Mozilla Thunderbird is a complete, powerful and open source email and news client. It is cross-platform, written in C++. Mozilla Thunderbird is developed by the Mozilla Foundation, which is famous for their product Mozilla Firefox. As a competitor to Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird offers almost the same core features but is free. Besides being free, Thunderbird works on other operating systems such as Mac OS X, Solaris and Linux.
Here is the complete set of Mozilla Thunderbird features:
Multi Email Account Setup
Mozilla Thunderbird allows you to set up more than one email account and manage them easily. With its mail account setup wizard, it is very easy to add a new email account — Mozilla Thunderbird will find the correct settings for you. You just need to fill in your name, email address and password and let Thunderbird do the rest.
RSS news client
As well as mail accounts, you can also set up a news group for your favorite RSS feeds. You can subscribe to any valid RSS feed and add it to Thunderbird. When there is an RSS update, you will get the news instantly with a nice little popup at the bottom right of your screen.
Address Book
Managing your contact information is easy — just a single click. One-click Address Book is a quick and easy way to add people to your address book. Add people by simply clicking on the star icon in the message you receive. Two clicks and you can add more details like a photo, birthday, and other contact information.
Activity Manager
Activity Manager is a log of activity between Thunderbird and your mail server. You can track and find out what happened if anything goes wrong.
Multi Tabs and Search function
Thunderbird comes with multiple tabs and a search function. You can read your email full-screen in another tab and reply without any distraction. The search function helps you find emails or news from any folder and archive.
Message Archive
If you think you are going to need an email in the future but want it out of your inbox without deleting it, archive it! Archiving helps you manage your inbox and puts your email into a new archive folder sorted by month, so you can find it easily later.
Themes manager
Mozilla Thunderbird supports custom themes. You can find a lot of themes in the Mozilla Thunderbird themes add-ons. I like the Mac OS X theme — it looks neat and cool. Choose any theme that suits you.
Extensible through add-ons
Mozilla Thunderbird has many add-ons to extend its features and abilities. You can download them directly from Thunderbird (Tools > Add-ons) or visit the add-ons page. One of the most popular add-ons is Lightning, which adds an event calendar. With this add-on Thunderbird has the same feature as Outlook.
Easy to update
Just like Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird is easy to update. When a new update is available there will be a popup and you can update with a single click. The automated update system provides updates for Thunderbird on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in over 40 different languages.
With that set of features, what else do you need from an email client? Share your thoughts in the comment box below. Thanks.