I've used Thunderbird ever since it was released as a standalone mail client and like it - although it has sometimes been a rocky experience in the past. I use it now with Fastmail as my mail provider.
One thing I might be interested in is the "contacts" side of mail. In an effort to move away from too much Google, I ditched Google Contacts and host my own CardDAV using "Radicale" [0]. This works, and I also access it via DAVx on Android.
But would a CardDAV server be something worthwhile via Thundermail? Or perhaps too small a service itself? Maybe part of their scheduling tool "Appointment"? I might prefer having this hosted elsewhere than in my house.
I had to think to recall the reason. I had a support ticket at Fastmail about this in 2024 - I wanted to host my own CardDAV server and have Fastmail use and sync to this. This was not possible - I was told that two-way sync with other services was a "calendar only feature". I might re-visit.
Do you like Thunderbird better than Fastmail’s UI?
I’ve always felt TB to be clunky, outdated with an ecosystem of abandoned extensions that haven’t been updated since GMail got popular, but I haven’t tried it in the last 3 years to see if it got better.
If you want to have your email offline, you must use an application built for that. Thunderbird has its shortcomings but it does actually do the job. Web user interfaces have their place (such as on phones, which make development harder), but there is no replacing the desktop email client.
Fair, though in this day and age I find being offline is quite a rare event, and when it happens (I’m driving in the middle of nowhere), I don’t need my emails.
I’ll give TB another try. Web apps always feel terrible.
It's not about being away from the internet (for me), it's about keeping my data on my own machine. I'm still trying to figure out how to delete everything from the server and still have my own copy. But that is kind of a niche requirement these days. It's better for everything to stay available on the server, usually.
One thing I might be interested in is the "contacts" side of mail. In an effort to move away from too much Google, I ditched Google Contacts and host my own CardDAV using "Radicale" [0]. This works, and I also access it via DAVx on Android.
But would a CardDAV server be something worthwhile via Thundermail? Or perhaps too small a service itself? Maybe part of their scheduling tool "Appointment"? I might prefer having this hosted elsewhere than in my house.
[0] https://radicale.org/v3.html