Notion Mail Review: Can It Replace Your Email Client?

Clean Email Remains My Go-To Inbox Management Tool

While the Notion Mail app's AI-centric approach to email has its merits (more about what Notion Mail offers soon), it didn't convince me to abandon my favorite inbox organizer, Clean Email, which continues to be the cornerstone of my daily email management routine.

Why? Because Notion Mail and Clean Email serve fundamentally different purposes:

Specifically, Clean Email tackles the bigger picture of email organization and automation instead of focusing on individual email workflows within the Notion ecosystem. It automatically sorts thousands of emails into Smart Folders, intelligently suggests the most effective inbox cleaning actions, unsubscribes from multiple newsletters simultaneously, applies powerful cleaning rules that work across all major email providers (not just Gmail), and more.

Because Clean Email presents its inbox management options through an intuitive, user-friendly interface, it makes powerful email organization accessible to anyone regardless of their technical expertise. It also maintains strict data protection standards and never shares your information with third parties, so you can rest assured knowing your data won't be used to target you with ads or worse.

If you'd like to see Clean Email's capabilities in action, check out the following short demonstration video that shows how it can transform a chaotic inbox into an organized one in minutes:

What Is Notion Mail?

📌 Author's Note: After extensive testing of the Notion Mail app, I'm sharing my unbiased findings about this AI email tool. All information provided reflects my personal testing experience and current pricing as of June 2025.

When I first heard about Notion Mail's AI-driven automation capabilities, I assumed that it was positioning itself as an alternative to feature-packed inbox organizers like Clean Email.

In reality, Notion Mail is a minimalist wrapper around your existing Gmail or Google Workspace account (other mail accounts are not supported).

The fact that Notion Mail works only with Google mail accounts has frustrated many users in the Notion community:

Of course, if your digital life revolves around Google products, then the Gmail limitation might not bother you much. However, everybody should be aware that the integration of Notion Mail with Notion itself is only skin deep. Despite carrying the Notion brand and promising seamless workflow integration, the way in which Notion Mail integrates with Notion itself is surprisingly limited.

📌 During my testing, I discovered that you can't turn emails into tasks, connect messages to your existing databases, or embed emails directly into your Notion workspace. The current integration points are mostly cosmetic: @-mentioning Notion pages in email drafts and using /schedule to access your Notion Calendar.

This disconnect has left many users puzzled about the product's direction. A Notion team member, Jason, acknowledged these limitations by explaining that they wanted to make the standalone fundamentals as solid as possible before adding deeper integrations.

While this approach might make sense from a development perspective, it raises questions about whether the app was released too early to properly compete with the best email tools.

How Much Does Notion Mail Cost?

One of the most appealing aspects of Notion Mail pricing is that the basic functionality comes at no additional cost. If you already have a Notion account (even the free tier), you can start using the Notion Mail app immediately without paying extra fees.

However, there's an important caveat that affects whether Notion Mail is good for your specific needs: the AI features that make Notion Mail truly powerful aren't completely free. The free Notion account includes only a trial of Notion AI, which means you can test the advanced automation features for a limited time before needing to upgrade.

Unfortunately, the Plus plan ($10/month if you pay yearly) still only includes a trial of Notion AI. For unlimited access to Notion AI, you need the $20/month Business plan, which is a LOT of money considering what many other AI email organizers charge.

📌 The only AI-powered mail tool I've reviewed that's even more expensive than the Notion Business plan is Superhuman, which starts at $30/month for the Starter plan (includes only basic AI features).

I assume that this isn't a coincidence. You can read my Superhuman review to see the detailed feature comparison, but it's clear that Notion Mail positions itself as a direct competitor to Superhuman's premium email experience. Both tools target professionals and teams willing to pay premium prices for AI-enhanced email workflows.

However, Notion Mail has a significant advantage in this positioning: it's not a standalone email tool competing solely on email features. When you pay $20/month for the Notion Business plan, you're unlocking capabilities across the entire Notion ecosystem, including the core workspace platform and Notion Calendar.

How to Use Notion Mail?

Before you can start using Notion Mail, you need to connect it to your Gmail account (remember, Notion Mail only works with Google accounts). The good news is that the process is painless — a familiar Google sign-in pop-up window.

The user interface of Notion Mail is built using the same design language as the UI of Notion itself. By default, your inbox is presented chronologically, with messages grouped by date. This is something you can customize with a few clicks if you'd like to.

To the left of the main inbox panel where your messages are located is a side panel with inbox views (prefiltered categories like Social and Promotions), folders like Spam and Trash, and additional options related to Notion Mail's features.

AI-Powered Auto Labeling

The most important UI element in Notion Mail is located in the top-right corner, and it's the Auto label button. This button lets you access the app's AI-powered labeling capabilities, a feature that easily sets it apart from other AI email management tools.

I started by instructing it to label emails from several senders, and I was asked if I wanted to move them to a separate view (which would result in a cleaner inbox) or keep the labeled messages with all other messages on a single pile. I went with the first option, and Notion Mail started analyzing my inbox based on the prompt.

