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Thunderbird Pro November 2025 Update

54 responses

Welcome back to the latest update on our progress with Thunderbird Pro, a set of additional subscription services designed to enhance the email client you know, while providing a powerful open-source alternative to many of the big tech offerings available today. These services include Appointment, an easy to use scheduling tool; Send, which offers end-to-end encrypted file sharing; and Thundermail, an email service from the Thunderbird team. If you’d like more information on the broader details of each service and the road to getting here you can read our past series of updates here. Do you want to receive these and other updates and be the first to know when Thunderbird Pro is available? Be sure to sign up for the waitlist.

With that said, here’s how progress has shaped up on Thunderbird Pro since the last update.

Current Progress

Thundermail

It took a lot of work to get here, but Thundermail accounts are now in production testing. Internal testing with our own team members has begun, ensuring everything is in place for support and onboarding of the Early Bird wave of users. On the visual side, we’ve implemented improved designs for the new Thundermail dashboard, where users can view and edit their settings, including adding custom domains and aliases. 

The new Thunderbird Pro add-on now features support for Thundermail, which will allow future users who sign-up through the add-on to automatically add their Thundermail account in Thunderbird. Work to boost infrastructure and security has also continued, and we’ve migrated our data hosting from the Americas to Germany and the EU where possible. We’ve also been improving our email delivery to reduce the chances of Thundermail messages landing in spam folders.

Appointment

The team has been busy with design work, getting Zoom and CalDAV better integrated, and addressing workflow, infrastructure, and bugs. Appointment received a major visual update in the past few months, which is being applied across all of Thunderbird Pro. While some of these updates have already been implemented, there’s still lots of remodelling happening and under discussion – all in preparation for the Early Bird beta release.

Send

One of the main focuses for Send has been migrating it from its own add-on to the new Thunderbird Pro add-on, which will make using it in Thunderbird desktop much smoother. Progress continues on improving file safety through better reporting and prevention of illegal uploads. Our security review is now complete, with an external assessor validating all issues scheduled for fixing and once finalized, this report will be shared publicly with our community. Finally, we’ve refined the Send user experience by optimizing mobile performance, improving upload and download speeds, enhancing the first-time user flow, and much more.

Bringing it all together

Our new Thunderbird Pro website is now live, marking a major milestone in bringing the project to life. The website offers more details about Thunderbird Pro and serves as the first step for users to sign up, sign in and access their accounts. 


Our initial subscription tier, the Early Bird Plan, priced at $9 per month, will include all three services: Thundermail, Send, and Appointment. Email hosting, file storage, and the security behind all of this come at a cost, and Thunderbird Pro will never be funded by selling user data, showing ads, or compromising its independence. This introductory rate directly supports Thunderbird Pro’s early development and growth, positioning it for long-term sustainability. We will also be actively listening to your feedback and reviewing the pricing and plans we offer. Once the rough edges are smoothed out and we’re ready to open the doors to everyone, we plan to introduce additional tiers to better meet the needs of all our users.

What’s next

Thunderbird Pro is now awaiting its initial closed test run which will include a core group of community contributors. This group will help conduct a broader test and identify critical issues before we gradually open Early Bird access to our waitlist subscribers in waves. While these services will still be considered under active development, with your help this early release will continue to test and refine them for all future users.
Be sure you sign up for our Early Bird waitlist at tb.pro and help us shape the future of Thunderbird Pro. See you soon!

Tags: tbpro

54 responses

AT wrote on

Awesome update!

internet user wrote on

cool beans!

Magruf wrote on

Congratulations and waiting news.

Alex wrote on

Hello,

Thanks for sharing your improvements. It’s nice to see Thunderbird under active development again. I understand you have to earn money to run the services. However, 9$ a month seems expensive and not very competitive compared to major services, especially for companies and individuals. Services such as M365 and G Workspace also offer additional services like online document editing. I hope you will be able to find the right balance here. Good luck.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the feedback on pricing, and we’re still exploring what different pricing tiers we can offer our users. And while Microsoft and Google may offer more features, we will offer far more data privacy and look to explore and expand features where we can!

Basil wrote on

I can not wait to have access to this. Being able to use my own domain… without worrying about self hosting… And it’s all open source, sounds amazing.

And the usage limits seem very fair

Henk Beek van wrote on

bevalt mij goed

tony wrote on

Why would you limit aliases?
Also your pricing puts you at twice the price of your most expensive (and well established) competitors.

