reMail Blog

reMail is now Open Source

Fri, 5 Mar 2010 18:12:48 +0000

Last month, we announced reMail's acquisition by Google. Since we'll be focusing on other projects at Google, we also decided to remove reMail from the App Store. Existing users were able to keep using it because reMail is a client-only application. Our announcement caused a lot of interest in reMail's product, and we looked at a number of options to make it available in some form. We decided that the best option was to open source the code, which is now available on Google Code as remail-iphone under the Apache 2.0 License.

As someone who is passionate about mobile email, my hope is that developers interested in making email-related apps can use reMail code as a starting point. Part of the reason email apps are hard is because you have to pay the tax of figuring out how to download email via IMAP, parse MIME messages, handle attachments, and store data. reMail has already solved these problems. If you have a great mobile email idea, I hope you will find reMail's source code helpful in your quest.

I put some effort into documenting the source code so you can get started on your ideas quickly. If you like reMail and want to improve it, I have also listed some potential projects with implementation tips. Most of these projects are features that users have requested in the past. I encourage you to contribute improvements back to the project. I've also created the group remail-iphone on Google Groups, which is a great place to ask questions. Best of luck with your projects!

Google Code: remail-iphone

reMail Acquired by Google

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:37:57 +0000

I'm thrilled to announce that Google has acquired reMail! I will be joining Google in Mountain View as a Product Manager on the Gmail team.

Gmail is where my obsession with email started as an engineering intern back in 2004, and I'm thrilled to be coming back to a place with so many familiar faces. reMail's goal was reimagine mobile email, and I'm proud we have built a product that so many users find useful. Still, I feel like we've only seen the beginning of what's possible. Google is the best place in the world to improve the status quo on how people communicate and share information. If you have what it takes to make these changes happen, I encourage you to reach out and come join me.

You might be wondering what will happen with reMail's product. Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail's iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store. reMail is an application on your phone. If you already have reMail, it will continue to work. We'll even provide support for you until the end of March, and we've enabled all paid reMail features for you: You can activate these by clicking "Restore Purchases" inside the app. reMail downloads email directly from your email provider to your phone, and your personal information, passwords, and email are never sent to or stored on our servers.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the people that helped make reMail a success. Fabian Siegel, Einar Vollset, Sridhar Srinivasan, Paul Bohm, Marissa Coughlin, Erol Koc, Matt Ronge, and Stefano Barbato have all contributed to building a great product. Our investors saw the potential in improving mobile email and took a bet on reMail in the darkest days of the recession. I couldn't be more grateful to YCombinator: Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Kate Courteau, and Trevor Blackwell all have provided invaluable guidance. Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh endured my slide deck on our multi-step plan for global email domination, and pointed out that instead I should build something small, simple, and useful. It worked.

reMail 2.11 is Out!

Wed, 3 Feb 2010 19:50:12 +0000

Please update via the "App Store" app on your iPhone. reMail 2.11 has a couple of bugfixes, and one cool new feature: The view of folder contents is now updated instantly as reMail downloads mails. A lot of users have requested this, and it's finally in the product.

We're also updating all users of reMail for Gmail to a new version that supports multiple accounts and all the good stuff since 2.4 - we found out that a lot of users are still on reMail for Gmail and we thought they'd probably enjoy a long-due update.

How Friends Use reMail

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:15:39 +0000

I'm always happy to get feedback from my friends on reMail and get a sense of how they use the product. While they're likely not representative of the whole userbase, their input is still valuable, and I can actually watch them use the product and find bottlenecks. Here are two examples:

I have an Indian-American friend who flies back to India once a year for a multi-week trip. Since he's worried about AT&T overcharging him, he switches the phone to airplane mode for the entire trip. He uses reMail to find all the addresses and travel plans he needs, and occasionally downloads the newest emails over Wifi. He's been asking for HTML support in reMail, which is definitely on my list of things to do next.
My friend Axel lives in Germany and uses an old Nokia as his cell phone, because it's small and the battery lasts forever. He also has an iPod Touch which he's primarily used for gaming and listening to music. Since he doesn't have email access on his Nokia, and his iPod Touch doesn't have GSM, he uses reMail to have access to his email archives when he's not at home or at school.

