Inbox has thought about how email should work in the modern age and come up with an open-source solution described as the "next-generation email platform".

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who really enjoys email, because most people view it as a technology in dire need of an upgrade. In fact, a team full of Dropbox and MIT alumni believed email needed so much tweaking that it founded Inbox as an alternative to standard protocols like IMAP and SMTP.

"In the current email landscape, captive users are shown targeted advertisements, and interfaces are cluttered with confusing 'social' services," Inbox explained, as a slight to Google and Google+. "We've been at their mercy. Until now. Today we're excited to announce the first step toward a new email platform."

That said, Inbox hasn't developed an innovative app or email client just yet. It's only developed something called Inbox Sync Engine. Developers can use the technology's API and cloud service to build next-generation email apps that work with popular email providers like Gmail and Yahoo.

Although the cloud service is still in private beta, Inbox has made its new sync engine open-source. It even plans to release a hosted SaaS version of its platform later this year. All you need to know is that developers can start using Inbox straightaway to build new apps and email clients.

READ: Google Now adds bill reminder cards pulled from Gmail

"Email is here to stay. But developing with email has become more and more difficult over the years. Old protocols and formats have made it nearly impossible to add the simplest features, and the existing mail providers have all but stopped innovating," Inbox explained on the company website.

Michael Grinich, the CEO and of Inbox, who previously worked as an engineer at Dropbox and designer at Nest, co-founded Inbox last year with a MIT alum. He said in a press release that Inbox's API lets developers focus on building apps rather than learning "archaic protocols and formats".