Best Email Manager App in 2024

What Makes Our Choices The Best Email Management App

An email management app is designed to organize your inbox so email becomes less of an overwhelming task. Therefore, any online email manager you are looking for should at least offer some of the following features:

As we evaluated options for the best email manager app, we looked at email clients, email management apps, and browser extensions to see which options provided the most mail manager features and tools.

We also looked for options that offer advanced features, automations, and AI-assisted management. Ultimately, we compiled a list of apps for email management that are widely compatible with email providers and operating systems, plus provide the most mail management features.

Here are the apps we selected:

1. Clean Email — a feature-filled automatic email management app
2. Mailbird — an email client that lets you organize all emails in one app
3. Mailstrom — an email manager app that lets you bundle messages in multiple ways
4. SaneBox — the best email manager for those who need help with prioritization
5. Edison Mail — a mail manager app that doubles as a personal assistant
6. eM Client — the best app to manage multiple email accounts
7. Spike — an email management app focused on conversational messaging
8. Thunderbird — an entirely open-source email manager
9. Sortd — the best app to manage emails and to-do lists simultaneously
10. Mailbutler — an inbox extension that offers many AI-driven features
11. Hiver — the perfect email manager for collaboration
12. Drag — a way to turn Gmail into an all-in-one workspace
13. Shortwave — reshapes your inbox with customized email threads and pinned messages

The 13 Best Email Manager Apps

There are many different kinds of emails manager apps. Some, like Clean Email, are designed to help you organize your inbox and get rid of unwanted subscriptions and newsletters, while others allow you to access multiple inboxes from one place.

What all email manager apps have in common is their ability to ease email overload. As unfortunate as it is, most people receive more unwanted emails than legitimate ones. Those who use email for both work and personal purposes often receive over a hundred of emails every day, and it takes them a lot of time to go through them and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Any app that can speed up and simplify this tiresome process is welcome, which is why the market with emails manager apps is booming. There are now even automatic email manager apps that you can essentially teach how to manage your inbox for you. Clean Email is a great example of an automatic email manager, which is one reason why we consider it to be the best email manager app in 2024.

2. Mailbird

Mailbird is a snappy but powerful email manager for Windows. It’s designed to provide a unified email management solution with support for scheduling, tasks, and third-party apps (Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Dropbox, Google Calendar, Asana, Todoist, and others). It shines the most when used with multiple email accounts at the same time because you can then manage all your emails in one unified inbox.

Some of the more advanced features that you won’t find in most other email managers include attachment search, LinkedIn lookup, snooze, custom sounds, and customizable layout. Not all of these features are included in the free version of Mailbird, however. To unlock all features, you can either purchase the annual plan or pay once and use Mailbird without any limits forever.

Mailbird’s developers are also constantly working to improve user experience and add new features to remain competitive with other inbox manager tools. Currently, Mailbird is working to add AI replies powered by OpenAI and inbox categories similar to Clean Email’s Smart Folders feature.

3. Mailstrom

Mailstrom is an email manager designed to help you manage emails more effectively. Instead of relying on artificial intelligence algorithms, Mailstrom amplifies human intelligence by identifying bundles of related emails and making it easy for you to act on them as a group. It can bundle emails according to their sender, subject, time, type, and more. Just like in Clean Email, you can then manage them in bulk as you normally would.

Mailstrom has an unsubscribe feature to stop unwanted newsletters and subscriptions from cluttering your inbox, and it also has a one-click block feature that instantly stops all future emails from a specific sender.

We like that Mailstrom gives new users the option to try it for free without a credit card. This email manager works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, as well as other IMAP-based providers, and it uses industry-leading encryption to keep its users safe.

4. SaneBox

For many people, the most difficult aspect of email management is learning how to manage emails under pressure, with multiple deadlines quickly approaching and bosses becoming increasingly anxious to meet them. The SaneBox app is designed to help users organize their inbox more efficiently, using algorithms to analyze your email patterns and determine the importance of incoming messages.

Essentially, SaneBox automatically decides which emails are important, and it moves the rest into a separate folder, where they sit and wait until you have time to go through them.

