Email and newsletters

Spark Premium alternatives

2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.

The full assessment →

The projects

Foundry376/Mailspring17,726GPL-3.0A cross‑platform, full‑featured desktop email client with IMAP/SMTP support and unified inbox.Open on GitHub mailpile/Mailpile8,826licence unclearA web‑based, privacy‑focused email client that stores and indexes mail for fast searching and management.Open on GitHub

What you give up either way

Polished cross‑platform native clients and OS integrations (iOS/Android/macOS/Windows)
Mature sync, push notifications and reliable background fetching across devices
Proprietary product polish, long‑running reliability and customer support
Team/enterprise features like admin controls, dedicated success manager, and SOCII security posture

An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Spark Premium, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.