
Mailpile: Let’s take email back - threedaymonk
http://www.mailpile.is/
======
nhangen
I'm in the crowdfunding business, so I feel strange saying this, but I'm
really turned off by this model of 'pay us in advance for developing a product
that hasn't been market tested or validated,' especially when asking for a sum
as large as is $100,000.

What happened to building something and selling it?

According to the campaign page, the need is so great because:

"We're asking for a lot of money, so of course you should know why. $100.000
means paying two people $4166 a month for a year, including all taxes,
insurance and other fees."

I suppose people get what they pay for, but I find it insulting to ask me to
pay your salary for a year so that you can avoid risk.

If you were truly concerned about online privacy, you'd build it anyway. So is
privacy the mission, or the pitch?

~~~
belorn
> What happened to building something and selling it?

Since they are already providing it for free to those who need it, and
producing at as free software, selling it as a finished product is unlikely.

> If you were truly concerned about online privacy, you'd build it anyway.

Many people do altruistic work during their free time. crowdfunding means you
can do the same work, but not be limited by what scraps of time that exist
after work.

The extremely few people in the world that would quit their job to do
altruistic work is few. They are so few that almost every time it happens, it
get posted here as _news_.

If I made a poll, asking how many people here cared strongly about something
in the world, I would get close to 99% hands that said yes. If I then asked
how many of those people would agree to quit work to work altruistic on that
subject, how many hands would I see?

~~~
HerraBRE
I have actually been working on Mailpile "altruistically" for a while, but
sorely missed the ability to dedicate myself to it full time. Thus the
fundraiser.

~~~
nhangen
Totally get it, but why not share some of the risk with your supporters and
meet them halfway? Asking for a full (decent) salary for two people for a year
places all of the risk on your supporters and makes you look uninspired.

Edit: I can't reply to child, so I'll do it here.

It has nothing to do with a free ride. I don't want the product because the
solution isn't right for me, but I would much prefer to pay a monthly fee for
something than give a 'free ride,' as you call it, to a developer, in advance.

I have no sympathy for the family argument, because I spent a year building a
business on the side while I was employed full-time, so that when I quit my
job, I could support my family.

I believe there's something to be gained when the venture does not include a
parachute.

~~~
nonrecursive
I don't understand your objections at all. These guys are making a proposal,
which individuals are free to accept or reject as they see fit. Those who
accept it know what they're getting themselves into and accept the risk. No
one is getting scammed. If these guys want a parachute, that's their
prerogative. Just because you wouldn't take the same approach doesn't mean the
approach is a bad one.

~~~
nhangen
Point blank - I'm tired of people abusing crowdfunding as some sort of money
grab (Spike Lee's recent Kickstarter as an example) and because I'm involved
in the industry, I have a vested interest in seeing crowdfunding, as an
industry, prosper.

These guys probably have a great product, and are probably great people, and
for that reason alone, I feel bad that my comment leads the thread. However, I
never said anything that suggested this was a scam, and I don't believe it is.
Like I said, people get what they pay for. It's just that I see this trend
getting worse, and I think long-term it will hurt crowdfunding.

~~~
nonrecursive
I can see where you're coming from and I think that your argument would be
stronger if you took your own feelings out of it. For example, you say that
you find it insulting that they'd ask you to pay for their salary. Well, why
should it matter to anyone else that you feel insulted? If that's your
reaction then they're probably not talking to you. Besides that - why should
anyone care about whether you feel insulted? You also mention that you feel no
sympathy for the family argument because of your experiences. In this context,
why does that matter? I don't mean this to be dismissive of you personally;
I'm just trying to share my minor analysis.

You also say that you're not suggesting they're running a scam but at the same
time you compare their outreach to a money grab.

I don't know, perhaps your arguments are very good ones and I am a heartless
bastard because they don't sway me. At their root, it seems like you're saying
that these guys are proposing something that violates your sense of fairness
somehow. I'd be interested in seeing an argument that applies more
universally, and not just that you personally find it unfair.

