The team behind the open source email client Thunderbird has released the annual report for the 2023-2024 period. The report covers major developments as well as an overview of financials.
And it could not look better. Financial contributions reached 8.6 million US Dollar in 2023, which is an increase of nearly 35 percent when compared to 2022’s 6.4 million US Dollar.
The project received donations from over 300,000 individuals according to the report. The median amount donated was 11,12 US Dollar and the number of big — over 1,000 US Dollar — donators was just 56 in the period.
Donations from five countries — Germany, the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan — accounted for more than 63 percent of all donations.
The expenses chart is interesting, especially when compared to Mozilla’s expense chart. More than 68 percent of expenses go to personnel, and almost 14 percent to infrastructure and operational services. Donation processing fees eat up more than 7 percent, which means that more than 600,000 US Dollar are wasted on fees. Marketing makes up 2 percent of expenses.
The bulk of revenue flows directly into the Thunderbird project and related services.
Major development took place since 2023
The organization has released two major versions of Thunderbird for the desktop since 2023. First Thunderbird 115 in 2023 and then a year later the big Thunderbird Nebula release.
K-9 Mail for Android was finally turned into Thunderbird for Android, which marked a major development step in creating a true cross-platform solution.
Development on add-on services began in 2023 as well. The team focused its efforts first on services that would add value to Thunderbird and align with its own values and goals. The following services were created as a consequence:
- Appointment, a calendar scheduling tool
- Send, based on Firefox-Send, a file transfer tool.
- Thunderbird Sync, a file synchronization tool to sync settings between all devices.
Development picked up pace between 2023 and 2024, and so did community contributions, which suggests that it is heading in the right direction.
Now you: do you use Thunderbird as your email client or another application? What is your take on the development? Feel free to leave a comment down below.