If people are using their phones then they are using their email service's app to check their mail. Not Thunderbird.
> the primary computing device of the world right now.
Whether this is true or not depends a lot on which the bubble is that you live in.
I used it at a previous job that didn't have a web option for email, but for me the killer feature was that it was the only mainstream newsgroup client (the job delivered error notifications via newsgroups).
> the job delivered error notifications via newsgroups
Well, now I've heard everything. This is either peak greybeard creativity, or that was a thing in like 1992 and a system has been left alone for 30+ years to just do its 90s thing. Either way I kind of love it.
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Yes, on desktop (macOS and Linux). It's not a speed demon but I trust it (on Linux I build from source).
On Android I use Fastmail's mobile client, but I'm thinking of trying the new mobile Thunderbird there too.
I do mostly for work (Alpine does not work out that nice if everyone is sending Exchange-blended tag soup), and a lot of my friends do, many of them (non-IT) engineers.
Thunderbird lets the user change the UI and hide almost every single element of it. I don't like clutter.
With that feature I could also help an elderly friend after Microsoft abruptly replaced the easy to use Windows Mail with a mess that they didn't even bother to translate into other languages.
At my (small) workplace we all use Thunderbird, and I use it for my personal email as well.
A good desktop client, once configured, works a lot better than web-based email clients, especially (but not only) when you have different email accounts that you want to use in the same interface.
> I would guess 99% of people use their browser [for email]
Your comments reveal a major blind spot. 99% of people (or whatever) are using dedicated email clients instead of webmail. They do everything on their phone.
Not only do I use it for my non-primary email accounts, but I use it for NNTP too. :)
I like not looking at ads when reading my email, so I use it. If it added local AI based drafting assistance, I would check out that feature. I don't care about FF Send, but might use it a couple times a year.
Don't most people use an ad blocker?
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yes i exclusively use thunderbird to check my email
Web based email is a disease.
What don't you like about it?
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