I think you need to re-evaluate the value proposition you provide to us normal people.

I was excited for this, but I currently pay $10 a year for my email with unlimited domains and aliases, with as good a privacy policy as yours.
Another comparison is I rent a 4 core 8gb ram root server with 512 GB storage for your monthly price.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

We are still working on our pricing tiers, and we’ll have further updates on this in an upcoming update in the new year!

Daniel wrote on

Woho, can’t wait!

Christian wrote on

This is turning out to be highly interesting to be honest, and I really do hope the pricing will be competetive, especially to early adopters/beta testers.

A question;
When you say you moved the data hosting to EU “where possible”, what exactly does that entail? I am pretty sure personally identifiable user data from EU citizens is not allowed to leave the EU anymore, period?

Enthusiastic to hear more!

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Sorry for the delay with this – we’ll definitely have more in-depth communication and posts about our data hosting and what that entails as we get closer to our first release, and ways, even with EU hosting, to keep your data as secure and private as possible.

Zain Jetha wrote on

Is Thunderbird Send ever likely to evolve into a full-blown sync solution or is this out of scope? Ie an app for Linux machines and Android so you can ensure your most important files are stored safely in the cloud?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

We have been talking about things like encrypted sync, so definitely stay tuned for future updates. You can also submit this as a suggestion on our new ideas page for Tb Pro! https://ideas.tb.pro/

Harry Tang wrote on

Wonderful news. I hope self-hosted version will be available in the near future 🙂

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks! And if you go to the Appointment GitHub repo, it’s already possible to self-host this for the brave of heart: https://github.com/thunderbird/appointment

Uke wrote on

@Ryan could you provide more insight as to what the $9 plan will entail?

Given that this offering so far is basically existing FOSS as far as i understand (reusing firefox send and stalwart for mail for example) will that fee be enough to use my domain and move my family over to tb.pro or is this the fee for one inbox?

Don’t get me wrong, i really dig the idea of using a great stack and not having to host my mails, but on the other hand i could either host myself or depending on how much i care about my data use purelymail, proton or apple’s icloud+.

Some of those match tb.pro’s vision of hosting in europe and the majority of features so far announced so my question is:

What will be the unique selling point of this service? Will it be the possibilites of self-host without the hassle? Or is this an attempt to provide the same services as the “big providers” for the office365 experience with a pricetag to match?

I just checked your website and the subscribe to pro thing should be on a separate pricing page with it’s own page in the menu and a more detailed writeup what is included in the 30 GB of storage. Is it 15 address aliasses for one inbox for 9 bucks or could i also move my family over?

So far this development leaves me quite confused and the pricing puzzles me to be honest.

PS: Will Firefox Relay also become part of this suite to match that feature of the aforementioned providers?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Not Ryan (sorry!), but we’re thinking about all of those things as we work our our pricing tiers closer to release. Part of the price is definitely the convenience of self-hosting, in addition to the commitment to privacy. Thanks for your suggestion for the pricing page, and this is something our team is currently exploring, in addition to the possibility of Firefox Relay.

Jerry wrote on

In a future release, will email sent between Thunderbird email accounts be automatically encrypted the way they are with Proton mail and Tuta mail?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

This is something our team has wanted to explore! In the meantime, this would be a great suggestion for https://ideas.tb.pro

Jerry wrote on

Meant between Thunder mail accounts….

Jason Konu wrote on

This is going to be super cool!

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

We think so too!

Steve wrote on

Is there any thought about bundling the Firefox Relay functionality as well?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

This would be a great suggestion for the Thunderbird Pro Ideas page! (Similar to Mozilla Connect): https://ideas.tb.pro/

CC wrote on

Is the email encrypted at rest?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

While it likely won’t be encrypted at rest at launch time, this is something we’re actively exploring how to implement.

Keith S. wrote on

The tb.pro website mentions that users will get 15 email addresses — the screenshots above mention aliases, with a limit of 15. So is the idea that a subscriber will get one address and 15 aliases, of 15 distinct email *accounts*, each capable of supporting up to 15 aliases? Would be great to make that clearer on the tb.pro website.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Sorry for any confusing wording! This is fifteen aliases for a thundermail/tb.pro email account.

Keith S. wrote on

Sorry, typo – should have said OR 15 distinct email accounts….

