Hello everyone,
I use Thunderbird as my email program under KDE with 3 email accounts, two of which are gmail. I have also been able to integrate Google Drive well into KDE. Now I am thinking of trying out Kmail with Kontact in order to have complete organization of my contacts, emails and the calendar synchronized with Google. Do you have any experience with Kontact and Kmail? I have already researched a lot and am not sure whether I would be better off switching from TB with the Google calendar extension to Kmail + Kontact, especially since TB works well. What advice could you give me?
Every now and then I’ve given Kmail a try and to be honest, the effort of setting it up has never been worth it for its functionality. Although it’s got good integration with the OS, so for example you can pipe messages through scripts, I’ve never found it to work as well as (the admittedly far from perfect) Thunderbird. One big frustration has always been that when I compose a message with Thunderbird I can start typing a recipient and quickly get an auto-complete to choose them. Whereas with Kmail that never worked. It’s always seemed to me that Kaddressbook just doesn’t work at all well.
The sad thing is, back in the KDE3 days it really was a well-functioning utility.
There are extensions that should allow you to integrate Google’s calendar and addressbook into Thunderbird, though I can’t comment on how effective they are as I run my own CalDAV/CardDav server (also accessible to my mobile) rather than entrust my data to Google.
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I’m kind of lazy so I just use Gmail. Don’t have to bother with backups, or setting it back up when I install a new ISO and Gmail works on my phone. Heck it even works in my car, not that I use it.
Thanks for your contributions. I’ll stick with Thunderbird then.
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My experience with Kontact was same as @beermad.
Very troublesome to setup, and the UI keeps disobeying the settings.
Not worth to switch from Thunderbird.
In fact, I have tried other KDE apps such as KTorrent.
The impression I get is: KDE tries to push out new versions and new app every now and then, but they never bother to understand users’ need, and they dun address users’ bug reports.
Once an app has been published / updated, the new version will simply introduce more bugs than you can imagine, and looking at the KDE bug system, u can see those bug reports will just sit there without getting attention from any dev.
Thank you! Nevertheless, I’m sticking with KDE overall - which I really like because of Plasma 6 and Wayland! In TB I have been able to synchronize the Google calendar and now also my Google contacts using the “cardbook” extension.
I tried Kmail too, but I disliked that it comes with a huge amount of dependencies and stuff, like Akonadi, MariaDB, PIM etc.
So I sticked with the relatively lean Thunderbird.
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Here’s my 2p worth:
I actually liked KMail but gave up with it (and KNotes) back in the days of Plasma4, due to the headache that Akonadi was. I don’t know if things have improved since, as the experience put me off and I stuck with Thunderbird.
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I am using kmail, and with the exception of one incident about five years ago where my database was corrupted and whereby I had to wipe the whole configuration and start anew, it has been highly reliable.
Mind you, I am using it with only one email account — a POP3 account with my ISP — with two sender identities, and I keep my GMail account reserved for my phone.
Gratuitous screenshot included below. 
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I’ll have to give KMail another go after reading that.
My issue is that I’ve not been able to sync Thunderbird with my “online” email accounts for some time and I hate being limited to a web interface, especially if I can’t download important messages before their servers have a “hissy-fit” because I forgot to check for too long and lose all my correspondence.
My previously “free” mailboxes with my domain are no longer inclusive and I haven’t had the money to reactivate them yet. Everything except my income keeps going up. I know I’m not the only one on this less-than-watertight boat.
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I feel your pain, and I am in the same boat. 
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I like your post, but not the circumstances, if you get my drift.
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It seems you’ve already given the best recommendation possible:
Cheers.
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Thank you very much! Your contributions are very interesting and useful for me! 
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Recently tried Kmail and Thunderbird, been failing to set up with Protonmail on both. Unsure how to reset Thb to try again with saved PW.
If the password is somehow not retained in Thunderbird, you can usually re-enter it when you again check for mail. Something to keep in mind is that the auth2 method is now required for Thunderbird passwords and if that’s not properly configured it can cause some difficulties.
I don’t know which email service(s) you might be using but a quick search revealed these results, which may be useful:
Cheers.
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