Thunderbird Pro Enters Production Testing Ahead of $9/Month Launch

Thunderbird Pro has moved its Thundermail email service into production testing as the open-source email client's subscription bundle of additional services prepares for an Early Bird beta launch at $9 per month that will include email hosting, encrypted file sharing through Send, and scheduling via Appointment.

Internal team members are now testing Thundermail accounts and the new Thunderbird Pro add-on automatically adds Thundermail accounts for users who sign up through it. The project migrated its data hosting from the Americas to Germany and the EU.

Appointment received a major visual redesign being applied across all three services while Send completed an external security review and moved from its standalone add-on into the unified Thunderbird Pro add-on. The new website at tb.pro is live for signups and account management.

This bird won't fly

[haruchai]

best of luck to them sincerely

Not good

[MBGMorden]

I can't see them selling email accounts for $9 per month. That's just too small of a service for that much money. $1.50 per month maybe (paid annually to lessen CC processing fees), but not $9 per month.

Re: Not good

[melizeche]

9$ per 15 email accounts it's not bad imho, Google charges that per account

Re:

[DaTrueDave]

Proton is $7 a month and offers so much more, but seems to have fairly slow adoption. Considering the market penetration of the Thunderbird email client, I don't see that they're offering anything that will get them more than a tiny sliver of the market.

Re:

[nicubunu]

Proton [...] offers so much more

Depends on your definition of "more", for me the lack of standard imap/smtp from Proton is a show stopper

Re:

[DaTrueDave]

I mean, if you want to give up all of the privacy features, using the Proton Bridge is a no-brainer. That stops no shows.

Re:Not good

[registrations_suck]

$9/month for email?

Hahhahhahahahahagahhahahahahahahahahahahahay

Good luck with that.

Re:

[nicubunu]

This is for early adopters, later they will have lesser plans.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not really clear what it even does. You get an @thundermail.com address I think, probably blocked or assumed to be spam by many systems. Anything else?

Re:

[ukoda]

The most interesting thing is JMAP support, but it does fell weird given JMAP support hasn't even been started on the normal Thunderbird email client.

there's hope

[melizeche]

If they market it right this could be an interesting alternative to Google Workspace mail for small companies ðY'

Re:

[jrnvk]

If they market it right this could be an interesting alternative to Google Workspace mail for small companies ðY'

At the current price point, it's already DOA for that purpose.

Could be a good thing?

[eriks]

I've been a Thunderbird user since forever ago, and I've only had two big issues in all that time, and both instances I think were due to changes in the mailbox/account format on disk, and they were fixed fairly quickly, so major kudos to the devs for that.

I've noticed a drop in the overall quality of the software in the past couple years, so hopefully this gives them an infusion of cash to get things back on track. I guess there's always Betterbird. I was just looking at switching yesterday, since I curr

Re:

[nicubunu]

In the last couple of years Thunderbird added tons on new features, from the new UI to native Exchange support, you can expect some time is needed to polish all that.

Re:

[eriks]

Totally, even though for the most part I don't actually use any of the new features, I get it, but it is a little frustrating when software that I depend on and use all day, every day, takes a nosedive in quality, so I really do hope this new thing helps them bring the quality back up to where it was a few years ago, rather than adding even more features...

lol

[ozzymodus12]

$9 for something I can get for free.

Re:

[CptJeanLuc]

You still pay, by sharing all your data, thus enabling other companies to make possibly even more money off you in the end, e.g. by dynamically altering the price of some completely unrelated product they know you really need. Not judging anyone here, I use Gmail myself.

Re:

[pauljlucas]

How do you know Thunderbird doesn't monetize your data and charge you $9 for the privilege?

Re:

[nicubunu]

This is not Mozilla, is MZLA Technologies Corporation [thunderbird.net]

As much as I want to shit on Mozilla

[TheMiddleRoad]

30 GB of Mail Storage
300 GB of Send Storage
15 Email Addresses
3 Custom Domains
Is a good amount of service for $9 a month. I assume that this is 15 different logins. Proton is $7 per user.

Either way, my intention is to set up Synology NASs in two locations then use Tailscale and some type of dynamic DNS to set up backup. Just another thing to do.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

30 GB of Mail Storage
300 GB of Send Storage
15 Email Addresses
3 Custom Domains
Is a good amount of service for $9 a month. I assume that this is 15 different logins. Proton is $7 per user.

I pay $11.50/month for 500GB of storage. It's a hosting service called OpalStack. You can have unlimited email accounts, unlimited domains as long as it all fits in 500GB

Sure it's $2.50 a month more, but you get hosting as well. And it's a full Linux shell prompt, no chintzy CPanel or other service - full linux LAMP hosting

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

Mod parent up. For a small outfit this is a great deal. Plus, no lock-in, it's open source after all. And yes, you can pay only slightly more and get a full LAMP stack. But then you have to take care of your full LAMP stack.

All the best to Thunderbird!