Myself, I think the cool thing about crowdfunding is that it's so open and
free. I might personally find it frustrating or unfair that money gets
allocated in a way that doesn't match my values, but too bad for me!

~~~
nhangen
You make some great points, and I can't say that any of them are off-base. My
comment is obviously filtered by my experiences in the industry, which might
be unfair to the founders in question.

However, my comment seems to have resonated with many others, so could be
offered as advice for ways to improve the campaign.

------
rpdillon
This is exactly what I've been looking for! It seems the product is aimed at
technical users (at least initially), though there are some technical details
I didn't see in the video, description or FAQ:

\- This is an MUA, correct? Based on the features on the project page, it
sounds like MailPile will not act as an MTA or MDA, and is predominantly
interfacing with mbox/maildir. I see features for IMAP and POP3 on the
roadmap, but its not clear if using those protocols is idiomatic for MailPile.

\- How is PGP/GPG handled? The server-side code for MailPile must have access
to my secret key, correct? Is MailPile's web interface then accessible via
HTTPS (given the proper cert)?

\- Is there a plan for a key management interface?

\- It sounds like the MUA itself (MailPile) is a server, and it would access
maildir/mbox directly. Is there any API planned for accessing that data
through MailPile's programatically, or is MailPile's main goal to provide a
browser interface?

\- This might have been covered, but will the web interface support mobile as
well?

Thanks for working on this...it really sounds like a great project!

~~~
HerraBRE
Thanks! The idea is you run Mailpile on a machine you control (it is an MUA),
either your laptop (and connect to localhost) or a home server like a plug
computer or something like that - basically somewhere where you feel
comfortable storing your secret keys.

And yes, API access to mail is something we already support, every "command"
can return either HTML, plain text or JSON. Probably XML to come as well.

We'll have to help with key management, otherwise it won't be usable by normal
folks.

Mobile web support, yes, probably sooner than later.

Hope this clarifies!

~~~
mtgx
I'm not sure how you plan on doing it, but I think you should tie everyone's
public keys to their names/id's. So let's say you know someone who uses
Mailpile. You shouldn't have to ask him what's his key. You should just
"enable PGP" (if it's not default, though maybe it should be), and he should
just get the e-mail.

So try to do the key management as automatic and "out of the way" for users as
possible. That's the biggest hurdle with using PGP right now.

~~~
chongli
But that just defeats the whole purpose of PGP. If you don't even know where
the key is coming from, how do you know it's secure?

~~~
amenod
Easy: [http://www.xkcd.com/1181/](http://www.xkcd.com/1181/) :)

------
marquis
I applaud these goals however if we were to ever consider moving from Google
Apps (which we would) it would only be for an open source project given that
privacy is becoming the more critical issue as the years go on. It would be
great to see a subscription based email service such as this where the source
is fully available for scrutinizing and patching.

Edit: Great, so the source is already available.

~~~
marcosdumay
This is an open source project.

Also, if privacy is important for you, you shouldn't look into subscription
services, whatever software package they use.

~~~
marquis
That's fantastic. I didn't see any information about this on your page so you
might want to make this clearer (I assure you I read it first before
commenting, then went back and saw the Fork on Github ribbon, the only
indication).

By subscription I mean that I am happy to support an open source project with
regular funding. Initial funds from Indiegogo are not sufficient to maintain a
long-term service and we'd be hesitant to move our most important business
infrastructure to something that may not be updated regularly as the security
environment changes. If you were to look into making this a business with
recurring revenue I believe you would find there is a lot of support.

~~~
andrewcooke
there's a big red line across the top right corner pointing to github (and
licencing info there). there's another link to github near the end. apologies
for a previous post that used strong language, but you really can't have
looked very hard.

(you know, i just read chapter 2 of 'how to win friends and influence people'
which tells me that criticising people never works because they simply work
harder to justify themselves. it's the most depressing thing i have read in a
long time, but it seems to be horribly, universally true. and it's so
frustrating when the world seems to be populated by incompetent idiots. how do
you convince someone 'nicely' that they complained about something without
even reading it?)

~~~
tspike
Regarding your addendum, if you really view the people as incompetent idiots,
I'd argue you're not all that interested in winning them as friends.

In any case, just give the person the information they need without attacking
them -- they won't feel defensive and they'll probably feel pretty stupid on
their own.

For bonus points, try to empathize and think about something stupid you once
did -- surely you've done some idiotic things in the past.

