Email as a chat: what it means and when it helps

We started Chail because our own inboxes had turned into a pile. The emails we actually cared about came from maybe twenty people, and they were buried between newsletters, receipts and “Re: Re: Fwd:” chains we had to scroll through to find one sentence. In our messaging apps, by contrast, finding the last thing someone said takes a second. So we asked a simple question: what if email worked like that?

What “email as a chat” means

A classic inbox is a list of messages, newest first, with every message its own row. Conversations get grouped into threads by subject, so one person can have ten threads, and one thread can mix ten people.

Email as a chat turns that around. Every person is one conversation. Everything you and that person ever wrote sits in one place, newest at the bottom, like in a messenger. Short replies look short. The quoted history that most email apps repeat under every reply stays out of the way.

Underneath, nothing changes. It is still email: the same addresses, the same providers, the same standards that every mail app uses. Only the way you see it is different.

What changes for the people you write to

Nothing. They get a normal email with a subject, and they answer from Gmail, Outlook, their phone or whatever they use. Nobody has to install anything or join anything. That is the main difference to a messenger: you keep reaching everyone who has an email address, which is basically everyone.

One thing to know about Chail’s free plan: after three emails a week, your emails end with a small line, “Sent with Chail · Email, but it’s a chat.” With Plus the line never appears.

When it helps

• Your inbox is mostly people. Freelancers, small businesses, landlords, parents, anyone whose important emails come from a few dozen people.
• People write from several addresses. A work address, a private one, an old one. In a chat view they land in one conversation instead of three.
• You look for files a lot. “The contract Anna sent in March” is easier to find when everything from Anna is in one place, files included.
• Newsletters crowd out people. Splitting people from newsletters, shops and receipts is half of what makes an inbox feel calm again.

When a classic inbox is the better choice

We would rather tell you this now than after you have set everything up.

• Shared team mailboxes where several people answer the same messages and tickets get assigned. That needs a help desk tool, not a chat view.
• Heavy folder systems and rules that you rely on every day. A chat view sorts by people, so deep folder trees fit it less well.
• A calendar in the same app. Chail is about email. If you want mail and calendar side by side, an app like Outlook or Thunderbird fits better.

How Chail does it

• Chats for people, Updates for newsletters, shops and receipts, and with Plus Requests for new senders who wait outside until you say yes.
• Files per person: the attachments someone sent you, in one list in their chat details.
• Your emails stay on your device. Chail gets them straight from your email provider. Images load when an email arrives, not when you open it, and tracking pixels are blocked, so senders can’t see when you read.
• The small things: undo send, send later, hide a chat until later, a reminder if nobody answers, and quiet hours after work.

Chail runs on Windows PCs today and works with Gmail, Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, iCloud, Yahoo, GMX, WEB.DE and most other providers. You can start for free, with the last 10 messages of every chat; Plus shows everything and starts at €3.99 a month.