Have a reMail story to share? Use the "Support/Feedback" button in reMail to send it straight to me!

reMail 2.11 Submitted for App Store Review

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:34:48 +0000

I just submitted reMail V2.11 for App Store review.

It has one pretty cool feature: The view of folder contents is now updated instantly as reMail downloads mails. A lot of users have requested this, and it's finally in the product.

reMail 2.11 should be on the App Store soon.

FCC Chairman (Jokingly) Endorses reMail

Thu, 7 Jan 2010 18:44:49 +0000

GigaOm kindly invited me to a GigaOm session yesterday with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski yesterday. In the discussion, Genachowski discussed issues around net neutrality and the looming constraint on wireless spectrum.

At the start of the event, the Chairman joked about how he had mentioned his fascination with an iPhone App at a conference, only to find that company come back to him and ask for an official endorsement, which as an impartial government agency the FCC can't give.

When the time arrived for the Q&A session, I stood up to ask a question about FCC's involvement in regulating the mobile app stores. Here's what happened. You can see this exchange at time index 44:45 (displayed in the player as -18:10):

Gabor: Hi this is Gabor from reMail, we develop iPhone applications. So ...
Genachowski: [jokingly] I endorse your company.
[laughter]
Audience member: Sit down, you're done!
Gabor: Um - I'm going to keep standing and ask the following question ...
Genachowski: Am I in trouble now?
Gabor: I'll put that on our website this afternoon.

And here's the post, as promised. If this post gets taken down, you'll know why it happened.

If you can't see the player, click here.

Watch live streaming video from gigaomtv at livestream.com

reMail 2.8 on the App Store

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:17:12 +0000

reMail 2.8 was approved by Apple right after Christmas, while I was out snowboarding in the Swiss Alps. It's a minor bugfix release, so it's not imperative that you upgrade.

We added a workaround for GMX users who were experiencing Protocol Errors caused by GMX's IMAP implementation. We also improved the speed of the "Status" screen which used to take several seconds to appear for people with tens of thousands of emails. It should now appear instantly.

reMail 2.8 Submitted to App Store

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:24:38 +0000

We just submitted reMail 2.8 to the App Store. It will be a small update with some UI speedups and a bugfix for users with GMX accounts. (It turns out GMX doesn't completely follow the IMAP protocol specifications. There's now a workaround in reMail to deal with their server.)

Until then: Happy Holidays from the reMail team!

"Search All Your Rackspace Email on Your iPhone with reMail"

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:25:35 +0000

Here's what Rackspace writes about reMail:

You know this situation: You’re traveling and you need to look up your flight confirmation, meeting time, or hotel reservation. All this information is in your email. We partnered up with the team at reMail to offer Rackspace Email customers a solution to this problem — and get a great deal at the same time!

We're offering Rackspace Email customers a reduced price on reMail functionality. Read all about it here.

reMail hearts Rackspace

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:48:44 +0000

We've partnered up with Rackspace to bring their 1.5 million email hosting customers a more integrated, cheaper version of reMail: You can connect any number of Rackspace email accounts to your reMail for $0.99, instead of the $4.99 we charge for any IMAP account.

This feature is available in reMail 276, which is now available in the App Store. This new version brings a bunch of new stuff: Person searches are now faster, the UI is smoother, and you can set up Push notifications to remind you to download your latest email.

We've also changed reMail to be a free download. You can then buy support for other types of accounts via In-App purchase. We believe that this is a better model than charging the entire amount upfront. This way you can test drive reMail and see how useful it is!

Existing customers get reMail 2.7 for free. All the In-App purchase options will be marked as purchased (if this doesn't happen, please drop us a line in Settings > Feedback). We're phasing out reMail for Gmail in favor of a single edition of reMail: If you've used reMail for Gmail in the past, please download reMail.

Read more about this on the Rackspace Apps Blog!

reMail's New Business Model

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:17:19 +0000

reMail is now available on the App Store for free:

Support for Gmail and Google Mail accounts is included for free. You can purchase IMAP support inside the application,by clicking on "Buy reMail Features". IMAP support costs $3.99:

I think that this is the model that we'll see most apps trending towards: A true Freemium model. Apps will be free. Users can buy additional features that will make the app more useful and valuable. Rather than paying $4.99 upfront, reMail users can now buy the same features once they've been able to try out the app with a Gmail account.

