Inbox, a pioneering start-up helmed by alums of MIT and Dropbox, breaks its silence, bringing to the fore a state-of-the-art email platform. The platform is not dissimilar to the recently launched Gmail API and pledges to provide a contemporary approach to constructing applications that bridge the gap to end-users’ inboxes. Unlike its competitors, it promises wider compatibility, smoothly integrating with services like Yahoo and Microsoft Exchange, says the firm.
The company’s website features a self-assured statement, indirectly alluding to Google: “Not like Google, an ad company, Inbox narrows down its focus solely on email. This product is our cardinal focus and will not be unpredictably discontinued.”
The unveiling of “Gmail API” at its Google I/O developer conference carried Google to the centre stage of the tech world. This API delivers developers crafting email applications with sophisticated tools to tap into Gmail inbox components, doing away with the need for full inbox access. It aims to reduce reliance on older protocols like IMAP, especially when apps do not function as email clients but focus on specific features.
Like Google, Inbox intends to take a leap from the “outdated protocols and formats” that developers currently need to wrangle with to work on email, lending a hand to a larger developer demographic. This includes those in need of basic features as well as those aiming to build complete email clients for end-users.
MIT alumni Michael Grinich, former engineer at Dropbox and Nest designer, and Christine Spang, an early Linux kernel engineer at Ksplice, are part of the formidable team founding Inbox. The team boost of being MIT alumni, members experienced in Google and Firebase, and two graduates from MIT CSAIL’s Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group that offered their expertise to Meraki.
“The complexity of adding features to email apps, an issue I faced while writing my thesis at MIT, was instrumental in the birth of Inbox. The hurdles were not inconsequential, with problems arising from the underlying framework such as IMAP, MIME, character encodings. These are issues that Inbox is aiming to resolve for developers,” shares Grinich.
Inbox is laying the groundwork for establishing a new email standard, not limiting itself to just providing a developer toolkit. In real-world terms, this means offering the essential infrastructure as an open-source package. “We have made the sync engine freely available on GitHub to foster communication and pull requests,” Grinich explains. The open-source sync engine is already compatible with Yahoo and Gmail, and they plan to extend its reach to all IMAP providers in the near future. Microsoft Exchange’s business users can sign up for the Inbox Developer program that supports ActiveSync and is currently under private beta.
A handful of apps currently feature Inbox, with a few demo versions accessible on GitHub using Inbox SDKs (JavaScript or iOS). The Inbox API enables developers to access REST endpoints for sending, fetching, adapting emails, curating custom filters, handling attachments, drafting mails, and much more. What’s more? Developers get to use the Inbox APIs free of cost, without transferring email data to a third party.
Beginning today, developers can download the Inbox engine, sync an account, and commence building on top of the local development environment platform. The company intends to introduce a hosted variant of Inbox that enables developers to architect applications without the need to expand their own infrastructures.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Inbox draws support from Fuel Capital, SV Angel, CrunchFund (founded by the creator of TechCrunch), Data Collective, Betaworks, and others. Details about funding remain under wraps for now.
Paul Femi Balo is the founder and publisher of TechBooky. He covers artificial intelligence, African technology, digital infrastructure, enterprise technology and the global digital economy.
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