Betterbird
Betterbird is a drop-in replacement for Mozilla Thunderbird. Betterbird has more features and more fixed bugs than Thunderbird.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Flathub
- Chocolatey
Features
- Multiple Account support
- Privacy focused
- Lightweight
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
- Unified inbox
- Works Offline
- Ad-free
- Support for Themes
- Portable
- PGP Encryption
- No Tracking
- Spam Filter
- Calendar Integration
- No Coding Required
- Sync with Google Calendar
- Dark Mode
- Email Organizer
- Reminders
- No registration required
- OpenPGP
- Email Scheduling
- Full-Text Search
- Integrated Password Manager
- Import/Export OPML Feeds
- Mail Filtering
- Specific for 64-Bit
- Personal Information Manager (PIM)
- POP3 Support
- Built-in RSS reader
- IMAP Support
- SMTP Support
- S/MIME Support
- Gmail integration
- Add-ons
- Instant Messaging
Betterbird News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
- Douze reviewed Betterbird
Definitely better than Thunderbird, but ultimately falls into the same pitfalls as its big brother: bloat, and more bloat.
- Read-Create-Motivate liked Betterbird
- CodexCrypto reviewed Betterbird
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.
- Masterchief reviewed Betterbird
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.
- braky updated Betterbird
- added Dark Mode as a feature to Betterbird
Betterbird information
AlternativeTo Categories
Office & Productivity, Security & Privacy, News & Books, Social & Communications
What is Betterbird?
Betterbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail, news and instant messaging client.
Betterbird is a soft fork of Mozilla Thunderbird. "Soft fork" means that it is closely following the Thunderbird Extended Support Releases (ESR).
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. To give you an impression of where the project is headed, see this feature table at https://www.betterbird.eu/#featuretable
Betterbird aims at providing a better user experience by fixing annoying bugs in Thunderbird and implementing new features. The maintainers of Betterbird submit all changes to upstream code to eventually benefit Thunderbird. So far, Thunderbird has accepted these changes.
Betterbird integrates long waiting security patches and an Outlook-like multi-row Message description
Easy adoption. You can install Betterbird at the same time as Thunderbird and run them on the same profile. That means that you can try out Betterbird with zero hassle, and go back to Thunderbird if you don't like it - which is unlikely. Please read the fine print on our support page.
If you like Thunderbird but are discouraged by too many bugs, then give Betterbird a try. It is 100% compatible with Thunderbird's ESR version. You can install the same dot release of Thunderbird in parallel and switch between Betterbird and Thunderbird on the same profile without problems and without needing the -allow-downgrade command line switch.
Comments and Reviews
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."
very good. I hope it continues to develop for a long time.
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
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
Reply written Feb 5, 2024
Definitely better than Thunderbird, but ultimately falls into the same pitfalls as its big brother: bloat, and more bloat.
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.
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.
For the first time in forever I actually enjoyed setup up my accounts in email software. Things just work.