Tutanota is powered by WebStorm

We are building Tutanota with WebStorm, an excellent tool for developing web projects. This blog post is for all those guys that are interested in web and software development.


From my point of view, WebStorm is the perfect development tool for implementing large web projects. And here is why:

  • Excellent Javascript support. This includes the most mature refactoring support available in any Javascript Editor and a good code completion.
  • Native support for nearly all important build tools and frameworks. Just to name a few: NPM, gulp, Knockout.js.
  • Perfect git integration: I love the git command line but WebStorms integrated git tools (especially history, merge and diff support) increase my productivity.
  • The integrated terminal is a small feature but we use it all the time. It is great that you do not have to change applications when you switch between the terminal and your code.

Before we switched to WebStorm, we evaluated a bunch of other tools. None of them was as easy and productive to use. However, there is always room for improvement and we would be very happy to see:

  • Extended support for the upcoming Javascript versions (ES6) and other frameworks that we currently use to build the next generation of Tutanota… :-)
  • Bugfixes for some smaller bugs that only occur on linux systems (we use only linux).

It is good to know that the guys behind WebStrom (a company called JetBrains) is already working on those improvements. All in all we are very happy that JetBrains is supporting our fight for privacy by providing these excellent development tool for us.