In Italy, legally binding email lives in a second inbox nobody remembers to open.
Certified mail (PEC) carries the same legal weight as a registered letter, and every business and professional is required to have one. But providers sell it as a separate mailbox, with its own login and its own bill, so people end up running two webmails and checking one of them late. Velyo is a prototype of the provider that doesn't split them.
The two frames below are the live prototype running inside this page, not screenshots. It is front-end only: no backend, no real mail. The login accepts anything, so you can walk straight in.
One mailbox, two legal weights.
A certified message arrives in the same list as a newsletter, marked apart rather than filed away somewhere else. Open it and the certification is spelled out in plain language: when it was sent, when the provider accepted it, when it was legally delivered — and the receipts that prove each step, sitting inside the thread.
Live — switch plan from the demo bar at the bottom of the frame
Three calls that shape the whole thing.
Receipts belong to the message
Every certified send generates at least two receipt emails, and in a real PEC mailbox they pile up as separate messages. It is the loudest complaint about the format. Here they are folded into the thread they certify, so the inbox stays a list of conversations.
Certified is an attribute, not an account
There is no second identity and no "write as" menu. One address, one inbox, and a switch in the composer that decides whether this particular message carries legal value. The folders for certified mail and receipts are filtered views of the same inbox.
Sending certified costs one extra click
A certified message is a legal act, so deliberateness is a feature. Turning the switch on changes the composer visibly, removes blind copy with the reason written next to it, and asks which kind of delivery receipt you want before the button changes to "Send certified".
The rules came first, the screens second.
Certified mail is regulated, so most of the interesting interface decisions are not free choices. I read the rules and the two biggest Italian providers before drawing anything, and these are the constraints that ended up shaping the product.
One subscription instead of two providers.
The market is split in a way that leaves an obvious gap. Certified mail providers sell a compliance product, cheap and unloved, with no interest in being your daily inbox. International mail apps have better products and no certified mail at all, because it is an Italian rulebook they have no reason to implement. Nobody is selling both.
So the pricing follows the product: certified mail is not an add-on with its own bill, it is what you get when you move up a plan. The prototype ships three, and the demo bar switches the interface between them so you can see what each one actually unlocks.
The product site — positioning, plans and the certified mail story
Where the prototype stops.
Velyo is a fictional brand and a front-end build: plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no framework, no backend, no real mail. Messages live in memory and reset on reload. Becoming an actual certified provider means accreditation, infrastructure and audits that no prototype can stand in for.
What it is meant to prove is narrower and, I think, more useful: that the split between everyday mail and certified mail is a product decision rather than a technical necessity, and that closing it makes the legal part easier to live with rather than heavier.
Sign in with the pre-filled credentials, send yourself a certified message and watch the receipts arrive.