How to Set Up Email in Thunderbird

Thunderbird, from the Mozilla Foundation, is a free and open source email client for Windows, macOS and Linux. It connects to almost any mail provider so you can read, write, send and receive email from your own computer rather than from a browser tab. This guide walks you through adding an existing mailbox, one that already lives on your Noiz hosting account, to Thunderbird, using both the automatic path and the manual path.

Thunderbird is a genuine drop-in replacement for the classic desktop Outlook that many businesses grew up on, and it is the client Noiz recommends most often to clients who want a real desktop inbox without a subscription attached to it.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026, against the current Thunderbird release (monthly Release and ESR channels). This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current against Thunderbird. It complements, and does not replace, the official Thunderbird documentation linked below. Thunderbird ships a new monthly release alongside a slower-moving ESR, and the setup screen differs between them: the current Release and the newer ESR use the Account Hub, while the older ESR still uses the earlier Account Setup tab shown in the screenshots below. The field names and the values you enter are the same on both.

Official Documentation Reference

• Thunderbird Support (Mozilla): the official support hub, kept current with every release.
• Automatic Account Configuration: how Thunderbird tries to discover mail settings for you, and why it sometimes cannot.
• Manual Account Configuration: the reference for every field in the manual setup form.
• Install, Migrate and Update Thunderbird: installation and upgrade guidance for each operating system.

Prerequisites

• The mailbox already exists on the server. Thunderbird can only connect to a mailbox that has been created first. If you have not created it yet, see How to Create an Email Address in Plesk, How to Create an Email Account in cPanel, How to Create an Email Account in DirectAdmin or How to Create an Email Mailbox in ISPConfig, depending on the control panel that came with your package.
• You know the full email address, for example you@yourdomain.com, and the mailbox password that was set when the address was created. That password is set at server level, not inside Thunderbird.
• Your domain’s mail is already pointed at Noiz. If the domain was only recently moved across, allow DNS changes time to propagate before the mail hostname will resolve.

Overview

• Download and install Thunderbird.
• Enter your email address and password.
• Let Thunderbird configure the account automatically, or configure it manually.

Download Thunderbird

• If Thunderbird is not already installed, start there. From your web browser, go to https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ and click the free download button. Always download from thunderbird.net rather than a third-party download site, so you get a genuine, unmodified build.
• Run the installer for your operating system. Software installation sits outside the scope of this guide, but Mozilla’s install, migrate and update articles cover every platform.
• Once installation finishes, Thunderbird opens its account setup screen. On the current Release and the newer ESR this is the Account Hub; choose Email Account to reach the Add your email address screen. The older ESR opens Set Up Your Existing Email Address instead. If Thunderbird is already installed and you are adding a second mailbox, open the ☰ menu at the top right, then Add Account (called New Account on the older ESR), then Email.

Set Up Your Existing Email Address

• This first screen is much the same in every email client. You are asked for a name, an email address and a password; the Account Hub asks for the name and address first and for the password on a later screen, Enter your email account password. The name is the display name recipients see, so it can be your full name, a nickname, your company name, or the role of whoever mans the mailbox. That choice is yours. The email address and password, however, must match exactly what was created on the mail server.
• Click Continue. Thunderbird then tries to work out the mail server settings for your address on its own.
• If you already know your server settings, or you would rather not rely on discovery, click Manual configuration (Configure manually on the older ESR) and skip ahead to the manual section below.

• IMAP is the recommended configuration on every Noiz mail server, because it keeps your mail on the server and mirrors it to Thunderbird. Folders, read and unread status, and every message stay in sync across your laptop, your phone and webmail. POP downloads mail to one computer and, by default, removes it from the server, so your other devices and webmail will not see it. Unless you have a specific reason to keep mail on a single machine, choose IMAP and click Continue, enter your password when asked, then click Finish on the last screen of the Account Hub (Done on the older ESR). The Account Hub has no separate “successfully created” screen: it shows Account created while it looks for address books and calendars, then ends on a screen offering end-to-end encryption and an email signature.

Switching between IMAP and POP later means removing the account and adding it again, so it is worth getting this right at setup. If you do need to remove one, see How to Remove an Email Account in Thunderbird.

That is it. If all went well, your account is set up and ready to send and receive.

Note: If you are not sure whether the mailbox exists on the server yet, check in the control panel that came with your hosting account, or contact the Noiz support team through the client area or by emailing support@noiz.co.za.

