---
title: Introducing Sobamail: More than a Just a Mailbox
date: 2026-10-21
category: Product
excerpt: Sobamail offers a standards-compliant mailbox that can hold more than messages: apps live in it too, beside your mail.
icon: /icons/app/icon-64.svg
---

Sobamail started with a seemingly simple question: How can we make a mailbox
that could hold more than messages? It would then be our very own database, and
apps could live inside it.

Most of the apps we use at work run on the web, and the web was built to publish
documents: one copy on a server, for everyone to read. However, work between
colleagues runs more like correspondence. Each person keeps their own records
and sends updates to the others, the way email has always worked.

Hosting apps in a mailbox is a different problem than hosting them on the web.
On the web, everyone works on the authoritative copy, and the server has the
final say. Email travels like, well, mail: each message waits on a server until
the other side collects it, sometimes days later. And since anyone can send an
email, each mailbox has to check every change for itself.

We built apps in a mailbox to work that way. Each colleague keeps their own copy
of an app's data, changes travel between them the way messages do, and every
change is signed by the account that made it.

Today, Sobamail is a standards-compliant email account and a desktop client for
Windows and macOS. Its mailbox holds applications beside your mail: their data
lives under the same address, and the apps run inside the desktop client, in a
window next to your messages. They keep working locally while you are offline
and catch up once the connection returns.

An app in the mailbox needs no server or login of its own for you or your
colleagues. It uses the account everybody already signs in to -- their Sobamail
mailbox.

So, who is Sobamail for? The short answer is anyone who uses email. The longer
answer is that some teams get a great deal more out of it than others, and the
rest of this first post on our blog describes them.

## Anyone with an inbox

First and foremost, Sobamail is made to be a good email host. It works with the
mail client you already use, still accepting attachments of up to a gigabyte.
The desktop client keeps a copy of your mailbox on your machine, so reading,
searching and writing complete right away. Contacts and calendar apps come with
it, and invitations that arrive by email go straight into the calendar. Your
address takes a tag after a plus sign, so a supplier or a mailing list can have
an address of its own that still reaches you. If all you ever do with it is
email, you have a fast mail account with generous limits, and that is a fine way
to use it.

The apps are there when you want them. Every app instance appears as a folder
under Apps in the folder tree, and you open it the way you open any other
folder: select it, and the app takes the place of the message list, in the same
window as your mail.

## When email is where the work starts

An order arrives. A customer sends a request. A colleague forwards a case that
needs attention.

Then the details get copied into a spreadsheet, a ticketing system or a shared
document. From that moment on, the conversation is in one place and the record
is in another, and someone has to keep the two straight.

We wanted the record to stay where the message landed. In Sobamail, an intake
form, an approval checklist or a case list lives next to the Inbox, under the
same address, and the team signs in once to reach all of it. The record and the
conversation stay side by side, in one window.

## Work that fits a process of its own

Off-the-shelf software rarely fits a specialist. A chartering desk, a law
office, a clinic, an engineering firm: each one runs on a handful of forms,
lists and approvals that fit its work exactly, with its own fields to fill, its
own sign-offs to collect and its own records to keep.

Building a tool for that process used to mean building and running the
infrastructure around it too: a server for the data, accounts for the people and
someone to back it all up and keep it safe. Today's AI coding tools put a
working form or list within reach of a small team, but the application still
needs a home for its data and a way to share it.

We built Sobamail to be that home. An app is a form or a list with the fields
your work needs, its data lives in the mailbox, and you share it by naming the
colleagues who should have it, when you set it up or later. We published the
source of our Calendar and Contacts apps, so there are working examples to start
from and adapt.

## Work offline, synchronize when you are back

Field teams, people who travel, offices with a flaky line, anyone on a ship or
at a remote site: for them, work has to carry on through an outage.

This is where keeping your own copy pays off. The desktop client holds your mail
and your apps on your machine, so you keep reading, writing and updating records
while the line is down. Your changes wait like letters in an outbox, and the
client catches up once you are back online. Your colleagues see your changes
when they arrive, and you see theirs.

## Teams that share work

Share an app instance with the colleagues you pick and it appears in their
mailboxes too. From then on, whatever anyone adds or changes reaches everyone
else, so the whole team sees the same records.

For the mail itself, a department is a mailbox the team holds together. It
appears in its own pane beneath your folders, with its own Inbox and Sent, and
everyone with a role in it can read, reply and write from its address.

## Teams with one person minding security

Every new tool usually brings another server, another login and another set of
credentials to protect. We wanted the person responsible for security to have a
single piece of infrastructure to worry about, so Sobamail apps run inside the
mailbox and client your team already has. Mailboxes and app instances are
private by default, and data is shared only when someone explicitly shares an
instance.

## Your data, in a mailbox you can export

We want you to be able to take your data and leave whenever you choose. App data
and files live in your mailbox at full size, alongside your email, and your
mailbox is a standard one. You can export all of it with standard email tools
and move to another host.

## Getting started

That question became Sobamail, and it is available today. The desktop client
ships for Windows and macOS, and webmail works from any browser. We set up
accounts on request and review every request by hand, so [request an
account](/#request) with your name, your email and a link to your homepage or
LinkedIn profile, and we will email you when it is ready.

This blog is where we will tell the rest of the story: the ideas behind
Sobamail, how the platform works and what each release changes. The [FAQ](/faq/)
answers the practical questions in the meantime.