Mozilla Thunderbird email Client puts all of your email accounts in one manageable spot, and doesn't cost a cent.
It makes sense to use an email provider that doesn't care about your internet provider, and moves with you. Gmail, Yahoo mail, and Hotmail are examples of free email providers that give you the freedom to keep your email address for years. You could use the email service that your internet provider gave you, but a lot of the time they just plain stink, and what do you do if you get fed up with Comcast for instance, and decide to use another internet provider? You loose your email address.
Most of us end up using more than one email address because it makes sense to have an email address for our blogs, ebay, our web page, school, etc. But you soon find yourself logging in and out off different email accounts all day, and email becomes a big nuisance. That is where a desktop email client like Thunderbird comes in handy.
You may be familiar with Outlook because you've used it at work, or you may have payed a tidy sum for it along with Microsoft Office. Thunderbird is a lot like Outlook mail but costs nothing, and is hands down the best Free email client for Windows, Mac, or Linux. Sure there are others that you may prefer, but I've tried most of them, and keep coming back to Thunderbird.
Now here's the deal, with Thunderbird, as with Outlook, you can add as many email accounts as you like. You can create, receive, and respond to all of your email in one place. You simply add a new account and the software sets it up for you. The only email provider that's a little tricky is Yahoo.
Yahoo for as long as I can remember has charged people for the privilege of being able to communicate with an email client, Pop3 is still part of their premium service. But what Yahoo has done is add IMAP for free so that devices like cell phones, and iPods can use their email service. The nice thing about that is that you can use IMAP in Thunderbird also, but you need to know the settings. The automatic setup in Thunderbird for Yahoo tries to set up Pop3 communication, and that's fine if you are paying for Yahoo's premium service, but it won't work if you use Yahoo's free service. Most of us didn't pay for Yahoo mail so here is how you set it in Thunderbird:
When you are going through the setup do this:
Set the Outgoing Server to: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Server Name: imap.n.mail.yahoo.com
User name: Your user name@yahoo.com
Security: STARTTLS
Your Yahoo, or other email accounts will appear on the left on the main Thunderbird screen. You simply click on the account that you want to use, select the write button at the top, and send an email message from that account. Your incoming email messages will also show up on the left in the inbox of the respective account.
If you've had your email account for a long time, and haven't emptied your inbox for years then be patient the first time you use an account, Thunderbird needs to load all of that email onto your computer for the first time. It can take a while, but after that it's a piece of cake.
Here's one more trick for managing you email. Gmail gives you the flexibility of being able to forward your email with it's free service. The advantage of forwarding is that you could forward all of your Gmail accounts to one, and get all of your email in one place. This works well with email addresses that get very little mail, but you still need to monitor them. My Thunderbird email client is only showing one Gmail, and One Yahoo account by doing this.
I hope this helps you get your arms around your email, once you do it makes your life just a little bit less complicated.
