Get Thunderbird Donate
featured post title image

Thundermail June 2026 update: what we learned after the first few waves of invites

41 responses

Over the past several weeks, we have been welcoming early users from our waitlist into Thundermail, a few waves at a time. Many of you are now setting up your accounts, trying things out, and sharing your thoughts with us.

Naming updates

You may have noticed that we are now saying Thundermail more often, and Thunderbird Pro less.

Thunderbird Pro started as the name for our subscription services, including Thundermail, Appointment, and Send. But early feedback made two things clear: people cared most about Thundermail, and “Pro” created confusion about whether Thunderbird itself was becoming a paid or limited product.

So, to clarify things, Thunderbird Pro is now simply Thundermail: the email service from Thunderbird, with features like Appointment and Send included.

The Thunderbird Desktop and Mobile apps remain exactly what they are today: powerful, compatible with any email service, and free.

What we learned so far

Every day, members of our team are reading through your survey responses, your messages in the Thundermail Early Bird community chat, your support requests, and every new idea and vote on the board. We discuss what we are hearing, and we sort it into what we can address right away and what we want to plan for. Then we keep working in the open, where you can see what we are up to and tell us when something is not quite right.

Here are some of the things we’ve learned so far:

However, there was one request which came through louder than any other…

Webmail

Webmail was, by a wide margin, the most requested idea from our community, and whereas we had it in the plans for down the road, many people expected this to be a feature available from day one.

We moved webmail to the top of the list, shifted resources into the work behind it and we are excited to share that an early alpha version of it is coming next month. As with most early releases, it will have some rough edges, but will also allow for a much more interactive user experience for our beta testers. Everyone will have a vote in how it’s shaped for the future.

A look at what is coming next

Send and Appointment

Our scheduling and secure file sharing tools are still here, and they are still part of your subscription. Our main focus right now is Thundermail and webmail, but we are continuing to care for both with steady improvements along the way.

We’re looking for more ideas

If you are an Early Bird, we would love for you to visit our ideas board to share your suggestions and vote on the ones you would most like to see. We really do read every single one.

And if you have not been invited yet, you can join the waitlist. More waves are going out soon, and we are looking forward to welcoming you onboard.

Thank you for helping us build Thundermail.

Tags: tbpro thundermail

41 responses

zakius wrote on

there is no Thunderbird Mobile app, there’s K-9 under a new management
Thunderbird Mobile would be the same app, likely with responsive GUI to match the mobile screen, but with exactly the same internals, features, and when connected to external monitor the same GUI

same goes for… that’s even more layered, there is no Firefox Mobile, there’s Fenix (and there was Fennec), that is neither Firefox running on Android nor even Quantum running on Android

different apps with different goals, priorities, capabilities, workflows = different names

“but uniform branding and connection” yeah, no, that causes confusion and unmet expectations
make it Mozilla K-9, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Fenix, Mozilla Quantum and you have your branding and clear distinction between vastly different apps

I wonder if webmail would be Thunderbird-in-browser (and I always wonder why SeaMonkey is a suite that somehow never really integrated anything, a toolbar button to open a new mail window makes no sense, make it a tab in the browser, otherwise it gives me no benefit over using separate apps)

home user wrote on

Looks good and promising. I do have suggestions.
* I do NOT have a cell phone, only a “land line”. The land line is VOIP only. So I need to be able to subscribe and use Thundermail with neither a cell phone nor non-VOIP phone service. Multi-factor authentication must work by sending codes to other e-mail addresses or a VOIP land line phone.
* I’ll need Thundermail to work in Thunderbird. It would also be nice for it to be available via a website accessed in Firefox.
* The only calendar that I use is the one in Thunderbird, and it’s stored locally only. I would not use the one proposed to be included in Thundermail. It would be nice to to have Thundermail without the calendar, assuming that it would make a meaningful difference in pricing.

Thank-you for all your efforts on this. I continue to look forward to Thundermail.

By the way, what’s the current thinking on when Thundermail will be available?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the suggestions on Thundermail!

(Edited for clarity!)

