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Show HN: Marco, a privacy-first, offline-first email client (IMAP-native, no AI)
Hey HN. I'm Isaac, and I'm building Marco (<a href="https://marcoapp.io" rel="nofollow">https://marcoapp.io</a>), a cross-platform email client that works with any IMAP provider. macOS, iOS, and web today.<p>I started Marco because I finally lost patience with Apple Mail, and the email client market has a weird gap. Legacy clients look terrible and/or are not cross-platform. The good ones scan your data or cost $300+/year. And there's a graveyard of startups (Tempo, Big Mail, Caley) who built beautiful products and shut down after a year or two.<p>I made a few opinionated bets early on:<p>1. IMAP-first, not Gmail API-first. Nearly every email startup builds on the Gmail API. It's convenient, but it locks you into one provider. Marco is IMAP-native, which means it works with Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail, custom domains, and any provider that supports IMAP.<p>2. Offline-first. You should be able to read, reply, delete, and organise email on a plane with no wifi. When you reconnect, everything syncs. This requirement nearly killed me. I went through WatermelonDB, Triplit, InstantDB, PowerSync, and Replicache before landing on my current approach: regular HTTP endpoints with TanStack DB and TanStack Query, using IndexedDB on web and SQLite on mobile as storage layers. I ditched "fully fledged" sync engines entirely. Turns out, for my data volumes (hundreds of thousands of entities per user), every sync engine I tried either choked on performance or added complexity I didn't need. I wrote about this journey in detail: <a href="https://marcoapp.io/blog/offline-first-landscape" rel="nofollow">https://marcoapp.io/blog/offline-first-landscape</a><p>3. No AI. This is intentional. Every email client launching right now leads with AI. I think most of it is noise that none of us want or need. Marco is a tool. It should be fast, reliable, and stay out of your way. No email summarisation, no smart replies, no "AI powered" anything.<p>The stack is React Native with Expo, Node.js backend on Railway, Postgres, Redis, S3, etc (all privately networked). Yes, a lightweight backend is needed to facilitate things like push notifications. One codebase across all frontend platforms, 100% shared code.<p>Marco is bootstrapped and profitable at $8/month with a 7-day free trial. 2,000+ users, all organic. No VC, no paid marketing.<p>Would love feedback from HN. Happy to go deep on IMAP internals, the offline-first landscape, or any of the technical decisions.
Marco demonstrates impressive technical execution and organic traction, achieving profitability with 2,000+ paying users in a highly competitive 'red ocean' market. While the contrarian 'no AI' and IMAP-native approach appeals to a specific power-user niche, the venture-scale potential is tempered by the historical difficulty of scaling email clients into billion-dollar companies.