As far as I know, Spotify still doesn't have lossless

They've added it as an option recently.

For anyone reading, I would highly recommend steering clear of EmailEngine.

Why?

EmailEngine author here. The commenter tried the EmailEngine trial back in 2024 and appears to have had a negative experience. Since then, he’s repeatedly criticized EmailEngine and related components like the ImapFlow IMAP library, often while promoting his own product.

It’s a great honor to be able to talk with Andris. A few months ago I learned that the author of EmailEngine not only created EmailEngine, but is also behind many foundational Node.js email libraries that are widely used. My own projects, RustMailer and Bichon, are built on the shoulders of many great Rust email libraries. EmailEngine is undoubtedly a success, and Andris has spent years quietly and diligently contributing to these core libraries. I have deep respect for you.

Thanks, and best of luck with Rustmailer! I believe there’s plenty of room for multiple solutions in this space.

Yes indeed. The criticism is well-founded and comes from months of experience with the product.

It's slow, unreliable, very feature-limited, and extremely expensive for what it is.

Especially these days, you could vibe-code something an order of magnitude better within a day or two and not be locked into a single author's rat's nest of code.

At this point, almost all new EmailEngine customers are AI startups. These are teams that know how to use LLMs well, which makes it interesting that they still opt for EmailEngine despite the extremely expensive $83/month price tag.

At this point in time you don't consider using an LLM to "vibe" code a "rat's nest"?

An LLM with a strongly-typed language and capable dev would produce better results. If you don't believe me, have a look through the codebase.

On the flip side, our iOS app which _uses the Gmail API_ and also supports raw IMAP is ~14MB:

https://marcoapp.io

Interesting!

Just curious, if this is a completely greenfield project, why IMAP instead of JMAP?

This is coming from someone who works with IMAP on a daily basis and has rightfully grown a disdain for it.

Check us out, we support Outlook and any other possible IMAP/OAuth provider. Cross platform, offline-first, and instant syncing:

https://marcoapp.io

So... An iframe?

InstantDB is a far better choice

yeah it's great as long as you understand it's not a traditional character level crdt. it's last write wins so you have to be careful with it

How or why is this better than InsantDB?

Probably easier to self-host Pocketbase.

There's a number of competitors: Firebase, Supabase, Pocketbase, TrailBase, InstantDB, Fusio, Nhost.

> The only thing I'm missing is on iOS. Email on my phone is a literal joke.

I hear you on that. I'd even go a step further and say Apple Mail on desktop is a joke too.

That led me to build Marco, an IMAP‑primitive, offline‑first, cross‑platform email client for web, iOS, and macOS:

https://marcoapp.io

No love for Railway? They're running their own metal and are a fantastic team.