~~~
andrewcooke
i don't deny doing stupid things. look, here's an example from my recent
posting history -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121287)
and the follow-up
[http://www.acooke.org/cute/HyperloopW0.html#Mon29Jul20132135...](http://www.acooke.org/cute/HyperloopW0.html#Mon29Jul20132135420400)

what depresses me is that people don't admit it, learn, and move on. instead
we get "well, i am showing how important it is to make this information more
explicit because everyone else is as dumb as i am". no. we are not.

ps and no, i am not interested in winning you as a friend. what makes you
think i would be? i am interested in influencing people. i want people to be
smarter. it's frustrating that this can't be done by simply pointing out the
correct answer. instead, people need to be molly-coddled into changing their
minds without noticing. by pretending to be friends. an enormous amount of
effort is needed to effect the smallest change.

i don't deny it. i think i need to read and learn from that depressing little
book. but god i wish people would think a little more.

~~~
gregd
When you view the world as being filled with incompetent idiots, you're seeing
the world through your own filter...not anybody elses. Realize that everybody
on the face of the planet has their own filter. Human relationships are built
upon being able to empathize with others and perhaps glimpse life through
their filter.

Not seeing the fork ribbon in the upper-right isn't about someone being "dumb"
anymore than you not knowing how to change your own oil, fix a leaky faucet,
put in a new electrical outlet or build a fucking house, makes you dumb.

You didn't just "simply point" out the correct answer. You added, "you really
can't have looked very hard." which is an assumption on your part; a
conclusion you reached based on your filter of the "world seems to be
populated by incompetent idiots".

~~~
oblique63
Very much this. As someone with a strong interest in everything
neurology/psychology/intelligence/learning/teaching/etc, this is the most
accurate description of what is going on.

"Incompetence" isn't toxic, viewpoint and attitude are. There will always be
someone "dumber" than you, and there will always be someone "smarter" than
you. Once you realize this and internalize it into your world view, you will
come to the same conclusion that book teaches, and that is one of
_cooperation_.

Like my parent here alluded to, you didn't just point out an answer, you
projected your thought process onto another person. Why do some people get
depressed at what seem like tiny insignificant details, while others live
happily in the worst of global conditions? The answer is _Perspective_. The
pain/difficulty anyone feels is very much real to _them_ , it is not an
objective measurement -- so when you project the idea that a person just
_couldn 't have tried very hard_, you make the assumption that you know what
it's like for that person to 'try' anything in that context.

If you look at my own comment history, you'll see that I have dealt with the
difficulty of explaining myself to others quite a bit, but also that I try to
turn it into a productive thought-provoking discussion with a neutral tone and
strong points. For example, what I am saying right now is very similar to a
direct attack on your ego (and I wouldn't blame you if you took it as such),
but I try to present my words in such a way that will invoke action from your
rational 'executive brain' long before it hits your emotional 'reptilian
brain', if that makes any sense?

The only real course of action that makes sense _is_ cooperation; any other
interpretation would basically implicate that either the world revolves around
you, or that everyone is like you, and those ideas should be clearly false to
everyone.

------
moxie
Here's why I want something like Mailpile:

Right now, _every single email I receive is encrypted._ I have my public GPG
key on my mail server, and every incoming email that's not already encrypted
is encrypted using that public key. That way if the anyone compels my VPS
provider for access, they just get a bunch of encrypted email.

So my problem isn't receiving or encrypting email, it's reading it. The only
real option I have right now is Thunderbird, which isn't great, and is no
longer under development. Mailpile doesn't look like a mail service to me, it
looks like a browser-based but locally-hosted MUA, which might be the remedy
to Thunderbird that we need.

------
rufugee
I just switched back to Zimbra (also open source) after years with Google
Apps. It's been a spectacular experience so far, and it's nice to have email
fell like email again (not to mention being in full control).. It has
everything I need: a rich web client, good smartphone phone support, good spam
filtering, and a good community.

~~~
1O0101ll100O
Another vote for Zimbra.

Seriously, it's not that hard to install and setup.

Once you have it all going the capabilities are immense. It also lives on your
machine, using your SSL certs, and using as much in-place HDD encryption as
you want.

This is how you take your privacy back. You care enough about it to do it
yourself.

