oh. consent-first email
on your own mailboxes.

Mail that sorts itself into real IMAP folders. New senders wait at the Screener. Decide once, and ohmail files the rest.

14 days free · no card · nothing to cancel

Download freeTry the demo

This is not a screenshot.

The real ohmail, already running on this page — nothing to install, nothing to sign up for. Three senders are waiting at the Screener; go let one in.

ohmail.app
  • Only mail you said yes toStrangers wait outside. When it's quiet in here, it's actually empty.
  • The Screener answers the doorThree senders wait. One press decides: Ohbox, News, Receipts — or never, which also unsubscribes you where the list offers one click. Spam lands in your mail server's own Junk, and neither asks again.
  • Unread is always on topNew mail waits in one group at the top of the Ohbox until you read it — an empty New group means you're done.
  • Read conversations land under EarlierA conversation with nothing new sits under Earlier in the order it arrived; one you just read in ohmail moves to the top when you move on. Nothing to archive, nothing to tidy.

Inside the demo⌘K everything, by namejk move↵ readgs go to the Screener

  • Only people you choseStrangers wait outside, so a quiet Ohbox really is empty.
  • The Screener decidesOne press sends a new sender to Ohbox, News, Receipts or Never.
  • Unread stays on topNew mail waits in one group until you have read it.
  • Read mail moves downRead conversations settle under Earlier.

Like it? Start your 14-day trial.

Start free trial

Cloud, desktop or your own server.

Your mail stays in your own mailbox and your rules and screening decisions travel with it, so you can switch between Cloud and your own server any day, in either direction. What moves

  1. Cloud from $9/mo

    The web app, Android push, always-on processing, AI included.1

    Start free trial

    14 days free · no card · nothing to cancel

    Two months free when billed annually.

    • Solo

      $9/mo

      billed monthly

      2 mailboxes

      1,000 AI credits/mo

      room for roughly 80,000 emails stored for the web app2

      Choose Solo
    • Plus Recommended

      $15/mo

      billed monthly

      5 mailboxes

      2,000 AI credits/mo

      room for roughly 200,000 emails stored for the web app2

      Choose Plus
    • Pro

      $29/mo

      billed monthly

      10 mailboxes

      4,000 AI credits/mo

      room for roughly 400,000 emails stored for the web app2

      Choose Pro
    • Originals stay in your own mailbox
    • Trial: no card, nothing to cancel
    • Open source

    1 Every tier starts with 14 days free — no card, and 500 credits to try. The monthly allowance begins when the subscription does; run out and mail keeps flowing rules-only, with no overage charges.

    2 Email counts are estimates from real use — about 25 KB of stored message text each, which is 2, 5 and 10 GB of room. Attachments stay in your mailbox and never count against your plan.

  2. Desktop Free

    Your machine. No account; mail never reaches our servers. macOS, Windows, Linux.3

  3. Self-host Free

    The same server behind ohmail.app, one compose file, mailboxes unmetered. Umbrel package public, still a draft.

Open source, so you can run it yourself any time.

Where a message goes.

First-time senders wait until you decide.

One press picks the door for every future mail from them: Ohbox, News, Receipts — or Never, which also unsubscribes where the list offers one click. Spam goes to your mail server's own Junk, and that sender never asks again.

3 waitingScreener ›
First mail fromLaura Nyffeler
OhboxNewsReceiptsNever

Ohbox: people. News: newsletters. Receipts: paperwork.

  • Ohbox3
  • News12
  • Receipts7
  • Screener3

New

Giulia FerrariRe: Glaze order #2214

Petra WyssYour talk is in!

Earlier

Ben ArnoldKiln's fixed + Friday pizza

Real IMAP folders, readable by any other mail app.

In any other mail app

  • Inbox Ohbox
  • Junk
  • Sent untouched
  • ohmail
  • Screener
  • News
  • Receipts
  • Screened
  • Quarantine
  • _meta housekeeping

One message in ohmail/_meta, in a public format.4

Folder
ohmail/_meta
Subject
ohmail settings for this mailbox

This message stores your ohmail settings for this mailbox: which senders you have screened in, your filing rules, notification choices, away reply and tag names. Keeping them here means they live in YOUR mailbox: they travel with it to any computer or service you connect it from, and they remain yours even if you stop using ohmail.

… then your settings, as JSON

The first lines of the real message, word for word — the rest is your settings, as JSON.The format is public — read the specification

Rules first. AI only proposes.

Rules you can read file most mail with no AI at all. Where judgment helps, ohmail offers a door for a new sender or a draft in your voice — every proposal waits for your yes, and nothing sends itself.

