Mozilla planning to launch an email service: Thundermail
From https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/04/thundermail-and-thunderbird-pro-services/
Thundermail is an email service (with calendars and contacts as well). We want to provide email accounts to those who love Thunderbird, and we believe that we are capable of providing a better service than the other providers out there. Email that aligns with our values of privacy, freedom and respect of our users. No ads, no selling or training AI on your data – just your email and it is your email.
With Thundermail, it is our goal to create a next generation email experience that is completely, 100% open source and built by all of us, our contributors and users. Unlike the other services, there will not be a single repository where this work is done. But we will try and share relevant places to contribute in future posts like this.
The email domain for Thundermail will be Thundermail.com or tb.pro. Additionally, you will be able to bring your own domain on day 1 of the service.
and https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/02/thunderbird_pay_services/ mentions
Thundermail, an email hosting service based on the Stalwart stack, to complement the Thunderbird client. Stalwart supports JMAP (JSON Meta Application Protocol), intended as a successor to IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol).
Will they manage to make it work in the long term?
Comments
They have built their userbase on socialist principles and now are in deep shit because their users don't understand money is needed for any service to function.
It has been sad to witness Mozilla downfall, but it was destined to happen since day one.
The least shitty way to navigate it, if i were in their shoes, would be to sell licenses. I would be willing to purchase open source Firefox "founders edition" or something.
Instead they have chosen to betray pretty much all of their principles and start shoving ad's, trackers and other unwanted shit in to their products. Which in turn made their previous, "donate" business model obsolete, because at this point its like donating to Google and nobody wants to do it.
I don't think it will go anywhere, probably will end up like Vivaldi Email used by tens of people.
I honestly don't believe the financial struggles of Mozilla are caused by the user base. The issue is more with the leadership and the years of Mozilla ignoring their user base.
The user base really struggles nowadays to give any money to Mozilla because they immediately waste it on some Silicon Valley startup nonsense. Most users want Mozilla to develop Firefox with a focus on privacy. Mozilla, on the other hand, buys a bunch of failed startups and launches (currently) trendy projects, only to scrap them a year later. And because all of this works so well, they increase management salaries. I think a huge chunk of the user base just doesn't trust Mozilla to handle any potential donations responsibly.
This feels like yet another one of their already dead projects. I also struggle to understand who they think the customers will be. By using Stalwart and the general Mozilla branding, it feels like they want to refocus on privacy. But with the service being hosted on US-based Google Cloud servers, I have a strong feeling that people will prefer other services like ProtonMail.
So, the only people who are likely to use it are probably the 10 hardcore Thunderbird fans.
Will get closed down in a year or two, like the others: https://killedbymozilla.com/
Sounds like these features aren't enough to distinguish them from other email service providers.