[mrks_hy]

I really like Thunderbird, it's the only truly cross-platform mail app, with K9 also now on Android.

Works perfect, I even migrated my Windows install to Linux just by copying the data folder, absolutely seamless.

Not sure why people are hating on it so much here. Point to an alternative with the same features?

[ACS_Solver]

I've been using Thunderbird for my email for a very long time. Probably since some early 1.0 release.

In these years, I've also had it on Windows and Linux, I've migrated it easily across many OS installs and hardware changes, I've used it with different kinds of email accounts and servers. It's worked with PGP encrypted mail, with SpamAssassin on the server and more.

It's great. It doesn't change much, which is probably a good thing, Firefox lost me as a user at some point. Thunderbird mostly stays the same, adding features occasionally. As I write this, I realize I'm so used to Thunderbird I'm not even sure what other clients are available. Definitely one of the best programs I've used.

[tracker1]

I used to be a pretty heavy NNTP user... at some point, while it was largely left to rot, NNTP features themselves became much harder to use... the fact that the leading button on posts now "reply" is an email to the author of a post, instead of a response post is beyond me, and changing the behavior got worse release after release.

The fact that they haven't invested in anything resembling a companion set of services for shared calendar/contacts is also a heavy pain point in contrast to the use of GMail or Outlook/M365/Exchange. If they had offered hosted email/calendar/contacts alone as a monetization option, they could have done so well ahead of GMail or M365 options and could still do so and under-cut them... having an open-core suite just for communications.

They've left a lot of options out there to die... they effectively had Electron a few decades before Electron was a thing. XulRunner was pretty nice to use, and they just left it to die... it got worse over time and just stopped seeing updates. All the while, the charity org and business org just kept spinning their wheels and basically throwing money away... for decades now.

[dominicq]

I can't get it to save emails that I've corresponded with on the Android app. I always have to find specific emails in the email history, and then "Compose message to". If I try to start a new email and start typing the name, or email address, there's no dropdown, no suggestion. Have you ever had this issue on Android?

[copperx]

people point to the rare bug report that deletes absolutely everything in the account. but at this point, I don't even know if it's true.

[jorvi]

I've been hit by that bug, although it only deletes mail AFAIK. There's a separate bug that completely corrupts the mail database on compaction, making Thunderbird lock up including for every future launch.

Its a beautiful open source effort but products that have bugs like that languish for 10-20 years just aren't reliable. I need my mail client to be reliable.

[mrks_hy]

I've been using it to close to 20 years with multiple accounts and it was rock-solid. I wouldn't extrapolate from anecdata, in either direction.

But we should not spread FUD. If you can link to the bug I'd be interested, otherwise it doesn't add much value to claim this.

[wsmwk]

Yes, FUD and long held myths can be found anywhere. But speaking as a staff member and someone who has seen first hand user reports, here is some straight shooting:

* there are rare cases of a profile either misplaced (exists but not correctly pointed to) or gone - it is something which I understand Firefox people are working on (Thunderbird uses the Firefox profile system) * there are extremely rare reports where prefs.js is corrupted * there are no compact failures in current versions - there are no open bug reports for recent versions, so it has been totally obliterated by a rewrite and subsequent fixes. Most user reports of compact failure are attributed to other causes of folder corruption * folder corruption can occur as easily from external sources as from product bugs.

Anyone who has a problem can file a support request at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird to get assistance.

Also, beware drawing broad conclusions about other users' experience from one's own personal experience. I have almost never experienced corruption - once in the last 10 years. But I am also using a Thunderbird profile that has gone through 5 different laptops, two different OS, using daily builds, which is AMPLE opportunity to have had multiple catastrophic failures. But because I know other users experiences I consider myself lucky.

[justin66]

There are lots of bugs and the person you're responding to might have a different one in mind, but this is the classic, ancient unresolved bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462156

Although in recent years it looks like it turned from a bug about one specific (never resolved) issue to a more general troubleshooting session related to data loss issues.

[tracker1]

I used to maintain a mailbox in dropbox that tended to work across my mac, linux and windows environments... it was pretty great... at some point a few incompatible releases across the environments broke everything and had other bugs that I could no longer revert from. I pretty much haven't touched it in a while.

[charcircuit]

Gmail can be used from any modern platform through the web and has dedicated Android and iOS apps too.

[cropcirclbureau]

Gmail has ads inline that are hard to distinguish from real emails. What kind of self-respecting person uses that when they have the technical knowhow to spend time on hackernews (i.e. options)?

[tracker1]

People that want shared/server contacts/calendars that actually work.

[sva_]

I have to say that I am blissfully unaware of them, perhaps due to ublock?

[dmantis]

1. web is too slow compared to any decent desktop client. thunderbird navigation/deletion/message opening is basically instant from human perception, web version operations are visible to human eye.

2. doesn't cut trackers

[Barbing]

It's bad enough so many of us have to get our emails through them. Adding even more tracking on top of that… No, thank you. I don't want all my scroll positions on all my emails to be logged in their database forever.

[mrks_hy]

It cannot do PGP, by design, just for a very obvious fault. It won't let you use your own domain and web storage. Sorry, no contest.

[Zizizizz]

I use my own domain with Gmail

https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1g0m0um/how_to_set_up... is what I did.

[cbeach]

I use Gmail with my own domain (you have to pay for the privilege but Google Workspace has been very reliable and flexible for my purposes)

I'd rather use Google's web storage than my own. I don't have the time nor the expertise to implement multi-region replication etc.

I understand that granting Google access to one's emails might be a dealbreaker for journalists, dissidents etc, though - so clearly Gmail is no good if you have legitimate need for PGP.

[dwedge]

Expanding the acronym really works well here. Gmail is no good if you have a legitimate need for pretty good privacy.

I would argue everyone does, most people just don't really think about what they are giving away. And how many emails a day are you receiving that a daily or hourly incremental offside backup wouldn't give you almost all of the benefits of "multi region replication"?

[cbeach]

I’m sure I could rig up my own email server with replication and all sorts. I recall doing this many years ago, running SpamAssasin etc.

Turns out the quality of things like self hosted spam filtering is no match for the world’s most notorious data ingestion and analysis company

[dwedge]

Sounds like shifting the goal posts.

I have two or three emails a month get through my spam filtering. I don't consider fixing that to be worth the price of letting the world's most notorious advertising company have access to my emails

[lamasery]

Gmail uses stupid amounts of memory, and the web version on iOS is so terrible it's got to be deliberate. The key problem is that they override scroll behavior such that scrolling intents are often registered as clicks, then they reset scroll position on back, the combo of which makes it almost unusable if what you're doing involves scrolling your mail list at all.

They used to still offer "basic HTML" gmail, which was waaaaaay better all around and was the only way I used it on any platform, but they discontinued that some time back.

[traderj0e]

I don't like their UI either, that's why I'm using the Mac/iPhone Mail app.