Essentially, SaneBox automatically decides which emails are important and keeps them in your inbox, while categorizing the less urgent ones into various folders such as SaneLater for less immediate emails, SaneNews for newsletters, SaneNoReplies for emails awaiting responses, and more. As such, SaneBox stops you from wasting your time on spam, subscriptions, and low-value emails, helping you accomplish more in less time.

SaneBox offers several advanced features that go beyond basic email sorting. Its digest feature allows quick processing of non-Inbox emails with actions like Training, Snoozing, and Archiving. Additionally, the app helps in organizing email attachments by automatically uploading them to your preferred cloud service, and assists in inbox decluttering through its Email Deep Clean feature.

5. Edison Mail

Edison Mail is a smart email manager that offers a unified inbox, allowing users to manage various email accounts from different providers in one consolidated view. The app also functions as your personal assistant, organizing your emails into different categories, such as Subscriptions, Travel, Packages, and more, sending you real-time alerts for messages, and ensuring that unimportant messages never distract you from your work with the Focused Inbox feature.

Edison Mail combats email overload with effective tools such as one-tap unsubscribe and domain blocking. It supports pinning important messages and features like 'Undo Send' for greater control. Additionally, search queries are processed nearly instantly, and common actions (archiving, snoozing, or deleting) can be performed with a simple and intuitive swipe.

A key emphasis is placed on privacy in Edison Mail, with automatic blocking of tracking pixels to protect users' data and ensure confidentiality. The app serves as an effective email manager for Gmail, Outlook, and other email accounts and is available for free, with in-app purchases.

6. eM Client

Do you have multiple email accounts that you would like to manage from a single place? If so, you should consider giving eM Client a try. This full-featured email client for Windows and Mac computers has everything you could ever ask for from an email manager app and more.

When it comes to working as an email organization app, eM Client gives you the option to snooze incoming messages, establish email rules for automated sorting, and the ability to add tags to messages. eM Client also offers an integrated calendar, task list, contacts, and chat, meaning you don’t need to switch to another application when you receive a messages with an invitation to a meeting or task.

eM Client keeps your emails automatically backed up while you’re working, and it supports PGP encryption so that you can send encrypted and signed emails containing sensitive information without having to install and configure complicated privacy software applications.

7. Spike

Traditional email doesn't really fit the needs of many employees who collaborate in real-time and frequently share project-related files. Spike upgrades email for the 21st century by introducing people-centric instant messaging, advanced file management, and voice and video call capabilities. As such, it bridges the gap between Gmail, Outlook, and other traditional email services and full-fledged instant messaging solutions like Slack or Skype.

However, Spike isn’t just a modern inbox — it also includes many email management app features. The priority inbox, super search, and conversational emails all help keep the clutter to a minimum and maximize efficiency. Furthermore, Spike’s focus on AI tools help you summarize lengthy messages and reply to emails faster than ever before so you can respond and remove in minutes.

Spike works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail, iCloud and other IMAP mail accounts. You can also take advantage of the free version, which includes nearly all of Spike’s features for up to three users, or invest in one of their two paid subscription plans for larger groups.

8. Thunderbird

First released in 2003, Thunderbird is a venerable email manager from the people behind the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and several other Unix-like operating systems. Unlike other email managers on this list, Thunderbird is an open source project created by contributors from around the world.

You can use Thunderbird with any existing email account. The mail account setup wizard can automatically find the correct settings for you, so all you need to do is provide your name, email address, and password. Managing multiple email accounts is easy thanks to Thunderbird's tabbed user interface, which makes it easy to quickly jump between them.

Even though Thunderbird comes loaded with useful features right-out-of-the-box you can make it even more powerful by installing third-party add-ons to organize your schedule and life's important events in a calendar, add OpenPGP message encryption and authentication, or create templates that can be easily inserted into your own emails.

9. Sortd

Sortd is a sophisticated email manager for Gmail. With a single click, it transforms Gmail into a Kanban-style workspace where you can organize emails as if they were tasks on a to-do list.