~~~
cromwellian
It's also how you give yourself a headache having to sysadmin a machine. I
myself used to run Zimbra and switched to Google Apps. Too much irritation
with backups, monitoring, security, et al.

------
sorbits
They talk about privacy, but MTAs like Postfix can already encrypt mail via
TLS when moving it to another host¹. GPG gives us a better guarantee, but more
user overhead, and unreadable by many recipients.

Additionally SPF gives us a way to check if the sender address has been
forged. GPG signing is more robust, but again, more user overhead.

Not to mention, I already have S/MIME support in my mail application and can
get GPG support via a plug-in, but I use neither, because few recipients can
handle it.

So what is new with Mailpile? What is it supposed to change?

In my opinion, if the goal is to make email more secure, we should look into
ensuring that all MTAs is setup to support TLS and use it when delivering mail
to other hosts (AFAIK Exim4 only announces STARTTLS when connecting to its
submission port).

Getting SPF records setup would also be a plus.

This would go a long way in making email more secure, and only requires action
from administrators of mail domains.

¹
[http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#smtp_tls_security_lev...](http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#smtp_tls_security_level)

~~~
alextingle
Exim can announce TLS to all comers. Set the tls_advertise_hosts option to
'*'. (I believe Debian sets this by default.)

[http://www.exim.org/exim-html-
current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-...](http://www.exim.org/exim-html-
current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-encrypted_smtp_connections_using_tlsssl.html)

------
jeffbr13
I'm super-happy that someone is at last trying to build a self-hosted
competitor to Gmail.

Sure, I can set up my own mailserver already, but the amount of effort it
takes is too much compared to just setting up a Gmail account. If they can get
set-up and spam-protection right, then this could be huge!

~~~
StavrosK
Bonus points for it being installable with one "docker build" command. I would
definitely give it a shot, at the very least.

------
johnchristopher
Nitpicking:

Thumbnails shouldn't be high-res pictures that actually are scaled to stamp
proportions. It's slow to appear on poor connection and for a moment I thought
there were no screenshots and just words like "compose". And it slows down my
poor 2nd gen asus notebook.

------
HerraBRE
Bjarni here, lead dev. Happy to answer any questions.

~~~
mkl
"Mailpile is a modern web-mail you run on your own computer."

I think this sentence should be the first thing anyone sees when they go to
the page. The text at the moment assumes everyone already knows roughly what
Mailpile is, so I didn't figure it out until I read HN comments.

Also, are there screenshots somewhere?

~~~
jspaetzel
I think that this sentence needs to be gotten rid of completely. \- Webmail is
fundamentally not something that can run on your own computer. The word is
"web" mail, not desktop mail, it's just going to confuse users.

In addition to it being confusing, because of dynamic IPs and residential port
blocking you may be able to run it on your computer, you just won't be able to
do anything with it due to other internet infrastructure... \- Sending mail
from home is almost guaranteed to fail sometimes/often, due to dynamic ip
ranges which are frequently blocked. \- Port 25 and port 80 are blocked by
most major american ISPs these days for residential services. Making this
unusable from a home server. Not to mention it's against many ISPs terms of
service to run a server from home without paying for a business package.
(That's right, it's not just google fibre) \- SPF records and other forms of
email authentication? You would also need a third party DDNS service if using
a dynamic IP.