Blue to Red to Blue

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:43:34 +0000

If you're a reMail user and regularly update your apps, you might have noticed that reMail's icon went from blue to red, and red to blue, over the course of the last weeks. Why?

We switched to red after seeing this blog entry by Jeremiah Lee. Yes, blue is the default choice for icon colors. Choosing blue doesn't make you stand out. We wanted reMail to stand out.

We received a bunch of support emails in the past week about the new icon. Most of it negative. One user joked how 2.6 was our "Holiday Edition". We caved in, and in 2.7, we went back to blue.

reMail 2.7 is Out! Please Update

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:05:53 +0000

reMail 2.7 just got approved! It's a bugfix release that fixes the bugs in reMail 2.6.

Thanks to all the users who reported these bugs within hours of releasing reMail 2.6. Also, a big shout-out to Apple's App Store team for reviewing this so quickly.

If you're on reMail 2.6, please use iPhone > App Store > Updates > reMail > Update to get the newest version.

And if you were wondering: yes, the application icon is back to blue.

Update 1: There seems to be an App Store bug. It shows you 2.7, but when you click update, it downloads 2.6. We're hoping Apple will fix this soon.

Update 2: The App Store problem appears to be fixed. Happy upgrading!

The Vision for reMail

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 19:51:29 +0000

Where is reMail headed? I wrote up some thoughts on my personal blog.

Some Bugs in 2.6

Sun, 6 Dec 2009 20:04:33 +0000

There are some bugs in V2.6 of reMail. We've fixed them and submitted 2.7 about 12 hours ago (yes, on a Saturday night :-).

These things happen. We should have been more careful in QA with the final 2.6 release. Here's the list of problems:

"Clear Search History" and "Clear Attachment Cache" make reMail crash
Email accounts can't be deleted. (You can use iPhone Home > Settings > reMail to Reset all data as a workaround, but will need to re-download the mail from other accounts)
"Time estimate to complete download" is displayed incorrectly in some cases

None of these bugs affect the core search experience. To all those writing bad App Store reviews: We understand your frustration. We're sorry about these bugs. A fix is on the way.

How to Restore Your Features in V2.6

Sat, 5 Dec 2009 18:12:26 +0000

reMail 2.6 just hit the App Store. I'll write more about the new features in an upcoming post.

One major point of confusion has been that for some users who have previously purchased reMail, some features are now missing. The first time reMail starts up after the 2.6 upgrade, it checks for previous purchases, but if you're offline, it can't do that, and it assumes you got the software for free.

How to Fix: In reMail, click Settings > Buy > Restore Purchases. You should now have all your features back.

If that doesn't work, send us a message in Settings > Feedback and we'll work with you to resolve this.

The Wait for 2.6

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:33:47 +0000

I'm hoping for a quick approval for reMail 2.6. It has a bunch of yummy new features & speed-ups. But most of all, it has a bunch of bugfixes that affected a bunch of users. I've been sending all users who've experienced these bugs beta builds, but I'm running out of UDIDs on our developer accounts.

reMail 2.6 was submitted to the App Store on Thursday, 11/19, at 9 am Pacific (yeah, I put submission dates in my calendar). I hope it will be on the App Store in the next few days.

Recent reMail Reviews on the App Store

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:42:53 +0000

As we're continuing to improve reMail, App Store reviews are also becoming more and more positive. I was very happy to see these pop up - this is evidence that we're headed in the right direction!

outstanding app!

by ilya239 on Nov 23, 2009 v2.5

I've wanted this functionality for a long time; it was more important for me than most other iPhone functions. Finally, there's an app for this. I've only used it a bit but so far, works extremely well. Many thanks to the developers!

reMail has replaced my gmail search

by imosquera on Nov 18, 2009 v2.5

reMail does such a great job of searching e-mails that I no longer use the gmail search because its faster. it can also do searches when the iphone is completely offline like on an airplane or on the metro which has already been a life-saver. great app! highly suggested!

