mxHero, launched in 2012, has created the first and only secure platform for developing and deploying email applications on top of any major email system, including Gmail, Microsoft, Zimbra and Lotus. The platform is highly scalable and offers an integrated application store and administrative dashboard capabilities plus individual apps.

Despite challenges from new messaging and collaboration technologies, email remains dominant. In fact, the number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase to nearly 4.9 billion by year-end 2017, according to the Radicati Group.

'Companies and individuals don't want to abandon email. What they want is more control and more innovation,' says Alexis Panagides, CEO and co-founder of mxHero. 'We intend to use the funding to work closely with the leading app stores and marketplaces and to launch a number of power-user Gmail extension capabilities and unique cloud storage and security integration apps later this year.'

The company already serves 90,000 users on Google Apps Marketplace and more than 350,000 users worldwide. It recently expanded its offering to AWS Marketplace.

'mxHero's story and rapid international adoption are a great testament to the truly global nature of today's technology industry,' said Christian Hernandez, managing partner of White Star Capital and former director of international partnerships for Facebook. 'The world-class team and accelerating rate of adoption across a number of platforms and languages are what attracted us as an investment partner.'

mxHero's new Professional Edition has more than 25 apps that significantly improve business user and IT Admin experience in areas of personalization, security, monitoring and cloud file management. Some of the most popular apps enable users to send massive attachments, create read-once self-destructing emails and prevent blind copy distribution.

mxHero also announced the establishment of a board of advisors with email, technology and strategy experts. The company's advisors include:

Joshua Baer, serial email entrepreneur and chief innovation officer of Return Path

Stephen Singam, chief enterprise security technologist for HP Asia Pacific

Art Mikhlin, former senior vice president of strategy and corporate development for Adify

'Email is still the backbone of person-to-person communications, and that isn't changing any time soon,' says Joshua Baer, chief innovation officer of Return Path. 'Server-side email platforms are more important because developers have less control over the client side experience. mxHero is uniquely positioned to fill this gap.'

This is the second email start-up for mxHero's founding team of Alex Panagides, Bruno Santos, Marcelo Marmol and Marcelo Correa, who have worked together for more than a decade. They launched mxHero in the Brazilian enterprise market and on Google Apps Marketplace in early 2012. mxHero then moved to the US and was selected to participate in the 2012 summer class of New York-based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator.

'We believe mxHero is coming to the rescue of email, helping to solve many of the pressing problems plaguing millions of users and inboxes around the world daily,' said Charles Kemper, managing director, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. 'We are excited to see the next stage of their development as they roll out these products to enterprises everywhere.'

About mxHero

mxHero is an email enhancement platform and app store that gives companies, service providers and end users powerful new ways to control, use and analyze email. The mxHero virtual appliance and its growing suite of email apps, downloadable or available in the cloud, help companies and service providers address the challenges of increased email volume and size by improving flexibility, security and productivity. Apps developed for mxHero's open source platform work with any email management program, including Gmail and Microsoft Exchange. More than 5,500 companies with 350,000 users have added mxHero to their email capabilities.