So with all of that said, I like the interface pictures. It could be a good
competitor to webmail clients like roundcube and friends.

~~~
alextingle
> Sending mail from home is almost guaranteed to fail...

It's an MUA - it can sent mail just as well as any other MUA. Use your ISP's
smarthost if you are using it from home.

> Webmail is fundamentally not something that can run on your own computer.

This statement is plain wrong, even if by "your own computer" you really mean
"your desktop box". I can run any server I like on my desktop box. If it has a
well designed installer, then it would be as easy to set up as a "normal" app
- the end user might not ever know the technical details.

> The word is "web" mail, not desktop mail, it's just going to confuse users.

Now I do agree with you. The product seems to be a little bit of both, so
there is some potential for confusion. "Web-mail you run on your own computer"
does seem to explain it pretty well though.

------
petercooper
Weird that the description of what it actually _is_ is below the fold :-)
However: _Mailpile is a modern web-mail you run on your own computer._

------
joshguthrie
I don't get it, how is it better than RoundCube[0], Horde[1] or any other
webmail clients? Out of the six "reasons", three of them are already there in
the wild (privacy, self-host and no ads), I'm pretty sure two more can be
found/coded (search & encryption) and the last one (speed) is completely
subjective to one's usage.

I mean seriously, what's the appeal to paying for Mailpile when I could just
use an open-source webmail client on my server? (Which I will by the way,
thanks for the idea)

0: [http://roundcube.net/](http://roundcube.net/)

1: [http://www.horde.org/apps/imp](http://www.horde.org/apps/imp)

PS: Here are more: [http://www.noupe.com/ajax/10-ajax-webmail-
clients.html](http://www.noupe.com/ajax/10-ajax-webmail-clients.html)

------
srid68
It is very good you are attacking this problem, but is this the right way to
attack the email problem?

According to Paul Graham frightening startup ideas
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html),
email is a bad ToDo list, How are you going to implement a better Todo list?

I have created a alpha prototype which attacks these problems conceptually,
namely, Message Classification, Message Sharing, Bidirectional Messaging, Pull
Messaging, Sender Revocation, Message Expiry, Centralized Attachment etc as a
Mobile App but approached this as a separate todo protocol using the Push
Messaging Infrastructure.

You can download the working app from Google Play
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=priya.pullgrid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=priya.pullgrid.v1)
and can see a website created
[http://www.pullworld.com](http://www.pullworld.com) (Undocumented - You can
download the Frontend App Html Source - Have not even shared in HN as Show HN
because it is incomplete in documentation). The purpose of the Prototype is
just as a proof of concept and not really to solve the email problem.

I would love to share my knowledge/architecture if you are interested, so that
you can really attack this problem as envisaged by pg and since you are
planning to do it open source and with email, would love to contribute if you
are thinking of mobile in the future using Html/OpenGL based client.

~~~
gcr
I'm not sure about that idea. A tongue-in-cheek evaluation:
[http://pastebin.com/Xf1RffNV](http://pastebin.com/Xf1RffNV)

------
jokull
This project has roots at least some years back, so it’s not starting from
scratch with lofty ideas that are unlikely to come to fruition. Solid team
with a great ideology!

------
vickytnz
Urrgh, if you're going to ask for money, at least ensure you use 'its'
correctly on the fundraising button (i.e. it should be 'reach _its_
fundraising goal'. I really wish everyone would read the Oatmeal piece on
apostrophes
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe)

------
ghshephard
I like the concept - but it's missing a discussion of how they handle what I
consider to be (by a pretty large factor) one of the most important feature in
email - Anti-Spam.

Gmail (which I'm not suggesting is an ideal, just what I happen to use)
doesn't even bother to show me my spam folder - and, in the last week, it's
redirected 1178 messages there.

~~~
HerraBRE
Absolutely. I'm the lead developer - I spent almost 6 years working on anti-
virus and anti-spam, so rest assured we know this is a big deal. :-) There is
alot of quality stuff in the open source world already which we will be able
to build on.

Update: To clarify why we left it out of the pitch - we just took it for
granted that you can't have a functional e-mail client without dealing with
spam.

~~~
anentropic
Nothing I tried ever handled spam as well as Gmail, I was drowning in it, it's
the number one reason I use Gmail. I see so little spam now I think if
everyone used Gmail the spammers would have to give up.

There are plenty of nice-enough webmail UIs around, and people complain about
the speed of Gmail but I find it perfectly fine. Spam's the thing.

------
AxisOfEval
Noble goals. With all the NSA action, this is something whose time has come.
Where do I donate?

~~~
rocky1138
I get what you're saying, but what's to stop them from monitoring the
transmission and how can you be sure the receiver of your sent email is
running a secure email as well?

I don't think this does much to stop snooping.