Excellent app

by VDC5087 on Nov 4, 2009 v2.5

App is fast, easy to use and the search function is the best I have used. Far superior to the native search on the gmail iPhone app. Could not be more pleased.

Incredible!

by swilcox on Oct 28, 2009 v2.5

I've had reMail for less than 24 hours and already feel I can't live without it. Gorgeous application, stunningly efficient. This is how an iPhone application should perform. Email is a critical part of my workflow and reMail will make a significant improvement in my effectiveness. I have to admit I hesitated at the $5 price (how telling that a $5 application, the cost of a latte, gives us pause). But it was clearly money well spent. Wholeheartedly recommended!

Excited for reMail 2.6!

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:51:22 +0000

We just submitted reMail 2.6 to the App Store with a lot of bug fixes and a very useful new feature.

reMail 2.6 also has a lot of speed optimizations for startup time and searched.

We're excited to see this on the App Store soon!

reMail now with Multiple Account Support

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:39:57 +0000

I'm happy to announce that reMail 2.5 just hit the App Store. It implements our #1 most requested feature: Multi-account support!

reMail can now download emails from all your accounts. Not only can you have all your email with you, but this will also let you search all of your email in all your accounts from one single search box!

This new version also brings a revamped UI and home screen. This is what it looks like:

We also implemented the #2 most requested feature: reMail can now show you the contents of your folders. One note for Gmail users: If you've been having reMail download all your mail, it has only been syncing your "All Mail" folder. In case you want folders to work, you'll have to remove and re-add your account.

reMail comes in two flavors. For $4.99, you get a version with access to any IMAP account and multiple account support. reMail for Gmail is free, but will only support one Gmail account.

reMail's Support Philosophy

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:06:40 +0000

reMail solves a big pain point for many users. But it isn't perfect. As with any product, there will be problems, bugs, and features that still need to be implemented. This post is about how we're making reMail better, integrating your feedback.

We read every Tweet, Email, and Support Post

When you contact us, there is a human at the other end of the line. There are no automated emails with boilerplate tips. We try to respond to every single one, and do so as quickly as possible.

I think a lot of startups make the mistake of hiring support staff pretty quickly, thus moving the eyes of developers off the pain points of the users. It's easy for engineering to get distracted and start implementing new things instead of fixing old bugs.

Users like responsiveness: A lot of them are positively surprised, and while we can't fix every issue, at least it's clear that we care.

Ad Hoc Beta Program

If there is a customer issue that we can fix, we try to find a solution as quickly as possible and send that person a pre-release build. Apple calls this “Ad Hoc distribution”. There are now almost 200 people in our beta. Since Apple allows only 100 devices per account, we've exhausted more than one Apple developer account to get there (we have a company account and some personal accounts). Apple will grant us another 100 devices when our account turns a year old, and I'm looking forward to that day!

A New Version Every 2 Weeks

Our goal is to have a new version of reMail on the App Store every 2 weeks. We average at around 2.5. That's about the time it takes for Apple to approve updates. iPhone users love updates. Not every single version we've released has been perfect. Yet it's satisfying for users to see forward movement on one of their favorite apps. It's a gentle reminder that we care.

Moving Fast

Paul Graham didn't attribute this, but this is my quote: "Fast iteration is the key to success." We try to push out easy things, bugfixes, and small improvements as quickly as possible. As a developer, this is also very satisfying.

Facebook correctly identifies the tradeoff when they say "Move Fast and Break Things". Obviously we don't want broken versions to be in the App Store, given that it takes about 2 weeks to get an update through. So how can we be fast, yet have reMail not break for most people?

There's a New reMail Almost Every Day

Our beta program allows us to do a new release to some users every day. These releases are incremental: Often it's just to fix a specific issue that one customer contacted us about, and we send her a personalized version of the product. Sometimes, rather than fixing problems, these releases break things. We've found that most beta users don't mind these broken versions, as long as we show that there's forward momentum.

