Chatmail makes e-mail fun, secure and instant
The Chatmail project develops and releases instant messaging server templates and client Rust infrastructure libraries, implementing cryptographically secured server interoperability, metadata minimization and automatic end-to-end encryption, with reliable cross-platform Peer-to-Peer realtime messaging to top it off. The future is now: Chatmail makes e-mail fun, secure and instant.
Our community-driven project is lifting the floor for interoperable FOSS alternatives to centralized proprietary instant messaging apps and servers. Server operators, App and Bot developers and all of their users benefit from our decentralized chatmail infrastructure efforts. We are also contributing to lifting and fixing the floor for billions of users which unknowingly depend on the integrity, resilience, security and reliability of the e-mail system.
Chatmail servers enable interoperable and cheap instant messaging
chatmail/server is the main template for automatically deploying a minimal e-mail server with battle-proven components, optimized for instant end-to-end encrypted messaging. Chatmail servers provide ephemeral transport only, not long-term storage, and rely on interoperable cryptography, cutting out IP reputation and spam-checking magic. Chatmail servers are therefore extremely cheap to run and use:
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Hosting costs for 100K active users are around half a Cent per user and year.
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System administration costs are near-zero after setup.
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Apps and bots can freely use instant chatmail addresses, avoiding classic e-mail rate limits.
Chatmail core is a reliable Rust library for chat apps and bots
chatmail/core is our cross-platform infrastructure Rust library for low level network and encryption protocols, integrated by many chat bots and higher level applications, allowing to securely participate in the globally scaled e-mail server network. Chatmail core offers a high level JSON-RPC API for managing contacts and chats, and for sending and receiving instant messages via e-mail and P2P realtime messages, while caring under the hood for many low-level details:
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secure TLS setup with DNS caching and other resiliency features
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robust SMTP and IMAP connection handling
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safe MIME and OpenPGP parsing and e-mail building
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reliable Peer-to-Peer Iroh networking
We are helping to maintain some of the involved 600 Rust dependencies and regularly provide upstream bug reports and fixes.