Beta version of email service Mailpile is out

Martin Brinkmann
Sep 16, 2014
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I reviewed Mailpile back in August of 2013 for the first time. The project was running a Kickstarter campaign back then for funding and did so successfully.

A first alpha version, only available as a source code and a demo interface on the web was released in January 2014 and a second alpha about six months later in July of 2014.

The first beta version of Mailpile has been released today by the company. It brings along with it several improvements including native clients for Windows and Macintosh systems that users can run locally.

If you are in a hurry, you can check out the latest version of Mailpile online using a public demo account. If you have more time at hand download one of the available packages instead.

Windows users can install the mail software right after it has been downloaded to the system. One of the things that sets Mailpile apart from other mail clients is the fact that you run it as a service on your system and access it using modern web browsers.

If you run the local version, you are asked to enter a secret passphrase on first start. This phrase is being used to unlock the data and for the encryption keys. Since all depends on that phrase, it is highly recommended to select a long passphrase to improve security.

The application generates the encryption key for your right away afterwards and you need to enter your passphrase to authenticate at this point in time.

After you have created the passphrase and the program has created the encryption keys, you are asked to add a profile to the application.

Here you are asked to enter basic information about yourself, your name and email address, and configure credentials for the mail server that you want to use.

Once that is out of the way, you are asked to define mail sources. These sources define where mail comes from, for instance from a local program such as Thunderbird or online services like Gmail or Outlook.

If you select Thunderbird for example as a source, you are asked to add the path to the Thunderbird email folder, and select whether you want mails to be copied or not.

Once all of that is done, you are taken to the inbox of the installation.

The interface itself has not been optimized yet according to the company. This means that it can be rather slow at times and that it may not work well on smaller screens.

So what is working right now?

  1. You can read and write emails.
  2. Attachments.
  3. Searching and tagging both work.
  4. Spam filter is operational.
  5. OpenPGP support is built-in.

Before you decide to try the service out right now, you may want to check out the known issues page here. The company plans to release version 1.0 of Mailpile in December and hopes to fix the majority of them by that date.

Conclusion

You can try Mailpile right now even if you cannot build from source which is the major feat of this beta version in my opinion. Yes, it features several important milestones such as the setup procedure to get started, the web interface or core mail features.

While that is the case, it is still likely that many users who want to give it a try are overwhelmed by the setup process. While it is easy enough to set up a passphrase, having to add both profiles and mail sources can become a problem for some users. One example? The default path for Thunderbird on Windows was set to the default Linux path of the mail client.

All in all though it is shaping up nicely and while it won't reinvent the wheel, looks like it could become a solid alternative for some Internet users but not for everyone. It remains to be seen how comfortable the OpenPGP integration is when the final version is released in December as it could become one of the main reasons why users would switch to it.

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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
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      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
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      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
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    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
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    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
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      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
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      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
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      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
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    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
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    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
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    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
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    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
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    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
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    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
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    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
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    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
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      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
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    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
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    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
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    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
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    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
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    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
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    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
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    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
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    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
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    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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