Introducing Sobamail: More than a Just a Mailbox

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 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 answers the practical questions in the meantime.