MFA will initially include authenticator apps. If you don’t have a mobile phone, and authenticator app on your desktop or laptop would be a good solution to enable this. Email may be something we explore in the future, but there’s no decision on this yet: https://ideas.tb.pro/p/multifactor-authentication
Thundermail definitely works in Thunderbird, and most of us have been testing the early alpha of webmail in Firefox
Thundermail is built on top of STalwart, and it includes a Calendar by default. It would likely not be possible to ship a version without the built-in calendar; the best option in this case would be not importing Thundermail’s calendar into Thunderbird.If you meant Appointment instead, we have suggestion for ‘a la carte’ pricing for Thundermail – aka a Thundermail ONLY version that doesn’t include Appointment, which is more a scheduler. Again, this is just a discussion item of a community suggestion, and not something on our roadmap right now: https://ideas.tb.pro/p/a-la-carte-pricing

Rodger Strickler wrote on

I’m trying Linux for the first time and I have Linux/Mint/Cinnamon. Thunderbird came with it and I set up the first email with NO problems! Then all of the rest failed. I cannot set up a 2nd email… I get an error from AOL. Then I tried GMAIL… again, failed. Then I tried Yahoo and it failed. All of these are established and working email addresses in Windows/Outlook

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

We’re sorry you’re having issues setting up your email accounts! We can’t give very detailed troubleshooting here in the comments – can you please go to support.mozilla.org to open a new ticket?

These articles may also help with AOL/Yahoo and Gmail:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-yahoo
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-gmail

Erwin wrote on

Will Webmail available for own mail servers and/or mailboxes? Or is it Thundermail only?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Each Thundermail account has one inbox all messages go to, whether from aliases or custom domains. Webmail will allow you to read those messages from custom domains there.

George Holman wrote on

No web based apps for me, thank you.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

You can still use Thundermail with Thunderbird, or any other email client you want to use! The choice is completely up to you.

Ryan Camaratta (ryancnap) wrote on

First thing that stands out is the switch to Thundermail vs Thunderbird Pro, I think that’s a really good move and makes things much clearer. Have been following the ideas and github repos extensively, all awesome stuff, development moving super fast, and this June update sounds good.

Calendar UI refresh looks good!

Excited for webmail, I’m more of a Thunderbird desktop guy but webmail is definitely mandatory to stay competitive and it’s also nice to have more features

Can agree that integration with Thunderbird desktop and mobile has been super smooth, one-click style. Haven’t had any bugs/weirdness/interruptions/etc.

I had to laugh at the calendar and contacts comment, I was very happy to find out a little late that these were already built in haha. Would definitely be good to advertise that front and center on the main landing page

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the thoughtful comment and replies! It’s awesome how long you’ve been involved with this newest project, and we’re glad you’re also excited about the focus on Thundermail (it makes things so much clearer) and webmail. And thanks for the suggestions on putting the calendar and contacts a bit more front and center! And, as always, we’re glad you’ve been one of our Early Birds!

Paul V wrote on

Oddly, I missed most of this news. LONGtime T-Bird user here, having arrived initially via the great diaspora of longtime Eudora users.

So this is an email service? I can use custom domains and I can have it all come in to my Thunderbird desktop app, which I hope continues to be updated?

What about security? Serious security, end-to-end? Is that part of the structure?

I’d love to know more.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

This is an email service, and it’s easy to add to Thunderbird – but you can also use it in any email client you want (in addition to the webmail feature we’re adding). And yes, you can add up to three custom domains, that will all connect to your Thundermail inbox. You can read more about how to connect your custom domain email to Thundermail here: https://support.tb.pro/hc/articles/51253809827347-Custom-Domains-and-DNS-Configuration

Thundermail is built on the open-source Stalwart project, and you can read about their security (which is pretty serious!) at their website: https://stalw.art/

And of course, we are going to keep developing and improving the desktop app! Our next ESR update is next month, and our monthly release channel brings you updates on a muich quicker cadence. You can learn more about the difference between these channels here: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/choosing-thunderbird-release-channel

Bergius, Gerhard wrote on

Wieso schicken Sie mir immernoch Mail an meine alte Adresse?? meine Mailadresse lautet:
gxxxxx@gmail.com

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Ich habe Ihre E-Mail aus Datenschutzgründen bearbeitet, aber wir haben Ihre Adresse für den Versand auf diese hier aktualisiert. Die anderen Kommentare mit Ihren E-Mail-Adressen habe ich aus Datenschutzgründen gelöscht!

