Thunderbird Usage Continues to Grow

kent

98 responses

We’re happy to report that Thunderbird usage continues to expand.

Mozilla measures program usage by Active Daily Installations (ADI), which is the number of pings that Mozilla servers receive as installations do their daily plugin block-list update. This is not the same as the number of active users, since some users don’t access their program each day, and some installations are behind firewalls. An estimate of active monthly users is typically done by multiplying the ADI by a factor of 3.

To plot changes in Thunderbird usage over time, I’ve picked the peak ADI for each month for the last few years. Here’s the result:

Thunderbird Active Daily Installations, peak value per month.

Germany has long been our #1 country for usage, but in 4th quarter 2014, Japan exceeded US as the #2 country. Here’s the top 10 countries, taken from the ADI count of February 24, 2015:

Rank Country ADI 2015-02-24
1 Germany 1,711,834
2 Japan 1,002,877
3 United States 927,477
4 France 777,478
5 Italy 514,771
6 Russian Federation 494,645
7 Poland 480,496
8 Spain 282,008
9 Brazil 265,820
10 United Kingdom 254,381
All Others 2,543,493
Total 9,255,280

Country Rankings for Thunderbird Usage, February 24, 2015

The Thunderbird team is now working hard preparing our next major release, which will be Thunderbird 38 in May 2015. We’ll be blogging more about that release in the next few weeks, including reporting on the many new features that we have added.

98 responses

  1. Ludovic wrote on :

    What’s the plan to celebrate 10M ADIs ?

    Also the graph would have been nice with key dates for the project below it 🙂

    1. kent wrote on :

      I’m glad that you also noticed that 10M ADIs seem to be a worthwhile next goal. We really should do a celebration when we get there!

      1. Caspy7 wrote on :

        Cupcakes for all!

  2. Ben wrote on :

    Enigmail by default would be great 🙂

    1. kent wrote on :

      In Thunderbird 38 we are shipping Lightning by default with Thunderbird, with an opt-out dialog on first install. So we have at least started down the path of better support for key features that are in addons, while leaving them as addons to reduce complexity for the casual user. Enigmail would certainly be one of the next candidates we would consider. Unfortunately Enigmail is more of a one-person effort, while Lightning has always been a team effort. Enigmail by default implies a commitment by the core team to support it, and I don’t think that the core developer understanding of Enigmail is deep enough that we could make that commitment at this point in time.

      1. Marco Bakera wrote on :

        +1

        Would be great to have encryption by default not by choice of addon.

        1. Dan Veditz wrote on :

          S/MIME encryption is built in, no add-on required.

    2. Peter wrote on :

      +1 on that.
      Security should be possible without any addons.

  3. Hervé wrote on :

    Great news!
    Translated To French on http://mozillazine-fr.org/le-nombre-dinstallations-de-thunderbird-continue-a-croitre/

  4. TigerCat wrote on :

    I like Thunderbird, and I look forward to Gmail contact sync function and better sidebar folder view.

    1. kent wrote on :

      In Thunderbird 38, we have restored the columns in the folder pane with unread count, size, and total count per folder. The reversal of a previous decision to do a featurectomy on the folder columns generated a lot of discussion and resistance. Any UI changes there seem to be very controversial, with one camp favoring a minimalist approach, and the others wanting more features exposed.

      I also use a modified version of the Folder Pane View Switcher addon, so that I can quickly switch between All Folders, Favorite Folders, and Unread Folders. I don’t see how anyone can easily manage lots of folders without such an addon (or Axel’s Quick Folder’s addon which is also quite popular), but others disagree.

      There are already addons that do the Gmail contact sync, and there has not been any plans to do anything else there.

      1. plovec wrote on :

        I think that we should have the option to choose from a minimalist interface to a more complete one.

        I prefer several details about folders and messages and I still open each message in a new window.

        1. kent wrote on :

          The approach that I have been promoting for choosing minimalist versus more complete is to consider shipping certain maximalist features as addons. There is a general attitude though that addons are second-class features that needs to be overcome. We should be able to ship a feature that is only used by a minority of users, yet complicates the UI, as an addon and still consider it a first-class feature. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here when the addon API does all that we need to control complexity of user interface.

  5. whydroppingit wrote on :

    Why not developing it again? As you can see webmails are not even close to subtitute a good email client…

    1. kent wrote on :

      The message of this blog is supposed to be that we are developing it. “We” here is a community of volunteers. The “Thunderbird is dead” marketing message/fiasco of 2012 was clearly not accurate. We continue to grow, we continue to develop, Thunderbird is alive and well.

