I have used Thunderbird for years. It works. It is also a browser disguised as an email client, and every few months I catch it syncing telemetry back to Mozilla (the foundation that makes Firefox) that I never asked for. I want an email client that does the work, talks to my IMAP server, and does not phone home to anyone. The $10 license for a tool called Betterbird sounded like a reasonable experiment, and the experiment has gone on for three months now. I am still using it. Here is what is good, what is bad, and what I would tell someone who is thinking about the same switch.
The TL;DR is that Betterbird is a fork of Thunderbird, maintained by a small team that has removed the telemetry and the Mozilla account integration, and it does everything Thunderbird does without the parts I did not want. The $10 is a one-time payment for the binary, and the source is open.
What Betterbird actually is
Betterbird started life as a community patchset against Thunderbird, addressing long-standing issues in the upstream client (the version of the software you get from the official maintainer) that the Mozilla team was not going to fix. The patches are extensive, and the maintainers eventually forked the codebase (created an independent copy of the source code that they can develop separately from the upstream project) and started distributing their own builds. The fork is a real fork in the sense that the maintainers make their own decisions about which upstream changes to merge and which to skip, and the binary they ship is not signed by Mozilla.
The fork’s biggest change, and the one that motivated my switch, is the removal of Mozilla’s telemetry (the automatic reporting of usage data that software often sends back to its maker) and account integration. Thunderbird, like Firefox, pings Mozilla with usage data by default. The setting is buried in the preferences and is opt-out, not opt-in. Betterbird removes the setting entirely, along with the code that pings Mozilla. There is no telemetry. There is no account prompt. There is no suggestion to sign in with a Firefox account to sync your address book.
Smaller but cumulative are the other changes. The calendar and address book have been reworked to handle larger datasets without locking up. The mail folder list is more responsive. The compose window has keyboard shortcuts that Thunderbird does not have. The whole thing feels like the Thunderbird I would have built if I had the time.
$10 is the cost of the prebuilt binary. The source is on GitHub under an MPL (Mozilla Public License, a permissive open-source license) and you can build it yourself for free. The $10 is effectively a donation that gets you a binary that is signed and notarized (a macOS security check that tells the operating system the binary is from a known developer) for the platform of your choice. I paid it because I want the maintainers to keep going, and $10 is the cost of a sandwich.
How the migration went
I exported my Thunderbird profile (a profile is the directory where Thunderbird stores all your settings, mail filters, and cached mailbox data) to an external drive, which is a built-in feature in both clients. The export is a directory of mbox files (a standard format for storing email messages in a single file per folder) plus an address book and a calendar. Betterbird reads the same format, so the import is just a matter of pointing Betterbird at the directory and telling it to use it as the default profile. The whole thing took about 10 minutes, including the time to verify that all my filters had come over correctly.
The settings I had to re-enter by hand were the IMAP server (the internet mail protocol used to fetch email from a server) and SMTP (the protocol used to send outgoing mail) credentials, which I store in the macOS Keychain anyway, so I just had to point Betterbird at the Keychain and let it read them. The OAuth tokens (short-lived authentication tokens that let a third-party app act on your behalf with a service like Gmail) for my Gmail account had to be reauthorized, which is a one-click operation in the Betterbird UI. Total time for the migration was 15 minutes, and I had mail flowing in both clients for the first 24 hours so I could verify nothing was lost.
The things that were harder than expected were my saved searches. Thunderbird stores them in a way that Betterbird can read, but the keyboard shortcut to invoke them is different. I had to remap three of them, which took me about 20 minutes of fiddling. The things that were easier than expected were the address book and calendar. Both came over cleanly, and I did not have to re-enter a single contact or appointment.
What is still rough
Betterbird is a fork maintained by a small team, and the smallness shows in a few places. The macOS binary is signed but not notarized in the same way Mozilla’s is, so the first launch triggers a “this binary is from an unidentified developer” warning that you have to click through. The Windows binary is signed with a community certificate, and some anti-virus tools flag it as suspicious. The Linux binary is just a binary, no drama.
The update cadence is also slower than Thunderbird’s. Thunderbird ships a major release every 4-6 weeks, with security patches in between. Betterbird ships a release every 2-3 months, with security patches cherry-picked from upstream in the meantime. The patches are fast, but the major releases lag. For most users, this is fine. For users who need the latest Thunderbird features on day one, it is a real cost.
The other rough spot is the documentation. Betterbird’s documentation is good but small, and it assumes you already know Thunderbird. If you have never used Thunderbird, Betterbird’s learning curve is Thunderbird’s learning curve, which is not nothing. The upside is that the documentation for Thunderbird itself is extensive, and most of it applies to Betterbird as well.
What I would tell past me
If I could send a message back to the version of me that was about to start the migration, here is what I would say:
- Export the profile before you do anything else. The export is a directory, and the directory is your backup. If something goes wrong with the import, you can roll back to Thunderbird in 5 minutes by pointing it at the directory.
- Reauthorize the OAuth tokens the first day, not the first week. If you wait a week, you will forget which account the token was for, and the reauth prompt will be confusing.
- Do not delete Thunderbird until you have used Betterbird for at least a week. The two clients can run side by side. Use them both for a week to make sure nothing is missing.
- Read the Betterbird release notes for the version you are about to install. The maintainers call out the upstream changes they have skipped, and the notes tell you which Thunderbird features are not in Betterbird yet.
Trade-offs
Betterbird is a fork of a fork’s fork, and the smallness of the team is the main thing you give up. Thunderbird has Mozilla’s resources, including a security team, a release engineering team, and a documentation team. Betterbird has a handful of maintainers, a small but active community, and $10 from people like me. For most users, this is fine. For users who need the latest Thunderbird features on day one, or who need enterprise-grade support, it is a real cost.
The other trade-off is the binary trust story. The macOS binary triggers a Gatekeeper warning on first launch. The Windows binary triggers anti-virus warnings on some configurations. The Linux binary is just a binary. None of these are bugs, but they are friction. The workarounds are documented and well-known, but they are friction nonetheless.
Time is the first real cost. The migration took 15 minutes, and the post-migration fiddling (re-mapped keyboard shortcuts, reauthorized OAuth tokens) took another 30 minutes. Total time investment: 45 minutes, plus a week of running both clients side by side. Money is the second cost: $10 for the binary, $0 if you build from source. Features are the third cost, and the most concrete: Betterbird does not have the latest Thunderbird features until they have been ported, and the porting takes 2-3 months. For most users, this is a non-issue. For users who need a specific Thunderbird feature on day one, it is a real cost. Upside is real too. No telemetry, no account integration, no Mozilla prompts, and a small team that is responsive on the issue tracker. For an email client, the upside is exactly what I want.
If you use Thunderbird and you are tired of the telemetry, the $10 for Betterbird is a clear win. If you need the latest Thunderbird features on day one, stay on Thunderbird and disable the telemetry in the preferences. If you need enterprise support, neither client is the right choice. If you build from source, the $10 is optional, but the maintainers could use the support.
Bottom line
Betterbird is a small, focused fork of Thunderbird that does what Thunderbird does without the parts I did not want. The migration took 45 minutes, the binary is $10, the source is open, and the team is responsive. If you use Thunderbird and the telemetry bothers you, this is the right switch. I have been using it for three months, and I have not gone back.