Thunderbird can't connect to my mail server

turns out I didn't uncomment smtp in /etc/postfix/master.cf file

submission inet n       -       -       -       -       smtpd
  -o syslog_name=postfix/submission
  -o smtpd_tls_security_level=encrypt
  -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
  -o smtpd_relay_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
  -o milter_macro_daemon_name=ORIGINATING

smtps     inet  n       -       -       -       -       smtpd
  -o syslog_name=postfix/smtps
  -o smtpd_tls_wrappermode=yes
  -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
  -o smtpd_relay_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
  -o milter_macro_daemon_name=ORIGINATING

Your mail server should listen on port 587 (submission) for user agents. This port should require STARTTLS and Authentication before accepting a message for delivery. Thunderbird works well with this setup.

Thunderbird will try a few subdomains when it auto-configures. For the domain example.com, configure DNS for mail.example.com for the server running postfix and dovecot. (Replace example.com as required for your domain.) This should be an A record. Other names can be used such as imap.example.com, smtp.example.com and pop.example.com, but mail.example.com works for most protocols.

A lot of ISPs block outbound port 25 to stop people from spamming on their network. They only allow it to their own servers.

You'd have to run postfix on a ssl enabled port and connect to that to send outgoing email