After using both tools for quite a while, I decided to write down my impressions on their respective strengths and weaknesses. Since the post ended up being longer than I thought, I posted it directly on my Web site.
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My name is Cédric Beust. I am a software engineer and the creator of the Java testing framework TestNG. If you like this blog, you should follow me on twitter or on Google+. You can also email me at cedric@beust.com.Top entries
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#1 by Skype on May 25, 2006 - 2:59 pm
I cannot believe that there is still no ‘mark for follow-up’ extension for Thunderbird… This is the main reason why I haven’t switched from Outlook yet.
#2 by WilliamG on June 13, 2006 - 1:40 pm
I switched to Thunderbird and the Mozilla Calendar as a temporary solution while waiting for MS Office to be delivered. Needless to say that was over a year ago, there is no way I’d switch back.
I use Thunderbird with the Quicktext function and template function that wipes the board with my colleagues and their outlook. We have a lot of repeat questions, so with Quicktext 2 clicks and a personalised reply is sent winging it’s way.
The calendar is shared without the need of expensive M$ Exchange, and we have about 6 sunbird users also online now. And the calendars are viewable over the intranet with phpiCalendar. All so simple and logical to use the same file formats etc.
With Thunderbird I can reply to an email, move the email to a folder, and the next email pops up.. if i want to save replying till later, I can simply click the flag next to the email to remind me I haven’t replied…
Yes it took me 2 months of thinking, do I want to stick with it, but knowing that I was going to have to learn Outl..k 2003 rather than 97 that I had been using, it seemed just as easy to learn Thunderbird instead.
And yes I use Firefox too…
#3 by WilliamG on June 13, 2006 - 1:41 pm
I switched to Thunderbird and the Mozilla Calendar as a temporary solution while waiting for MS Office to be delivered. Needless to say that was over a year ago, there is no way I would switch back.
I use Thunderbird with the Quicktext function and template function that wipes the board with my colleagues and their outlook. We have a lot of repeat questions, so with Quicktext 2 clicks and a personalised reply is sent winging it’s way.
The calendar is shared without the need of expensive M$ Exchange, and we have about 6 sunbird users also online now. And the calendars are viewable over the intranet with phpiCalendar. All so simple and logical to use the same file formats etc.
With Thunderbird I can reply to an email, move the email to a folder, and the next email pops up.. if i want to save replying till later, I can simply click the flag next to the email to remind me I haven’t replied…
Yes it took me 2 months of thinking, do I want to stick with it, but knowing that I was going to have to learn Outl..k 2003 rather than 97 that I had been using, it seemed just as easy to learn Thunderbird instead.
And yes I use Firefox too…
#4 by WilliamG on June 13, 2006 - 1:42 pm
I switched to Thunderbird and the Mozilla Calendar as a temporary solution while waiting for MS Office to be delivered. Needless to say that was over a year ago, there is no way I would switch back.
I use Thunderbird with the Quicktext function and template function that wipes the board with my colleagues and their outlook. We have a lot of repeat questions, so with Quicktext 2 clicks and a personalised reply is sent winging its way.
The calendar is shared without the need of expensive M$ Exchange, and we have about 6 sunbird users also online now. And the calendars are viewable over the intranet with phpiCalendar. All so simple and logical to use the same file formats etc.
With Thunderbird I can reply to an email, move the email to a folder, and the next email pops up.. if i want to save replying till later, I can simply click the flag next to the email to remind me I have not replied…
Yes it took me 2 months of thinking, do I want to stick with it, but knowing that I was going to have to learn Outl..k 2003 rather than 97 that I had been using, it seemed just as easy to learn Thunderbird instead.
And yes I use Firefox too…
#5 by Frankie on July 6, 2006 - 5:34 am
I Currently use Mozilla Thunderbird to receive my exchange email. I use an IMAP setup to the exchange server as long as the account is made on the server you should be able to send and receive your email. It’s one step closer to being better than outlook. The best thing about Thunderbird is that you can customize it to your liking.
#6 by benjamin pokorny on July 20, 2006 - 12:42 pm
Reading your “Outlook 2003 – Thunderbird Smack Down” today, I for the first time was able to find resolution to a recent Outlook problem, where my rules stopped auto-running. Your step-by-step approach to find the offending rule was helpful in me getting my rules to work again. Thanks for posting that (“rules are flaky”). Nobody else on the web seemed to have figured that out. ~Benjamin
#7 by Kersmudgen on August 10, 2006 - 4:17 pm
Ok… just installed t-boyd. As opposed to Outlook:
1. Install should offer mail storage option ONLY
2. No address entry type-ahead
3. Calendar & Tasks… ok it’s been mentioned
4. Not very intuitive (everyday features not obviously available)
5. Exchange (is there an extension? POP3 ONLY loses)
And there are a number of other lil annoyances – that, hopefully, will most likely be settled once I’ve digested navigation a bit longer…
I’d love to ditch Outlook… but the Exchange issues are huge (unless there is some extention out there I’m not aware of).
