Thunderbird donations have jumped by over 100% in 2022
The Thunderbird team, responsible for the open source cross-platform Thunderbird email client, published its financial report this week.
Almost all revenue of the project is based on donations. The team states that about 99.9% of revenue comes from user donations.
The project team has received USD 6.4 million in 2022 from donations, a more than 100% increase over 2021's USD 2.7 million in donations. The jump is remarkable and a comparison of the revenue of the past six years shows no comparable jump in revenue. The team received USD 736,000 in 2017 and revenue from donations has increased each year since that year.
The team explains the revenue jump with its increased communication efforts, which started at the end of 2021. It started to post blog posts and the newsletter more frequently, posted more on social media, and has expanded its reach by joining new services, including Mastadon. Also, the team introduced the first in-app donation appeal in the Thunderbird 102 release at the end of 2022.
Compared to 2021, donations were always higher in each month, but the main push came at the end of the year when donations skyrocketed in comparison.
The increase in revenue from donations allowed the team to expand its staff further. The project team began with 15 core staff members in 2022 and ended the year with 24 core staff members.
The Thunderbird project hat expenses of USD 3.569 million in 2022. Most money has been spend on personnel, 79,8%, followed by general and administrative, professional services and donation processing fees.
2022 has been a major year for the Thunderbird project. The project acquired the K-9 email client for Android and started to prepare it to become Thunderbird for Android eventually. On the desktop, the team made large architectural changes to Thunderbird, which will culminate in the release of Thunderbird 115 later this year. Plans have been set in motion to create an iOS client for Thunderbird and an iOS developer will be hired later in 2023 to start work on that version of the email client.
Closing Words
The Thunderbird project is doing well financially and also development-wise. 2023 will be a key year for the project, with the release of Thunderbird 115 for the desktop and Thunderbird for Android.
One has to wonder how much Mozilla would be able to earn in revenue from donations, if it would follow Thunderbird's lead.
You find more information on the financials at the official Thunderbird blog.
I use Thunderbird as my main email client and Tutanota as a secondary. Tutanota has a desktop client as well and also works on Android. But Legibility which is an Firefox app to turn pale grey fonts to black doesn’t work on Tutanota unfortunately so I only use it for stuff like providing Ghacks with a valid email address.
The Thunderbird project has expenses of USD 3.569 million in 2022. Most money has been spend on personnel, 79,8%.
So 80% of 3.569 million = $2,855,200
The project team began with 15 core staff members in 2022 and ended the year with 24 core staff members.
So lets do the $2,855,200 divided by 24 staff = $118,966.67 (Please note they said at the start of the year 15, by the end 24…but I have been generous and assumed 24 throughout).
Which seems like pretty expensive programmers to me!
Not the way I really want to see a non profit to be run.
> So lets do the $2,855,200 divided by 24 staff = $118,966.67 (Please note they said at the start of the year 15, by the end 24…but I have been generous and assumed 24 throughout).
With benefits included, there are no extravagent salaries happening here.
And as someone else mentioned, creating a great product requires good talent which requires $$.
> Not the way I really want to see a non profit to be run.
A postscript regarding this viewpoint:
In a capitalist society, competition is inevitable.
And then, the reality is the same in communist societies, even harsher and more disastrous for those involved with the losers (Eventually, they are forced to work or executed, and are usually eliminated).
A business cannot stand on its own with well-meaning volunteers.
What about the reality of charitable orphanages and monasteries, for example?
There is no way forward if we demand empty arguments for the “management of cutting-edge businesses.
The key to military affairs is “first things first.”
The success or failure of a thing depends on the accuracy of advance preparation (planning and logistics) and the ability to execute (skills and coping ability).
The lesson learned in the old and new world was that how many talented people (skills rather than numbers, And leadership skills and a diverse workforce with the right people in the right places.) were acquired was the deciding factor between success and failure.
> Which seems like pretty expensive programmers to me!
Not the way I really want to see a non profit to be run.
Would that be so?
What about Google?
What about Microsoft?
What about Brave or Vivaldi?
They have not revealed anything, though.
Thunderbird clearly discloses everything!
There is a “market price” for things.
Both Google and Microsoft are where they are today because they have acquired talented people and companies, and Thunderbird must secure talent in such a market.
If they ruin the client, I will switch to Betterbird.
> If they ruin the client, I will switch to Betterbird.
Betterbird is a good choice, but Betterbird’s purpose is to “support Thunderbird” by releasing a beta version of Thunderbird on a community basis. In short, it is inextricably linked to Thunderbird and is not a replacement for “Thunderbird”.
