Everything you might want to know about Sobamail. Still stuck? Email us.
Sobamail is an email solution with an application platform built on top. It is standards-compliant (SMTP, IMAP, POP3, and webmail), and its native desktop client can also run small apps whose data is stored inside your mailbox, alongside your email.
Yes. Sobamail is built on well-known open-source email technologies and supports SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 as well as webmail, so it works as a normal email account. The application platform is layered on top of that foundation.
App data is stored and kept up to date inside a series of email messages, held in special folders in your mailbox. So everything an app needs lives right alongside your email archive, with no separate backend servers or extra accounts to manage.
No. A Sobamail app is a JS backend (a Mutator) plus a regular HTML/CSS/JavaScript web UI. The runtime handles storage, sync, and replication for you, so there is nothing to provision and no database to wire up.
Yes. Apps run locally inside the native client, so everything you do is saved on your device immediately and then synced quietly in the background as connectivity allows. Slow or missing connections don't interrupt your work.
Each change an app makes is recorded as a mutation and shipped between replicas as a regular email: a machine-readable attachment plus a header that points to it. Every replica replays the same changes with the same, frozen version of the app, so all your devices and your collaborators converge on identical, consistent state. Replicas of the same mailbox can also sync directly peer-to-peer over a local network.
Yes. An app instance can be private to you or shared with other Sobamail users, so a group can collaborate on the same instance of, for example, a shared to-do list, without any central server coordinating them.
You can exchange attachments up to 1 GB in size. The actual content lives in your mailbox rather than as links to third-party services.
Sobamail's native desktop client runs on Windows and macOS. Linux is on the roadmap. There is also a webmail interface for accessing your mailbox from a browser.
Your mailbox and its app instances are private to you by default. Data is only shared when you explicitly create a shared instance with other users.
Yes. Sobamail can run on infrastructure you control, so your data never has to leave it.
Yes. It's a standard mailbox underneath, so you can export your mail and app data with standard email tools and move to another host whenever you choose.
Sobamail is currently in beta and free to use during the beta period.
Request an account from the home page. We are in beta and review every request by hand, then email you as soon as your account is ready.
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