When comparing Pidgin vs Mozilla Thunderbird, the Slant community recommends Pidgin for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Windows?” Pidgin is ranked 4th while Mozilla Thunderbird is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Pidgin is:
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Support for a wide range of additional chat services
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Pro Free and open source
Pidgin and its code is completely free and open source. Pidgin has no ads and no features behind a paywall.
Pro Cross platform
The Pidgin instant messaging client is cross platform, working on Linux, Windows and OSX.
Pro Convenient notification features
Like other quality IRC clients, Pidgin features notifications that the user can set in order to have a variety of things happen when the users is mentioned, such as an audio cue or changing the system tray icon.
Pro Highly customisable with plugins
Pidgin not only has a large plugin library built-in, but also an array of third party plugins for a variety of functions.
Pro Free (as in freedom and beer)
Pro Available on Linux, OS X and Windows
Pro Very reliable
Version after version, Mozilla Thunderbird works as expected.
Pro Good filtering system
Mozilla Thunderbird offers a flexible filtering system with the ability to set flags and read/unread, as well as sort/assign to new mail directories. There are also numerous plugins available to assist in the filtering.
Pro Large assortment of plugins available
Mozilla Thunderbird offers a huge amount of extensions to expand the usability and options of the client.
Pro Great flexibility
More options and extended settings than most power users could dream of. Get it working how YOU want.
Pro Tabs for navigation
Pro Lightning Calendar and Address Book integration
Pro Consistent and involving a moderate learning curve
The app design of Mozilla Thunderbird has not changed significantly since its beginning, making its learning curve almost non-existent.
Pro Send large files easy
Install pCloud plugin for Thunderbird and your files (upto 20 GB free storage included) will be received as download links
Cons
Con Miserable IRC font controls (as of 2.13.0.17)
Does its best to avoid putting sensible default font controls in any place where you can get to it. And when it does grudgingly change it, based on system preferences (not local preferences), it does so in an inconsistent and unpredictable fashion.
Con No native VoIP support
While there are plugins there is no built in support for VoIP in Pidgin which is time consuming to implement instead of being baked in from the jump.
Con Development slowed to only focus on stability and security
Mozilla Thunderbird has slowed down its development of features to only focus resources on security and stability.
Con Outdated interface
Thunderbird's interface is very outdated and unpleasant. It feels more like a Windows XP application than like a modern MacOS one.
Con Terrible integration with macOS
Simple things - drag/dropping pictures doesn't work, for instance.
Con Subject lines can (temporarily) disappear from the list
This is sporadic behavior.
Con Serious bugs
Clicking on a subject line can bring up the wrong email.