  6. 887 wrote on :

    Here in Germany many people use Thunderbird + GPG to protect our Mails. There is a huge adoption in progress, even with non technical people! These Numbers look even better, since we are only a country of 80 Million People.

    Thanks Thunderbird Team, keep up the good work!

  7. Anthony wrote on :

    Thank you to everyone who continues to work on this project. Your efforts are greatly appreciated!

  8. Dusty wrote on :

    I love Thunderbird! My hope on the next upgrade would be not about making it look like windows 8 like so many new apps do. ewwww And an improved search function would be nice.

    1. kent wrote on :

      There is always a lot of debate about user interface issues in Thunderbird. You seem to be about resisting more “modern” themes, while we certainly get plenty of comments from people who don’t like Thunderbird’s so-called dated look.

      In Thunderbird 38 (currently in the aurora channel ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-aurora/) try setting the preference mail.preferences.inContent to true. That will enable the experimental options-in-a-tab with a more “modern” look. (Try Tools/Options to see the effect). What do you think of that? That seems to be the direction that Thunderbird’s UI designer is headed.

      1. crstn wrote on :

        Can you please explain how exactly to change the mail.preferences.inContent preference? I’m really curious to see the new design.

        1. kent wrote on :

          (This only works in Thunderbird 38, currently in the aurora channel. Not sure about beta 36 or 37)

          Go to Tools/Options/Advanced/Config Editor… and search for the preference mail.preferences.inContent Change this to true.

          1. jc wrote on :

            Hello kent,

            Can Thunderbird 38 be installed along side Thunderbird 31, or do they interfere with each other?

            Thanks!

          2. kent wrote on :

            Yes you can install Thunderbird 31 and 38 at the same time without interference. Profiles used with Thunderbird 31 should work fine with Thunderbird 38 as well.

  9. Aron wrote on :

    How about finally implementing large scale message archiving automatically and properly?

    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Archiving_your_e-mail

    From that article (my emphasis):

    “Beginning with version 3.x, Thunderbird has built-in support for archiving e-mail. The “archived” messages are moved to a dedicated folder (or hierarchy of folders) within the Thunderbird profile. It DOES NOT HAPPEN AUTOMATICALLY, you have to either press the Archive button or use the ‘A’ keyboard shortcut. ”

    I have lost data due to the way this “feature” operates in the real world in conjunction with remote IMAP stores.

    1. kent wrote on :

      The post that you mention had a wide variety of suggestions for archiving, so I am not sure which issue you are referring to. In Thunderbird 38, there is a new filter context that runs a filter when archiving is done. This gives you pretty fine control of the behavior if you really need it.

  10. albgwiz wrote on :

    im sorry if this sounds stupid but what would prevent TB from running entirely within a modern browser? webmail like roundcube and squirrel are ok but having TB everywhere would be the real deal..

    1. kent wrote on :

      What you are describing is “the web is the platform” which is the entire emphasis of Mozilla, except for Thunderbird. We are a native app, and Mozilla views their mission to make native apps unnecessary.

      But it is a tremendous amount of work. Perhaps someday Mozilla would fund such an effort, but it is unlikely to use Thunderbird as a base. The closest you can come now is SeaMonkey, but that is really just another native app that happens to be both a browser and an email client.

    2. Axel Grude wrote on :

      If you move the logic to the web then you are turning the actual search routines of the mail application into services (and you will soon have to pay for it, like you do for Exchange licenses). The whole point of desktop software is to have a local copy of the database and can bring it with you and evaluate it without any external service. You are also not reliant on a permanent internet connection that can easily be used to inject advertisement into your content. Once you have your emails downloaded you can concentrate on working with them.

      Also the UI of gmail is really quite inadequate when you are dealing with many mail accounts and newsgroups, the 3pane window is just a much more efficient way to deal with this information. And then you can augment your software with Add-ons such as QuickFolders or Stationery which is all something that will be taken away once you rely on a website to do this work for you. With a web frontend you are always locked into the way the web developers view the workflow, on the desktop there is actually a much bigger variety of possible workflows.

  11. Bonbadil wrote on :

    Hello,
    Thank you for your work on Thunderbird.
    I still hope it will be able to sync my contacts from my CardDav server one day… I could then use it for writing email and not just to read them. And no, SoGo doesn’t work.

