Mailpile is a privacy-focused email client designed to give users greater control over their messages and personal information. It combines a browser interface with local email storage, searching and encryption, providing an alternative to relying entirely on commercial email services.
The application runs on a personal computer or private server, allowing users to access their messages through a browser. Unlike conventional hosted services, Mailpile is designed around keeping email data under the user’s control. It incorporates a dedicated search engine and tools for organising large collections of messages.
Mailpile places particular emphasis on making OpenPGP encryption accessible without requiring users to become experts in cryptography. However, development of the original Python 2 application has stopped. Its developers are working on a separate Python 3 replacement called Moggie. The original Mailpile should therefore be regarded as legacy software rather than a recommended choice for new installations.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Privacy-focused design – keeps email data under the user’s control rather than requiring storage with a third-party provider.
- OpenPGP integration – supports sending and receiving encrypted messages and creating and verifying digital signatures.
- Powerful search engine – provides fast searching across large collections of locally indexed messages.
- Flexible tagging – organises messages using multiple tags rather than restricting them to conventional folders.
- Automatic classification – applies tags to incoming messages using configurable rules and Bayesian classifiers.
- Local data encryption – protects locally generated files using encryption.
- IMAP and SMTP integration – communicates with existing mail services for receiving and sending messages.
- Browser interface – provides access to email from a local computer or remotely through a privately operated server.
- Command-line interface – offers an alternative way to interact with the application.
- Developer API – allows external tools and applications to communicate with Mailpile.
- Internationalisation – supports localisation for different languages.
Website: github.com/mailpile/Mailpile
Support:
Developer: The Mailpile Team
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Mailpile is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Web-Based Email Clients | |
|---|---|
| RoundCube | Browser-based multilingual IMAP client |
| Cypht | Webmail aggregator |
| SnappyMail | Simple, modern, lightweight fork of RainLoop |
| Mailpile | Client with user-friendly encryption and privacy features |
| Nextcloud Mail | Email client application for the Nextcloud platform |
| Afterlogic WebMail Lite | Modular IMAP client with contacts, encryption and admin tools |
| JMAP Webmail | JMAP client with shared inboxes, contacts and calendars |
| Tachyon | Lightweight, privacy-focused client with Sieve and DAV support |
| SquirrelMail | Webmail package written in PHP |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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