
Show HN: Kanmail – An email client that functions like a kanban board - Fizzadar
https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail
======
toyg
Don't sell an email client, there is a reason they are all dead: too much
effort, too many edge cases (POP3, IMAP, Exchange, Gmail...), not enough
margins.

Instead, sell me _a hack that can make Outlook look like that_. You worry
exclusively about the UI, Microsoft does the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

Best case: you make a ton of money by selling to actual businesses (rather
than annoying geeks and other weirdos who dare use uncommon clients);
slightly-worse case: you sell it to MS.

~~~
joshfraser
How about a Chrome extension that makes Gmail look like that?

~~~
zwayhowder
Already built in. Enable multiple inboxes in Gmail and use labels for all
these.

~~~
zchannel
We do a combination of labels and stars. The last ones are easier to change
and if you only pick a minimal number of stars it is not that complicated to
remember them and rapidly click through them until you select the right one.
See more on the first video of my Youtube Channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoPEE8RAtxJ3OhnlgeBVWEQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoPEE8RAtxJ3OhnlgeBVWEQ)

------
usrme
If there are people out there who are well invested into Gmail, then here's an
alternative ([https://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-
how-...](https://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-
gmail-more)) that does not require a separate client application. The initial
concept is focused on desktop usage, but with a small modification it can be
adapted to mobile-based working as well.

~~~
abendy
For years I've used Gmail Filters to apply labels to specific "from"
addresses. Takes a bit to set up as I have very long "from(@domain.com OR
@domain2.com OR ...)" queries but ideally I'm also unsubscribing from
newsletters etc. that I don't want.

I also use multiple inboxes as well. First, "Starred" (different colored stars
means different things to me and this strategy is used consistently across
multiple platforms inc macOS labels, Trello etc.), then "Alerts" (critical
emails from various systems), then "Important and Unread", then everything
else.

Most emails are not "important" and I do actively unsubscribe so the method is
manageable for me. The last thing I need is my email inbox to be a giant todo
list. Most important are tech/work related, current projects,
finance/business. I try not to sign up for anything that I need to read,
newsletters etc. That's what RSS is for. Email is for quick actionable item
and some communication.

~~~
j45
This approach works well, until you have to click on a star in each mail 4 or
5 times to get it to turn into a purple star, etc.

~~~
abendy
I star a handful of emails max. each day. Not laborious at all considering the
work load offloaded to Gmail's filters and I use a red, orange, yellow, &
green star system.

------
klaushardt
Jut a Headsup, Chrome blocked the download and a virustotal report look like
this:
[https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/2e78fed158e9e6857db7bfc6...](https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/2e78fed158e9e6857db7bfc6af37b3cc8abc2d7092fe63f64cb59e4ad10a3c22/detection)

6 engines detected this file

Do what you want with this information, cloud be false positive, cloud be
something else idk.

------
mmPzf
I'm a bit confused by the "open source but not free" statement in the readme.
How common is it to refer to software with public source code as "open
source"? I always thought the "open source" label applied only to those
licenses officially certified as open source.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
Yes, it's a misuse of the term "open source". It should be described as
"source-available" [0], not "open source".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-
available_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software)

~~~
z3t4
Many popular "open source" projects are also not free...

~~~
mmPzf
Can you name some examples? According to the internet for most practical
purposes the terms "open source" and "free software" refer to the same set of
licenses [0]

[0]: [https://opensource.com/article/17/11/open-source-or-free-
sof...](https://opensource.com/article/17/11/open-source-or-free-software)

~~~
orangeshark
I think they mean free as in free beer. So there can be Free and Open Source
Software that you must pay for.

