K-9 Mail is looking for funding (opens in new tab)

I'm surprised there's no work being done on the UI on the roadmap, K-9 looks like an app from the "Ice Cream Sandwich" days of Android.

With that being said, K-9 is the best Android app I've seen for mail that isn't made by Google.

edit: it seems the work has already been done, thanks for the correction.

K-9 is a really great mail app for android! In my opinion it's the best app if you want to use a custom SMTP/IMAP server instead of using a solution like hotmail/google/etc.

It also has PGP support (with the help of OpenKeyChain to manage certificates) that works great! There are no other well known solutions for applications supporting PGP in Android; this is huge.

People that either want to avoid walled gardens or need proper encryption to their mail need to support this project!

How to create one super successful email client.

- Support IMAP IDLE

- Support all the major business platforms: Web, Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

- Support email encryption on a one off basis as needed. Nothing fancy just encrypt the email with AES256. Don't worry I'll get the key to the reipient.

Why this would be super successful.

1) It would eliminate instant messaging for most business use.

2) Consistency, simplicity and ease of support.

3) Contrary to popular opinion, 99 percent of business communication is not super secret stuff. It doesn't warrant the complexity of full time end to end encryption. But it is nice to bave it readily available for the 1 percent where it is really needed.

And yes, I have used K9 personally and I will support it but it doesn't begin to meet my business needs.

PSA: if you've not used it in awhile, use the betas via F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.fsck.k9/ You have to click "Versions" from the F-Droid app and specifically opt-in (and upgrade) the betas, F-Droid will default to installing the older stable version.

The betas are almost night (mode heh) and day apart, the UI and operations have almost a complete overhaul from the old days and it looks (and works) really great on my Android 11 device. This isn't K-9 Mail on your T-Mobile G1 anymore, it's a brand new day for the betas.

I use K9 for a small LLC, and would like to support the developer. My CPA advises that anonymous[1]/charitable contributions are not tax deductible business expenses. However, if the recipient publicly acknowledges your sponsorship, it's considered an "advertising" expense.

To accept contributions from small corporations using your app, consider offering a low-friction non-charitable service such as a one-year placement on a "sponsors" page of your website, like (the Python Software Foundation does this for contributions of any amount. [0])

Another option could be an annual per-user license (for organizations large enough that the person with a credit card wanting to support you cannot also influence the advertising budget.)

If you're a solo developer, don't forget small businesses when considering how to raise funding!

[0]: https://www.python.org/psf/donations/ [1]: https://liberapay.com/about/

I used K-9 back in my Android days (5+ years ago). It's biggest weakness was, and to my knowledge, still is, inability to support modern OAuth authentication schemes that Google and Microsoft have largely switched to. Sometimes I get a notification from a comment on the GitHub issue still.

It used to be able to connect to Exchange servers, but hasn't been able to for nearly a decade.

K-9 Mail is like, the _only_, sane e-Mail Android app out there. Pitching in for sure.

I remember using K-9 when I got my first (or second?) Android phone. I don’t remember the exact version, but it was probably pre-ICS. I do remember that I liked it a lot.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago, I tried the app again and was disappointed at how it looked basically identical to the last time I tried it. Seeing that, I just assumed it became abandonware.

Does this fund raiser mean I was wrong, and the app was always under development, or that it was recently revived?

I really love K9 Mail. I startend donating 5€ per month now.

What I love the most is how easy it is to sort E-Mail and to actually use existing Folderstructures.

I almost dont need a desktop client anymore to handle my mail.

K9 used to feel like a great app, but I think it has been creaking around the edges for a while.

I've thrown in a few quid.

There isn't anything to rival it so I hope it gets some more developer time.

I wanted to give a quick shoutout to Hey [0] while giving K-9 a potential solution. Hey is fiercely approaching email like no other email client has in decades. It is a fundamental shift in the way we interact with email. For anyone who hasn't tried it, you're missing out on what email can be. They have a free trial but it isn't free nor is it ad supported or backed by a VC, which brings me to the point about funding. You shouldn't be sorry about charging your customers or feel only if some investor would give you money all your problems would go away. I gladly pay for Hey because it solves a real problem elegantly, sure it's not perfect, I still have to have my gmail on the side as sort of a backend to my email experience, but the problems it solves are well worth paying for. So if K-9 provides real value where no other email client provides the same level of value then their users should be more than happy to pay for it, I know I would. But if it provides some esoteric feature like PGP where even those who use it don't really know why they do and most certainly would not pay for then sure maybe you do need outside funding.

[0] hey.com

I can recommend K-9 fork p≡p [1] which has material design.

[1] https://pep.security

K-9 is one of these programs I use every day, several times per day. And among these programs, one of the (rare) ones that have never needed any care from me: it just works, and has kept working for years.

That being said, there are lots of things that could be improved upon the current release version (especially wrt search), and I understand that just keeping up with the Android ecosystem is not a small task.

I've just set up a small recurring donation. It's more than worth it.

Love this app. Recently, it became less and less usable, with deal breaker bugs like mails not sending reliably or at all.

So I'm going to donate, because this app is fantastic and I really want it to keep existing.

I've not donated through Liberapay before but this prompted me to donate to k9-mail and in turn after poking around on Liberapay for a bit, I've set up small recurring donations to other OSS that I use (like GIMP).

i recently started getting into selfhosting email and k9 mail was the goto app for android. i first got the f-droid version but switched to github beta version and the experience has been awesome

Is there an equivalent for iOS? I'm currently using Outlook, which does all the basic stuff very well, but I'd like something a bit more "power user"...

Was going to donate but there are no crypto payment options.

I've been using K-9 since forever, maybe since 2011 if it's as old as that. I don't need any new feature, all I need is that it downloads mail from POP3 accounts. Manual pull only, customers already send me push messages on Slack ;-) Still I'm donating some money because I want that it keeps working on new Android versions.

And I am afraid, for the sake of my battery, if it doesn't support ActiveSync, it won't happen.

Switched to FairEmail and never looked back. Just a beautiful piece of software.

I was running local mail on my main machine called "Brainmachine" after a computer in the old 1960s Dalek comic strip. Looking around for an Android program to access it, I found K-9. Serendipity.

Just started $5 on github, cheers for the reminder

If the developer is checking this thread: take a look at the Brave Creators program. If you have an account there I will gladly add you to my list of regular contributions. Brave userbase is growing in and millions of users are receiving BAT which can them be used to support developers and content creators.