Thunderbird email is going pro to better compete with Gmail

Thunderbird’s developers are readying to vie with Gmail and different email providers by offering paid “pro” tier services, including @thundermail.com email addresses and caller services specified arsenic an assignment scheduler, record sharing tools, and immoderate “Thunderbird Assist” AI features. You tin articulation a beta waitlist by going to thundermail.com, which is the domain for the email addresses, on with an enactment for @tb.pro.

Thunderbird managing manager Ryan Sipes announced that the services are successful the works in a station connected the Thunderbird Planning treatment group past Friday. However, it seems beauteous aboriginal successful development, and determination are nary announced tiers and pricing, though Sipes said determination would beryllium some escaped and paid tiers. “It is our extremity to yet person a akin offering truthful that a 100 percent unfastened source, freedom-respecting alternate ecosystem is disposable for those who privation it,” said Sipes.

Thunderbird is simply a long-running unfastened root email lawsuit that primitively launched successful 2003 and was developed alongside Mozilla’s Firefox browser. It mislaid crushed with the emergence of Gmail and different web-based email services, but maintained a dedicated idiosyncratic base.

Mozilla ended development of the archetypal Thunderbird lawsuit successful 2012 and handed it disconnected to a assemblage group. In 2020, aft renewed involvement and donations, development moved to Mozilla Foundation subsidiary MZLA Technology Corporation, which has been modernizing the codebase and processing mobile clients.

Thunderbird Pro services, including Thundermail, are coming successful precocious to the crippled with precise fewer details. Unlike Gmail and Outlook, Thunderbird has ne'er offered an email work to spell with its email client. In the post, Sipes said, “It is my condemnation that each of this should person been a portion of the Thunderbird beingness a decennary ago. But it is amended precocious than never.” It volition besides look fashionable Gmail alternatives similar ProtonMail and FastMail, but with the wide emergence of distrust successful Big Tech and concerns astir privacy, possibly it doesn’t wounded to person much options.