No one looks over your shoulder: not us, not the senders.

Postfach is a slim, fast mail app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Most mail apps keep your password on their servers so they can push notifications to you. Postfach has no servers: it talks to your mail server and to nothing else, and your password never leaves your Keychain.

60-day trial, then CHF 19.50 once for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Postfach on the Mac: the inbox with a message open

Mail software, not a mail service.

You buy Postfach once and run it yourself. It speaks IMAP and SMTP to your own mail server and keeps everything it knows on your device. There is no other place for it to go.

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No servers of ours

Not one, anywhere. No relay keeping your password so it can push a notification to your phone, no model reading your mail to summarise it, nothing counting what you do. The privacy label says “Data Not Collected”, which here describes how the app is built rather than a promise about how we behave.

Postfach has been through a series of security reviews, and their fixes are in the app. What changed →

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Fast, and offline

Every message is kept in full on your device. Reading works without a connection, search finds a word anywhere in years of mail in a fraction of a second, and the Archive lists them by year and month. More about search → · More about the Archive →

Templates

The replies you write again and again, with placeholders for the name, the address, the subject, and the date. Sorted into folders, one per language if you like, for every account or just one, and sent to your other devices by email, through your own mail. More about templates →

All Inboxes. One list over every account, newest first, with a menu above it to show a single account; under it All Drafts, All Sent, All Flagged, All Archives, All Junk, and All Trash, one list each.
Smart folders. A search you keep: a list in the sidebar of the messages that meet your conditions, from every account, with nothing moved. More about smart folders →
Statistics. What a full mailbox is made of: the people you have written to, newsletters and lists, and everything else, each kind's senders the largest first, with how much of their mail you have read. Counted on your device. More about Statistics →
Any IMAP account. Zimbra, Gmail, and the rest; Zimbra servers are found from the address alone.
No ghost messages on Zimbra. The empty messages from nobody, dated 1 January 1970, that come back after every delete do not appear in Postfach. More about Zimbra →
Notifications, and quiet Junk. A notice per message, an alert when a folder fills up, Time Sensitive if you want it to come through a Focus; spam your server filters out is never announced. More about junk →
Every account its own way. Its own interval, signatures, notifications, plain text or HTML, paused or read-only.
Drafts and an Outbox. A half-written message is kept in Drafts; one a server refused waits in the Outbox and says why.
Native on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. SwiftUI on all three, light and dark, in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, with text up to the largest accessibility sizes. More about the Mac →
Postfach Contacts. The people you write to and the senders you trust, in a book of the app's own: their mail stays out of Junk and their images load, where your server confirmed the sender. The few who matter most you pick into My People, with a mailbox of their own. More about trusted senders →
Addresses as tokens. A recipient is a token you drag from To into Cc or Bcc and back; a click shows the address behind the name.
Room on a small device. Each account can keep the text of its mail and leave attachments and pictures on your mail server; an attachment left there shows a cloud and comes back with a click or a tap. More about space →
Tracking blocked. The tracking pixels of known services, and invisible pictures, are taken out of a message before you see it, also when you load its remote images. The message says how many, and Settings › Privacy counts them, with a switch for each service. More about tracking →
Long conversations. A mailing list's conversation opens as a tree of replies, each under the message it answers, and Next Unread in Conversation takes you to the next message you have not read.
Attachments together. All of a message's attachments at once, into a folder or as one ZIP file.
Your setup on every device. Accounts, settings, templates, and junk rules get from one device to the next in a file or through your own mail, with no cloud in between. More about your devices →

Why not Apple Mail?

Your Mac and your iPhone come with a mail app, and for many people it is enough. Postfach is for the rest of us: the things it adds are the ones that come up when mail is part of the work.

Templates. The replies you write again and again, with placeholders for the name, the subject, and the date, in folders per language, per account if you like.
Search that is already done. Every word of every message is indexed on your device as it arrives, so from:, to:, subject:, and file: answer at once, offline, across years of mail.
An Archive in order. Listed by year, or by year and month, each with its count, and left out of a search unless you ask.
Pause an account. The work mailbox left alone over the weekend, its mail still readable, without removing it.
Junk rules of your own. Subjects with emoji, or written in an alphabet none of your correspondents use, moved to Junk as they arrive, and word rules you make from a message in Junk, which show what they catch while you pick the words; the senders you trust are never caught, and spam your server catches is never announced.
Every account its own settings. Its check interval, its signatures, where its replies are filed, its notifications, plain text or HTML, when it loads remote images, and how the account and the people in its mail are shown: by name, by address, or both.

What that costs you.

Three things Postfach does not do, because each one would need a server of ours holding something of yours.

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Instant push on the phone

To push mail for an ordinary IMAP account, an app has to keep your password on its own server and watch your mailbox from there. On the Mac, Postfach holds its own connection and new mail appears within seconds. On the iPhone and the iPad it shows new mail at once while it is open; in the background it checks when iOS lets it, a few times an hour to a few times a day. That is the trade, and it is the only one we made.

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Summaries and smart replies

No model of ours or anyone else's sees a word of your mail, so nothing summarises your inbox, sorts it by importance, or drafts an answer for you. If that is what you want from a mail app, this is the wrong one, and we would rather say so here than have you find out later.

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Anything to measure

No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifier. We do not know how many mailboxes you keep, which features you use, or whether you opened the app today. So when something breaks we hear of it only if you tell us. The app hands you its log for that, and it holds folder names, counts and timings, never message text, addresses or passwords.

