Reasons for starting developing a new email client
Hi 👋, I’m Sven and I started developing YouniqMail at May of 2025.
In my search for an e-mail client that is data protection compliant and does not send all mails or other data via the developer’s servers, I hardly found any mail clients that came into question. Even when I did find one that could be considered, it forced you into certain ways of working and/or was not customizable enough.
So I had to start developing my own email client that was based on the three main pillars
1. privacy compliant
2. does not send data to the developer’s servers,
3. is highly customizable and offers more features to organize your mails – so you can etablish your own email workflow.
I firmly believe that every user has different workflows for their email management, which is why YouniqMail should be Younique for every user.
It's tough to build an MVP quickly, because an email client requires many basic features to be developed before it's even usable. Even though development is already well advanced, there's still a long way to go. So follow us on our journey.
Really cool project Sven! I'm also building in that space.
Quick question: since Gmail requires the CASA security audit (which can run $15k+ if you request the sensitive scopes), how are you planning to approach that? Will you stick with IMAP/SMTP at first, or go through the audit once you’ve got traction?
Yeah I also came across this problem with this huge costs, so I will stick with IMAP/SMTP at first. I haven't implemented Gmail Accounts in YouniqMail yet, but I think you will miss some data or features without the API, so of course the audit or access to the API would be very nice, but yeah let's see. When there is 4+ or 5+-figure MRR maybe I will think about the CASA security audit again.
The user experience isn’t great right now, because you hit a big “Return to safety” warning, have to reconnect every 2 weeks, and there’s a hard cap of 100 users. So Google really makes it tough to digest.
One workaround (aparently) is using a provider like Nylas, which already has the CASA compliance badge. You authenticate through them, and they authenticate with Google. The trade-off: they charge about $3.50 per connected user/month, so you’d probably need to reserve Gmail integration for a premium subscription tier to make it sustainable.
Thank you very much for your explanation and suggestions. It's interesting that there are providers like Nylas. However, that wouldn't quite fit in with my data protection and security concept, because I want to avoid third-party services and servers so that the YouniqMail mail client only communicates directly with the corresponding mail server. That's why I'll probably start with the IMAP/SMTP variant for now.
I really like Superhuman; the only problem is its $350 annual fee.
What would you consider a fair price to pay for a good email client? And what (features) do you like about Superhuman?
Oh nice, sounds like the exact same problem I've encountered with email clients. Looking forward to a new, modern email client. I'll definitely follow along and sign up for the beta phase.