20 Tools for More Productive Email
These email apps, plug-ins, and services can make your digital life easier to manage and more organized.
By Jill Duffy
With the uptick of text messaging, team chat apps, and social networks, I find myself sifting through email less and less often. Yet I still have several inboxes to manage. I still have to prioritize my replies, follow up on emails I sent, unsubscribe from mailing lists that I don’t want to be on, and more. The good news is that tools for managing email have gotten really good. So let’s take a look at some of the best email apps and services to see what they can do.
I’ve listed these apps and tools in alphabetical order. Some are email client apps with special features that connect to an existing email account. For example, Edison Mail is an email client with a snooze button, a feature Gmail doesn’t have.
Other items in this list are better described as tools, services, or plug-ins. In these cases, you use your email account as normal but add something onto it. SaneBox is a good example; this service goes into your email on the back end and categorizes messages based on their importance or other criteria you set. When you receive emails that are important, they go into your inbox. When it sees a new message that may be unsolicited or of low importance, SaneBox sends it to a different folder, so the email never shows up in your inbox. The more you use SaneBox, the smarter it gets. All the while, the interface you use to access your email doesn’t change significantly and you don’t have to download a new app to use it.
1. Active Inbox (for Gmail)
Starting at $49.92 per year
Is your inbox really a to-do list? ActiveInbox is an add-on for Gmail that gives you options to turn mail into tasks. Say your realtor emails you asking what properties you want to see tomorrow. You don’t want to deal with that message right now, but it’s important to do today. ActiveInbox puts new buttons in Gmail that let you set a deadline of “today” on that message. You can also add subtasks to it, such as “review property listings to view tomorrow” so that you don’t have to reread the whole message when you’re ready to reply. If that’s your most important message for today, you can also drag and drop it at the top of your inbox, so it’s front and center.
2. Boomerang (for Gmail)
Free; paid accounts starting at $4.99 per month
Boomerang for Gmail tracks messages you send, alerts you if a recipient doesn’t reply, and lets you schedule when to send an email you draft ahead of time. This add-on service for Gmail is great for business people who don’t need a full-scale email marketing tool, but do need help keeping track of messages they send. You can use Boomerang for free if you’re ok with only tracking 10 messages per month. Paid accounts are unlimited and come with advanced features, too.
3. Crystal (for Chrome)
Free; $29 per month
Crystal, which is a browser plug-in, tells you about the person you’re emailing so you can change your tone to suit them. Does the person prefer short and direct communication or an informal and chatty approach? Crystal learns about your email recipient based on their online persona and then suggests phrases to use that will appeal to them. While it isn’t a foolproof method for writing better emails, it could be helpful for making inroads with new clients and colleagues. It’s free to try, but you’ll need a paid account for integration with CRMs, LinkedIn, and Gmail.
4. Discoverly (for Chrome)
Free
Do you ever get an email from someone whose name is familiar but you just can’t place how you know them? Chrome plug-in Discoverly tells you about the people who email you, based on their information from LinkedIn, Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook. When a new email arrives, you can see whether you and the sender share any mutual friends. You can also see whether they’ve tweeted recently and what they said. If you swap messages often with people who are “loose ties,” this is a great app to help you stay on top of your email game.
5. Drag (for Gmail)
Free; from $12 per person per month for group accounts
Here’s another email plug-in for when your inbox is your to-do list: Drag. Drag turns Gmail into a kanban board. Your emails become cards that you can move around the board to keep track of their status. You can make columns for emails that you must reply to today, messages that are pending a response, and so forth. If you think of yourself as a visual learner or you manage an email account with multiple people, Drag could be a great fit.
6. Edison Mail (for Android, iOS)
Free
Edison Mail is a free mobile email client app for Android and iOS. You can connect virtually any email account to it, and multiple accounts at that. The app has a few special features, such as a focused inbox view, prominent unsubscribe button, and an assistant that sorts messages automatically into categories such as Travel, Packages, and Bills & Receipts. This is a great email app to consider if you manage your email often from a mobile device.
7. eM Client (for Windows)
$49.95
If you communicate in a few different languages but aren’t perfectly fluent in all of them, eM Client is right up your alley. This email client app for Windows includes language translation features. It’s also one of the better apps you’ll find for putting email, calendar, contacts, and tasks into one interface. It’s only available for Windows, and while the nearly $50 price may sound high, it’s a one-time fee rather than a recurring subscription.
8. Front
From $12 per person per month
Front is an email app for teams. It’s designed for groups of people who manage an inbox together, such as a small business where everyone answers emails sent to a generic company address. Front not only lets a group of people access the same inbox, but also delegate tasks, such as assigning the job of replying to an email to a particular person. Prices start at $12 per person per month.
