Skiff is an

email service A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behalf. ...

startup company and

collaboration tool A collaboration tool helps people to collaborate. The purpose of a collaboration tool is to support a group of two or more individuals to accomplish a common goal or objective. Collaboration tools can be either of a non-technological nature suc ...

, that provides privacy-friendly end-to-end encrypted ''Email'' and ''Cloud services''. The company's commercial strategy is focused in offering to its clients a

Source-Available Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called open-source ...

Open-Source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, transparent and audited ''Email, Calendar'', and ''Cloud Storage'' services without trackers or advertisements. Skiff launched in 2021 and was developed in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. In November 2023, 17 months after launch, it reached almost 2 million users. Skiff was acquired by

Notion Notion or Notions may refer to: Software * Notion (music software), a music composition and performance program * Notion (productivity software), a note-taking and project-management program from Notion Labs Inc. * Notion (window manager), the s ...

on 9 February 2024. Users will have six months to migrate their data before the closure of the services.

History

Skiff was founded by Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg in 2020 and was initially focused on providing a secure document editing service similar to Google Docs. While Skiff was in beta, the founders released a public

whitepaper A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. A white pape ...

explaining how Skiff’s

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...

works. Skiff had its public launch out of beta in November 2021. A difference from other services was that it stored its files using the

InterPlanetary File System The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespace ...

(IPFS). Skiff Mail and Skiff Drive were launched in 2022. In February 2024,

acquired Skiff and it is no longer open for registration. All user data will be deleted 6 months after the purchase date, but emails will continue to forward to your new address until February 9th of 2025.

Software

Some of Skiff’s

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

source-available Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called open-source ...

with some libraries being

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

. Skiff uses public-key authenticated encryption for secure and private access to end-to-end encrypted documents, files and emails. Skiff also allows users to send payments through MetaMask.

Reviews

In a 2023 article, PCMAG reviewed Skiff pointing that Skiff offers "End-to-end encryption for email, collaboration, and calendar", making complements to the fact of its services being free and easy to use (while being available as Apps for macOS, Android, and iOS). Moreover, it also was pointed the "cons" of Skiff services "requiring four separate mobile apps" and having "no encrypted email with nonusers". PCMAG's final score review was "''4.5/5 Outstanding''".

Controversies

According with a WSJ article published in 2023, allegedly the Russian government banned Skiff from Russia, because of Skiff's end-to-end encryption business model, which is illegal in Russia. (And also due to the company's persistence in not handing over users data for the Russian Government, thus allegedly compromising the safety of its citizens). As a result Skiff faced a 81% drop in traffic from Russia, and Andrew Milich itself stated that Skiff's engineers were scrambling to find ways to restore access to Russian users after the occurrence.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Skiff website (no longer updated)
2022 software Defunct websites