Chapter 8 · 8.6
Thunderbird
Thunderbird is a free email programme for Windows, Mac and Linux, made by the creators of Firefox. It's open source, fetches your mail directly from our server, and doesn't share your data with anyone else. It's also a favourite with our team. Keep the details from All settings at a glance: servers, ports and security at hand.
Adding your account
- Open Thunderbird. If you start it for the first time, you'll get the screen to add an account straight away. Otherwise, click Add account in the menu (the three lines in the top right) and choose Email. You can also click the gear icon in the bottom left, then Account Actions and Add Mail Account.
- Fill in your name (recipients will see this as the sender), your email address, and the password for this address. Click Continue.
- Thunderbird will look up the settings itself. If it finds them, check whether the server is your domain name or your package's server name, with IMAP. If it's correct, click Done.
- Does Thunderbird not find anything, or is it incorrect? Click Manual config and fill in everything as shown below, including the fields that might seem optional.
Manual configuration
| Incoming server | Outgoing server | |
|---|---|---|
| Protocol | IMAP | SMTP |
| Hostname | yourdomain.com or the server name | same as incoming |
| Port | 993 | 587 (or 465) |
| Connection security | SSL/TLS | STARTTLS (for 465: SSL/TLS) |
| Authentication method | Normal password | Normal password |
| Username | your full email address | your full email address |
Click Re-test. If the connection works, click Done. Your mail will now be retrieved.
Tip: Does the hostname show something like imap.yourdomain.com or smtp.yourdomain.com? Remove the part before your domain name, or use your package's server name instead.
Entering a new password
Have you changed the password for your email address? Thunderbird will automatically ask for the new password as soon as the old one stops working. If it doesn't, remove the old password in Thunderbird's settings, under Privacy & Security and Saved Passwords.