PigeonPost
Coming from Thunderbird or Outlook?
The email client that never locks you in
PigeonPost is a calm, local-first desktop email client with a built-in calendar and contacts, free and open source. Your email stays where it already lives, with your provider (Gmail, Hotmail and Outlook.com, iCloud, Fastmail and friends), so nothing has to move in and nothing is stranded if you leave. No cloud in between. No account to create. No subscription.
Because your mail stays in your existing account, trying PigeonPost costs you nothing and leaving costs you nothing.
Switch in under a minute: add your account and you are in, synced straight away. Then find anything, instantly, even offline.
Adding an account, over the main window. The same toolbar carries mail, contacts and calendar.
Calm, predictable email
A familiar three-pane window that stays out of your way. Everything sits where you expect it and nothing nags you for your attention.
The layout you know
Folders, a message list and an optional reading pane you toggle with F8. Sort by date or group a thread into a conversation, then open that conversation whole to read the exchange in one place, your own replies included. Double-click a message and it pops out into its own window.
Stays fast
The message list is virtualised, so it stays fluid in folders of tens of thousands of messages instead of stalling.
Yours to drive
Full keyboard navigation with a visible focus ring and menu accelerators. Multi-select with Ctrl or Shift, bulk delete, mark, star and move, a right-click menu and reader tabs. After ten quiet seconds with nothing open, the window settles back on the Inbox, so you always resume from a known place.
Quiet by default
No ads. No feed. Nothing reordering your inbox behind your back. The window does what you ask and then gets out of the way.
Find your question
The detail lives on three focused pages instead of one long scroll.
Switching
Why the switch is not a one-way door: nothing to migrate, nothing to unwind and every worry answered plainly.
Features
Everything included: mail, calendar and contacts, instant offline search and a look inside the everyday windows.
Why
Why this exists, how it is engineered, an honest comparison with Thunderbird and Outlook and the calm promise.
Nothing moves that you cannot move back
Download the build for your platform, point it at your account and see how it feels. Your mail stays with your provider the whole time. If it is not for you, it was never anywhere else.
Supporting PigeonPost
PigeonPost is free and stays free. There is no paid tier, no licence key and no feature held back behind a donation. If it has replaced something you were paying for or simply saved you an afternoon, a contribution supports its maintenance and continued development. The same link sits at the foot of the app's own window.
Donate