[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by RHH

I want to emphasize that I CAN and HAVE setup an account for the account name and email address that I set up with Fastmail after signing up for the trial period

I have a single account with FM, with multiple identities (that is, several email addresses all of which are @ one or other of their domains) - more than just 5 though in my case.

I don't recognise the concept of having an "account name" and "an email address" (except of course FM do know my name etc). When I login to FM's browser interface I use an email address as the (primary) account name, and provide a password.

It's possible just to stop there and use that email address as one's only hosted address, or to use it and (in your case) 4 or 5 others.

It is BETTER though to treat that original primary email address as a secret that only you and FM know, only to be used to login to FM. FM do in fact allow one to change that address if you think anyone else has managed to find out what it is - quite a lot of us here do keep our primary username email addresses secret.

It's better because whereas anyone who knows your logon id can in theory then try to brute-force guess your password, it's more or less impossible for someone else to login as you if they have to guess the logonid which has never been public as well as the corresponding password.

That's - of course - true of all websites, not just FM; I use a different email address for every single website I login to - most of the email addresses concerned not being ones hosted at FM.


I'm afraid I haven't ever used Thunderbird, but I do have about 20 more email addresses registered with FM, unrelated in name to the one I use to login. Each of these is defined so that emails sent to any of them end up in my sole FM account - the one that the original primary email address/username gives me access to. I can write emails from any of them once logged-in to the webmail interface.

I'd suggest that you first use webmail only to get that working properly, and make sure you understand FM's (recently changed) terminology for what used to be called aliases (the extra email addresses) & identities (the combinations of those email addresses, the name (or form of your name) that you associate with each one, signatures etc) and what they now call just extra addresses (or something).

Beware that what FM call an "account" might be what other mail providers call a "user" and TB may or may not use the same terminology. I'd expect you only to need to define a single SMTP server (maybe a "sending account" in TB) and have it used by every one of your available sending email addresses. But then again, TB might need one SMTP server definition for each sending address. I just don't know. What I do know, having used various mail clients in the past, is that none of them used the exact same terminology for whichever features they offered and it could be extremely confusing reading advice written by people who phrased stuff in terms they were familiar with that didn't match the terms you knew or (if different again) that TB uses.

Originally Posted by RHH

I CANNOT, however, setup any of the other 5 email addresses I set up with Fastmail as a Thunderbird email account.

For receiving emails, you only have one place at FM (your mailbox, associated with your sole account there) into which emails addressed to any of your email addresses, will be placed. I would expect you to set up various folders within that, and filters to route mails addressed to different email addresses to different folders.

Then again, TB might require you to have 5 different INBOXes and sets of folders under them, one for each such email address. Some mail clients do do that.

Originally Posted by RHH

I THINK this means that I have successfully set up the 'app Password' at Fastmail and that its password has been successfully validated.

I am not certain, but I think one needs an app password for each separate application, other than the browser webmail interface, to login to FM.

If that's true then you'll need an app password for TB, but surely only one such? I assume you'd still use it with your account's primary email address (the one we mostly keep secret) when getting TB to login to FM.

Originally Posted by RHH

I proceed to choose POP3 instead of IMAP

As far as I know POP3 only allows one to access the INBOX within a mailbox. You only have one mailbox, and thus only one INBOX associated with it, no matter how many email addresses you have defined at FM.


I'd expect a POP3 connection therefore to fetch mails addressed to all of your email addresses. You'd presumably then use filters within TB to route them to folders which only exist within your TB application.


All the emails you send from TB need to be sent via the same SMTP server at FM. I would expect login to that server to use your account email address (the secret one) and the TB app password.

I have no idea if TB requires you to define that server once only or several times.