Introducing Cirrux

How I lost it all in 2005 and how I'm making sure that's never happening again

It’s 2005. Apple announced their iPod shuffle. The first ever movie was uploaded to YouTube. It was the year the term ‘selfie’ was introduced, and the year uTorrent was born. And, on one day in that same year, 20 years ago, I suddenly was locked out of my mailbox. It happened because we moved places and our internet provider messed things up—I can’t recall the details exactly anymore. What I do remember is feeling completely lost.

It was at that point that I realized I needed something not tied to any one internet service provider. Something not attached to a physical address. So I started using Gmail.

That Gmail account is now filled with over 100,000 messages that I really don’t want to lose. It holds chats, friends, meetings, newsletters, work, love, and messages from loved ones who passed away. I guess it’s as close as a time machine as I’ll ever get.

Fast forward to 2025.

In Europe, people are becoming increasingly aware that we’re not so great at a lot of things anymore. Over the past decades, we became Silicon Valley’s biggest fans. Our businesses, organizations, schools, and governments are running on Microsoft and Google. Our apps and services rely on Apple and Amazon. That wasn’t that big of deal before—a global market is great for getting what you need, cheaply. But when a foreign administration starts to fiddle with things, the story changes. You’ve probably seen the cases of mailboxes being shut down and organizations locked out of their data. No wonder a lot of people are worried and thinking about alternatives.

There’s also something else going on, best summarized with the term “enshittification”. It’s the idea that, over time, products and platforms turn into crap. The love is gone. Slack is a prime example of that. It once brought fun to teams, but today it’s mostly stress and chaos it delivers. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are on the same path: there are rough edges and annoying elements that should have been fixed years ago, and instead of improving their products (I don’t know, maybe make sure people don’t get locked out by accident and lose countless hours of productivity?) they force push AI features onto everyone. No wonder so many non-technical folks lost their trust in tech: it’s not really getting better.

We need more and better alternatives. We need to build and innovate. It’s the only way we’ll reclaim the space and push the industry forward. But building software to run our work on is costly. We’re used to an immense scope of available features, of security measures and stability. You underscored that in the answers to a survey I sent before—the task is pretty insane.

It makes sense to back away and try something else. But the more people say I shouldn’t try, the more I actually want to. One because I just love building software for work and none of the alternatives are great. Two, because there’s so much to gain in our work and lives with better tools. And three, because AI will change everything but the whole approach of sticking it everywhere is madness, let alone issues around trust and security. I’ll publish more on these items later, because there’s a lot to unpack.

So. How do we get there?

Here’s my plan: I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to launch a product which will offer email over IMAP, calendaring over CalDAV, contacts over CardDAV and a basic file sharing product by the end of this year. If you’re not familiar with those terms, it basically means that you’ll be able to use existing software like Apple Mail or Thunderbird with Cirrux. Basically any other available client that supports those open standards. I’m already using Cirrux Mail in production today, the calendaring is getting there and I have a good sense of the contacts and file sharing approach. It’s fun. And because I’m not focusing on building clients initially, I’m saving time.

To support all of that, I’m funding the development myself. But I can’t do that forever.

Enter Cirrux Backup. Cirrux Backup securely copies your mailbox so you’ll never be the 2005 Rick who lost it all. And since it’s built on the same foundation as the rest of Cirrux, it helps me battle test the infrastructure and gradually introduce new parts. It’s available today and it directly supports my larger plan.

Here’s how it works: you sign up for Cirrux and connect your Google account. I then sync your mailbox to servers in Europe. You use my app to download your emails from the Cirrux servers whenever you want to.

The Cirrux Desktop Downloader.

There’s a second reason for the Desktop App: it functions as your set of keys to the backup. Keys that are not stored on my servers, so no one, not even me, can read your emails. If someone somehow gained access to the whole system—databases, servers with files, everything—they would only find unreadable files.

The third reason for building this setup using an extra app and all this encryption stuff, is to show I’m taking your data seriously. I hate being locked into any platform. At the same time, normal people shouldn’t need to pick between ‘all my data sits with this one company’ and ‘hosting my own cloud in my garage’. I want to explore new routes that offers the best of both worlds.

It has been a ton of fun putting this together. And even more fun to welcome the first batch of (paying!) users who have been helping with invaluable feedback on these first steps.

Cirrux Backup users get a front-row seat to watch the rest of Cirrux come to life, and help shape it. And the path for Cirrux won’t be exactly easy or fast, but I’m starting to see a way forward to build something better.

Read more about Cirrux Backup and get started

I’m looking forward to your thoughts and feedback. Can’t wait to hear what you think.

Rick