14 DAY TRIAL // Once upon a time, Mozilla released an email client that gained overnight popularity. Currently, Thunderbird supports emails, newsgroups and feeds, providing users with a rich plethora of features aimed toward email management and customization.
The program is free and open-source, available on Windows, Linux and OS X. Wrapped in a multi-tabbed interface, Thunderbird not only offers a simple means of sending and receiving messages, but also implements an address book manager and support for further enhancement via extensions (just like in Firefox), to name some of its notable features.
During installation, Thunderbird can be set as the default email application. An optional component handles the program's updates silently in the background to not disturb the user's normal activity.
New or existing email accounts are set up via user-friendly wizards through IMAP and POP3 protocols. Advanced users can manually configure protocol settings when it comes to the server host name, port, SSL and authentication mode (can be later modified).
The multi-tabbed UI allows users to seamlessly switch between different windows with emails, local folders, chat messages, and so on. Standard actions shared with other self-respecting email clients can be performed, such as replying to one or all senders, forwarding messages or marking them as spam.
In matter of email management, Thunderbird has a few tricks up its sleeve. For instance, messages can be edited as new (e.g. without forwarding labels), prioritized by applying labels (important, work, personal, to do, later, custom tags), archived, moved or copied to other locations, while threads and subthreads can be ignored. A real-time search function with filters (e.g. senders, recipients, subject, body) is available across all folders.
Thunderbird's behavior is customizable in almost all aspects, starting with the page it shows in the message area at launch and alert type on incoming emails, whether it is a small balloon that pops up from the tray, default sound or custom audio file, or all.
As previously mentioned, server settings can be edited when it comes to the server name, port number, user name, connection security mode, and authentication method. Thunderbird is able to check the server for new emails on a regular basis (at least 1 minute), move messages to any folder, mark them as deleted or permanently remove them on deletion, as well as clean up the inbox and empty the trash on exit.
The Good
Courtesy of partner services, users may create personalized email addresses (requires a subscription fee). For example, they can assign their name as the domain.
It is secure, fully configurable and bundles a rich set of features, such as support for add-ons (e.g. UI themes, Lightning adds calendar functionality), return receipts, synchronization and storage, all wrapped up in a free and open-source package.
The tool is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, OS X), multilingual and includes extensive help documentation for all user categories. It runs smoothly on Windows 8/8.1 as well as on older Windows editions.
The Bad
Even with the help documentation, less experienced users are likely to have a hard time figuring out all of the app's options.
The chat feature could have been better implemented.
