Clean Email vs Trimbox: My Favorite Trimbox Alternative

Clean Email and Trimbox Comparison

Author's Note: I've rolled up my sleeves and personally tested both Trimbox and Clean Email. The insights, screenshots, and information I'm sharing in this comparison reflect my own experience and are accurate and up-to-date as of my last hands-on session in 2024.

Let's take a quick look at how Clean Email and Trimbox stack up against each other on some key features:

As I was gathering information for this Trimbox app review/comparison with Clean Email, two differences stood out to me the most, with pricing being the first one.

📌 Clean Email offers a more budget-friendly option, especially when considering monthly subscriptions.

Secondly, the range of supported email providers and platforms varies considerably between the two services. While Clean Email offers broad support for various email providers including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, AOL, and any IMAP service across web, macOS, iOS, and Android platforms, Trimbox is more limited in this regard.

The Trimbox for Gmail Chrome extension, which provides the most seamless experience, is as the name suggests available exclusively for Gmail users. Others have to contend with the web and mobile apps. This Gmail-centric approach might be a significant drawback for users who, like I do, rely on multiple mail services.

However, the real differences become apparent when you start using these tools for day-to-day email management. Here's what I've noticed:

I want to unsubscribe from emails

❌ Trimbox: While Trimbox markets itself as an unsubscribe tool, it doesn't actually solve the issue of unsubscribing in the true sense. When you use Trimbox to "unsubscribe," it actually creates a filter in Gmail to block emails from specific senders. Any new emails from these senders are sent directly to your Trash folder. The biggest drawback of this approach is that unwanted senders will continue to message you.

✅ Clean Email: When you click "Unsubscribe" in Clean Email, several things happen. The app sends an actual unsubscribe request to the sender and even fills in unsubscribe forms for you when necessary. It then immediately provides you with the option to move existing messages from that sender to the Trash. If the sender doesn't honor the unsubscribe request, Clean Email will reroute all future emails from that sender to the Trash.

I want to clean up unwanted emails

🤔 Trimbox: The main and basically only cleaning function is deleting messages in bulk, but only from specific senders. This means you need to check each sender separately, which can be time-consuming and inefficient for large-scale inbox cleaning.

✅ Clean Email: With Clean Email, you can also bulk-delete messages from specific senders, but the tool doesn't stop there. You can also delete all messages that fit certain criteria (such messages are automatically organized in many different Smart Folders), set up rules to automatically clean up certain types of messages as they arrive, apply Cleaning Suggestions, and more. With these features, I find it to be very easy to make even the messiest inbox usable again.

I want to organize my emails

❌ Trimbox: Unfortunately, Trimbox offers virtually no options for email organization because the tool primarily focuses on unsubscribing (or rather, blocking) emails from specific senders.

✅ Clean Email: My favorite Clean Email organization feature have to be Smart Folders, which sort your emails based on their type, such as social media notifications or travel-related emails. I typically start by opening a Smart Folder and then sorting it further based on criteria such as date or size. Once I have a bunch of messages selected and know which action (like archive, delete, move, or label) I want to apply, I consider automating the action by creating an Auto Clean rule. This is how I can become and stay organized with very little effort required.

I want to automate routine email tasks

❌ Trimbox: Unfortunately, Trimbox doesn't offer any automation features for routine email tasks, so it won't be able to help in this regard.

✅ Clean Email: Clean Email shines when it comes to automation. The Auto Clean feature, which I've mentioned several times already in this article, makes it easy to create custom rules to manage incoming emails automatically. For example, you can set up rules to delete emails from certain senders, move specific types of emails to designated folders, and so on. Your rules can then be managed from a convenient dashboard, and you can not only delete them but also pause/resume them.

I want to clean up my inbox for free

🤔 Trimbox: If you're wondering "is Trimbox free?", the answer is yes and no. Trimbox offers a free trial that allows you to unsubscribe from 10 subscriptions and perform unlimited deletions. While useful for testing the tool, it probably won't be enough for you to achieve your inbox organization goals.

🤔 Clean Email: Clean Email also offers a free trial, but it's more generous than Trimbox's. You can manage up to 1,000 emails and unsubscribe from 25 subscriptions without paying a dime. This gives you a better opportunity to clean up a significant portion of your inbox and test out more of Clean Email's features.

Quick Summary

The differences between Trimbox and Clean Email are easy to summarize because each tool is distinct, so deciding which one to choose boils down to how comprehensively you want to approach the inbox cleanup:

➡️ Choose Trimbox if you're a Gmail user looking for a simple Chrome extension to quickly unsubscribe from newsletters. You'll never be wondering how to use Trimbox because it's as simple as clicking the teal icon next to emails from mailing lists.

What Is Trimbox?

Trimbox is a popular inbox organizer whose purpose is to help Gmail users get rid of unwanted messages. The inbox organizer is known best for its Chrome extension (Gmail only), but you can also use it as a web or mobile app.