Bergius, Gerhard wrote on

hä? bitte auf Deutsch

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

(Übersetzt mit DeepL) Leider ist dieser Blog-Beitrag noch nicht auf Deutsch verfügbar! Wir suchen nach Möglichkeiten, Beiträge wie diesen für unsere deutschen Leser übersetzen zu lassen!

Jeremy Knight wrote on

I have “show alert when new messages arrive” set. But no alert appears when a message is routed to a local folder. That’s the opposite of what I’d like, because I’m usually more interested in messages that get sent to folders than those that stay in the Inbox.

Some while back I suggested that there should be a folder-specific setting to optionally show an alert when a new message is placed there. I still think that’s a good idea.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the suggestion! Another place you can make feature requests like this is our official feedback site, Mozilla Connect (or upvote a suggestion for this, if it already exists!)

Michael wrote on

Evolution is wonderful.
However, I would like Thunderbird Team to fix that classic bug: Phantom mail.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

One of our community members is helping us with this bug! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209501 The update to the new database will also help reduce incidents like this.

Jack Nash wrote on

This may already be apart of the solution, but PGP encryption would be fantastic. I know client, such as Thunderbird, allow for this, but having it available within the service would make it very convenient.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

There’s a good discussion happening around this on our Ideas board about this: https://ideas.tb.pro/p/additional-encryption-at-rest-with-openpgp-or-s-mime

There are definitely risks and tradeoffs we want to explore further, but I’d definitely encourage you to join the discussion there and follow it – and suggest any additional features you’d like to see!

Roy McKinney wrote on

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THUNDERBIRD EMAIL. JUST RECENTLY I HAD AN ENCRYPTED EMAIL SENT TO ME BY THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION WHICH HAD AN ATTACHMENT. WHEN I TRIED TO OPEN THE ATTACHMENT IT LOCKED MY COMPUTER DOWN FOR AWHILE SINCE MY COMPUTER WAS NOT SET UP FOR ENCRYPTED NOTES NOR WAS THUNDERBIRD. MY EMAIL IS STILL SCREWED UP BUT NOT BEING COMPUTER SAVY I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO EXCEPT TAKE IT TO A COMPUTER REPAIR SHOP AND SEE IF THEY CAN CORRECT WHAT NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED. I HAVE HAD THUNDERBIRD FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS BUT PLEASE CAN YOU MAKE IT MORE SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND AND OPERATE. THANK YOU, ROY MCKINNEY

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

If the computer shop can’t help you (but that’s a good place to look for support, especially since they can see exactly what you’re seeing), then go to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird – we have an amazing and friendly support community and lots of support articles, and it’s a lot easier for us to give you support there than here in the blog comments.

Joe Lee wrote on

I am a long time user of Thunderbird for Linux and it worked great, now that I tried the mobile version, there are 2 things keep bugging me. One there is no auto clean trash on exit, I’ve to do it manually to ‘double delete’ the mail every time, I don’t know why I need to do that, I used other mail client that can do this. Two is the notification on Android won’t clear after the mail deleted to cause lot of confusion. If the above two problem can be fixed then I’ve no complaint, for the same reason I would not try Thundermail.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the comments, and connect.mozilla.org is a great place to also make the request for a ‘auto clean trash on exit’ option! We are working on the issue of notifications not clearing, and hopefully will have a fix soon. You can follow our work here: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/issues/10936

Land Line Senior wrote on

I agree with home user on June 25, 2026, I would only use Thundermail and Contacts. Most of the things talked about in other comments I do not understand and would not use, nor would I want to try to learn how to use. Calendar planner made of paper is just fine for me. Being very low income, the less $ is better, free is best. Most $ of what people think is inexpensive is out of the question expensive for me.
Looking forward to Thundermail!