After a short while, I was presented with several preselected messages and asked to check if they matched my criteria. This step is important as it helps Notion AI learn how to label future messages. Once that was done, I hit Save, and the automated rule was created for me.

📌 While this process was convenient, it made me wonder whether it was actually faster than Clean Email and its Auto Clean rules. So I did some testing and discovered that I can actually create a rule faster in Clean Email than I can in the Notion Mail app. The main difference? Clean Email's rules are straightforward and immediate, while Notion AI asks you to verify and adjust the selected messages to ensure accuracy.

Custom Inbox Views

Another feature where Notion AI comes into play is the creation of custom views. When creating a new view, you can build your own from scratch, use templates, or describe what you want and let AI configure it.

If you go the AI route, then you'll be asked to again teach the AI by verifying its selections. During my testing, I asked it to create a view for "urgent financial notifications," and it analyzed my inbox to find relevant messages. I had to review and confirm whether the AI correctly identified what I considered urgent client correspondence.

📌 In comparison, Clean Email gives you 30+ Smart Folders right from the start, covering most common email categories automatically. In addition, you can save any custom filter to your Favorites. The fact that the most popular views are already provided means I don't have to spend time creating them.

Both the Notion Mail client and Clean Email let you sort and group messages in views and Smart Folders respectively in many different ways.

Email Composition and Replies

Since Notion Mail aims to be a full-fledged email client, I spent considerable time testing its message composition features and capabilities. When replying or writing a new message, you can ask Notion AI to create a draft, which analyzes the email thread and suggests contextually appropriate responses.

The ability to @mention Notion pages or people directly in your emails creates possibilities for knowledge sharing, though this feature feels somewhat underutilized given the lack of deeper Notion integration.

Arguably the most useful message composition feature is the support for snippets, which you can use to save frequently used responses and insert them with just a few keystrokes. You can also insert your availability directly into messages thanks to Notion Calendar integration to eliminate the back-and-forth of more traditional scheduling.

Most of what Notion Mail can do can be controlled using handy keyboard shortcuts, such as:

• C to compose a new message
• R to reply to a thread
• G + I to go to Inbox
• Ctrl + 1-9 to switch between email accounts
• Shift + arrow keys for multi-select

To see all available shortcuts, simply press Cmd + K or Cmd + P in the app.

All in all, Notion Mail has more to offer than inbox management-focused alternatives like Clean Email when it comes to message composition and replies. This makes sense since Clean Email is primarily about organization, so it only needs basic capabilities to send messages, reply, and forward.

Is Notion Mail Safe?

When evaluating any email tool, security should be a top priority. After all, our inboxes contain everything from personal conversations to sensitive business information. So, is Notion Mail safe to use with your Gmail account? The short answer is that it absolutely is.

Notion Mail follows the same security practices as the main Notion platform, which has a solid reputation for data protection. According to Notion's security documentation, all data is encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption and encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2 or greater. This means your emails are protected both when stored on their servers and when traveling between your device and Notion's infrastructure.

Because Notion Mail uses OAuth 2.0, an industry-standard protocol that lets you grant specific permissions without sharing credentials, you don't need to give Notion your Gmail password.

📌 However, the presence of Notion AI does raise some privacy red flags. When you use AI features, your email content is sent to Notion's AI subprocessors, including OpenAI. While Enterprise plan users benefit from zero data retention policies (meaning AI providers immediately delete your data after processing), non-Enterprise users' data may be retained by AI providers for up to 30 days.

This is a significant difference from tools that don't use AI, such as Clean Email, which never accesses email content in the first place.

💡 That said, it's important to remember that unless you turn it off, Google also uses your Gmail to train an AI. So while the privacy implications of the AI-driven automation features in Notion Mail are worth considering, your privacy situation won't become significantly worse by using it.

Summary

After weeks of testing, I've concluded that Notion Mail won't help you achieve Gmail inbox zero any more effectively than established inbox organizers like Clean Email. In fact, it's probably less effective when it comes to pure inbox organization.

However, if Notion keeps improving the app, especially if Notion improves the way Notion Mail integrates with other Notion tools like databases and project management features, it could become an excellent alternative Gmail client for productivity-focused folks whose lives are already organized in Notion.

Right now, it's too expensive for what it is compared to alternatives like Shortwave or dedicated inbox organizers, and it isn't even half of what it could be.

Here's my recommendation:

➡️ Use Notion Mail if you're already deeply invested in the Notion ecosystem and want a Gmail client that speaks the same design language as your workspace.

➡️ Use Clean Email if your primary goal is achieving and maintaining inbox zero through powerful automation, bulk actions, and other features.

As for me, I'll continue testing the free version of Notion Mail from time to time to see how it evolves, while still relying on Clean Email as my primary inbox management tool. This approach lets me stay current with Notion AI developments without sacrificing the extensive decluttering capabilities I depend on daily.