Am I to be locked into m$oft forever… help!!
#8 by acier on August 22, 2006 - 9:20 am
After having used various email packages (corp standard is Outlook), the overall ease of use and reliability of Thunderbird (v1.5.0.5) moved me to it. Sure Outlook has all manner of functionality (when it works), but as in typical office suites, most folks will use less than 10% of the bloated feature set. IMAP configuration is flawless, and the LDAP functionality extremely quick.
#9 by Talon on August 23, 2006 - 11:22 pm
I am an IT manager, I work for a company with over 700 employees. Our company policy is outlook and IE only. Since implementing my new courier TLS IMAPD outlook performs very badly.
Just to look at a few of the problems I have noticed in outlook that never occur in tb
SSL caching in MS outlook wtf?
Send and receive complete no errors with mail still in the outbox
Outlook gives up trying to connect to server no errors in any maillog tcpdump proves it never even attempted to connect to the server it just gives up and reports a successful send and receive.
Message filters not working or intermittent
I have contacted MS support with these issues and after paying out over 300 dollars to billy boy
#10 by KB on August 25, 2006 - 3:55 pm
Two notes:
(1) MS Outlook does not support NNTP protocol. I heard that newer version of Outlook will run outlook express to coomunicate with newsgroup. This way Outlook doesn’t support nntp natively but at least users can read/post news in outlook. But I have no personal experience for this, nor am I interested in.
(2) Outlook use MAPI to communicate with Exchange server for group collabration (calender/tasks/contacts/etc). But MAPI is not open standard, not even a protocol — it is only a set of API that only Micro$oft can make full use of.
By all means I’ll go with thunderbird/sunbird for open source software / open standards.
#11 by Ashok on September 20, 2006 - 2:57 am
Outlook is true PIM and Mail client.
For me the most important is to have emails, contacts and calendar in one place…all i need to do is copy my PST and go away.
Only outlook gives me this…plus I need to sync my N80 and iPAQ’s for contacts and Calendar…Outlook is always there for Sync.
#12 by Anonymous on September 29, 2006 - 12:10 pm
I used Thunderbird for about a half a year. Now I am migrating back to Outlook, only because of two reasons – 1) Synchornization with Windows Mobile PDA via ActiveSync, 2) Direct inclusion of meeting request from the mail to the calendar. As soom as Thunderbird adds these features I’ll be more than happy to use it again.
#13 by Anonymous on October 31, 2006 - 3:12 pm
A very good source of info for configuring LDAP (focused on M$ Exchange) in Thunderbird is:
http://movingparts.net/2006/05/05/ldap-microsoft-exchange-and-kaddressbook-or-thunderbird/
#14 by iago on November 6, 2006 - 4:03 pm
thanks to cedric and everybody else. it’s amazing how sick of outlook i’ve become, only to be reminded by all your comments of a few features i’d hate to be without. i guess i’ll stick with outlook for the next little while.
#15 by Matee Moshkovits on November 22, 2006 - 9:20 pm
As I read your Pros and Cons of Thunderbird I thought to myself “what version did he evaluate?”
just goes to show you how fast things change in the IT world … with Thunderbird 1.5.8 most of the CONS are addressed … even the integrated calendar and task list … its called “lighting” and its an extension of Thunderbird … it acts just like the Outlook Calendar except for Outlooks Slowness to load the Calendar if you have more then 10 tasks in one day
–
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office.
Thank You
Matee Moshkovits
Chief Technology Officer
AffordHost Inc.
http://www.affordhost.com
#16 by Matee Moshkovits on November 22, 2006 - 9:21 pm
As I read your Pros and Cons of Thunderbird I thought to myself “what version did he evaluate?”
just goes to show you how fast things change in the IT world … with Thunderbird 1.5.8 most of the CONS are addressed … even the integrated calendar and task list … its called “lighting” and its an extension of Thunderbird … it acts just like the Outlook Calendar except for Outlooks Slowness to load the Calendar if you have more then 10 tasks in one day
–
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office.
Thank You
Matee Moshkovits
Chief Technology Officer
AffordHost Inc.
http://www.affordhost.com
#17 by Jol on April 30, 2007 - 2:43 pm
This Folrin C. seems to have paraphrased, plagiarized and summarized your entire article
http://news.helpero.com/article/Mozilla-Thunderbird-vs-Outlook-2003_29.html
#18 by cyberpinoy on May 1, 2007 - 4:23 am
one possibly important aspect to consider:
If you have, say, 1 PC on Win98 and another on WinXP…you can’t install Outlook (2003 and up at least) on both PCs. You have to upgrade your Win98 PC into XP.
With Thunderbird, it installs across both Win versions.
check it out.
#19 by Massimiliano Adamo on June 5, 2007 - 2:43 pm
Hi.