~~~
takluyver
It doesn't guarantee that any specific e-mail is snooping-proof, but it makes
it hard for someone to trivially look through all your e-mails from the last
five years.

------
beachstartup
if you need free site hosting PM me. i run an infrastructure company and are
looking to support open source projects (we rely heavily upon open source).

------
didip
It uses CGI eh? Old school, I like it!

* It's a bit hard to find where the HTML/JS templates are. I think that's important for folks who are good at design and willing to help the project.

* search.py, looks like it stores indexes in memory, is that correct? Will it work if I run multiple instances of httpd?

------
tebeka
Two things: 1\. IMO sup ([http://supmua.org/](http://supmua.org/)) is more
mature and does about the same. However it's interface is a curses based one
which is a plus and a minus. 2\. Why not use an existing search products (like
xapian)?

~~~
HerraBRE
This is actually answered in the FAQ on our Indiegogo campaign:
[http://igg.me/at/mailpile](http://igg.me/at/mailpile)

Mostly, the reason we do things the way we do, is because one of our primary
goals is to make an end-user desktop app. Packaging is therefore a significant
task and minimizing dependencies will help a lot.

We still have quite a bit of work to do on our website and message.

------
weirdkid
This reminds me of Zoe.
[http://zoe.sourceforge.net](http://zoe.sourceforge.net)

Back in 2001 or 2002, I was following the progress of Zoe, what I thought to
be a very promising new approach to email archives. It kept your email in mbox
or eml files, used Lucene for indexing and search and then provided a web
interface on an embedded web server.

The Zoe project is no longer active (the homepage is dead and the files are
gone), but this MailPile sounds very much like it. Almost exactly like it. I
hope it does better.

------
daurnimator

        Mailpile stores in RAM about 180 bytes of metadata per message (actual size depends largely on the size of various headers), but Python overhead brings that to about 250B. This means handling a million messages should consume about 250MB of RAM - not too bad if you consider how much memory your browser (or desktop e-mail client) eats up.
    

Totally killed my interest, I want to run this on a small server (e.g. NAS),
for everyone in my family

------
chrischen
I'm not sure what responsive framework you're using, but the layout doesn't
look good and the logo is messed up on mobile browsers.

------
arcameron
Hi guys,

If you're interested in this, you might also want to check out:

[https://echoplex.us](https://echoplex.us) (overview)
[https://chat.echoplex.us](https://chat.echoplex.us) (in action)
[https://github.com/qq99/echoplexus](https://github.com/qq99/echoplexus)
(github)

Lead developer here, FYI

------
TomAnthony
This looks great!

I have a couple of questions:

\- Any plans for a plugin/extension system?

\- Are there any screenshots of the interface anywhere?

Thanks! : )

~~~
falk
At around 1:30 in their Indiegogo video they show what I assume is the user-
interface of the app. Looks nice.

[http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailpile-taking-e-mail-
bac...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailpile-taking-e-mail-back)

------
lnanek2
Thumbnail images under the interface section are coming up broken.

------
topherwhite
Should they succeed, let us hope that the mobile version of the webmail client
will function better than the mobile version of your static site. Pretty
unusable in MobileSafari.

~~~
brennannovak
Hey topherwhite I'm the UI/UX designer of Mailpile- totally aware of the poor
rendering on mobile at present. Working on fixing that- was swamped with other
aspects of the campaign launch. Thanks for your feedback :)

------
znowi
Very timely. Might be a viable alternative to NSA's Gmail.

The tech lead is from the Empire though - an ex-Googler - not exactly a
privacy caring company :) Maybe that's why he left :)

------
msvan
It‘s still decidedly aimed at techies though. I guess it'll be another few
years before the benefits of a Free Software Gmail competitor will be
accessible to the layman.

~~~
brennannovak
Hi there. I'm the UI/UX designer on the Mailpile team. Making every aspect of
MP easy for non-techies is my primary concern. We aim to be easier than
Wordpress with our Alpha release in Jan 2014. Please give me any feedback
concerns with out to achieve this goal :)

~~~
WayneDB
Feedback: IMAP and POP3 would let everyone continue to use the native apps
that they know and love for their UX. The web sucks for apps. It just does.
Making _robust_ dedicated native apps for each major platform would be a real
differentiator.

