Mailpile is a free and open-source email client with a strong emphasis on privacy and usability, written in Python. Rather than acting as a hosted webmail service, it runs on your own machine and exposes both a fast web interface and a command-line interface, indexing your mailbox in a local search engine so results appear instantly. OpenPGP encryption is built in, making encrypted mail a first-class part of the workflow rather than an add-on.

Key Features

• Local full-text search — indexes mail in its own engine for near-instant search across large archives.
• Built-in OpenPGP — encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify messages directly from the interface.
• Tagging model — organise mail with flexible tags and saved searches instead of rigid folders.
• Web UI and CLI — use the browser interface or drive it from the command line.
• Multiple accounts — manage several IMAP accounts from a single installation.
• Self-hosted and local — your mail and keys stay on hardware you control.

Why Use Mailpile?

Mailpile suits users who want a private, self-hosted mail client with encryption built in and search that rivals desktop clients. Because mail is indexed locally, searching an archive of tens of thousands of messages stays fast. Its tagging approach is more flexible than classic folder hierarchies for users who file mail in several ways at once.

Note on development: Mailpile has remained in release-candidate status for several years (latest tag 1.0.0rc6) and repository commits are infrequent — treat it as a mature but slow-moving project.

Use Cases

• Privacy-focused users who want PGP-encrypted mail with minimal setup
• Self-hosters who want a local webmail-style client for their own IMAP accounts
• Users with very large mail archives who need fast local search

Platform

Linux · macOS (Python; runs as a local service accessed through a browser or the command line)

Licence

AGPL-3.0 — free and open source software.

Website

mailpile.is · GitHub