    1. kent wrote on :

      CardDav is recognized as a critical missing feature within Thunderbird. That will probably be a goal for the post-Thunderbird 38 era. It would also not be difficult to do as an addon, there are already several addons that interface other protocols to the address book (including my own ExQuilla addon for Exchange Web Services).

      1. Mirko wrote on :

        Too Bad. Honestly I expected from this release revisiting phonebook , with integration of the protocol CardDAV .
        Thunderbird is a very great and professional email client . The only thing missing is support for CardDAV ( from a purely business point of view ) .

        However sincere thanks to all the team .
        Great job and keep it up .

        1. till wrote on :

          I agree CardDAV support is the only thing i really miss in Thunderbird, and I also tried very hard to get the sogo plugin installed. The current adressbook is a mess, sorry :/, I love the rest though would want a other mail client!!!

          1. kent wrote on :

            Address book is recognized as the area of Thunderbird that needs the most work. There is one new significant feature shipping in Thunderbird 38 (search over multiple address books) but hopefully more in Thunderbird 45.

  12. John Nagle wrote on :

    It’s good that Mozilla mostly leaves Thunderbird alone. Otherwise they’d break it.

    I’m worried that Mozilla will have Thunderbird send all your contacts to Mozilla (they’d call it “synching”), or add “social” features so they can get kickbacks from Twitter and Facebook. We don’t want anything that “phones home”. No “cloud services”. No “calendar integration” unless the user specifically installs it.

    1. kent wrote on :

      In Thunderbird 38, the calendar addon Lighting is shipping with Thunderbird, and will install by default with an opt-out dialog. We debated much on how to do this, balancing the desires of people like you (who do not want calendar integration) with users who do not even know it exists and would benefit from the pain-free installation. I hope you are happy with the compromise that we reached. There are currently no plans to integrate it, which would make it impossible to remove.

      1. eurythmia wrote on :

        With such a central focus given to lightning, will issues such as blocking I/O be addressed? I uninstalled lightning long ago because TB would entirely lock up while lightning was talking to my workplace’s exchange server.

        1. kent wrote on :

          I don’t think it is correct to say that we have given a central focus to Lightning, more that Lightning should not be considered a second-class part of the Thunderbird world. At the Thunderbird Summit in October 2014 where we agreed to include Lightning by default, we did discussed possible performance issues such that you describe as potentially a blocker. Nobody had any recent negative experience with that though. I’m not sure if it is because it has gone away, or people with the problem are no longer using it (like yourself). In any case, Lightning will remain an addon that can be disabled or removed completely if you don’t want it.

        2. kent wrote on :

          If you are talking about exchange server, then you were probably using the Exchange connector addon. That addon had known issues of locking up Thunderbird if there were lots of events, such as daily repeated tasks or events. Not sure about the more recent versions.

  13. Matt wrote on :

    First off, thanks for working on Thunderbird, it’s been my email client for a few years now, and I’m glad to see it doing well.
    One thing is I hope to see is better search though, even with the quick filter version, it seems a bit lacking.
    HiDPI with thunderbird works fairly well on my (linux) laptop though, which is nice.

    Thanks!

    1. Adam wrote on :

      +1 for better search, more advance options is nice

      1. kent wrote on :

        At the moment we have no contributors focused on search unfortunately, so you are not likely to see much change there unless someone comes forward to work on it.

  14. Igor Komolov wrote on :

    Love Thunderbird – can not wait for the update! Ever since , “continued innovation on Thunderbird is not the best use of our resources given our ambitious organizational goals.” , I have been worried but now I am relieved. Thanks!

  15. thunderbirdsarego wrote on :

    Can we get something like firefox sync for thunderbird?

    I would like to run thunderbird on several machines, but have mail synced between all instances without refetching from the mail servers (since I remove mail from server when I fetch), and also syncing mail read/unread status?

    And I’d like to run my own thunderbird sync server

    1. kent wrote on :

      You are describing IMAP, which is fully supported in Thunderbird. Just run IMAP.

      1. Sandro wrote on :

        Hi,
        I think TB is realy great and as any tool out there, there is allways space to improve.

        1+ concerning the “firefox sync for TB” BUT for this kind of sync https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sync-your-add-ons-another-copy-firefox

        I have several devices where I use TB.
        The mail sync (IMAP) is not the issue, its more the part with syncing addons/filter settings/-n settings made in TB.

