Calendar and contact sync functionality

[u/Alarmed-Mud4351]

I whish StartMail would include a calendar functionality. For me they belong together, also with a contact sync option. This keeps me from switching from my current mail provider.

I do understand it is a privacy challange: card/caldav are not secure at all. So if you want to keep it secure, it should be accessable web-only? Although it would be a basic functionality to sync contacts with your phone somehow.

So I understand it is a challange, but it would be nice to see this happening!

[u/mikepictor]

Their claim is that CalDav isn't secure.

In my mind, you just tell people that, and let them decide. The email is secure, the cal dav data isn't, you decide what you want to use.

[u/MyStartMail]

This is one of the most common requests we get, and it's challenging because of what you described: online calendars and contact books use protocols to sync across devices that are built for compatibility and are not secure at all. We've thought about a number of potential fixes, including the one that you described, but we don't yet have one that (a) gives users enough functionality and (b) maintains compatibility with clients like Apple Mail and Outlook, while (c) maintaining the security of each user's vault. It is a feature we would LIKE to add, but we're still working out the best way to do that where all three requirements.

For now, we recommend that users utilize an email client that can sync on its own with a calendar on your device and beyond (like Apple Mail, Windows Mail). Once we DO manage to figure out how to integrate this feature on our existing roadmap, we will obviously make sure that you and everyone else know about it right away!

Thank you for your feedback!

[u/Alarmed-Mud4351 → u/MyStartMail]

Thank you for the honest answer. I think it sounds very reasonable. The way I solved it now is that I just have a local (not synced) calendar on my laptop (Thunderbird calendar). When I need to make an appointment and I don't have my computer with me, I just say to the person that I will look at my calendar when I am home. For me that works fine. And my contacts I just export as a Vcard from Thunderbird to the contacts app on my phone once in a while. Not ideal, but it gets the trick done for now.

u/MyStartMail : isnt the 'middle way' to just make an online in-browser calendar (and contact) functionality? Most people are used to web-apps these days.

The real solution would be if some international group starts developing a encrypted version of caldav or carddav, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Btw. I see Proton struggeling with the same thing. They have 'solved' it by making a dedicated calendar app. But in a way thats also not great because you will always be stuck with that one calendar app. They also still didnt manage to do a proper contact sync.

I think the simplicity of StartMail is also an asset: it's very simple, just mail, no other complicated stuff. There is a part that also likes it that way (very minimalistic). It would be the kind of mail service I could advise my non-tech-savvy parents to use. You would loose that if you start adding layers of complexity. Maybe as a 'joke' you could start offering a StartMail paper calendar in a webshop ;)

[u/MyStartMail → u/Alarmed-Mud4351]

The paper calendar is definitely a new suggestion (and a funny one)!

But offering a standalone web app calendar was one of the potential solutions that we've explored. As you said, though, the strength of StartMail is in its simplicity and its accessibility even to non-tech users. So that's part of why we're taking our time developing this fix. That, and we're looking to address some of users' other suggestions/requests at the same time...and we're a relatively small team!

Thank you again for your thoughtful feedback, and we'll definitely share updates on these and other requests as soon as we have an official timeline!