Betterbird icon
Betterbird icon

Betterbird

 53 likes

Betterbird, a soft fork of Mozilla Thunderbird, improves user experience with advanced features, bug fixes, security patches, and multi-row descriptions similar to Outlook. Compatible with multiple platforms and can be used alongside Thunderbird, sharing the same profile.

Betterbird screenshot 1

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Application types

Country of Origin

  • DE flagGermany
  • European Union flagEU

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux  Binary install, works on all distros but not beginner-friendly
  • Flathub  Prefer the Flatpak app, better isolation
  • Chocolatey
4.5 / 5 Avg rating (17)
53likes
16comments

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Privacy focused
  2.  Support for Themes
  3.  Lightweight

Features

  1.  Multiple Account support
  2.  Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
  3.  Works Offline
  4.  Unified inbox
  5.  Spam Filter
  6.  Calendar Integration
  7.  No Tracking
  8.  SMTP Support
  9.  POP3 Support
  10.  IMAP Support
  11.  Ad-free
  12.  Add-ons
  13.  Portable
  14.  Mail Filtering
  15.  PGP Encryption
  16.  No Coding Required
  17. Google Calendar icon  Sync with Google Calendar
  18.  Email Organizer
  19.  Dark Mode
  20.  Reminders
  21.  Email Scheduling
  22.  Import/Export OPML Feeds
  23.  Integrated Password Manager
  24.  No registration required
  25.  OpenPGP
  26.  Full-Text Search
  27.  Specific for 64-Bit
  28.  Built-in RSS reader
  29. Gmail icon  Gmail integration
  30.  S/MIME Support
  31.  Personal Information Manager (PIM)

 Tags

Betterbird News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

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Recent activities

  • App icon
    POX removed Betterbird as alternative to SeaMonkey
    3 days ago
  • Natterjack565, kirill0ermakov, nohirot154 and ursamajor737 liked Betterbird
    8 days ago
  • Danilo_Venom updated Betterbird
    about 2 months ago
  • jmawebqqhtsjwqlttb, sweetemberxv, alternativeto-dingo898 and very_unfortunate liked Betterbird
    about 2 months ago
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Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Comment summary: Betterbird is consistently praised for its speed, feature richness, and effective maintenance compared to Thunderbird. Users appreciate its focus on bug fixes, offline capabilities, and privacy through PGP encryption. While Betterbird is often regarded as a superior fork, retaining essential features with improvements, some concerns include marking emails as junk and potential bloat. Its open-source approach is valued over Thunderbird's for-profit model, providing exclusive features and regular updates.
Top Positive Comment
Codex Crypto
Sep 2, 2024
3

Today's best email client is also a much better fork of Thunderbird and has more features. What's more, it's open source and constantly updated. This is the kind of development that deserves more publicity and support outside the circle of technology experts. Congratulations to the developer for his excellent work and keep going strong.

Top Negative Comment
K0RR
Jan 29, 2024
-2

Has a few improvements over Thunderbird, but recently started to mark all received messages in my inbox as junk. About 100 emails from different addresses

Francewhoa
Feb 5, 2024

Hello @K0RR :)

If you are not familiar about how to configure your automated junk filters in Betterbird, this page might be of interest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-junk-spam-messages

I you believe that the challenge you are facing is a bug in Betterbird, I suggest creating a new ticket at https://github.com/Betterbird/thunderbird-patches/issues?q=is%3Aissue

Including in your ticket the version of your Betterbird and the steps to reproduce the challenge

superstickynotemealt
Feb 24, 2025
1

Honestly still not a good email client, and stil filled with bugs, but way above thunderbird in terms of fewer bugs and overall stability. Still haven't found a truly good macOS email client for myself. On windows I used EssentialPIM, and it was great. Sadly I just haven't found anything equal to it for macOS yet, and EPIM doesn't run in CrossOver useably well.

Douze
Sep 25, 2024
-1

Definitely better than Thunderbird, but ultimately falls into the same pitfalls as its big brother: bloat, and more bloat.

Masterchief
Apr 18, 2024
1

What can I say, much better than TB as advertised. For a start doesn't have the freezing issue that has been plaguing TB for a while. It also feels very slick as TB always fires up the fan the moment I connect a new mailbox, which isn't the case here.

Francewhoa
Feb 5, 2024
3

Betterbird is a drop-in replacement for Mozilla Thunderbird. Betterbird has more features, more fixed bugs, and better support than Thunderbird.

The main challenge with Mozilla Thunderbird is that, in 2020, they changed from a not-for-profit to a for-profit organization. This mean that starting in 2020, there is a very high risk that Mozilla Thunderbird will increasingly value money above you, the people. Source about Mozilla for-profit since 2020 at: • https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/https://archive.is/b3BAO

Betterbird successfully resolved this challenge above. Because is not a for-profit organization. Also, "Betterbird is better than Thunderbird in three ways: It contains new features exclusive to Betterbird, it contains bug fixes exclusive to Betterbird, and it contains fixes that Thunderbird may ship at a later stage. Please refer to this feature table for examples." https://www.betterbird.eu/index.html#featuretable "This should give you an impression of where the project is headed."

arsCynic ??
Nov 13, 2023
0

For the first time in forever I actually enjoyed setup up my accounts in email software. Things just work.

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7 of 16 comments

What is Betterbird?

Betterbird is an open-source e-mail, news, and instant messaging client compatible across various platforms. It's a soft fork of Mozilla Thunderbird, closely following its development and updates. Betterbird introduces new features, incorporates bug fixes, and implements fixes that Thunderbird might include later.

Betterbird aims to improve user experience by fixing Thunderbird bugs and introducing new features. All changes made by Betterbird's maintainers are submitted to Thunderbird for potential inclusion. Currently, Thunderbird has accepted these changes. Betterbird includes security patches and features a multi-row message description like Outlook.

Betterbird can be installed alongside Thunderbird and operate on the same profile, allowing users to test Betterbird and revert to Thunderbird if needed. It's fully compatible with Thunderbird's ESR version. Users can install the same dot release of Thunderbird in parallel and switch between Betterbird and Thunderbird on the same profile without any issues.

Betterbird Videos

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Official Links

Betterbird information

  • Developed by

    DE flagJorg Knobloch
  • Licensing

    Open Source and Free product.
  • Rating

    Average rating of 4.5 (17 ratings)
  • Alternatives

    27 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English
    • Spanish
    • German
    • Dutch
    • French
    • Italian
    • Portuguese
    • Japanese
    • Polish
    • Ukrainian
    • Czech
    • Turkish

AlternativeTo Categories

Office & ProductivitySecurity & PrivacyNews & BooksSocial & Communications

GitHub repository

  •  698 Stars
  •  32 Forks
  •  28 Open Issues
  •   Updated Jun 17, 2025 
View on GitHub

Our users have written 16 comments and reviews about Betterbird, and it has gotten 53 likes

Betterbird was added to AlternativeTo by bigbigboy on Aug 7, 2021 and this page was last updated Apr 29, 2025.