        ( Filter is not realy working well as it does not allways automatically shifts new messages from inbox to the subfolder configured )

        Thanks to all who continue developing TB !

        Any plans for a iphone/ipad app of TB with integrated Enigmail ?

        Regards, Sandro

        1. Karsten Loepelmann wrote on :

          +! to this kind of TB sync.

        2. Axel Grude wrote on :

          I think a Sync service for Thunderbird would be great indeed. It would have to be something that is open enough so that Add-on authors can sync their information as well as configuration of some Add-ons can be quite complex.

  16. EricV wrote on :

    While I do use thunderbird on Linux in corporate environment to access Exchange mail server via IMAP, and calendaring with lightning and Exchange EWS Provider, I’m puzzled that the storage on filer via CIFS protocol has been completely busted for years.

    When storing mail from IMAP to a networked folder over network, Mail are transmitted line by line of 79 characters, and network error handling for write are totally unhandled. The worse is that this is Linux specific, as the same thunderbird version used on windows on the same folder for storage does work correctly.

    I know there is work in progress but I doubt it will be ready for May meaning that I will have to wait another year to get correct behavior. I can provide the bug reports number and the newsgroup discussion.

    1. kent wrote on :

      We have a contributor who is focused on this issue. See at least bug 1122698, there are many others, and I’m sure a much earlier bug that is more specific to the Linux network issues. Yes help would be appreciated. I don’t think that you will see any improvement in this in Thunderbird 38 though.

    2. kent wrote on :

      Storing of Thunderbird profiles on a network is a known weak issue. There has been a contributor considering working on this, but “patches are welcome” is still the status.

  17. Guest wrote on :

    Thank you.

  18. Twirrim wrote on :

    I use thunderbird daily. The only thing that drives me crazy is it doesn’t really work well for large inboxes / email rates, even with mail filtering being handled on the server side (be it Exchange, Exim or what have you.) Those initial daily syncs are significantly more painful than, say, mutt, and seem to use a fair amount of CPU resources.
    I’ve found about the best way to use Thunderbird is to renice it to 10 so that the it isn’t a priority for CPU.

    1. kent wrote on :

      The initial opening of databases associated with very large folders (tens to hundreds of thousands of messages) is a known issue that is not trivial to solve. We’ve discussed various possible approaches to this, but there are many other priorities as well.

      1. Twirrim wrote on :

        Even past that, when bringing up the laptop from hibernation if its been hibernating for several hours and it has to pull in a whole bunch of email it seems to struggle. That said I think you’re right, it really is that first opening from closed step that’s the most painful 🙂

        1. Axel Grude wrote on :

          It might help not keeping all emails in the same folder (Inbox). I filter pretty much 95% of my mails into various folders and do not experience a huge performance issue on startup.

  19. andy wrote on :

    Thank you very much for you amazing work on Thunderbird. I’ve been using it for many many years, first on windows, then on a mac, and now that I’m 50 and have finally grown up, on Linux. Haven’t used another client since I discovered it way back when.

    A big fan of lightning as well. Would really love PGP integration that is intuitive and has the ability of respondents to utilize PGP by default without even having to know they were.

    Again many thanks!

  20. anon wrote on :

    Maildir support would be really nice. Currently have to run dovecot locally to serve up local mail spool to TB over imap which seems more than a little silly.

    1. kent wrote on :

      Storing of one message per file (maildir) versus one file per folder (mbox) is working pretty well in Thunderbird 38, and is what I use on my main profile.

      But many people, and I suspect you are in this camp, hope to feed the files directly into the file system, and then have Thunderbird process them. This is not going to work for a variety of reasons, so our “maildir” implementation may not be what you are really looking for.

  21. clickwir wrote on :

    Any work on maildir support? I have some setups that have tons of mail that have to be kept for legal reasons. I’ve split it out into many folders, but it’s still slow. I setup a test system using maildir, it was much faster. But I can’t rely on it until it’s an official option. Please let us know if anyone is making progress on it. Love TB! Best mail client I’ve ever used.

  22. Gordonbp wrote on :

    Would be good if a proper access to Google tasks could be instituted – that’s the one thing that holds me back from using it….

  23. Serge wrote on :

    Why are there drops every July???