This beta program and the relentlessness with which we push them out has probably been the #1 driver of cracking down on bugs. We're especially careful with releases that make it on the App Store and try to distribute them as widely as possible. With email, there are a lot of weird edge cases that can't be reproduced in our lab, so it's better to check against a large corpus of emails. The combined email volume of our beta users probably numbers in the millions. But even that won't catch every misformatted email, crash, or display bug. But we'll keep pushing on.

iPhone Mail Search vs. reMail Search

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:07:58 +0000

I just made this video that briefly illustrates two of the main differences between iPhone Mail's Search and reMail Search. reMail search is faster and will find words that appear in the bodies of emails, not just in the headers.

Gotta love it when you can clearly illustrate two technical points in just 32 seconds!

Excited for 2.5!

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:27:02 +0000

We just finished coding up reMail 2.5, the future version of reMail. It will take a while to get approved on the App Store, but it will rock your world!

German reMail Review: "reMail is how Mail should be"

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:08:48 +0000

Know German? You should read this review of reMail by Computerwoche Blogger Thomas Cloer.

This nicely continues our international theme - just last week we released reMail in French.

reMail Hot in Europe - Now Available in French

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 19:39:09 +0000

reMail is hot in Europe: While our #1 country is still the US, it's immediately followed by the Germany, UK, France, and the rest of the European countries.

What's the appeal of reMail to Europeans? In Europe, if you get into a car, pick a direction, and drive for 2 hours, you end up in a different country. A country where you have to pay data roaming fees. Having all your email on your phone means that you won't have to pay them.

reMail has always been localized to German, and we've just added French:

Thanks to our volunteers who helped with translating reMail to French: Raymond Chenon, Michael Maillot, Christophe Dessimoz, and Christophe Baillon!

reMail 2.4.1 Released

Sun, 4 Oct 2009 17:45:29 +0000

reMail 2.4.1 is out! This version has a bunch of bugfixes and fixes some UI details. You can update using your iPhone: iPhone > App Store > Updates > "reMail" > Update or Update All

Here's what's new:

New Search Operators: "sender:", "tos:", "ccs:" - I'll write more about these in an upcoming post.
Incremental Search: 2.3 used to always display search results on a new page when you hit "More Results". 2.4.1 shows these results incrementally.
Time ordering: Some of our users had problems with email search results being shown out-of-order when they had many folders. This is now fixed, but you might need to delete and re-sync reMail for the ordering to be correct in all cases. You can do this in iPhone > Settings > reMail > Reset All Data
Japanese and Asian language bodies: They should now be displayed correctly. Some of our users are still seeing bugs syncing Japanese messages, though. We're aiming to fix that soon.
French Localization

Also, a big shout-out to the Apple App Store review team: We initially got V2.4 approved on the App Store on Thursday. That version had a small bug that caused reMail to crash when syncing certain messages. After a frenzied email to Apple, 2.4.1 got approved around 48 hours later. Thanks, Apple!

New: reMail for Gmail

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:55:56 +0000

Today we're launching reMail for Gmail. It's available on the App Store for $1.99 (€ 1.59, £ 1.19).

reMail for Gmail is a cheaper version of reMail that only supports accounts on Gmail, Google Mail, and Google Apps for Your Domain.

Like the version that supports any IMAP account (which costs $9.99), it downloads all your emails to your iPhone and lets you search them at light speed.

It's available on the App Store now! If you haven't bought reMail yet, and have a Gmail account, this is your chance to get reMail's power at a lower price.

Get it here!

New version: reMail V2.3 - Please Update!

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:16:36 +0000

reMail 2.3 got approved in the App Store a few hours ago!

Please update to the newest version using the "Updates" feature of the iPhone's App Store application. Detailed instructions are here.

This release is primarily a bugfix release and fixes a bunch of issues that people reported in previous versions:

Now allows downloading and opening Word and Excel files (.doc and .xls)
Now you can search for sender, tos, and ccs (I'll write about this more in an upcoming blog post).
Fixed errors when downloading messages
reMail now has better error reporting and allows you skip messages where errors keep occurring

With this new release, as announced, we're also ending the special promotion price. reMail will now cost $9.99.

We're going to continue to fix issues as they come in. reMail 2.4 is already in the works! If you're still seeing any problems, we're happy to help: Just contact us via our Get Satisfaction support page.