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the comments and concerns about pricing! We have a suggestion for a la carte pricing, and we’d love to have your comments there as well – even more than here on the blog post! https://ideas.tb.pro/p/a-la-carte-pricing

Ernst Zimmermann wrote on

Bitte weiter benutzen

Christian Willems wrote on

Prima doe zo verder !

Eddie Erlank wrote on

I am encountering serious problems to DELETE e-mails from the ALL MAIL folder. As I delete them, they simply jump back into the folder. I currently have way over 3,000 e-mails in that folder and am being told that I have used up my “allowance” and that I will have to pay to receive more e-mails, or will forgo the use of an e-mail service. Is there a way that you could help me. I am 83 yrs old, have limited technical skills, but would like to continue using Thunderbird/mail which I have been using for more than a decade.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Do you mind opening a new question at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird ? We can help you much more there (along with our community) since we probably need more information to troubleshoot this, like who provides your email, and if there are any settings you need to change with them to get these messages to delete. We have very friendly people who know so much about Thunderbird! https://support.mozilla.org/fxa/authenticate/?next=/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird/form (If you need help making a Mozilla account, it might be helpful to have someone tech-savvy in your life who could help you with this!)

Ron D wrote on

Suggestion :

I’ve using Thunderbird for over 30 years or maybe more.

When talking about future upgrades or better features, All I ever see
is changing or adding intricate features for users who
seem to be or are proficient tech users wanting more tech upgrades.

How about Thunderbird start with upgrading just their basic email composing
content for said emails with very easy user friendly controls like a Word document,
for the common every day user. The control bar features while composing an email is ridiculously limited. Why, after all these years?

Adjusting parameters in [ Settings ] doesn’t help or are effective, like you may think.
Anything we change like font sizing or paragraphing doesn’t come out the way
it shows when constructing a simple email to be sent.

It’s still frustrating we can’t do any effective composition because after any & all changes we make in [Settings] and then type an email, the content received on the email sent does not look like the composition we did on the original email sent. Why?

The answer we always get… “well, you just need to change your settings”.
Really? That’s what we’ve been doing and can’t get Thunderbird to send out an email simply composed that way we want.

All this time we see used to change technical features, and no time is being invested in just simple email composition for the average everyday user.

Why hasn’t someone come out with a simple ‘User Guide’ for making easy changes to an email in the “Settings” for say [ Composition ] ?

I’m not the ONLY guy out here complaining.

It would be nice if someone would address this situation, as I know people who tried Thunderbird and got disgruntled and then returned to their old email service.

Thanks for reading.

Ron

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the feedback, and I’m sorry Thunderbird has been frustrating to use. We’ve actually had a lot of talks about how to make Thundermail easier to use while still letting power users have their options. I don’t know if you’ve used Mozilla Connect, but this would make a great suggestion there too: https://connect.mozilla.org

John Macek wrote on

Taking a look. Time for outlook is over.

Anando wrote on

If this is a call, to keep things a bit basic and simple, then I agree totaly.
Sometimes certain programs have so many features, that simplicity is getting lost, and it is hard to figure out something because automation “helps” you to get lost .
It is like Excel…. that program has so many options, and I think 95% of the possibilities are not needed by 90% of the people.
Maybe it would be good to give the option in certain programs, where you can choose between normal and advanced features.

Hervo wrote on

Dear ThunderMail Support Team,

I hope you are doing well.

I have been on the ThunderMail waitlist since May 3, 2025, and I am still patiently waiting for a beta invite. I am very excited about ThunderMail and the vision behind the project.

It would truly be an honor for me to join the beta, test the service, share feedback, and support the ThunderMail community in any way I can. I believe this project has great potential, and I would be very happy to contribute as an early user.

Thank you very much for your time and for all the work you are doing. I would be grateful if you could kindly check my waitlist status or let me know if there is any update regarding beta invitations.

Warm regards,

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for being part of our waitlist, and we’re getting through it more quickly now! We just invited 10,000 people last week, and we’ll likely be starting another wave of invites this next week. I hope you get your invite and join us soon!

Walter wrote on

I still didn`t get an Invite. :/

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Your invite will hopefully be on its way soon! We recently did an invite wave of 10,000 this past week, and will likely have another wave within the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience!

Comments are closed.