Newton Mail continues with new owners
Newton Mail e-mail service will continue to exist. The service was owned by smartphone maker Essential, which has been discontinued. That would also end Newton Mail. Two fans of the service have taken over.
Maitrik Katiara and Justin Mitchell are the new owners of Newton Mail. Katiara is a product designer for a software developer and Mitchell is a co-founder of a software development company. The two write in a blog that they are big fans of Newton Mail and therefore want to save the service.
According to the new owners, the service with the accompanying apps will continue to work as in the past. The price of fifty dollars a year does not change either. If Katiara and Mitchell fail to successfully continue the service, they promise to release the service and find a way for people to host Newton themselves.
The service also wants to improve privacy standards under the care of the new owners. The privacy conditions will be adjusted immediately so that the service fully complies with the GDPR. Users can easily delete their account completely. The new owners also say they are considering adding pgp encryption.
Furthermore, the two want to communicate more clearly to customers and solve bugs faster. After existing bugs are fixed, new features should be coming to the service in three to six months, including a dark mode.
The e-mail service was created in 2013, then still free and under the name CloudMagic. In 2016, the name was changed to Newton Mail and the $50 per year subscription was introduced. The service had to stop in 2018 because it was no longer profitable. Mitchell says he tried to get his hands on Newton Mail back then, too, but it didn’t work out.
Smartphone maker Essential got hold of Newton Mail and integrated the service into his phone. When Essential announced it was shutting down earlier this year, it was also said that the Newton Service was shutting down. That has now been put a stop to the takeover. It has not been disclosed what the new owners have paid.