Comment by ano-ther

16 hours ago

As a lot of people in this thread advise against Thunderbird, what do you recommend instead (preferably for Windows as I am stuck on that)?

I think they are just hating on Mozilla out of pure principles, but without any alternative.

  • Thunderbird of now is more annoying and less convenient to use than when I last time used it in 2010's, before I moved to claws-mail.

    And only reason using it now is cos of MS fucked up oauth2 method that is PITA to setup for any other OSS client as it requires the app to be added to their catalog and only thunderbird was big enough to get that

    So I can understand the annoyance

    • To be honest while I’m not the biggest fan of Thunderbird I struggle to understand how this is true by any measure.

      The program is pretty much the same as it was in 2010 from a UI standpoint.

      My biggest complaints with it are that the profile configuration is not portable, and that the UI is too cluttered with features. I just want something simple that does all the important stuff and remains somewhat powerful.

      1 reply →

I've tried so many while doing a bit of research into MUAs and I can't say there are any alternatives that could replace it properly. But depending on your usage or if you're not a demanding user, there might be something out there.

For Windows the pickings are unfortunately slim. On Apple platforms I use Mail.app which has done its job quite well for decades but as of yet haven't found analogues for Windows and Linux.

Under Linux, Geary once held promise but has long since stagnated and is too basic.

As far as I know there isn't one. Maybe Evolution if they have managed to fix all the bugs it used to have. it is a sad state of affairs that we have so few useful email clients.

I still use Thunderbird but on my Linux system that I just set up I would like to try something else.

Some options appear in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/17r3twi/best_wind...

If you’re doing a new install and are generally fine with Thunderbird, Betterbird is a good option. It has additional good stuff that Thunderbird is lacking or took longer to get implemented/fixed.

What I don’t like about Thunderbird is that the profiles aren’t portable. It seems like every Thunderbird install is its own unique mess. I’d love to find something that allowed me to move the same configuration around between computers and platforms. I’m not sure if that exists.

I like how Thunderbird has the ability to handle mail, calendar, and contacts, but the implementation especially for calendar leaves a lot to be desired.

My favorite clients are Apple Mail/Calendar for their simplicity and being local-first clients but I’m using macOS less and less these days.

The “new outlook” that’s offered by Microsoft to consumers for free seems to be creepy and syncs your emails to Microsoft servers even if you’re using a third party client.

I’d also say you only need a truly local client if you have multiple email addresses. If you have just one email, let’s say you’re with FastMail or something, their web mail and mobile/desktop apps are great.

  • Thank you. Am moving away from Outlook and Thunderbird is my default option. Betterbird looks promising, so I'll give it a try (or some of the ones in the thread)

    • Just don’t expect Betterbird to be way different than Thunderbird. It is better but if you don’t like Thunderbird fundamentally I’d keep looking.

      It’s way more work but this subject got me thinking about the idea of self-hosting the all in one nextcloud suite.