Email advice, Thunderbird vs Apple Mail

Mail imports most other common email formats. Thunderbird has the email functions from Mozilla. Mail can import Mozilla messages.

Mail's trainable junk mail filter alone gives it a leg up on most other email clients. It is also a darned nice program to setup and use. I have Thunderbird installed on my system. However, I see nothing in Thunderbird that puts it above Mail. Mail is my primary email client.

I vote for Mail over Thunderbird (Mac) any day. I used Thunderbird extensively for Windows and Linux, and it's a very good program. The mac version is (to be blunt) utter crap. It is slow and buggy. Mail, on the other hand, is fast, compatible with Spotlight (Thunderbird isn't), and just nicer to use overall. Use Mail, it's worth it. You shouldn't have any import problems as long as you look up instructions and follow them. I've moved back and forth several times over the past 4ish years and haven't lost any mail.

Try Postbox

Oz86 said:

Try Postbox

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I am going to download this. I like the detailed search it has and the interface is still very mac like.

Do Thunderbird messages appear in Spotlight? It is the main reason I use Mail.

Correo is a cocoa based Thunderbird, but it's old (late 2007?) and has not been updated lately; plus v3 of Thunderbird should be cocoa? Correct me if I'm wrong..
http://nkreeger.com/correo/index.html - Correo

Earlier in windows i was using thunderbirg, but when i discover MAIL (Apple) i never install another mail app. It's simple amazing and integrate with other apps in system.

I use a couple IMAP accounts across multiple platforms. For me, I could not use the Mail application because of a couple reasons:

1) Does not support multiple identities per email account. I have several aliases I use for different mailing lists, etc, and I have to use that identity to send email to that list, or it is not allowed. Even Thunderbird is much more of a pain than 15 year old "pine" software from a UNIX shell.

2) It's much easier to move between platforms, Linux, BSD, Windows and Mac when they are all using Thunderbird, instead of Thunderbird, Kmail, Mail, etc.

3) SSL certificates. My mail servers' certificates are all signed by CAs that are not installed by default. This leads to Mail prompting me endlessly to accept the certificate. It's not really annoying, but a nuisance.

Honestly, though, I am probably more demanding on an email program than 99% of the folks that use email. The Mail application is probably good for most people that only have one account hosted by someone else, like yahoo, etc.

-jt2

jt2ga65 said:

... The Mail application is probably good for most people that only have one account hosted by someone else, like yahoo, etc.

-jt2

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I have no idea what you are talking about. On my setup, I use Mail to access four email accounts, including AOL and Gmail. Also setup is a fifth inactive account. Selecting the account that I want to use is a easy as clicking a popup menu.

Oz86 said:

Try Postbox

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I thought I would never switch from Mail, but Postbox is great.

mail.app has been mentioned to have some problem with some IMAP servers.

Im using web based mail for now, but I like Thunderbird's easy color labeling, and new tabbed interface.

pooky said:

I vote for Mail over Thunderbird (Mac) any day. I used Thunderbird extensively for Windows and Linux, and it's a very good program. The mac version is (to be blunt) utter crap. It is slow and buggy. Mail, on the other hand, is fast, compatible with Spotlight (Thunderbird isn't), and just nicer to use overall. Use Mail, it's worth it. You shouldn't have any import problems as long as you look up instructions and follow them. I've moved back and forth several times over the past 4ish years and haven't lost any mail.

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Slow and buggy? Are we using the same program? I've had ZERO problems with Thunderbird for Mac, and love the fact that I can share mailboxes across platforms. The plugins are fantastic. I don't use the filtering, since that's done server-side.

Having said that, I'm going to give Mail.app and Postbox a try to see what I'm missing. But I've been really happy with Thunderbird - it's a very capable, stable client with tons of options. The differences we are talking about are primarily of person preference rather than true functionality, IMHO.

JeffR said:

Slow and buggy? Are we using the same program? I've had ZERO problems with Thunderbird for Mac, and love the fact that I can share mailboxes across platforms. The plugins are fantastic. I don't use the filtering, since that's done server-side.

Having said that, I'm going to give Mail.app and Postbox a try to see what I'm missing. But I've been really happy with Thunderbird - it's a very capable, stable client with tons of options. The differences we are talking about are primarily of person preference rather than true functionality, IMHO.