See what a full mailbox is made of.

Thousands of unread messages are too many to go through, so nobody does. Statistics is a second view of a mailbox, beside its messages: it sorts the mail into people you have written to, newsletters and lists, and everything else, and lists each kind's senders, the largest first, with how much of their mail you have read.

The largest senders by messages, by unread, or by size
A company that writes from several addresses is one sender, and so is a mailing list
A sender's mail opens as the list you know, to read, archive, or delete
Counted on your device: looking changes nothing, and nothing is sent anywhere
On the Mac, the iPhone, and the iPad

More about Statistics →

Search that has already read everything.

Postfach indexes the full text of every message as it arrives. A search runs on your device against that index, so results come back at once, whether you are on a plane or on a slow connection, and nobody but you sees what you searched for.

Whole words and prefixes, across all folders or in one
A filter for unread, flagged, or with attachments, in the list and in search
Conversations gathered under the message you are reading
Find in the open message and through its conversation: ⌘F on the Mac, Find in Message on the iPhone and the iPad
The Archive listed by year and month, and left out of a search unless you ask
A Flagged mailbox under each account, while it has flagged mail

More about search → · More about the Archive →

Postfach on the Mac: writing a new message

On the Mac, new mail in seconds.

On the Mac, Postfach keeps a connection open to each inbox, so your server tells it the moment a message arrives, with no server of ours in between. Menus, windows, and keyboard shortcuts are where a Mac app has them.

Double-click a message to open it in a window of its own, with Reply, Archive, and Print
Print with ⌘P: the header over the message as you see it, on white paper in Dark Mode too
Paste a file copied in the Finder, or a screenshot, into a new message, or drop files on it, and they are attached
The recipients by keyboard: the arrow keys move from address to address, the delete key removes the selected one, and Tab takes a suggested address
Make Postfach your default mail app, and mailto: links open a new message in it. For shortcuts and scripts, Postfach has a link of its own
Keys for everything you do often: the keyboard shortcuts

A support conversation about adding a Gmail account open in a window of its own, with Reply, Forward, Print, Archive, Delete, Junk, Move, and Flag in its toolbar

The same app on the iPhone and the iPad.

One purchase covers all three. The phone shows your mailboxes in a drawer, the iPad in a column beside the list and the message. Both swipe to delete, flag, mark unread, or archive, and keep checking your inboxes in the background while they are put away.

Notifications for new mail, per account, with the sender, the subject, and the first lines
HTML mail with scripts off and remote images blocked until you ask
Folders: create, rename, move, and delete, on the server
Pause an account: the work mailbox left alone over the weekend, its mail still readable
Write in HTML with bold, italic, and links, or in plain text, per message or per account
Select several messages to mark or delete them at once

Postfach on the iPhone: reading a message

Postfach on the iPhone: the mailboxes drawer

On the iPad, side by side.

The mailboxes, the list, and the message in three columns, the sidebar out of the way when you want the room. With no message open, Eddie sits on the empty pane and plays with a ball you can throw with a finger.

The same purchase as on the Mac and the iPhone
New Message and Get new mail at the top of the mailboxes
Eddie sleeps while Postfach is in the background, and Settings › Appearance turns Eddie off

Postfach on the iPad: the mailboxes, the list, and a message side by side

One purchase for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Postfach has no running costs on your behalf, so it has no running charges either. No subscription.

CHF 19.50 once

The App Store shows the price in your currency.

You can use every feature for 60 days before deciding. After that a single purchase, Postfach Pro, keeps mail flowing on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad together. What is already on your device stays readable and searchable either way.

Bought through the App Store, tied to your Apple Account. Major new versions may be sold separately; the version you bought keeps working.

Updates are part of it: what changed in each version.

Questions people ask.

Where is my mail stored?

On your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, in the app's own container, as the original messages plus a search index. Nowhere else. Deleting the app deletes the copy; your mail stays on your mail server.

Does it work with Gmail?

Yes, with an app password from your Google Account. The setup sheet fills in the servers and tells you where to create one. Gmail's labels appear as folders.

Will notifications on the iPhone be instant?

While the app is open, yes: it keeps a connection to your server. In the background, iOS lets the app check its inboxes now and then; instant delivery would need a server of ours holding your credentials, which is exactly what Postfach does not do.

What happens when the trial ends?

The app stops checking for and sending mail until Postfach Pro is bought. Everything already on your device stays readable and searchable. The purchase is tied to your Apple Account and covers the Mac, the iPhone, and the iPad.

Who makes Postfach

esense GmbH in Basel, Switzerland, a small independent company. There is no support department: the person who made the app reads the mail. Questions and contact →

Why I built it

What made me build this app was a call from my trusted hosting provider, asking whether one of my important email addresses had anything to do with a big cloud provider. I was surprised, because it didn't. Then it turned out that the mail app I was using relied on that service to send push notifications. Well: since I had tried almost every mail app out there and was never quite happy, I decided to build my own.

I built every feature of this app because I need it in my daily work. My work means reading 20 different accounts, so I needed a mail app with the things that make my day easier:

A clear layout for many accounts: split into groups that fold open and closed
A junk filter of its own that filters by alphabet and emoji, extendable with your own words
Templates in several languages, easy to exchange between two devices with the same account
Folder alerts: when a folder suddenly holds more than n messages, you get an alert (for server log mails)
Colourful icons and debug info for messages

The app runs quite well now, and maybe someone else will find it useful too. Have fun with it – I'd love to hear your feedback.