    1. Mark__T wrote on :

      Maybe at summertime less people are in their office

  24. amar wrote on :

    Just wanted to say it’s also growing in size and bulk. Please keep it lightweight, or make it so.

  25. Colin Brace wrote on :

    Carddav supported was mentioned above. I’m using the Inverse SOGo Connector extension to sync contacts with OwnCloud and that works extremely well. Not sure how this can or should be improved.

    I’ve been using Thunderbird since v1 and am very happy to hear that it is still actively being developed. (Was worried there for awhile!) The one thing I’d like to see are some additional HTML editing functions in the message compose window along the lines of what the CKEditor offers.

  26. Jonathan Schemoul wrote on :

    I totally uninstalled any instances I had of thunderbird when it was anounced dead in 2012 (with a transition period with some security updates until 2013 if I recall well) and transitionned to webmails everywhere (gmail, roundcube, etc).

    Is the project alive again ? Usage of unmaintained software seems dangerous to me, download page should have a warning to prevent growth like this.

    1. kent wrote on :

      Thunderbird has never been unmaintained software. The 2012 announcement of cutback of Mozilla support was very poorly handled, and widely misread as “Thunderbird is dead”. That is not true, and was never true.

  27. dremon wrote on :

    2-line message pane (outlook/evolution style) would be a killer feature.

  28. John Nova wrote on :

    These ADI numbers are actually sad as it shows growth has slowed. Yes growth continues but very slowly in previous years ADI was growing much faster and since 2012 only a growth of one million ADI? This is something to be concerned about not celebrate.

    Why would someone use Thunderbird over other newer mail clients, webmail or even Postbox which is Thunderbird based and made by the original Thunderbird Team?

    1. Wayne wrote on :

      Disagree with your assessment on the facts. and conclusion. The chart shows growth in the last two years of approximately 1.5M, compared to approximately 1.9M in 2010-2012 time period. A significant reduction in the *rate* of growth, but still strong growth. What company wouldn’t want 19% growth?

  29. Mark__T wrote on :

    Would be great to integrate theexchange connectro from here too:
    https://github.com/Ericsson/exchangecalendar
    I’m using it daily

    1. Wawrzek Niewodniczanski wrote on :

      That’s would be good. Exchange connector is the most important functionality – Mobile client would be nice as well.

  30. Jan Oliver Oelerich wrote on :

    I am very pleased to hear that TB development is accelerating.

    A feature that I have missed for a long time is some kind of small API, that allows me to programmatically read out the number of unread emails and so on. This could be implemented on Linux via dbus for example. Currently, it is close to impossible to make any external programm extract information out of TB which makes integration into Window Managers really hard.

    Is TB 38 already feature frozen, so that the feature set in Aurora is what we can expect for the release?

    1. kent wrote on :

      Current aurora has string but not patches for a couple of expected features. There are still a few patches missing on maildir, GMail OAuth authentication, shipping Lightning, and options in a tab.

  31. Stefan Lehnert wrote on :

    Thank you for your great work on Thunderbird!
    I am using Thunderbird for long years; it is also used here in our company. Its great that Lightning will be included in Thunderbird per default.

    Another suggestion: The possibility to sync with CardDAV-servers natively would be absolutely great! The workaround with this creepy sogo-connector-plugin is much too buggy…

    1. Wayne wrote on :

      CardDAV is a frequent topic of discussion, so you are not alone, and it is wanted. It is a question of when someone steps up to code it.

  32. Ruffin wrote on :

    Any chance the ExQuilla forum moderator’s use of the forums will continue to grow as well? ;^) It’s starting to feel a little like a ghost town in there, my questions haven’t hit the forums, and my trial period is nearly up. (Though I realize at $10 a pop, it’s practically volunteer work. Just wondering if ExQuilla is dying as TB activism seems to be ramping back up.)

    Is there an easily accessible chart of the Thunderbird ADI numbers by country over time? I quickly scanned the blog archives, and didn’t easily turn one up. Has the US number declined? Is the US number smaller than Germany & Japan because of a relative lack of good, localized, commercial email clients?

    Thanks for the continued good work and OSS fight.

    1. kent wrote on :

      Concerning ExQuilla, I hope you know that I am also the ExQuilla developer. And yes ExQuilla development has suffered a little as I have spent more effort on core Thunderbird in the last few months. I am not aware though of any issues with ExQuilla support.

      Country numbers over time exist in theory, but it is not easy to extract them from the raw data. I had hoped to include them with this chart, but it turned out to be too much work.