  • Patterns graduate into rules: three identical decisions become a rule, which then runs with no AI.
  • Codes are sacred: codes are stripped before a model reads anything. Structural, not a setting.
  • A complete mail client with AI off.
Try it both ways.AI assiston
  • Lena Kaufmannfirst mail · atelier-eichspan.chOhbox92% sureSuggested from how you handled her studio before. Press ↵ to accept.
  • Giulia FerrariRe: Glaze order #2214Draft, in your voiceCiao Giulia, perfetto — il 4 agosto va benissimo. La consegna resta all’atelier, come sempre. Grazie mille!Sits in the composer as a proposal. You send it, or you rewrite it, or you delete it.

Suggestions and drafts — proposed, never performed.

Also in ohmail today.

Search Typo-tolerant, over your whole mailbox, as you type. Narrow it by sender, folder or attachments.

⌘Kcommand palette

jkmove

↵read

gsgo to the Screener

Keyboard ⌘K opens the command palette; j and k move, ↵ reads, g s goes to the Screener, ? shows every shortcut.
Studio notes, week 31The kiln is back up to temperature.
Studio notes, week 31The kiln is back up to temperature.View original
Dark mode that includes the mail. HTML mail adapted to a dark screen; the sender's original is one click away.
Schedule send Pick when it goes out. On Cloud, it sends while you're offline.
Resurface Park a message until tomorrow, next week or a date you pick; it comes back on its own.

potteryacross 3 mailboxes

Kiln rebuild — the new elementOhbox · 12 Jul

Glaze samples, second batchNews · 3 Jul

Tags One tag reaches across every mailbox; the folder a message lives in stays what it was.
  • Mail in the desktop app never reaches our servers.
  • Cloud stores mail on servers in Switzerland, encrypted at rest, deleted with the account.5
  • Open source: the apps and the server in one public repository.6

Notes

3 The macOS and Windows builds are not signed by Apple or Microsoft yet, so the first launch asks you to confirm it once. Nothing in the app phones home except one signed update check.

4 What does not travel: triage piles, Resurface timers, learned patterns, which tag is on which message, notes, snippets and the app's own preference switches stay with the install they were made on.

5 Not end-to-end encrypted: the service reads mail to file and search it, and a small number of people with production database access could technically read it. Never sold, never mined. Deleted from the live database with your account.

6 Only the hosted service's billing machinery is private.

Questions, answered.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. 14 days, no card. You get the whole product, with 500 credits to try drafts and the Screener's suggestions. Give no card, and the trial ends on its own after 14 days. The desktop app is free and needs no trial.

What is an AI credit?

The unit your plan is measured in. Actions cost what they cost us: screening a new sender or filing a message is 1 credit, a drafted reply 15. Drafting reads a whole thread and writes prose, so it costs more than sorting one message — pricing them the same would only mean charging everybody for the expensive one. When the monthly budget runs out, mail keeps flowing rules-only until the next cycle. There are no overage charges — ever.

Do you read my mail?

Not as a matter of practice, and our admin tools do not display message content — every response the console can produce is checked by a test that writes a marker into every text column of every table and fails if any of it reaches a staff response. The database refuses them too: the console reads through a column-restricted database role that cannot select message content, and it verifies that restriction before it reads anything. The honest fine print: Cloud mail is stored unencrypted at the application level and is not end-to-end encrypted, so someone with production database access could technically read it; that access is held by very few people, and the product privacy policy will spell out who and under what conditions when it publishes. On Desktop the question doesn't arise — your mail never reaches our servers at all: the app runs as a real mail client against your own server, on macOS, Windows and Linux alike. Separately, nobody else gets to watch you read either: a spy pixel is blocked by default — loading them is a choice you would have to make in Settings — and one disguised as an ordinary picture loads like any picture each time the message's pictures are fetched, before it is blocked; the standalone phone app, which fetches pictures itself, shows it. On Cloud, ordinary pictures load through our own proxy, so the sender's server sees us and never your address; the desktop app and the standalone phone app fetch pictures themselves, so there the sender sees that device's address.

Can I leave?

Anytime. Your mail never needs exporting — the originals live on your own server, in ordinary folders ohmail created in place, and nothing we do touches them. Be clear about what Cloud holds, though: a full copy of that mail — bodies, headers, subjects and senders — alongside your rules, tags and notes, because that is what makes search and push work. All of it is deleted from the live database with your account.

What happens to my existing folders?

Nothing destructive. The folders you already have are left exactly as they are; ohmail organizes new mail into real IMAP folders on your server. Everything stays visible to any other mail client, on any device.

Which mailboxes work?

Gmail · Microsoft 365 & Outlook.com · iCloud Mail · Yahoo · Fastmail · GMX · Infomaniak

…and any IMAP mailbox, including your own server.

Microsoft 365 and Exchange connect with your Microsoft sign-in on ohmail Cloud and on self-hosted servers set up for it, and some organizations require an admin to approve ohmail first.

Are the desktop builds signed?

The macOS and Windows builds are not signed by Apple or Microsoft yet, so the first launch asks you to confirm it once. Nothing in the app phones home except one signed update check.