'reMail App Makes Mockery of iPhone Mail'

Sun, 6 Sep 2009 20:43:40 +0000

Check out this review on TrustedReviews, a European tech news site:

"I don't often write about individual smartphone apps, but this one catches my attention because 1. It's rather good and 2. it shows Apple how proper email search should be done.

'reMail 2' (#1 passed us by) is a remarkably fast and comprehensive alternative to the iPhone's own default mail client. Much like the existing client, it can download new email, reply or forward it and write and send new emails. What is its key differentiator however is lightning fast, full text search."

Gmail Down == Prime Time for reMail Users

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 20:34:34 +0000

Gmail is down.

If you had reMail, you could still be searching your email at light speed. That's because reMail has all your email on your phone.

Also, for most people, IMAP access seems to still be working. If you buy reMail right now, it can start syncing and searching your mail from Gmail.

$4.99 Price Extended

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 17:51:16 +0000

I've extended the $4.99 price for reMail for another couple of days. I was going to raise the price with the arrival of V2.3, but I didn't factor in enough time for the App Store approval process.

My App Store calculus tells me that V2.3 will hit the store sometime around Sep 10. Once V2.3 is out, reMail will be $9.99.

Updates will be free. If you get V2.2 now, you'll be updated to V2.3 without charge.

New reMail Videos

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:04:36 +0000

I put together reMail's launch video in a haste a few days before launch. With the help of a video pro, we re-recorded the whole thing. We also added some real-life shots of reMail to show off how fast it really is. Here's the result:

Then I got a haircut (as you will see in a minute) and shot another video. In this one, I talk about how to set up reMail with your Gmail or IMAP account:

A lot of people have asked about how to do advanced searches in reMail. Our full-text search engine is pretty powerful. To illustrate its power, I put together this video that talks you through reMail's advanced search options.

On these last two, you can can see how late it got on the iPhone's clock. I was recording these videos pretty late into the night. Enjoy!

reMail V2.2 is Out - Please Update

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:22:16 +0000

reMail 2.2 just got approved in the App Store! On your iPhone, click Home > App Store > Updates, then apply the update either by clicking on reMail 2 > Update, or by clicking "Update All". This update is free.

You can verify that the update process war successful by going to the "Status" screen. It should say "V2.2" on the bottom left.

V2.2 is a bugfix release that fixes many of the issues that were reported after we launched reMail. For example, if you're seeing errors 26 or 31, this release will fix them. If you're still seeing problems, please report them on our Get Satisfaction page. reMail 2.3 is already on its way!

Another Quick Update

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:58:11 +0000

We've spent the days (and nights) since the launch fixing reMail bugs reported by users. Almost all of the problems submitted via reMail's Get Satisfaction page have now been fixed in a beta version.

An update (reMail V2.2) is pending in the App Store, but it will likely take another few days for Apple to approve it.

More Press for reMail

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:05:25 +0000

I wrote previously about all the coverage we got for reMail. But there's even more!

One of our followers on Twitter wrote^* that he heard reMail mentioned on Leo Laporte's "This Week in Google" (at 1:04:40). After listening to Leo's reassuring voice explaining reMail, I would totally have bought the product. If you find anything not mentioned here, just drop us a line or leave a comment right here!

Until then, here's some more great reMail press.

This story in Xconomy, a business news publication, highlights a very real use case for reMail:

"The first app grabbed my attention because of my recent brush with almost-literal highway robbery. My drive to Michigan last week to visit my parents took me through southern Ontario. Soon after I crossed over Buffalo’s Peace Bridge into Fort Erie, this astonishing little SMS message popped up on my iPhone: “AT&T Free Message: International data rate of $15.00/MB applies. Unlimited domestic data rate plan does NOT apply outside the U.S.

I immediately put my phone into airplane mode, fearful of receiving any more SMS messages or e-mails, which, at $15 per megabyte, would have cost me more than the gas I was burning. That meant I was effectively off the grid during the four hours it took to cross this little corner of Canada. I survived the hardship—but the experience did highlight the problem that outrageous roaming charges can pose for travelers who use mobile e-mail a lot.