Manual Configuration

You may want to enter the server settings yourself for several reasons:

• Automatic configuration failed or timed out. This is common on custom domains, because discovery relies on optional DNS records and well-known URLs that a domain need not publish.
• Discovery returned settings you do not recognise, such as a generic hostname belonging to a previous provider.
• You want to connect to a specific hostname, for example the server hostname rather than mail.yourdomain.com, while DNS is still settling after a migration.

In the Account Hub, Manual configuration (or Edit configuration on the screen showing the settings Thunderbird found) opens Incoming server settings and then, on a second screen, Outgoing server settings. On the older ESR, Configure manually expands the form so you can enter incoming and outgoing server details directly.

Noiz mail settings follow a standard template. Replace yourdomain.com with your own domain throughout.

Setting	Incoming	Outgoing
Protocol	IMAP (recommended) or POP	SMTP
Hostname	mail.yourdomain.com	mail.yourdomain.com
Port	993 for IMAP, 995 for POP	465
Connection security	SSL/TLS	SSL/TLS
Authentication method	Normal password	Normal password
Username	Your full email address, you@yourdomain.com	Your full email address, you@yourdomain.com
Password	The mailbox password set at server level	The same mailbox password

Two details catch people out most often:

• The username is the whole address, including the @yourdomain.com part. Entering just the portion before the @ will fail authentication, even though the password is correct.
• Both directions use SSL/TLS on the encrypted ports. Do not fall back to the unencrypted ports (143 for IMAP, 110 for POP, or plain 25). These are secure settings and they are strongly recommended. If you have an unusual requirement that appears to need insecure settings, contact Noiz support before changing anything.

The mailbox password is set or reset through the control panel that comes with your hosting package, whether that is Plesk, cPanel, DirectAdmin or ISPConfig. Thunderbird never changes it: if you reset the password in the panel, you must update it in Thunderbird as well, or the account will keep prompting.

When Thunderbird Cannot Verify the Settings

After entering the settings, click Test on the outgoing server screen of the Account Hub (Re-test on the older ESR) first. Thunderbird will attempt a live connection and, if it succeeds, let you carry on with Continue (or Done). This is the cleanest outcome, because it proves the hostname, port and credentials all work before the account is created.

If the test fails, Thunderbird could not verify the settings itself. You can still proceed: click Advanced config, then choose OK on the Confirm Advanced Configuration prompt to force the account to use exactly the values you entered.

Be aware of what this does. Advanced config creates the account and drops you into Account Settings without a successful test, so if a value is wrong you will find out later as a repeating password prompt or a send failure rather than as a clear error now. Use it when you are confident the settings are right and something transient, such as DNS still propagating, is blocking the test.

Troubleshooting

• Thunderbird keeps asking for the password: the username is almost always the cause. Open Account Settings, then Server Settings, and confirm the username is the full email address. Check the same under Outgoing Server (labelled Outgoing Server (SMTP) on the older ESR), which stores its username separately.
• Mail arrives but will not send: incoming is configured and outgoing is not. Confirm the SMTP entry uses mail.yourdomain.com on port 465 with SSL/TLS and normal password authentication. Some networks, particularly mobile and hotel Wi-Fi, also block outbound mail ports, so test on a different connection before assuming the settings are wrong.
• Thunderbird warns that the server’s certificate does not match mail.yourdomain.com: the settings are right; the certificate belongs to the Noiz mail server’s own name. Use the mail server hostname shown in your Noiz welcome email as the hostname instead, and the warning goes away.
• Automatic configuration finds the wrong provider: an old autodiscover record from a previous host can survive a migration. Use Manual configuration (Configure manually on the older ESR) with the settings in the table above, then ask Noiz support to check for stale DNS records.

Next Steps

With the account connected, a few small adjustments make Thunderbird considerably more pleasant to live in day to day:

• The Best Thunderbird Settings to Configure First
• How to Organise Your Email with Folders and Filters in Thunderbird
• How to Create a Professional HTML Email Signature in Thunderbird
• How to Set Up OpenPGP Encryption Keys in Thunderbird and How to Send Encrypted and Signed Email with OpenPGP in Thunderbird

For a fuller reference on the Account Hub and the older Account Setup screen, including a side-by-side comparison of IMAP and POP, see How to Add an Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird.

Conclusion

Thunderbird is one of the best desktop email clients available for reading, writing, sending and receiving mail, and it costs nothing to run. You have now connected a domain mailbox to it both automatically and manually, and you know which settings to reach for when discovery does not cooperate.

If you get stuck at any point, open a support ticket from the Noiz client area or email support@noiz.co.za, and a Noiz hosting agent will walk you through the setup.