Mozilla Thunderbird Vs. Microsoft Outlook – What to Choose?

Microsoft Outlook is one of the most popular and widely used email application run in various organizations. Outlook performs multiple functions which includes email application, group scheduler and contact manager. On the other hand, Thunderbird is a free and an open source cross platform email application which can be launched on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Let’s have a complete Mozilla Thunderbird Vs. Microsoft Outlook comparison in the further section.

It is flexible to manage and enables us to expand further via plugins to add more features that make it easy for the users to work with. While switching the email application from the default email client, most of the users look out for its features and functionalities which differs from one another. This blog will let users understand the various advanced features of both Outlook and Thunderbird email application in a better way.

Let’s have a quick glance to the below-given user queries to help understand the situation easily,

“I am a freelancer and most of the time I work from home. My laptop is configured with Outlook 2007 and I need to update to the latest version. Later, I came across Mozilla Thunderbird which is a free email application. Hence, I need to know the best email application which can provide a friendly interface on working at home. Can anyone let me know the difference between Outlook 2007 and Thunderbird email application? Please update me at the earliest.”

“I am using Thunderbird email application since the time I have joined this organization. Due to some security reasons, my organization has also allowed installing another email application. I felt to install Outlook 2019, but I am not aware of its features and other properties. Could someone explain to me the difference between Thunderbird and Outlook 2019? Kindly revert as soon as possible.”

Overview : Microsoft Outlook VS Thunderbird

Here’s a thorough analysis of both the email clients. Starting with Outlook!

MS Outlook

MS Outlook is a personal information manager which is a robust email application. It is a desktop-based email application that allows working on MS Exchange server and MS Sharepoint server across multiple users within the organization. Apart from various other features, it also includes calendar, task management, note, task, journal and web browsing functional properties. It is available as a separate email application which is part of MS Office Suite. It allows organizations to incorporate Outlook with MS Sharepoint which enables them to share multiple files and helps to collaborate with the colleagues in real-time.

Along with that, Outlook calendar is a built-in feature that does not allows users to send and receive appointments with other Outlook users within the same network. MS Outlook has an initial storage capacity of 5 GB data which can be increased as per the need of the user.

MS Outlook is capable to customize the view as per the users’ choice considering themes properties. From the Outlook application settings, themes can be easily downloaded to adjust the various settings. Furthermore, Outlook is an added feature that ensures to track the status of the sent email messages. Besides, it also includes email attachment reminders which notifies to insert the attachments while sending the emails. Let us check out the advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft Outlook.

MS Outlook Pros and Cons

Pros

• Ensures to provide powerful spam filtering and truncate phishing attacks
• With “Smart lookup” feature, it enables an automatic search with the help of Bing search engine without using any external browser
• Easily supports IMAP, POP3, MSN and Hotmail profile in MS Outlook
• With the help of cloud services, email attachments can be directly attached
• Emails can be filtered with “Clutter” according to the priority of incoming emails
• Quickly adds different accounts in an Outlook account like Gmail account configuration

Cons

• Does not support other email aliases, apart from Outlook aliases
• Does not allow users to create flags, folders or rules
• Complex to configure in comparison with Mozilla Thunderbird
• Paid application, hence a user needs to purchase a licensed version
• More Prone to email crashing, if the Mail folder size gets increased

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free full-featured and a secure email application. It is also known as a chat client which includes RSS feed reader, newsgroup options and many more. It allows to manage as many email accounts from a convenient location and also filters away the junk emails. It is developed by the Mozilla open source community after Mozilla Firefox web browser was released. By default, Thunderbird is available for Linux, however it can be easily installed and configured on Windows and Mac machine.

The development of new features has interrupted for a while, there are only stable versions that are released and updated. On working with Thunderbird email application, it provides a self-explanatory exposure to the user. Along with that, it ensures to provide a friendly graphical user interface which makes it comfortable to work with.

In the welcome page of the Thunderbird profile, the left panel contains the subfolders and the items of the configured accounts. Thunderbird allows multiple accounts configuration within the same Thunderbird profile. For instance, the configuration of different Google Apps account, Yahoo mail account, etc. within the Thunderbird profile. Concerning the needs of the users, all these items from the panel can be customized and modified. Let’s check out some prominent pros and cons of the Mozilla Thunderbird email application.

Mozilla Thunderbird Pros and Cons

Pros

• Provides a feature to open multiple tabs for navigation similar to Chrome
• Adds different email clients which support IMAP, POP3 and SMTP protocols
• Quick archival of unwanted email messages by hitting the “A” button
• Enables easy email management with fast search, filters, tags, views, etc.
• Offers several extensions to expand the usability to the end-users
• Ensures high-security protection with spam filters, firewalls, and anti-virus
• Allows to send heavy files by installing pCloud add-on for Thunderbird
• Consistent and involving a moderate change in the App design of Thunderbird

Cons

• Subject lines have temporarily vanished from the list
• Does not include calendar and task list, it can be configured only with add-on
• The overall interface is outdated which leads to unpleasant functionality
• The development has slowed down to focus more on stability and security
• Features like drag/dropping the pictures, etc does not work on it

Note: For switching from Thunderbird to Outlook, users can convert MBOX to PST file free.

Specifications – Microsoft Outlook VS Thunderbird

Features	Outlook	Thunderbird
IMAP	Yes	Yes
POP3	Yes	Yes
Exchange Support	Yes	Yes
Multi-Account	Yes	Yes
Platforms	MacOS, Windows, Android	Linux, MacOS, Windows
Snooze Emails	Yes	Not available
Search	Yes	Yes
Threaded	Yes	Not available
Unified Inbox	Yes	Yes
Free	No	Yes

Conclusion

This blog has clearly stated the major comparison between Mozilla Thunderbird Vs. Microsoft Outlook in a simple way. For users who are hunting in various blogs and websites to know the difference between Outlook and Thunderbird, then this blog will let them understand about the same. Both the email application is designed uniquely to provide a friendly interface and an easy approach to manage the emails.