Hartmut W Sager wrote on

I see that the screenshot of “Incoming Server” shows JMAP protocol (in addition to IMAP). This has me excited at the possibility that Thundermail/ThunderbirdPro might be a full “labels” system instead of just “folders”. Is this the plan? I have been a delighted user of Fastmail (whose engineers are key in the JMAP protocol) for several years now, and would never return to a “folders” system. At the moment, I only know of Fastmail and Gmail being full “labels” systems, and it’s high time that this superior concept replaces “folders”.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the comment and sorry for the delay! Right now, it doesn’t look like this is something actively on our roadmap, but this would be a strong suggestion to make or upvote if it already exists at https://ideas.tb.pro !

Roger wrote on

For a new era of freedom!

Tom wrote on

Very exciting! Maybe the new T-Bird will turn Outlook to Nolook ?

CC wrote on

End to end encryption is great. Will the mail also be encrypted at rest on the Thunderbird Pro mail servers?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the comment! This is something we’ve talked about exploring, but this would be something that would be post launch as it would be a non-trivial feature to add.

home user wrote on

So far, looks good. Two suggestions:

1. Global politics makes me nervous about you hosting in just one geographic location. I was thinking about proton e-mail, but then I saw it was hosted in Europe. I decided against it. In the past year or two, vital communications cables in the Baltic Sea and others in or near the Red Sea were cut. Tensions between NATO and Russia have also increased. I suggest having mirrored servers in multiple widely-separated locations, even on different continents.

2. I do not have a cell phone. I realize I’m in a small minority in that regard. Regardless, getting a new e-mail account without a cell phone is almost impossible. Please make your new accounts available without a cell phone, without a social networking account, and without having to use an existing account with a big commercial company (alphabet, microsoft, etc.).

I eagerly await your new product.

thank-you.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback! As for 1) Germany is where we’re starting our hosting, but won’t be limited to there. And for 2), you won’t need any of those things to use Thundermail. We hope this helps!

Steve wrote on

Will there be an Apple app for IOS 26

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

We’ll have more information about our first alpha release, which will be on Test Flight coming in an blog post soon!

John wrote on

Will Thunderbird Pro also support the sync of contacts?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Not initially, but we are thinking of exploring how to use Sync for things like encrypted setting sync. This would also be a great suggestion for https://ideas.tb.pro !

Al wrote on

Will you have faciltiy for third-party apps to integrate?
e.g. We’re looking at TextMagic / Coax / Podium to integrate our business comms.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

We’re not sure yet, but this would be an excellent suggestion for https://ideas.tb.pro !

POL Bruno wrote on

Thunderbird a toujours été un excellent site pour les mails merci à la direction.

Robin Shearin wrote on

I’ve had Email and Thunderbird ever since Verizon had their own email. My email address, @verizon.net, was transferred to Yahoo Mail when Verizon ended their email service. Will I be able to bring my current “verizon.net” email over to Thunder Mail??

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Unfortunately Thundermail can only be used with thundermail.com and tb.pro addresses, and custom domains. We wish we could help!

Tanya Marquette wrote on

Can someone tell me what this means for people who want the old Thunderbird email service and have no desire for connecting with Microsoft. I cannot understand what this actually means for my email service. Wish there was someone who can write in plain, layman’s English what this is really about and its consequences.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

If you don’t want to add an Exchange email account, you don’t have to! This won’t change your Thunderbird experience at all. But thanks for the feedback on this article, and we’ll keep it in mind for future blog posts!

ken m wrote on

Will there be a web portal for email?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

This is something we’ve talked about, but we don’t have any idea of when this might land. This would be a good suggestion for our Thundermail and Thunderbird Pro feedback website at https://ideas.tb.pro/

Oliver wrote on

Sounds and looks terrific.

João Paulo Vinha Bittar wrote on

I can’t wait to use Thunderbird Pro and have an open source solution to my e-mail needs. Good work!

Bebo wrote on

Presumably you moved from data centers in Americas to the EU for privacy. Then why is Zoom integration being supported? Zoom is still Chinese-owned organization and in 2020 Citizenlab showed Zoom was actually sending encryption keys back to Beijing which means the PRC has access to meetings. This makes no sense. You’re moving away form over surveillance in democratic countries while integrating support for a communist-owned service with known security issues. Please search for “Move Fast and Roll Your Own Crypto” to find a detailed break down on this security issues in Zoom.

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