~~~
z3t4
It's hard to sell air, until you compress it and put it in a tank. And it's
hard to sell sand, until you put it in a bag. So the air and sand is free, but
then it varies: Open core, dual licenses, packed with proprietary software,
license clause's, etc. Why not just ask for a license fee? And why can't
something be open source when it's not free as in free beer? So yes, what I
mean is there are open source software that is not free as in libre, and there
are open source software that are not free as in free beer. So why can't this
software be called open source, when the source is... open? Open source comes
with many advantages, not just that it's free as in free beer but also that
you can fix issues yourself, and it makes it easier to create plugins, mods,
etc.

~~~
orangeshark
> And why can't something be open source when it's not free as in free beer

There is nothing preventing you from charging a fee for Open Source or even
for Free Software. You only need to distribute source code to users of your
software. That means it does not need to be publicly available on a site like
Github. You need to remember that users who receive the software and source
code are still allowed to distribute your software for a fee or even free.
This method of selling software is not common at all though, so I can't really
name any successful projects doing it.

> So why can't this software be called open source, when the source is...
> open?

The reason you can't call software like that as Open Source is because Open
Source has a clear definition as defined by the Open Source Initiative[1].
Free Software has a definition as well[2]. The Open Source definition is a
more expanded and detailed version of the Free Software's Four Freedoms. If
the license you use for your software does not allow the things as described
by those definitions, you can't call it Open Source or Free Software.

[1]:[https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)
[2]:[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-
sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

------
lettergram
I actually setup something similar years ago with a gmail add-on. Was pretty
intuitive and liked it. It would be advantageous to add additional features
over this such as:

1\. Adding points or estimated workloads to emails.

2\. Adding notes to emails

3\. Snooze emails (which would drop their priority on the board, but stay in
the same lane until post snooze).

4\. Highlight who is in the discussion thread.

5\. Rules for lanes of work (for instance potentially emails from boss should
go straight to “in progress”)

~~~
Fizzadar
Thank you for the feedback, these are some really interesting ideas :)

1/2/3: It could be possible to implement points/notes/snoozes by using
(abusing?) IMAP folders to store such information. Ideally such information
would live on the server-side such that it would sync between devices
([https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/84](https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/84)
/
[https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/85](https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/85)).

4: Great idea, long threads make this really hard to see currently!
([https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/86](https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/86))

5: Currently possible using Gmail filters, but not part of the client itself
of course. Would be really interesting to implement this!
([https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/87](https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/87))

------
strogonoff
Kanmail is built using pywebview, which is an interesting alternative to
Electron. Lighter distributions thanks to using respective OS’s native web
view.

------
lukevp
This looks great! I’ll give it a try. Congrats on launching! Email is a great
communication mechanism, but as a manager, it’s so hard to corral the process
of following up on emails that take many days for people to do. It would be
awesome if each column could have a suspended area at the bottom and I could
set due dates and they would sort into that separate section until they are
due.

------
satvikpendem
Looks good. I follow this 16 year old on Twitter named Ethan, and he's built
something similar: [https://kanbanmail.app](https://kanbanmail.app). I know of
him due to his prevalence in the indie maker community, and he streams his
development on Twitch sometimes.

------
choeger
The package.json in that repository says "MIT". How does that work with the
propietary license agreement?

I also wonder if the author has any way to prevent copyleft code entering
their project. What would be a nuisance for a free software project could
potentially kill a commercial one like this.

I do not mean this as a comment against copyleft or this particular project, I
am really interested to know if there is a Semi-Automatic license scanner.

~~~
erjiang
License scanning is a big deal for enterprise, especially the ones deeply
afraid of any "GPL infection". Black Duck is one such vendor of license
scanning software.[0]

[0] [https://www.blackducksoftware.com/](https://www.blackducksoftware.com/)

~~~
rusticpenn
and it gives a lot of false positives and false negatives...

------
tjwds
Very cool! It looks like the primary focus here is displaying the messages in
multiple folders at the same time; I like the message opens where it has space
to open.

The account management settings page mentions needing an application password
for Gmail — you'll also need one to add a Fastmail account (it looks like it
retrieves through IMAP and sends through SMTP).

When I added an account, the account's existing folders weren't displayed to
me anywhere (I was expecting the sidebar), but it looks like you can add a
column for an existing folder and it'll just work.

It also looks like the action of dragging a message from one column to another
removes it from one folder and adds it to another, which makes sense for a
kanban board, but might get a little weird with Fastmail's labels mode, where
a message can exist in multiple folders!
([https://beta.fastmail.com/help/receive/labels-
beta.html](https://beta.fastmail.com/help/receive/labels-beta.html))

~~~
Fizzadar
Thank you for the feedback, this is incredibly helpful!

\- Regarding the new account message I shall update this to point at the
providers page
([https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/81](https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/81))

\- I like the idea of auto populating sidebar folders (without causing cluter,
one to investigate)
([https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/82](https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/82))

\- Originally Kanmail did copy emails between folders/labels (matching Gmail)
but moving emails is more IMAP friendly in general. However, perhaps an option
to copy is the best solution here, giving the end user the choice
([https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/83](https://github.com/Oxygem/Kanmail/issues/83))

------
tmikaeld
Would love it if any client would support grouping all messages per senders
unique email and topic, sorted by date.

The result is almost like a conversation. It makes it easier to see each topic
as well.

So far, I've only seen "Unibox" client on MacOS do this. (Not updates since
2018)