      As for Germany, I think that open source and privacy are just much bigger there than in the US, and Microsoft is weaker.

  33. Freddy wrote on :

    Seems to me that a logical killer feature would be the WebRTC/ Firefox Hello stuff that is in the latest version of Firefox.
    Surely Thunderbird is the natural place to put this ? It could be connected to the Address Book, so you can call people direct from there.
    C’mon, let’s kill Skype …

    1. kent wrote on :

      The former Thunderbird staff who was responsible for Thunderbird (Mark Banner) is currently one of the leads on the Hello project. I put this question to him a few months ago, and he said that Hello is pretty firmly embedded in Firefox, and would not be easy to port to Thunderbird. Still, I wonder about possibilities.

  34. Donna wrote on :

    Kent, I am a longtime user of Thunderbird for email and just love it. But recently, my laptop crashed and I’m trying to find…get my address book and email files stored on my old laptop. I did keep the same email, however when the thunderbird loaded on the new laptop it was blank of all addresses and files…pretty sad. How can I get them back?
    When looking on line for help with thunderbird, many folks are wanting to charge cash to help and also those wanting control of laptop. Please Help…

    1. Wayne wrote on :

      http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared is the best article I know of. It will require some navigation on your part

  35. padraic7a wrote on :

    I’m a big Thunderbird fan and am delighted it is continuing to develop. I think that add Lightning by default is a great move. I would love to see some development that would enable thunderbird / Lightning to be the default calendar option on Linux. I use Ubuntu at work and Fedora at home and though i have seen tutorial / hacks to implement this I have never been able to get it working.

    I would also love to see a ‘Thunderbird sync’. Not for my email [I use imap] but for settings and address books. So if I install a fresh Thunderbird install I would love to be able to seemlessly import existing email and irc account settings, message filters and address books.

    At the moment I use addons to import / export filers and address books and the experience is buggy, with updated filters often not working and older address books overwriting newer ones. if I want to set up all exisitng email & irc accounts I have to go find the settings for each one and it’s a pain to be honest.

  36. Maurizio Fumini wrote on :

    I agree with post, Thunderbird is become the most favorite e-mail client. great!

  37. Shariq Ansari wrote on :

    I’m glad to see that Thunderbird continues to grow and see more usage. I’ve been a Thunderbird user since nearly the beginning, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop using it; it’s so integrated into my daily routine.

    I hope that the TB team will use this blog more to talk about the direction development is going in, what your goals are, and also to generate/foster some discussion from the user base. I love TB but it honestly feels like it hasn’t changed or evolved that much over the years. I know people can be conservative but I would love for the TB team to try and be a little more experimental with what a desktop email client can do and be. 🙂

    1. kent wrote on :

      I don’t think that you will see Thunderbird as trying to be “experimental with what a desktop email client can do” because experiments will generate lots of negative comments from users who just want to get their work done without some experiment forcing them to change. But there are certainly lots of things that we need to do both to be complete (maildir, carddav, etc.) as well as forward-looking. I think that most of users will encourage us to be complete and reliable before they want innovation.

  38. Tom wrote on :

    This is great news. Is there any way to donate funds towards Thunderbird development?

    1. kent wrote on :

      There is not currently any method to donate directly to Thunderbird development, but we are working on this.

  39. Patilise wrote on :

    Quick question:
    Where does the factor of 3 in the estimate where active monthly users ~ ADI * 3?

    1. Patilise wrote on :

      oops I missed two words, should be
      “Where does the factor of 3 in the estimate [omitted] come from?”

      1. kent wrote on :

        That ADI*3 is just a number I have seen in that past that Firefox used. But since Firefox does not officially report ADI numbers, it is not easy to get any kind of official relationship between ADI and estimate of active monthly users.

  40. jean tchakalian ( PLEASE JUST USE1ST NAME ) wrote on :

    just saying happy birthday i have used you for many years now – must admit i like the earlier simpler stuffesp .the side bar on inbox etc but in all thing you are great and dont know why aussies use you more congrats please feel free to give me version about 5 ! i find new thing s a bit daunting . explanations dont always match my brain in lingo of computers ..

