Cloudron Mail

We announced the Cloudron Mail app on the forum a while ago, but we never really wrote about its features. Here’s a summary of why we wrote this app and a short tour of its features.

The email server has always been an integral part of Cloudron. For the webmail frontend we relied on third party clients like SOGo, Roundcube, RainLoop, and SnappyMail (now Tachyon). Unfortunately, these projects have either stopped development or stalled.

We started development on this webmailer to fill that gap. Unlike other webmail apps, this one is written primarily for use with Cloudron. This way we can provide a tight integration and make assumptions of the features offered by the mail server.

Cloudron’s email server has comprehensive docs, so we won’t cover that here. Let’s take a quick tour of this new webmailer.

Zero configuration #

Probably the first noticeable thing is that people sign in with their Cloudron username through OpenID. The app picks up the mailboxes assigned to that user. Email aliases are picked up as identities.

When there is more than one identity, you choose it in the From dropdown.

Layout #

A message can sit to the right of the list, below the list, or on its own.

Compose #

Compose opens as a window inside the page. You can keep several of those windows open and work in them at the same time.

The rich text composer has address completion, drag and drop for attachments, and auto-save to drafts.

Contacts #

The default Contacts app supplies address suggestions. The app also learns addresses from mail you receive.

Calendar #

An invitation attached as an .ics file is shown as a card. The events can be saved into the default Calendar app. With more than one calendar, you choose which one.

Search #

Search is recursive and incremental by default. This was an important functionality that we found missing in most other webmail apps. You can use the / shortcut to open it and type away. The search results also show the folder in which the message resides.

You can also narrow by sender, recipient, subject, words in the message, folder, and date.

For example, mail from maya@example.com, with Roadmap in the subject, after 1 October.

Filters #

Other webmailers expose Sieve as a rule language. Mail keeps filters intentionally simple and focuses on the common use cases.

Here, mail from news.example.com is marked read and moved to Clients/Northwind.

You can also create a filter from a message. Right-click the message and choose Create filter.

Forwarding #

Forwarding can be achieved either by admins in the Cloudron dashboard or by users in the app’s mailbox settings.

Vacation reply #

The vacation reply answers incoming mail while you are away. You set the dates, the subject, and the message. If someone writes again, they get the reply at most once every 4 days.

Spam #

Each mailbox has its own spam filter on the mail server. Marking mail as spam or not spam trains that filter. This is one place where you can see tight integration with the email server. You can see the spam/ham learning status.

You can also list addresses and domains that are always allowed, and ones that are always blocked.

API #

Mail has a JSON API. Accounts, folders, messages, and drafts are calls. A workflow can read and file mail through that API.

The reference is the Mail API.

Feature request? #

Want to see something else? One reason we built this app is that we can change it ourselves and keep the experience polished. Please file any feature requests in the Mail forum.