~~~
medecau
I think the upcoming hey.com service is going to do something similar to that.

~~~
tmikaeld
Huh, very interesting. Seems to be created by Basecamp, so will certainly be
reliable.

------
ThePhysicist
That look super slick, congrats on launching it! It still looks a bit "noisy"
to me, maybe you can reduce the information density a little as to me it seems
a bit overwhelming. Super useful idea though and surely something that can be
a success!

~~~
Fizzadar
Thank you! Agreed re:noisy-ness there's a lot going on currently; will be
looking into tweaking that!

------
freedomben
Thank you for using a model that respects users' freedom! I happily pay for
source-available software, sometimes even when I don't really need it that
bad, because I like to support ethical software :-)

------
reacharavindh
I have been wanting an email client where I can simply drag and drop emails as
a TO-DO Kanban board. I will definitely give this a try.

------
yodon
Is the $25 license per user or per machine, and per year or perpetual?

------
athenot
This is one reasone that keeps me on Apple's Mail.app: open multiple windows
for different mailboxes / folders / smart mailboxes and drag & drop at will
between them.

Keep a window for specific smart folders if there are special keywords /
people you want to give priority. Tuck it in a corner of the screen without
taking up lots of realestate.

To be fair, Apple really screwed that workflow in 10.15 by disallowing
customization of columns like they used to have since 10.0. But still, the
multi-window organization is so much more flexible than the all-in-one-window
setup. (For those concerned with tidiness, a window manager takes care of that
problem.)

~~~
beagle3
Thunderbird allows the same as far as I understand your wokflow (and has done
for the nearly two decades it exists), if you want to look at alternatives (or
occasionally have to use Windows or Linux)

------
Legogris
One thing that I think should be clarified regarding licensing: On the license
page it says "Licenses are $25 during the beta period.". It is not clear if
this means either:

1) During the beta period, a lifetime perpetual license is 25$

2) License for the duration of the beta period costs 25$. After that you may
or may not need to renew your license.

This looks really interesting, but I think there are others who are hesitant
to invest into something that may end up costing ongoing licensing fees that
are yet to be determined.

~~~
Fizzadar
You're absolutely right; I've expanded the copy on the license page. Any
licenses purchased during the beta will last for the duration of beta and all
of v1 updates.

------
KKPMW
I am trying this and I think I will move away from my over-configured "mutt"
setup, just to use it.

My only "suggestion" is to please keep it functional and simple.

------
lucasgonze
I installed this and used it for a day. This UX model is dramatically better
for business mail than the standard mess of random folders. Kanmail itself is
still pretty early stage. It's too raw for my own day to day usage, but I'll
check back later. I hope it keeps going.

------
ppadron
this looks amazing, will try it out. having the option show messages from all
accounts at once is a blessing for me.

~~~
yodon
It amazes me that Outlook mobile will let me see all my email from all my
accounts in one list but Outlook desktop will not.

------
andreyazimov
Reminds me kanbanmail.app was in Hackers News 2 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17576024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17576024)

------
janwillemb
My wife has a manual system for exactly the system in the screenshot, so I
thought she would like it. "Nah, can't use it on my phone".

------
mohammedhdotio
I've been doing Thunderbird with quick folder extension to achieve near the
same functionality however in Tabbed view.

nonetheless a great idea. will test it soon.

------
kev2908
It seems like that the software doesn't have STARTTLS, so it doesn't work with
Protonmail's Bridge :/

------
howmayiannoyyou
If this were solely a Gmail extension I would be 100% in and pay about
$25/month.

~~~
krembo
Checkout 2 alternatives implemented as Chrome extensions: *
[https://yanado.com/](https://yanado.com/) *
[https://www.sortd.com/](https://www.sortd.com/)

------
KitDuncan
If it has dark mode and good Linux support, I'll buy it. Will try out
tomorrow.

------
awinter-py
for any service whose core data is a 'collection of things', BYO
prioritization & queueing makes a lot of sense

too bad integration is really hard or this would be general

------
brentis
Love it, but calendar is so tied to Outlook. Please save us!