  41. Kevin wrote on :

    I am glad to learn that Thunderbird still exists, and that, new developments are being made to Thunderbird. “The Thunderbird is Dead” message of 2012 really put a damper on my using Thunderbird which I thoroughly enjoyed using in the past. Is the current version 31.5.0 of Thunderbird secure and stable to use? And when the new Thunderbird 38 is released in May 2015, will it be a download over the current version? Now that I know that Thunderbird still exits, I will continue with downloading the current version and look forward to the new release May 2015. I hope that Thunderbird is around for a long time to come.

    1. kent wrote on :

      Thunderbird 31.0.5 is the current version, and yes it is stable.

      When Thunderbird 38 is released, initially it will be for download only. After a period of time, when we are convinced that this version has no unforeseen issues, then existing users of Thunderbird 31 (or earlier stable versions) who have requested automatic update, will be updated.

      1. Kevin wrote on :

        Thank you for the clarification. Kudos to the Mozilla foundation and its team of dedicated volunteers.

  42. Klaus D York wrote on :

    I am a long time user.I do not do any coding ,so I am afraid i would be of no help.I noticed that you talked about the increase in usage were the USA has fallen to 3rd place.I am certain that is due to there not being a mobile version of Thunderbird.I came to this site and stumbled onto the comments about Thunderbird.
    i am sorry to hear that Mozilla doesn’t have the commitment to Thunderbird as they do to Firefox.i use both products regularly.I recently purchased a Samsung tablet. Immediately installed Firefox and then started looking for Thunderbird for my tablet.sorry to hear that there are no plans to make a mobile version.
    I believe that is why you have fallen to 3rd.I believe more Americans are moving to their mobile devices.I know I am.Why be tied down to your desk top.
    Hope you can change the powers to be about their mistake.
    Klaus D York

  43. Abdel wrote on :

    This is really great news! Thunderbird is a wonderful project that shouldn’t be abandoned.

  44. Ricardo Cristof Clemens-Remmert-Fontes wrote on :

    Hi there,

    good and relieving to see that TB isn’t completely abandoned (whoever thought that would have been a good idea at Mozilla should be slapped with a large trout. Again and again…).

    I use TB since the very beginning after switching from The Bat! and IMAP got properly implemented (had a flirt with Postbox and Apple Mail for some time because of Mac Adress Book and such…).

    But now, as a lot of people here pointing out, I still wait for proper CalDav-/CardDav integration (using ownCloud). But a UI overhaul would also been nice – my wife refuses to use TB, because she is used to Outlook and I indeed do see the appeal of the UI (but really, the workflow is disgusting, I hate it).

    Maybe there could also be some dedication in simplifying the UI (without sacrificing the pro settings) and giving it a more modern look (I liked the 90s, it was a ground breaking period for Death and Black Metal, but interface design was pretty craptastic…)?

    However, as a non-coder I would like to ask how to contribute directly to the efforts of Thunderbird and the TB team? Donations?

    In other news: I just became a grandparent! yay!

  45. Fitzcarraldo wrote on :

    To Kent James and all the other people maintaining or developing Thunderbird: Keep up the good work. There are a lot of users out here who appreciate what you are doing.

    Just to repeat what I wrote on another site yesterday, as I think Mozilla needs to know just how much we users appreciate and need Thunderbird …

    Thunderbird is one of the most important and useful applications I use for work purposes. I have used it since early 2007 when I started dual-booting Linux and Windows on my work laptop. I use Thunderbird to manage six e-mail accounts, two of which are Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Access accounts that Thunderbird accesses via DavMail Gateway (another excellent FOSS application I rely on for my work).

    In early 2007 I imported all my e-mails from 2002 onwards into Thunderbird, and today my Thunderbird installation has precisely 19,270 e-mails in 478 folders. The files reside on a NTFS partition jointly accessed by Linux (ext4 file system) and Windows 7. Thunderbird in each OS has its own separate prefs.js file but accesses the same e-mail folders and files.

    I use Thunderbird’s search tools regularly, and find them good. I also like the tabbing UI. I use Thunderbird’s Lightning calendar and meeting invitation tools frequently. My only grumbles would be the unintuitive method of specifying the e-mail account to use to send acknowledgements to event invitations, and that it is not possible to specify which e-mail account sends an acknowledgement according to which e-mail account received the invitation.

    Thunderbird may not be perfect, but it’s still a damn good application and has been incredibly reliable and robust for me over the last eight years, even when I migrated the files between two work laptops (Sabayon Linux/Windows XP on the first, Gentoo Linux/Windows 7 on the second) . I wish other applications were as good.