~~~
brennannovak
Thanks for your feedback! We definitely would like to build native (mobile)
apps for Mailpile- small (and important) steps, first though :)

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schabernakk
this looks awesome, lots of luck.

Am I understanding this correctly that this is basically a selfhosted
imap/pop/smtp frontend?

I am curious how you guys would use it, i.e. where would you actually host
your emails? Running your own mailserver on a vserver sounds fun and not to
expensive but I don't know if I want to maintain something like that in the
long run. If something breaks this just sounds like a lot of work.

You guys pay for mail hosting? Use the one that comes with your website
domain?

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Bjoern
What is wrong with e.g. Dovecot/Postfix + Roundcube ? How would this be any
better? Is this intended to be a "close as possible" gmail clone?

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gcr
How is this any different from every other desktop mail client (eg.
Thunderbird, Inky, Evolution, Notmuch, Sup, Mutt, ...)? What makes this
better?

~~~
HerraBRE
This is a desktop mail client. It is also a web-mail you can run on a server
somewhere if you so choose. It depends on how it is deployed.

Contrasting Mailpile with other tools, one difference is that the basic design
is that of a search engine, not a tool for reading mail from folders. Most
current desktop mail clients are built on top of a bad paradigm, in my
opinion.

Another exciting thing about this model, is that since the UI is a website (of
sorts), we can leverage the collective experience and creativity of the web
design community. That is a much, much larger pool of talent than UI designers
who know C++ or Objective C, or whatever.

Finally, making the app a web server means you get an API to interact with
your e-mail almost for free.

~~~
stevekemp
I've been working on an extensible console-based mail-client for the past
while. ([http://lumail.org/](http://lumail.org/))

I abhor the idea that clients only ever interact with messages from a single
folder.

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tambourine_man
Site is barely readable on the iPhone:

[http://imgur.com/IbwipKQ.jpg](http://imgur.com/IbwipKQ.jpg)

~~~
brennannovak
Thanks! I'm working on fixing mobile rendering ASAP :)

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oakaz
We all need to back this project to get rid of the monopoly of Google.

~~~
icebraining
Google doesn't have anywhere near a monopoly on Email. They are barely ahead
their two largest competitors.

~~~
oakaz
and what planet do you live in? everybody I know has a Google account only
because of either Gmail or Youtube.

~~~
icebraining
I live on the planet not defined only by your personal experiences.

~~~
oakaz
Ok then go research how many companies in silicon valley give their employees
Gmail. All the companies I've been worked provided Gmail only because there is
really not a good open source option. And Google accounts is a huge monopoly
that obviously sounds bad enough to hurt your feelings. But this is the
reality. Google is a valley of shit and most of us want to move on from it.

~~~
icebraining
Criticizing Google doesn't "hurt my feeling". I've moved away from Gmail and
other Google services (not all) a few years ago because I disagreed with their
options. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with nonsensical claims such as
Google having a monopoly on email.

Maybe they do on Silicon Valley, but I'm sure you realize that's a pretty
insignificant subset of email users.

~~~
oakaz
I believe we aren't in the same planet.

~~~
alextingle
You sound like you're getting pretty emotional. Time for a cup of tea and a
sit down?

~~~
oakaz
yeah, I'm really upset to not have any alternative of Gmail. What do you
recommend ?

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ivanbrussik
i like it, and im willing to pay $5. to make it happen

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VexXtreme
I wonder how long until they put a NSA rootkit in it.

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MrGando
Prime member... hope this project goes through.

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ricardobeat
This project desperately needs a logo.

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mikaelf
You have got to get rid of that logo.

~~~
brennannovak
Mailpile UI/UX designer here- thanks for the "feedback" I guess... What
bothers you about our current logo, specifically?

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jccalhoun
Who are we taking it back from?

~~~
brennannovak
Firstly, the centralized cloud webmail companies (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo) by
giving people the ability to self host their email with an awesome webmail
solution! ~Mailpile Designer

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javascriptgod
not another shitty mail service

~~~
brennannovak
Wow, that's a useful comment. Thanks.