As it happens, a new app called reMail can take some of the sting out of this dilemma. It went live in the iTunes App Store yesterday, and I learned about it from Jessica Livingston at Y Combinator, the California venture incubator where reMail got its start. ReMail stores your entire e-mail archive on your iPhone, which means you can read your messages without ever having to go online."

-- Wade Roush, Startups Give E-mail a Big Boost on the iPhone with ReMail and GPush, Xconomy

"The iPhone does have Spotlight search already built-in, but Spotlight has a limitation. It can only search what is stored on your phone. For an email account, this means that it can only search a couple hundred messages, not the account’s entire archives. And how often is the email you are searching for one of the most recent two hundred? In my case, the answer is rarely.

reMail works by connecting to your Gmail or other IMAP-enabled email account. It downloads the entire archives of the account onto your phone, making it searchable in the app."

-- Nancy Nally, reMail: Email Search for the iPhone, WebWorkerDaily

"iPhone mail search is fine. reMail iPhone mail search is actually good [...] reMail archives all your message text as far back as you want, letting you search full text—not just subjects—without a network connection."

-- John Herrman, The Week In iPhone Apps: Sorting Emails, Crushing Empires, Gizmodo

"[The iPhone's] level of search is certainly a good start, but it doesn't compare to newly-released app ReMail, which can index an entire e-mail account and do full-text search within all your messages. You want to find a word or phrase in an e-mail body? It can do that, and it's fast. Better yet, it doubles as its own e-mail app, so you can open up and read messages; copy parts to stick in new messages; or forward, reply, and delete--all without leaving the interface.

-- Josh Lowenssohn, ReMail brings full-text e-mail search to the iPhone, cnet

[*] Cool Twitter name, by the way.

reMail Quality Update #2

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:59:56 +0000

I wrote about some of the kinks in our first release here. We now have a beta that fixes most of the bugs that have been reported. If you want in on the beta, drop me a line with your UDID - my personal email is here.

We also submitted the beta to the App Store a few minutes ago. It should be up on the App Store sometime next week.

reMail Press Roundup

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:51:17 +0000

I'm super excited about all the positive coverage we've been getting for reMail's launch! I'm happy we built a product that solves a real-life problem for users. It looks like there are still kinks we still need to iron out, but the product has definitely struck a nerve:

"ReMail's smart auto-completion makes searching for emails easy and you can reply to emails right from within the application. The real game changer here, of course, is that you can finally search all your email from the iPhone, even if you are offline. What really makes the app stand out, though, is how fast it can search through your emails, even if you have downloaded thousands of emails."

-- Frederic Lardinois, reMail - Fast full-text email search on the iPhone, ReadWriteWeb

"Downloading or searching emails that are on the server (rather than on your phone) can be a pretty painful experience, especially given the continuing spottiness of AT&T’s mobile network. Now an iPhone application called reMail wants to end your suffering by downloading all your emails onto your phone."

-- Anthony Ha, reMail brings better email search to the iPhone, VentureBeat

"People calling for better e-mail search on the iPhone are getting a possible answer: reMail. The software app downloads e-mail to your iPhone or iPod touch and lets you search the full text of the copy -- even offline."

-- Jennifer LeClaire, reMail Searches Text in E-Mail on iPhone, iPod Touch, Sci-Tech Today

"Apple has done a decent job with email on the iPhone, but now there’s a better way to deal with the thousands of messages some of us receive. reMail, a new app for the iPhone, launched today, and it offers email capabilities that rival desktop equivalents."

-- James Kendrick, reMail brings offline email searching to the iPhone, GigaOm

reMail Quality Update

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:18:16 +0000

Looks like this was a really successful launch for reMail! We got some rave reviews in the press and from users (just check out these TechCrunch comments).

reMail works great for most people, but there are a handful problems that people have been reporting. I thought I'd write a blog post to openly discuss the bugs we've been seeing and how we'll address them.

We're working on these problems and will try to have an update ready for App Store submission by Monday night. Then it will take a while to have it go through the App Store approval process. We'll keep you informed on this blog. Downloading the updates will be free, of course.