The Trimbox Chrome extension has around 90,000 users at the time of writing this article, and it has been featured by Google in the Chrome Web Store, and Trimbox reviews are overwhelmingly positive. When you install the Trimbox Chrome extension, it integrates seamlessly with your Gmail account to scan your inbox for subscription emails and newsletters. It then adds a small teal icon next to the sender's name for messages it identifies as coming from mailing lists.

Key features

Trimbox is a simple product that doesn't offer too many features:

• Unsubscribe: You can click on the small teal icon to "unsubscribe" (see the disadvantages of Trimbox below to understand why the quotes) from the mailing list with a single click, without even opening the email.
• Delete all emails: The same teal icon reveals an option to bulk-delete all messages sent to you from the same address.
• AI email writer: The latest version of Trimbox includes a feature that can help draft email responses with the power of artificial intelligence.

• Multi-account support: You can use the Trimbox with multiple mail accounts.

Disadvantages of Trimbox

Most disadvantages of Trimbox stem from its narrowly-focused nature, and they include:

• Limited to Gmail: The Trimbox Chrome extension, which offers the most seamless experience, is only available for Gmail users. If you're using other email platforms like Yahoo or Outlook, you're limited to the less convenient web or mobile apps.
• No true unsubscribe: Despite its name, Trimbox doesn't actually unsubscribe you from mailing lists. Instead, it creates a Gmail filter to send future emails from that sender directly to Trash.
• Limited scope: The unsubscribe (or rather, block) feature only works for newsletters and subscription emails. Other types of email clutter, like transactional emails or personal communications, remain untouched.
• Lack of bulk organization: There are no options to organize or clean up your entire inbox at once. The tool focuses on handling emails one sender at a time, which can be time-consuming for severely cluttered inboxes.
• Missing action history: Trimbox lacks a dedicated dashboard or log where you can review your actions, such as which newsletters you've unsubscribed from or which emails have been deleted.
• Limited customization: Users can't customize filters, sorting, or rules within Trimbox, limiting its flexibility for power users.
• No automatic categorization: Unlike some other inbox management tools, Trimbox doesn't automatically categorize your messages based on their type, date, size, and so on.
• Lack of Automation: There are no features for automating routine email tasks, which could save significant time for users with high email volumes.
• Transparent pricing: When you visit the official website of Trimbox, you won't be able to find one important information: how much the tool costs.

Why Clean Email is More Powerful?

The extensive list of features above alone would probably be enough to illustrate that Clean Email is much more powerful than Trimbox, but I believe the main reasons are worth highlighting separately:

• Proper unsubscribing: Clean Email's Unsubscriber actually sends unsubscribe requests to senders instead of just moving all new subscription messages from the address in question to Trash.
• Comprehensive email management: With Clean Email, you can do much more besides unsubscribing from emails. You can block senders, create automation rules, label messages in bulk, and even reply to received emails.
• Automation of routine tasks: It took just a few Clean Email Auto Clean rules for me to automate most of my routine inbox management tasks and save a huge amount of time—something that would never be possible with Trimbox.
• Automatic message categorization: The usefulness of the Smart Folders feature takes a while to fully appreciate, but there's something really amazing about the ability to instantly see all your social media notifications, online shopping receipts, or travel-related emails in one place.
• Action History: Every action, whether automated or manual, is recorded in Clean Email's Action History. This feature has saved me once in the past when I've accidentally set up a rule that archived important messages.
• Inbox sorting: Clean Email can display your Gmail inbox in many different ways. For example, you can choose to group messages by email addresses, subjects, dates, and more. You can display the newest messages first or last, sort everything by size, and so on. This isn't something Trimbox lets you do, which is why it's closer to Unroll.Me and Cleanfox.
• Cross-platform consistency: Regardless of whether you use Clean Email on the web or on your mobile phone, you always get access to the same features and capabilities.
• Affordable pricing: Clean Email is a very affordable tool considering how much it can do, and its developers display pricing information very clearly and transparently on the official website. At the time of writing this article, Clean Email's pricing is slightly more affordable than Trimbox if you pay yearly and twice as affordable if you pay on a monthly basis.

Summary

All inbox management tools have their strengths and weaknesses, and that's true even for Trimbox and Trimbox alternatives like Clean Email.

• Trimbox is an excellent choice for Gmail users who want a super simple and quick solution for managing their inbox. If your primary goal is to quickly block newsletters directly from your inbox, then you'll probably find it to meet your needs perfectly well. The AI message writing feature is a nice bonus, but I definitely wouldn't put any monetary value on it since similar AI tools are a dime a dozen these days.
• On the other hand, Clean Email is my recommendation for handling more complex email management tasks, especially across multiple providers. It offers advanced organization features like Smart Folders, allows you to automate various email tasks with custom rules, and provides a true unsubscribe feature that goes beyond simply blocking senders.

Since Clean Email is slightly more affordable than Trimbox despite being significantly more powerful and just as easy to use in virtually all cases, I'm convinced that anyone who is serious about email management should use it as a better Trimbox alternative.