ChainConvo

ChainConvo is an email client and SaaS service that turns email threads into chat bubbles, the way a messaging app shows a conversation. Incoming messages appear on the left and the user's own messages on the right. Signatures, logos and quoted history are hidden automatically, so only the actual message is left on screen. Besides its own web app, ChainConvo can also be used inside Gmail, Outlook and Thunderbird.

Purpose

Email is still the main communication tool at work, but following long threads is tiring. Every reply quotes all the previous messages, signatures and logos repeat, and the few sentences that matter get lost in the clutter. I built ChainConvo to solve that. My goal was for people to read and answer email as comfortably as they use a messaging app they already know.

While doing that, I did not want to ask users to change their habits. That is why ChainConvo works both as a standalone client and as something that fits inside the email program the user already uses.

How it works

A user signs up with an email address and a password in a few minutes. On the free plan they immediately get a subdomain under the ChainConvo domain. They can then connect a Gmail or Outlook account with a single click, or enter the IMAP and SMTP details of any email provider. Whichever account it comes from, every email becomes part of a per-person conversation and lands in a single chat stream. From that screen the user writes, replies and forwards just as they would in a messaging app.

The backend parses every incoming email, strips reply chains, quotes and signatures, and turns each conversation into a single messaging view. New emails are pushed from the server to the interface in real time, so the user never needs to refresh the page.

On the Pro and Business plans the user can work with their own domain. In that case the system sets up the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records email needs to work properly, and the user does not need to know anything about DNS.

Key features

• Email threads become chat bubbles, and signatures, logos and quoted history are hidden automatically.
• Gmail and Outlook accounts connect with one click, and other accounts connect with their IMAP and SMTP details.
• With the add-ons I built for Gmail, Outlook and Thunderbird, the open conversation switches to the chat view inside the program the user is used to.
• On Pro and above, every incoming email is summarised with AI, and its category and the people and companies mentioned in it are extracted.
• On Pro and above, users can see whether a sent email has been opened.
• On Pro and above, incoming attachments and links are scanned by many security engines, and harmful content is flagged before it reaches the user.
• The Business plan includes a shared inbox, assigning conversations to teammates, internal notes and role-based access.
• Users can export their emails in .eml format and delete their account completely whenever they want.

Browser and email client add-ons

When designing the add-ons, I chose to do the parsing in one place, on the backend, rather than rewriting it in every add-on. The add-ons connect to the ChainConvo API with authentication and draw the bubbles from the conversation data the backend has already parsed. To find the ChainConvo match for the open email, they first look at the message ID and, if that fails, at the subject and the sender.

The Chrome add-on turns the open conversation in the Gmail interface into chat bubbles right where it is. The Thunderbird add-on works as a sidebar, and the Outlook add-in works as a task pane on Windows, Mac and the web. New messages are pushed to the add-ons in real time as well, and users can write their reply directly from the add-on. The add-ons only work for users with an active plan.

Technical stack

I wrote the backend in Go. The web app and the admin panel are built with TypeScript. The service also has a mobile app and browser add-ons. The system is multi-tenant, meaning every customer works under their own domain and brand, isolated from other customers.

Live updates reach the interface through SSE (Server-Sent Events, where the server keeps a one-way connection open and pushes events to the browser). Because the background service worker in a Chrome extension does not support such connections, the Chrome add-on receives updates through its content script and backs them up with short-interval polling.

Every change goes through a regression test suite and through static analysis and security checks such as staticcheck, gosec and govulncheck. Data is kept encrypted on our own infrastructure. Connections use TLS 1.3, credentials are stored encrypted and core dumps are disabled on the servers. The site is served over HTTP/3.

Use cases

• People who handle a lot of email during the day reading and answering threads faster.
• Sales and support teams managing a shared inbox together, assigning conversations to each other and working with internal notes.
• Small businesses that want company email on their own domain without dealing with DNS settings.
• Users who want the chat view without leaving Gmail, Outlook or Thunderbird.
• Managers who want to understand what a long email says from an AI summary instead of reading it end to end.

Privacy

In ChainConvo I treated it as a basic principle that a user's emails belong to the user. Data is never sold to third parties or used for marketing. The site only uses the cookies needed to keep users signed in and remember their preferences. The service was designed to comply with KVKK, Turkey's personal data protection law.