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Count me in as another vote for Thunderbird. I just prefer it over Apple Mail. Both are reasonably good though.

pooky said:

I vote for Mail over Thunderbird (Mac) any day. I used Thunderbird extensively for Windows and Linux, and it's a very good program. The mac version is (to be blunt) utter crap. It is slow and buggy. Mail, on the other hand, is fast, compatible with Spotlight (Thunderbird isn't), and just nicer to use overall. Use Mail, it's worth it. You shouldn't have any import problems as long as you look up instructions and follow them. I've moved back and forth several times over the past 4ish years and haven't lost any mail.

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I still use Thunderbird, but, they messed it up with the new release. It is slow and buggy - but, I still like it better than Mail. Turn off the spotlight indexing and it will speed up.

I prefer Thunderbird on the desktop, but have found that Apple Mail does the best job of importing email accounts from other platforms.

Another vote for Mail.app.

The best program Apple bundle with OS X.

Filemaker

I prefer Thunderbird, but it does not work in Filemaker scripts to send email - which ONLY works with 'Mail' even if I specify Thunderbird as the default !

Tumbleweed666 said:

Hope this is right forum, was thinking of posting in the 'new to mac' forums?

I have a lot of POP3 email on my Win XP PC, in Thunderbird. Am thinking about using Apple Mail when I get my iMac. Would the simplest way to xfer be to move my Thunderbird folders across from the PC into Mac Thunderbird, check that all works, and then do an import into Mail? (I'm assuming that it would have this function ! Does it? ) And, if I don't like it, can I then easily do the reverse process, a quick google shows it could be complex ?

Which leads me to my next Q , do folks in general think that Mail is better than Thunderbird, or should I just stick with Thunderbird anyway? What would the main advantages of using Mail be?

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Mail is OK if you have hundreds of archived emails. If you have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, I would stick with Thunderbird.

not in my experience

jnpy!$4g3cwk said:

Mail is OK if you have hundreds of archived emails. If you have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, I would stick with Thunderbird.

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I have tens of thousands of emails, and I'm using Mail. Works just fine!

stop thunderbird emptying mail off the web mail

im not sure if it is ok to post this here. i tried on the thunderbird forum but noone answered.i tried on apple discussions and they said you have to ask on the thunderbird forum. im concerned about thunderbird dl all my mail from yahoo onto the computer and then erasing them from the server. i think this is the default setting, and then there is no way to put them back again. is there any way to prevent this. i like firefox but feel disappointed in thunderbird a. because the support is not very good, esp. if you are used to getting answers on apple disucssions, quite often within minutes of posting a question, and b. because i dont think the default behaviour should be to remove mail from the server, or to dl 1000 of messages most of which are not worth keeping, to take up disk space. if anyone can help i will be very grateful. thanks

ericcartman said:

im not sure if it is ok to post this here. i tried on the thunderbird forum but noone answered.i tried on apple discussions and they said you have to ask on the thunderbird forum. im concerned about thunderbird dl all my mail from yahoo onto the computer and then erasing them from the server. i think this is the default setting, and then there is no way to put them back again. is there any way to prevent this. i like firefox but feel disappointed in thunderbird a. because the support is not very good, esp. if you are used to getting answers on apple disucssions, quite often within minutes of posting a question, and b. because i dont think the default behaviour should be to remove mail from the server, or to dl 1000 of messages most of which are not worth keeping, to take up disk space. if anyone can help i will be very grateful. thanks

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I have received replies on the thunderbird forum before. It isn't as active as macrumors but if you phrase your question clearly, it usually gets a response.

I use thunderbird with gmail and it leaves all my mail on the server. I think this was the default setting too. Certainly you can choose either. Have a look in the thunderbird settings, there are plenty of options. I have found thunderbird to be pretty good.

Do you have the latest version for OS X, 3.0.5?

Vote for Postbox

Guys! Thanks to some posts in this thread I tried Postbox as I was also looking for an alternative to Mac OS X Mail and originally considered Thunderbird. Even though Mail worked good I was looking for a more complex alternative to handle my mails professionally. After trying Postbox for a couple days I won't be switching back to Mail. Postbox integrates flawless with my gmail account and gets my mails organized just the right way. No more different sent mail account to search when using desktop application as well as iPad. Even return receipts I can request again, one of the lacking features in Mail.
Give it a try, I'm very happy with Postbox.

archive

My biggest problem is archiving my gmail emails. in thundirbird theres taht nice archive button, i havent seen it in mail although havent looked very hard.

So can I archive me emails in either postbox or mail????