Pay once. Use Epistles Pro forever, on every platform, for every provider you own. After the first 500 backers, lifetime closes permanently, we move to annual only at $35/year.
True Bereans · #1–100
100 seats · beta veterans + early friends
Public · #101–500
400 seats · public launch
01 · Refund
Inside your account settings. No call, no email, no "are you sure" survey. If it isn’t right, we send the money back.
02 · Survival
12 months of no commits to the public repo, or a shutdown announcement, either trigger, and the client publishes under MIT within 90 days. Local-first means your mail is yours already; this means the tool stays too. Read the clause.
03 · Architecture
Mail lives in local SQLite on your device, encrypted by your OS. The relay never receives message content. Credentials travel as AES-256-GCM ciphertext we can’t decrypt. See the architecture.
04 · Founder
Thiago Vinhas, LinkedIn, GitHub, tvinhas@epistles.com. Same hand at the wheel; reply within 24h during Year 1.
05 · Funding
If we ever take outside funding or get acquired, every commitment on /promises survives, or every Bereans backer gets a refund AND the client source publishes as MIT within 90 days.
06 · Cap
No "lifetime returns at $129 in Year 2." No bait-and-switch on the cohort that bought in first. The hard cap protects the Bereans cohort, not the company.
$99 from a brand I’ve never heard of. Why should I trust this?
You shouldn’t trust us on tone alone. Read /promises, it lists what we’ve structured ourselves out of being able to do, and what we owe you if any of it ever changes. The 60-day refund means the first two months are risk-free. The source-code-on-shutdown clause means the tool doesn’t die with us. The founder is publicly identifiable.
What if I buy lifetime and Epistles shuts down in a year?
The client source publishes under MIT within 90 days. Your local SQLite mail store works without our relay. Self-hosting docs ship alongside the source. The community keeps the tool alive even if the company doesn’t. This is in our Terms, not on a marketing slide.
What if you raise VC money and the new investor wants you to start training AI on my mail?
Then we owe every Bereans backer a full refund and we open-source the client within 90 days. Investors who don’t want that condition can’t fund us on their terms. That’s the point of writing this into the Terms before we’ve raised anything.
What does "lifetime" actually mean? My lifetime or the company’s?
The company’s, honestly. If Epistles ceases operating, the source release is what you get instead of perpetual support. If the company runs for 20 years, your $99 covers all 20 years. We’d rather be honest about which "lifetime" means, then print a word both sides will fight over later.
What’s the difference between the $79 and the $99 tier?
$20 and the order of arrival. The first 100 Bereans get $79 as a thank you for taking the earliest risk. After #100, the price is $99 for everyone until #500. Both tiers get the same features and the same lifetime. No clever feature gating to make later buyers feel cheated.
What happens after the 500th Bereans Edition is sold?
Lifetime closes permanently. Annual ($35/year) becomes the only plan we sell. It does not return at $129 next year. It does not come back as a "lifetime Plus" tier. The cap is the cap. Pinned to the /promises page so we can’t quietly walk it back.
Why "Bereans"?
Acts 17:11, "the Bereans were of more noble character... they examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." They were the ones who didn’t take a new teacher’s word for it. They checked. That’s the cohort we want.
, A note from the maker
“We’re a brand-new company. You have no track record to evaluate yet. So instead of asking you to trust intent, I’ve written what we’ve structured ourselves out of being able to do , and what we owe you if any of it ever changes. Check it. The code is on GitHub. My address is below. The refund is one click.”
, Thiago Vinhas, building Epistles solo since 2024 · tvinhas@epistles.com
Seats are claimed in order. When all 500 are gone, the Bereans Edition closes for good.