Thunderbird wants to compete with Gmail

Thunderbird developers plan to compete with Gmail and other email providers by offering paid services, including @thundermail.com email addresses and new services such as a meeting planner, a file sharing tool, and some "Thunderbird Assist" artificial intelligence features.

You can join the beta waiting list at thundermail.com (or @tb.pro), which is also a domain for email addresses.

Thunderbird CEO Ryan Sipes announced the news less than a week ago, but it's clearly still early days. Pricing and tiers for the new subscription are not yet known. What we do know is that there will be free plans alongside paid plans, but we don't yet know what they will include.

“Our goal is to eventually have a similar offering to the competition, but it would be a 100% open source, freedom-respecting alternative ecosystem, and it would be available to those who want it,” Sipes said.

Thunderbird is a long-standing open source email client that was originally launched in 2003 and was developed alongside Mozilla's Firefox browser. It lost ground with the advent of Gmail and other web-based email services, but it has maintained a loyal user base.

Mozilla discontinued development of the original Thunderbird email client in 2012 and turned it over to the community. In 2020, following renewed interest and donations, development was moved to Mozilla's subsidiary MZLA Technology Corporation, which updated the codebase and developed a mobile app.

They face stiff competition. The biggest are Gmail and Outlook, but ProtonMail and FastMail are also good and established alternatives.