Available now for Windows and macOS

Email and apps, all in one mailbox.

Sobamail upgrades email into a collaborative workspace, with apps that keep their data in the mailbox, work offline and sync automatically across the team.

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Sobamail — Inbox

The Sobamail desktop client: the folder tree on the left, the Inbox's message list in the middle and the selected message in the reader pane on the right

SMTP · IMAP · POP3 · Webmail Works without internet Files up to 1 GB Open source apps

How it works

Everything lives in your mailbox

Your email, your apps and their data live in one place, and they stay in sync across your devices and with your teammates.

Sobamail hosts your email

Read it with the desktop client or on the web. Your apps live in that same mailbox, under the same address, so one sign-in puts your mail and your tools side by side.

Keeps working without internet

The desktop client keeps a copy of your mailbox on your machine, and your apps run there too. You keep reading, writing and working on a plane or through an outage, and the client catches up once you are back online.

Apps are collaborative

Share an app with your colleagues and it appears in their mailbox too. Whatever anyone adds or changes reaches everyone else the way a message does, so the whole team always sees the same thing.

Your work, your apps

Add the tools your work needs

Sobamail is an app platform as much as a mailbox. The forms, lists and trackers your team runs on can live in it, next to your mail, and today's AI coding tools put a working app within anyone's reach.

Tools that fit how you work

Off-the-shelf software rarely fits a specialist. Sobamail's building blocks are simple enough to shape around your exact process: an intake form, an approval checklist, a case tracker.

One system to secure

Every new tool usually brings another server, another login and another set of credentials to protect. Sobamail apps live inside the mailbox and client your team already runs, so there is a single piece of infrastructure to worry about.

One hub for the whole team

Shared apps and their records sync into every team member's mailbox, so the whole team looks in one place for all of them.

Apps

The essentials are covered

Calendar and Contacts data stay in sync on every device you use. They show what an app on Sobamail can do.

Calendar

Plan your week in the same window as your mail.

See your time by the day, the week or the month, or as an agenda
Keep several calendars, each in a colour of its own
Invitations that arrive by email go straight into your calendar

Source on GitHub

The Calendar app on a working week, with port calls, meetings and crew appointments in three calendars

Contacts

Keep a card for everyone you write to.

File people under groups of your own
Import and export contact cards
Address a message from your contacts as you type

Source on GitHub

The ship's master's card in the Contacts app, filed under Fleet, with an email address, a phone number, the company and a note

The desktop client

Fast and lightweight

Sobamail Desktop is a native client for Windows and macOS. Every action completes at local speed, so you keep working with or without a connection.

Instant search, across the whole mailbox

Start typing in the search box and the message list narrows with each keystroke.

Full-text search reaches into message bodies when you need it
See a folder and all its subfolders as one list
Select several folders to browse them together

The toolbar's search box with Rotterdam typed in, the scope row beneath it and the three messages that match

Shared mailboxes for the whole team

A department is a mailbox your team shares. Members can impersonate it to write from its address, and roles decide who can do what.

Admins delete, move and organize; every member reads, replies and composes
A role granted or withdrawn takes effect right away
The department's folders sit in a pane of their own, below yours

The Departments pane below the folder tree, with the chartering department's Inbox selected and its messages listed beside it

Large files, transferred once

Attachments live in your mailbox at full size, up to 1 GB each.

An interrupted transfer picks up where it stopped
A file transfers once, however many messages carry it
Transfers are compressed, saving time and data
Attachments download as mail arrives, or only when you ask for them

The compose window with two recipients, a subject, a message body and two attached files of 845 MB and 273 MB

Delayed delivery and signed mail

Write a message when it suits you, choose when it goes out, and sign it so its recipients know it comes from you.

Pick a delay from 15 minutes to a day, or set an exact time
The Outbox shows when each delayed message is due
One click on the button clears the delay
Sign with S/MIME, so any mail client can verify the signature
Sobamail runs its own certificate authority, so everyone gets their own certificate from day one

The compose window's Delay Delivery menu open, with 2 hours chosen among the delays from 15 minutes to 24 hours

See your message arrive

Follow Delivery is on for every new message. As each recipient's mail server reports back, the reader marks the recipient with what happened.

Green when the message is delivered, orange while it waits, red when delivery fails
Click a marker for every delivery event of that recipient
The message's details count the delivered, waiting and failed recipients

A sent message in the reader, two of its three recipients marked delivered and the third waiting

Your reading stays private

When a message arrives, Sobamail's servers fetch its pictures and follow its tracking links. A sender who tracks opens sees the delivery, and the moment you read the message stays yours.

Pictures show from your mailbox, fetched ahead of time
A tracking link takes you straight to the page it leads to
It runs in the background as your mail arrives

Your data, your terms

Your data stays yours

Export your mail and app data with standard email tools anytime, and decide exactly who can see it.

Read the full FAQ →

Your data stays in your mailbox

App data and files live in the mailbox you control, at full size, and stay there.

Take your data with you

It is a standard mailbox underneath. Export it with standard email tools and move to another host whenever you choose.

Private by default

Your mailbox and its apps are yours alone. Data is shared only when you explicitly create a shared app instance with the people you choose.

Build your own apps

An app is a small backend plus a regular web page

You write a Mutator, a small handler that keeps your app's local state up to date, and a frontend in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Sobamail handles storage and background sync.

Our Calendar and Contacts apps are open source, so you can start from a working one and shape it to fit.

→ Read the 5-minute intro → Follow the counter tutorial → Browse our open-source apps on GitHub

my-first-app.js

import "soba://computer/R2";

export default class Mutator {
  static id = "todo.alice.user.app";
  static name = "My First App";
  static version = "1.0.0.0";
  static objects = new Map([ /* events */ ]);

  constructor() {
    // define tables, run checks
  }

  process(message, metadata) {
    // react to the incoming event
  }
}

Request your Sobamail account

We review every request by hand and email you as soon as your account is ready. The link helps us confirm you're a real person, and we'll only email you about your account.

Just want to see some code? Head over to GitHub.