Netscape Mail & Newsgroups features support for relevant protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP, a built-in Bayesian spam filter, support for multiple accounts, etc.

[3] Initially its development was overseen in-house, but following AOL's purchase of Netscape in 1998, its codebase development was handed over to the Mozilla Foundation, originally initiated by Netscape, and therefore became based upon the Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups component of the open-source Mozilla Application Suite.

Mozilla ceased development of the suite between 2004 and 2006 in favour of stand-alone applications, and as a consequence Netscape's series of suites were also discontinued.

In 2005, Netscape released Netscape Browser 8, based upon Mozilla Firefox, which did not include an email client, therefore the latest version inclusive of a mail client, version 7.2, became unsupported.

[4] Additionally, after an official poll posted on Netscape's community support board in late 2006, speculation arose of the Netscape 7 series of suites (including the Mail client) being fully supported and updated by Netscape's in-house development team once more, including major bug fixes and security issues.