Email clients based on Thunderbird

There are many applications that use the same mail and news library as Thunderbird or are based on Thunderbird.

Correo

Correo is a email client for OSX based on code from Thunderbird and Camino (a Mozilla OSX browser).

Eudora

Qualcomm announced in October 2006 that they were going to create a open source version based on Thunderbird and would stop selling Eudora when it was available. There are beta versions available based on the Thunderbird 3 code base. Eudora 8 includes a Penelope extension which can also be used with the normal version of Thunderbird.

Linux distros

Many Linux distros provide a version of Thunderbird that can be updated/installed using their package manager. This may include trunk code (code not released in the current version of Mozilla Thunderbird) , some changes in where/how its installed, or rebranding due to trademark issues. For example, IceDove is a email client distributed by Debian that is based on Thunderbird but removes any proprietary artwork and plugin support. See Moving from Windows to Linux for more information.

Mobility email

Mobility email provides support for running Thunderbird from a USB drive. It is a less well known alternative to Portable Thunderbird that provides its own launcher and has built-in support for S/MIME, OpenPGP (Enigmail) and several webmail providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and AOL.

Mozilla Suite

Mozilla Suite combines a browser with a composer, email, newsgroup and chat client, as well as a calendar. Its mail/news part was split off to build Thunderbird as a stand-alone client. The suite is now continued as community project (SeaMonkey).

Mozilla Thunderbird for U3

Mozilla Thunderbird for U3 provides support for running Thunderbird from a USB drive under Windows. It supports Thunderbird 2.x. Its not clear whether it will ever support Thunderbird 3.x. Sandisk and Microsoft are working on a replacement for Sandisk's U3 technology. Unless you really like the U3 launcher its recommended you use Portable Thunderbird instead.

Portable Thunderbird

Portable Thunderbird provides support for running Thunderbird from a USB drive under Windows. It does not install or register anything on the PC in order to make it more portable. One side effect of that decision is that the profile manager doesn't work. Its basically a copy of the latest released version of Mozilla Thunderbird bundled with a PortableApps.com launcher. Because it reuses a copy of Thunderbird its not unusual for users to update it to use the next major version of Thunderbird before its released or find a web site that has modified it for them.

Portable Thunderbird OSX

Portable Thunderbird OSX provides support for running Thunderbird from a USB drive under OSX. Its provided by the Free OpenSource Software Mac User group (FreeSMUG). It uses a platypus script as its launcher.

PostBox

PostBox is a email client from a startup founded by Scott McGregor (the former Thunderbird lead engineer) and Sherman Dickman (a former Director of Product Management at Mozilla Corporation). It does not have a open source license, a version for Linux or support add-ons. It competes with Thunderbird 3 but focuses on different functionality. See this web page for its list of features. It can import data and settings from a Thunderbird profile.

Their FAQ claims support for webmail but it appears to only support POP and IMAP servers. For example, the account wizard lists "Yahoo! Mail Plus" but doesn't appear to provide a way to use it with a free Yahoo account.

SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey is a community project that continued Mozilla Suite when Mozilla stopped developing it as a product and focused on Firefox/Thunderbird instead. SeaMonkey combines a browser with an HTML authoring tool (composer), email, newsgroup, and IRC chat client (Chatzilla).

SpiceBird

SpiceBird merges email, contacts, calendaring and instant messaging into one application. Its based on Thunderbird, the Lightning add-on and a communications framework called Telepathy. You can add iGoogle gadgets to Spicebird.

Third party builds

The Third Party/Unofficial Builds forum has several threads for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey builds.

Thunderbird -x64

Thunderbird -x64 is a third party build of Thunderbird for Windows x64 . The Mozilla Thunderbird source code is 32 bit code that can't be complied as 64 bit code without patches. You do not need to use it to run Thunderbird under Windows x64. Since Thunderbird doesn't need the extra memory available to 64 bit applications the main advantage is it runs slightly faster because its optimized for CPU's that support Intel EM64T or AMD64 and you're not using 32 bit code in a 64 bit environment.

Trustedbird

Trustedbird is a Milimail project to develop Thunderbird add-ons plus a open source version of Thunderbird (Trustedbird) that integrates most of those features. Its funded by the French Ministry of Defence and British Telecom. The added features include:

• Address auto completion with several LDAP directories
• Adds deletion receipt to Message Delivery Notification (MDN)
• Enhanced security services for S/MIME (triple wrapping, signed receipt, security labels)
• Limit the message size
• Process the message priority at the envelope level
• XSMTP support (lets you integrate additional headers in SMTP format in the body of a message)

See also

• Running from a USB drive - Thunderbird
• U3 - Thunderbird

External links

• lifehacker article on PostBox
• Wikipedia article on Thunderbird
• The OpenSUSE build service provides TB 3.0 beta x86_64 builds.
• List of Mozilla based applications