Big Mail is an emerging email app that aims to be more than other competing email apps that only fetch and archive your email. It aims to offer privacy and smart features.

Big Mail has all the smarts of a cloud service and all the privacy of a local app that does everything on your phone, iPad or computer. And it’s built by a single developer, which makes you wonder why big companies can’t do this. Maybe because they don’t want to?

"[S]ome of these apps have business models that don't allow for that," Big Mail developer Phillip Caudell told Lifewire via email. "They need access to your emails so they can see what you buy, where you travel, what you're interested in, and so on. All so they can sell that data to third parties. They're giving the app away for free because they're selling your data."

When Big Mail launches in early 2021, it will run on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. The app is based on something called Scenes, where the app configures its layout depending on the type of email you’re reading. Newsletters get a clean, full-screen look, without pointless reply buttons, for example, and a Purchases scene separates receipts and adds up their totals for quick budgeting.