I think 95% of the stuff you mentioned about outlook, (as all people is telling you) does work with thunderbird as well… and remaining 5% will work by using thunderbird extensions
In addiction, in thunderbird, nowaday, you have more then hundred extensions.
I think you’ll never have in outlook all functionalities offered by those hundreds of extensions.
You have lost!
–
Massimiliano
#20 by Raphael on August 30, 2007 - 12:14 pm
How come no one’s mentioned the biggest -ve in my book for Outlook? The single .pst file and it’s associate file size restrictions?
My Thunderbird mail folders are something around 7.3Gb in size. Nothing that Outlook could even come close to.
Although I hear the latest version goes some way to fixing that?
#21 by Will on September 27, 2007 - 1:04 pm
I’m looking for same answer as Raphael. I’ve spent much of last night and today reorganizing emails because the Inbox1.pst file was over 6 Gig. It’s the Prez’s Laptop and she keeps all emails sent or received. After moving/removing email folders, I’m now COMPACTING. It’s been going for 4 hours now!
#22 by msk on October 4, 2007 - 4:33 am
I will like to enlighten one very important and main thing and that is you pay over $100 for outlook and Thunder bird is available to you for no chanrge. This is a huge difference. Should not be a complainer when getting something that does not cost at all and still does most of the task. Plus Thunder bird is still in beta mode. How come outlook can be compared VS thunderbird? Calender is also integrated in thunderbird not only that now you can even synch thunderbird with your mobile devise and even that is for no charge. How come you can even compare outlook VS thunderbird. There is not even a match. Compare something that is in a same stream line. Thunderbird is way far ahead then outlook especially when it comes on spending. You also have forgotten lots of feature in thunderbird that you did not mentioned more then 95% of the features you mention for outlook are available in thunderbird. I use both the Thunderbird and outlook for exchange server. The day thunder bird will allow to synch exchange server that will be last day of me using outlook.
#23 by Ralph G on January 29, 2008 - 2:25 pm
Been trying to get beyond MSN/Outlook 2003 SMTP relay issue. Spent days working on it, and 1 hour with M$ tech support. Nothing would work. Dumped Outlook for TB. Surprise, surprise, everything in TB works the first time and no connection issues with my six email accounts from 5 different servers.
#24 by Fletch on February 15, 2008 - 1:39 pm
LDAP suport:
Thunderbird works fine (for reading) with openldap.
Outlook “lies” and says the no name found..basically it doesn’t work yet it tells you the person doesn’t exist when in fact they do. No excuse for no *working* ldap support in 2008.
#25 by George on February 22, 2008 - 12:13 am
I just found this and would like to comment….Outlook with IMAP is soooooo sloooooow. I have probably about 600 folders and probably about 1.5 million messages on my IMAP server. Outlook tries to check all of my folders for new mail — a task which is never finishes… slow my dual core 2.1 gig AMD to crawl and shoots memory usage way up — using 500 plus megs of memory — mostly page file which slows the system down more. Thunderbird is up and waiting for me in less the 3 minutes with 5 IMAP accounts and 4 POP3 accounts. OUTLOOK is bad for security and bad for IMAP accounts.
#26 by Sudheer on July 2, 2008 - 10:29 am
Hi,
Thanks for letting me know the advantages and disadvantages both in Thunderbird and Outlook. can you please send the good and bad options in both of them. Please mail me soon. TY.
#27 by I'm not stupid like someone......... on July 10, 2008 - 5:19 am
Learn how to use Outlook properly and i think you’ll find that most of your ‘-’s will actually be ‘+’s.
BAWBAG
#28 by bilal on January 21, 2009 - 11:18 pm
outlook is expensive. Mozilla Thunderbird is free,open source and runs much faster. cleaner interface, availability of add-ons, security make it better than outlook by a large margin.
#29 by jubma on February 8, 2009 - 9:50 am
Thunderbird has one feature that is very important to me that Outlook doesn’t have.
In case of slow internet connection, if we need to read an email which also contains a large attachment, Outlook will not show you the email until it also finishes downloading the attachment and this could take a long time. the interface will be frozen. But Thunderbird will show u the email text quicky, and an icon for the attachment leaving the option to us whether or not to download that attachment.
Very sensible feature indeed.
#30 by Samuel on May 15, 2009 - 10:45 am
You say Search Folders are a plus for Outlook 2003? I also prefer Outlook and not Thunderbird but not because of the search folders. I think the search integrated in Outlook is a big minus for Outlook. Unless you have a good and reliable search tool like lookeen (www.lookeen.com) or other add-ons. Outlook may be good but there are a lot of things that still have to be improved.
#31 by regan on June 2, 2009 - 12:19 pm
Hi, nice comparison.
However the Mozilla tools are good because they have free addons; and now you can completly replace your Microsoft Exchange + Microsoft Outlook with http://www.scalableogo.org and Thunderbird.
Inverse (SOGo developpers) are contributor to the http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/ plugin.