9. Hiri
$39 per year or $119 for lifetime access
Hiri is an email client app for any Microsoft email: Office 365, Microsoft Exchange, Outlook.com, Live.com, Hotmail, and MSN. It gives you a lovely interface with a dashboard-like view that gives you insight into what’s going on in your inbox. You can filter messages based on whether you need to take action on them or whether they’re informational in nature. It also lets you turn emails into tasks. It makes email less painful for anyone using Microsoft accounts.
10. Hiver (for Gmail)
From $18 per person per month
Similar to Front, Hiver is an email app for teams that share an inbox and specifically use Gmail. In other words, multiple people can manage one email account. Let’s say you run a business that isn’t large enough to warrant a full-fledged email ticket support system. You could use Hiver to allow a few people to triage incoming email to your company’s “help” or “support” email addresses. Hiver has tools and views to make sure two people aren’t answering the same email. It’s a good email service to know about if you run a small business.
11. Just Not Sorry (for Gmail)
Free
Our words matter and hedging words can undermine us. Just Not Sorry is a Gmail add-on that puts a red dotted line under words and phrases that can sap your authority. If you too often pad your sentences with phrases such as “I think…” and “I’m sorry, but…” this app can help you identify them and remove them. It’s a free and open-source plug-in that can help you write more assertive emails.
12. Mailbird (for Windows)
$39 per year or $79 one-time fee
Mailbird is an email client app for Windows that lets you customize the look of your inbox. You can connect to multiple email accounts and streamline everything into one view. One novel feature is called Speed Reader. It takes all the text from a message and shows it to you one word at a time in large font in the middle of the screen. This way, your eyes stay in one place as the text of the message flash before you. For some people, it can help them focus on the content of a message without being distracted by whatever else is on screen. Mailbird can integrate with popular business apps, too, such as Asana and Slack.
13. Missive
Free; from $10 per person per month for paid accounts
Missive is another team email client app (like Hiver and Front), although it’s different because you can connect it to not only email accounts but also social media accounts. That way, multiple people on your team can manage not only incoming emails, but also mentions and direct messages on Twitter, posts on Facebook Page, and SMS messages via Twilio. It’s another great email app to know about if you run a small business.
14. Polymail (iOS, macOS, web)
From $10 per person per month
Polymail is an email client app for sales teams. It has an option to connect to Salesforce so that you can pull in relevant information about the people you need to email. It also tracks emails, letting you know when someone opens a message you sent. Other team features include stats about how much time each team member spends in email and who is most likely to get a response. While it’s designed for sales teams, you can use Polymail-which is packed with additional features-for personal email as well.
15. Postbox (macOS, Windows)
$29.99 per year
Postbox is an email client app that lets you view all your email accounts in one place. It has customizable themes so you can make it more pleasing to your taste. You can also organize your inboxes however you want and open multiple messages in separate tabs. When you buy a license to Postbox, you can use the app on macOS, Windows, or both. The license is good for wherever you need to access your email. It has some nice built-in reminders, too, so you never write an email about an attachment and forget to add the attachment.
16. SaneBox
From $7 per month
SaneBox works behind the scenes to push unimportant messages to a dedicated folder before they ever hit your inbox. That way, only important messages land in your inbox. SaneBox never deletes messages without your permission. It merely sweeps them to one side so you can review them when the time is right and without distraction. This email add-on service has loads of other features, too, with its main purpose to automate the worst part of triaging your inbox: finding the signal among the noise.
17. Spark (iOS, macOS)
Free; $7.99 per month for Premium
Spark is an email client app for macOS and iOS with two appeals. First, it’s for people who like to reply to messages really quickly. It gives you options for replying with an emoji in one tap, so you can speed along to the next message. Second, it has features for team email. For example, multiple people can compose an email together, all while chatting about it off to the side. Spark has other helpful features, too, like an undo send button, snooze options, and reminders. There’s also a smart and quick calendar system that lets you hit Accept or Reject on invitations that come your way.
18. Spike (Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Web)
Free; from $7.99 per month for paid accounts
If you can’t be bothered with email anymore, Spike gets you as far away from it as possible. Spike, which used to be called Hop, makes your emails look like text messages. Replies look like chats instead of lengthy threads. It resembles messaging apps in other ways, too. For example, it gives you options for adding animated GIFs and images easily. The free version of the app is good for people using free email with no more than 100,000 messages.
19. WiseStamp
Free; $6 per month
Do you ever see a really nice email signature with photos and icons and wonder how the sender made it? Maybe they used WiseStamp. WiseStamp is a plug-in tool that lets you create a professional signature for any email account you use. It’s free to use, although paying members get multiple signatures, the ability to assign them to email addresses, professional templates, no ads, and added features.
20. Zapier
Free; from $24.99 per month
Zapier is an automation service: You use it to do connect apps and online services you use and make something happen automatically. The something is up to you. And it works with your email. For example, you could set up a rule that says, “When my online store receives an order for more than $500, automatically send a thank-you email from my Gmail account.” You can get pretty inventive with it and use it for tasks that go well beyond email.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com on December 2, 2019.