These are the bugs we're working on:

Error number 26: This was initially reported here and happens when you have a misformatted message in your IMAP account - reMail can't parse the headers that that are sent to it from the IMAP server.
Update: We have a beta that fixes this error.
Emails with incorrect sender names: Originally reported here. This one is weird: Emails show up as coming from the wrong sender. I'm not entirely sure what causes this, but if you're seeing this problem and live in SF, please ping me. The user who reported this issue wrote that uninstalling and reinstalling reMail fixed his problem.
Update: We have a beta that fixes this error.
Connection errors on huge inboxes: I ran into Justin Kan this morning. He has an inbox with a whopping 469,000 messages. When he starts up reMail for the first time, it is stuck at counting these messages. I will post a workaround for this on our support site.

If you're seeing problems with reMail, please check out our FAQ and our GetSatisfaction page.

Update: We have a beta that fixes almost all the errors that have been reported. If you want in on the beta, contact me. My personal email is here.

TechCrunch: reMail 2.0 Nails Full-Text Search For The iPhone

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:48:30 +0000

Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch writes in reMail 2.0 Nails Full-Text Search For The iPhone:

"The new version of reMail downloads the entire contents of your Mailbox — every single message — onto your iPhone, which it then stores locally. That may sound undesirable for those of us with large Email boxes that are many gigabytes large, but the reMail team has done an excellent job at compressing data for its search index: Cselle says that they’ve managed to squeeze 100,000 Emails into 500 megabytes (most Email accounts are only a fraction of that size).

To get started, you’ll have to download your entire mailbox to your phone which will take some time (Cselle recommends setting the phone to Wi-Fi and leaving it over night), but the service will pick up where it left off if you have to have to cut it off mid-way through the download process. Searching itself works exactly as you’d hope, showing results only a second or two after you’ve typed a query, with matching words highlighted."
[...]
"The company’s backers include Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, who built a little application called Gmail (they also co-founded FriendFeed). These guys know what they’re doing."

And the comments on the post are really positive too :-)

Introducing the New reMail

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Today, we're launching the new reMail for the iPhone! It's a completely new product.

reMail downloads all your email to your phone and lets you search full-text at light speed.

All My Email On My Phone? Really?

Yes, reMail downloads all your email to your phone. It will let you read and search all your email when you're offline. Just let reMail run overnight to complete the download. reMail needs less space than you think: 100,000 emails take only 500 MB on your phone - only 6% of the capacity of an 8 GB iPhone (the smallest iPhone you can buy).

This Will Save You Money

My family lives in Switzerland and I live in San Francisco. One thing I've found very frustrating whenever I travel to see my parents are the insane fees that AT&T charges for data roaming: For Switzerland, AT&T charges $19.97 per Megabyte. Check out this SMS I get the moment I turn my phone on the tarmac in Switzerland.

Now, with reMail, I don't have to think twice about searching for meeting times or flight reservations. When I'm abroad, I just download all my email over Wifi and have data roaming turned off.

We put together this page that contrasts data roaming prices with AT&T and T-Mobile Germany with the cost of reMail.

reMail Searches Full-Text

Another crucial difference between iPhone 3.0 Mail and reMail is that reMail searches full-text. The built-in header-only search is frustrating, because so many times, the words I'm searching for don't appear in the To, From, and Subject lines. If the words you search for aren't in the headers, reMail will find the email, iPhone Mail will not. reMail is email search you can trust.

What happened to reMail Search Beta?

We launched reMail Search a few months back, it was a server-based product. Searches were being done on the server, and you had to give us your email password. It turns out people are very opposed to sharing their email and password with third parties, especially a small startup.

So we built the new reMail. Now, everything happens on the phone. reMail downloads your emails directly via IMAP. No more reMail server.

What reMail Users Are Saying

We have beta tested the app with a lot of users, and they are loving it:

“This app is awesome! I use reMail constantly all day. It's so fast!”
— Sachin Agarwal, Co-Founder, Posterous
“I am loving reMail!”
— Richard Price, CEO, Academia.edu
“Complete Berlin trip organized via emails found by reMail. No printed reservations and tickets needed!
” — Bernhard Heinzel, Beta User
“reMail is a super useful app and search speed is incredible.” — Dan Veltri, Co-Founder, Weebly

We hope you'll love it too. Get it now. It's $4.99 on the App Store until Sep 1, and $9.99 thereafter.