JMAP: e-mail 2.0

In dark ages there was IMAP. With layers of complicated protocols that were added other the years, this inefficient protocol was ruling email. With its test based syntax that made generations of computer scientist cry, its lack of flow control, its chattiness, its statefull nature with mailbox selection, here is a good recipe for unmaintainable system that for sure will needlessly use network, battery and your user time. You can’t even talk to your mail servers from the web browser as this is non-HTTP!

IMAP was great, enabled emails to stay on the servers and be classified. Caused internet providers to buy at great price NetApp storage when transiting from POP3 world. IMAP made its time!

Now users expects seamless synchronization, real time across devices, uses mail on all their devices, and want things to go fast!

Now developers expect easy-to-use protocol based on well known transports and well-known formats. The exoticism of JMAP is not welcome.

Big GAFAMs did not wait and push / imposed their (proprietary) alternatives to IMAP. GMail API is one. MAPI / Active Sync another one. Rule by the protocols. Competitive advantage by nature with those protocol.

This is in this grim world that LINAGORA started looking for a protocol to implement its webmail.

Then was light: JMAP

JMAP (JSON Mail Application Protocol => JSON Metadata Application Protocol) is a novel proposition for reading emails. Based on HTTP transport and JSON data model — as the name implies, it delivers all primitives to quickly and efficiently retrieve your emails and keep them synchronized.

Technical mechanism at play here: an event log is kept for quick re-synchronization, and PUSH (WebPush / WebSocket / Server Sent Events) are used to notify client applications about those changes. JMAP uses a GraphQL like syntax that allows loading all your data in one go. Ah and HTTP compression / caches applies out of the box. This translate into a blazing fast, efficient user experience, even on degraded network.

The complexity of MIME message (ever pressed CTRL+U in Thunderbird?) is hidden by a clever JSON schema that maps what you want into your webmail. Non-email specialists can then work onto webmail topics!

This efficiency also means less load onto back-end server and network resources: we observed a x20 request count decrease and a x5 load decrease compared to IMAP.

Apache James: reference JMAP implementation

As early as 2016 LINAGORA contributed a JMAP draft implementation to Apache James, the mail server of the Apache Software Foundation, and adopted this protocol as the base of its webmail. In 2020 after the official publication of the JMAP specifications, LINAGORA contributed the upgrade to the APache James code, making it the first truly open JMAP implementation (as Submission code was not Open Sourced nor available along side Cyrus IMAP implementation).

JMAP Mail Enterprise Server for the win!

This effort represents 8 man-year of work.

Pioneering JMAP: writing specs within the IETF

Our team, as pioneer encountered set-backs and limitations of the existing specifications. Those missing featured were often generic enough for being shared within the JMAP community and resulted into RFCs:

— RFC-9007: Sending read-receipts with JMAP

— RFC-9425; Viewing quotas with JMAP

Our team do a careful review of IETF documents and attend normative events like IETF meetings and side events like Make Better EMail.

Twake Mail: interoperable, multi-platfrom frontend

Twake-Mail is the frontend of Linagora collaborative suite. Built with Flutter, it delivers native mail experience to phone and tablets, IOS and Android device alike. We also rely on it to build our webmail!

With its beautiful and modern design, Twake mail will charm your users!

When used with Twake mail server, it delivers the bast user experience as it supports Twake mail extensions (filters, forwards, delegation, auto-complete, etc…) but a minimal experience that fits to the JMAP standard is supported on top of other servers like Stallwart.

Linagora is among the very few company able to claim a 10 years experience with the JMAP protocol and related technologies like Apache James server and Twake mail frontend. LINAGORA proposes both technical assistance (man day based) and support for those.

Contact us for quotes!