If you are a layman and don’t know what you are doing, you should be prepared to be confused if you use the beta version.
Beta versions are “planned features implemented ahead of time to check compatibility”. Since it is a planned feature, the final Release version (stable version) is to be released with tweaks (in some cases, plans are postponed or cancelled) based on data and feedback from the user experience with the beta version. In essence, it is a version for realistic demonstration testing.
I was assuming they had some big donors, but it turns out this is predominantly just ordinary donations from ordinary users. That’s pretty incredible.
https://mastodon.online/@thunderbird/110344291408480373
“…one question was asked frequently: ‘Do you have mega-donors?’
Nope. We just have awesome people ?
Some stats we didn’t publish in the report:
-We had 76 donations that were $500 or above, which is less than 1% of total donations.
-95% of our donations were less than $100.
-The largest donation was €3000.
-Our average donation amount $15.78.”
Not everything is supposed to be for everyone. That’s how you end up with bloated software.
Also, lots of things successfully rely on donations. Grants can also cause problems if you rely on them.
“Almost all revenue of the project is based on donations. The team states that about 99.9% of revenue comes from user donations.”
Donations . . . ? The team may do better writing grants. Relying solely, exclusively on donations makes Thunderbird more like a second hand goods store with income constantly fluctuating. Maybe the team could integrate a ChatGPT search feature and move into the cloud era.
Any statistics to show Enterprise Level use of Thunderbird?
Major problem: “However, for those used to a cloud-based email system they can use on the go from any device, Thunderbird can seem a little limited.”
Stuck on one device . . . not an option for most users.
So you can download to thunderbird directly but not to firefox? pretty retarded if true
Sorry that was the bit that stood out to me…
I meant “donate” not “download” ! guess I’m the retarded one…
> I meant “donate” not “download” !
I see, Then we can understand it.
Firefox also greatly welcomes donations.
However, the scale of our business is completely different.
Donations alone are not enough to run the business (Generous human resource size commensurate with the size of the business and the ability to capital capacity to train personnel, and capital capacity to develop and improve competitively). As @VioletMoon points out, capital capacity could be unstable and active, sophisticated development investment would be difficult.
Thunderbird can “the core program, which costs an enormous amount of money, uses Firefox as its platform”, and focus only on other areas that require less people and less money. The ordeals for Firefox in developing a web browser that is the product of advanced technology are incomparably more difficult than for Thunderbird.
Note,
This logic also applies to “fork browsers” that use the core program (Firefox or Google chrome) as a platform. The development of a fork browser requires only minor manpower and expense.
Products that fork Firefox (Pale Moon, Waterfox, Librewolf, Tor Browser, Mullvad browser, Floorp, etc.) require a small number of people, while Microsoft Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi require dozens.
These differences are due to the many challenges that erupt from Cromnium (JavaScript engine), which requires unexpected manpower and costs.
> One has to wonder how much Mozilla would be able to earn in revenue from donations, if it would follow Thunderbird’s lead.
This sentence makes no sense at all. 1. Thunderbird is part from Mozilla. 2. You can already donate much longer for the Mozilla Foundation than for Thunderbird and they also promote it very actively, especially at the end of the years. How exactly would “Thunderbird’s lead” (or better “another Mozilla sub organisation’s lead”) change the donation income? What are your concrete proposals?
> Thunderbird is part from Mozilla.
No!
Thunderbird is a completely separate company, independent of Mozilla. It eliminates capital ties with other companies and completes solely on its own revenues (donations and business income). Of course, we are also operationally independent.
Thunderbird, which is independent, has decided that the “Gecko: HTML rendering engine” developed by Firefox, rather than the “JavaScript engine” used by chrome (Chromium), is superior.
This is because Thunderbird considers “JavaScript” to be the biggest security risk, so much so that Thunderbird has long been designed so that “JavaScript cannot be enabled” on Thunderbird.
Incidentally, the new company’s products are developed by backporting “Firefox ESR”.
It is clear that JavaScript poses the greatest security risk (Adobe’s “Flash,” which runs on the JavaScript, has decided to abandon its continued development. And HTML was recommended).
Mozilla never fully embraced donations. While the organization has accepted donations for a long time, its main source of revenue came and is still coming from search engine deals.
What I meant to say was that it would be interesting to see how far, revenue-wise, Mozilla would come if it would go all-in on donations and revenue from its own products.
Firefox has the much larger user base, which means that the potential for donations is higher.
In other words, would a fully independent Mozilla, without search engine deals, be able to survive on donations and its own services?