Its only been a few weeks since the much anticipated email client for iOS, Mailbox, opened its reservation system. And starting today (actually right now), you can reserve your place to receive the app through Apple’s App Store.

The company behind the app, Orchestra, says that they’ll still be fulfilling requests on a first-come, first-serve basis in order to keep prevent any overload happening to its servers. “Email, after all, needs to work reliably.”

We’ve had the great fortune of being able to use this app for a few weeks now, and we can’t say enough good things about it. It is by far the best email experience we’ve ever had on the iPhone. It’s super quick, extremely intuitive, and very reliable. If you haven’t already made your reservation, what are you waiting for?


Mailbox in a sentence

Mailbox is now live in the App Store and reservations are being filled.

Mailbox in a paragraph

Mailbox is now live in the App Store and reservations are being filled on a first-come, first served basis. Currently for iPhone + Gmail, the app is available to download for free. If you’ve already reserved your Mailbox, download the app and enter your reservation info. If you don’t have a reservation, download the app to get your place in line. Everyone can watch the line move in real-time from inside the app.

What is Mailbox

Mailbox is a mobile-first email app for iPhone + Gmail that reimagines the inbox for a world on the go:

Mailbox is a new way of checking your email, but when you use it for the first time, we believe you’ll say “of course.”

How we’re rolling out

We’re using a reservation system to scale the Mailbox service gracefully.

Mailbox relies on servers in the cloud to do things like send push notifications, make downloading email as fast as possible, and handle snoozed messages. Software that is server-based is susceptible to being overloaded and we want to keep this from happening. This is email, after all, and it needs to work reliably.

We’ve designed the Mailbox service to scale indefinitely, and have done as much load testing as we can. But we don’t know what we don’t know, so we’re using a reservation system to roll out gradually.

At first, the pace may seem slow. This is by design. If we run into unexpected snags, we may even stop filling reservations temporarily. But as the service grows, we should be able to dramatically increase this pace until we no longer need a reservation system at all.

How much does Mailbox cost?

Mailbox is free, and our goal is to keep a version of Mailbox free of charge forever. Like Evernote and Dropbox, we hope to add a premium set of paid features over time.

How long will I have to wait?

We can’t say specifically how long it will take for you to get your Mailbox, but you can see how many people are still ahead of you in line in the app. The app can also notify you when your Mailbox is ready.

Where did Mailbox come from?

Two years ago, a small team of engineers and designers set out to build the world’s best mobile collaboration tool. What started as an observation — that people use email as a (terrible) to-do list — evolved into Orchestra To-do, the App Store’s 2011 Productivity App of the Year.

But no matter how much we used Orchestra to get stuff done, tasks kept coming into our email. One day it dawned on us: rather than moving all of those tasks trapped in our email to Orchestra, what if we transformed the inbox where they already lived? Mailbox is the answer to that question.

We believe email is here to stay. And while we can’t get away from it, we can change how we interact with it. We can put email in its place.

Mailbox is a mobile-first email experience that challenges the archaic assumptions about how email should work and reimagines the inbox for a world on the go. It’s a new way of looking at your email, but when you use Mailbox for the first time, we believe you’ll say “of course.”