This approach has multiple advantages. First, it makes it easy to prioritize emails and organize them on a task-based basis. Second, it removes the need for a separate to-do application, allowing you to essentially kill two birds with one stone. Third, it simplifies team collaboration and removes the need for email forwarding, carbon copies, and mass replies.

Sortd offers a free plan limited to three lists, 20 number of incomplete tasks in a list, and basic customization. To unlock all features, you need to pay at least $6 per month per user for the Pro subscription plan.

10. Mailbutler

If you’re looking for Outlook or Gmail manager app that installs as a simple extension of your existing inbox, look no further than Mailbutler. This add-on offers a number of productivity features to help you out, including snooze, message scheduling, and tagging so you can focus on what matters most and leave the rest for later.

Mailbutler has also recently added a variety of AI-driven features that can help you save time and stop holding onto emails. In fact, the newly-added Smart Assist can help you compose, reply, summarize, and improve messages. It can also help you draw out task lists from each message you receive, so you don’t have to hold onto the email to remember what to do.

Mailbutler offers a 14-day free trial, then provides four different subscription plans to choose from. That being said, this extension only works with Outlook, Gmail, or Apple Mail.

11. Hiver

Hiver is the best email management app for teams who need to work on email collaboratively. This ensures that messages don’t get missed, and it also lets you segment messages within busy inboxes so everyone on the team knows what to do.

With Hiver, you can assign messages to anyone on the team, meaning you move them into the responsible party’s stack without cluttering up everyone else’s inbox. You can even use the built-in automaton tool to program Hiver to distribute messages automatically. The app also lets you apply a status to each message and use tags to distinguish groups of messages from each other.

Not sure Hiver will work for your team? You can take it for a test drive for seven days, then opt into one of the app’s three payment tiers. Hiver is also available for Google Workspace, Mac, and Windows.

12. Drag

Companies who use Gmail or Google Workspace email accounts will love Drag. It offers productivity tools, collaboration, and workflow setups all in a single place: your Gmail inbox.

Drag isn’t just an email manager — it’s a replacement for all of the other tools you’ve been using to stay on top of things at work. You can move, sort, and reassign emails in just a couple of clicks. You can also program automations that do all of these things for you when a message that meets the criteria hit your inbox. Also, since everything is shared between all members of your team, you can stop CCing and forwarding emails to each other, removing even more clutter than before.

Individuals and small groups can enjoy Drag for free with nearly all of its top features. However, larger groups will need to opt into one of the paid subscription tiers.

13. Shortwave

Shortwave is the final on our list of the best email management apps, but that doesn’t mean it’s the least helpful. In fact, it offers many unique features that users enjoy.

Shortwave doesn’t just let you sort messages into folders, but rather thread them into a single row, even if they’re from different senders or contain different subject lines. You can reorganize these threads at any time based on your personal preferences. Then, you can pin important messages to the top of your inbox and prioritize them over other emails.

Despite all of its incredible features, Shortwave is currently only available for Gmail, making it less than ideal for anyone who uses a different email client.

Bonus: EmailAnalytics

While it's not an email manager app, EmailAnalytics is included as a bonus solution on this list as it offers a unique solution to make managing your emaisl much easier. This email management tool integrates with Gmail and Google Workspace accounts and automatically syncs with your email history, then visualizes it in intuitive charts, graphs, and tables.

You can see how many emails you send and receive every day, who sends you the most emails, and what times of day are busiest for you. The tool also integrates with your employees' accounts, so if you manage a team, you can keep tabs on everyone in your team or even your entire company.

It enables data exports to Excel or CSV so you can manipulate your data however you want. And it sends a daily or weekly report that shows you your email activity (or that of your team) for the previous day or the previous week (your choice). Perhaps most interesting is the "average email response time" report, which shows how quickly you and your team respond to emails. This is a critical KPI for sales and customer service teams!

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are many great apps out there designed to help improve emails management. However, choosing the best app for email management isn’t as simple as reading this review: you need to really think about what features will help you organize your inbox and save you time. Once you have a list together, you can choose the option from our guide that best meets your needs.

Here’s to spending less time on emails and focusing on more important things in 2024!