Superhuman Email Overview
| Target Users | Power users, executives, teams processing 100+ emails daily |
| Supported Platforms | Mac, iOS, Android, Chrome extension |
| Email Provider Support | Gmail and Microsoft Outlook only |
| Key Features | Split inbox organization, AI-powered email writing and summarization, Extensive keyboard shortcuts, Calendar and meeting scheduling, Team collaboration tools |
| Starting Price | $30/user/month (Starter plan) |
| Best For | Heavy email users who value speed, Teams that need collaborative email features, Users who prefer keyboard-driven workflows |
| Not Ideal For | Light email users, Budget-conscious users, Users of email providers other than Gmail/Outlook |
| Security | SOC 2 Type II certified, local client with encrypted data |
Supercharge Your Superhuman Experience with Clean Email
Clean Email is my personal favorite inbox organizer, and it can be an excellent sidekick for those who intend to use Superhuman as their primary mail client, as well as a full-fledged alternative if you're interested in Superhuman mostly for its inbox organization features.
The main reasons why I love Clean Email so much and rely on it on a daily basis for keeping my inbox organized are its powerful automation capabilities and intelligent organization features.
Rather than just offering basic filters like many Gmail alternatives, Clean Email provides 33 intelligent Smart Folders that automatically categorize your messages based on type, sender, and content. With their help, you can effortlessly select multiple messages to organize in bulk.
For example, I routinely use Clean Email to clean up hundreds of newsletters, notifications, or old messages with just a few clicks.
You can also create sophisticated Auto Clean rules that automatically process incoming emails exactly how you want them—whether that's archiving old newsletters or moving specific emails to designated folders.
Should you still get overwhelmed by the sheer number of incoming messages (it happens to the best of us), then you can turn on Clean Email's Screener feature and let it automatically filter messages from unknown senders until you have time to review them.
💡 Best of all, Clean Email supports virtually any email provider—something that can't be said about Superhuman, which only works with Gmail and Outlook.
What Is the Superhuman Email App?
Figuring out what the Superhuman email app actually is just by visiting its website can be a challenge. The homepage is filled with bold marketing statements that create excitement but don't tell us much about the product itself. Just read some of them yourself:
- "Save 4 hours per person every single week"
- "Superhuman is the most productive mail app ever made. Collaborate faster and get more done with AI-powered email"
- "Fly through your mail twice as fast as before. Be more responsive to what matters most."
💡 The short answer is that Superhuman is a feature-rich mail client for Gmail and Outlook accounts that emphasizes speed and productivity through extensive keyboard shortcuts and AI-powered features.
The app was founded in 2014 by Rahul Vohra (who previously created the popular Gmail plugin Rapportive), and it became one of Silicon Valley's most talked-about email tools when it raised over $100 million from venture capitalists, including a major investment from Andreessen Horowitz.
How Much Does the Superhuman App Cost?
I feel that I should address the elephant in the room before I move to Superhuman's features and how they work in practice. You see, the Superhuman app is super expensive. Here's an overview of Superhuman email pricing:
| Plan |
|---|
| Starter |
| Business |
| Enterprise |
| Monthly Price | Annual Price (per month) | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| $30/user | $25/user (billed annually) | Email Productivity, Basic AI Features, Team Collaboration, Calendar & Scheduling, Group Productivity Coaching |
| $40/user | $33/user (billed annually) | Everything in Starter plus, Advanced AI with Ask AI, CRM Integrations, Smart Send, Recent Opens, 1:1 Productivity Coaching |
| Custom | Custom | Everything in Business plus, Advanced Security & Controls, Single Sign-On, Customer Success Manager, Team Analytics, VIP Productivity Coaching |
These prices are several times higher than what you'd pay for other email clients (some of them, like Thunderbird, are completely free) or inbox organization apps like Clean Email (pricing with discount coupon for Superhuman users).
On top of that, Superhuman doesn't offer a free trial. Instead, you'll need to request access and go through a mandatory onboarding call before you can start using the service (based on information available at the time of testing).
In contrast, Clean Email lets you test the service by managing up to 1,000 messages and unsubscribing from 50 subscriptions for free, with Privacy Monitor and Cleaning Suggestions remaining free features even after the trial ends.
Superhuman clearly targets a very specific demographic: heavy mail users who earn enough to spend around $30 per month to process their messages more efficiently. If you're earning a competitive salary and Superhuman can truly save you the advertised 4 hours every week, the investment might make perfect sense.
However, I recommend carefully evaluating whether you could achieve similar time savings with more affordable solutions. Many of Superhuman's productivity features, like keyboard shortcuts and mail organization, are available in other tools. You might find that combining a capable free mail client like Thunderbird with Clean Email's powerful automation features provides the efficiency you need at a fraction of the cost.
How Does Superhuman Email Work?
The core functionality of the Superhuman app revolves around three main pillars: productivity features, AI capabilities, and team collaboration tools. Let's start with its productivity features.
Smart Productivity Features
The moment you launch Superhuman, you're greeted with a clean, distraction-free interface. The most distinguishing part of the UI is the app's Split Inbox feature, which allows you to divide your inbox into customized sections like Team, Google Docs, or VIP Senders, so that you can better maintain focus on what matters most.
I've found the Split Inbox feature to work reliably, but it does require some initial setup as you need to manually add email addresses to the desired split.
📌 Clean Email's Smart Folders, on the other hand, automatically categorize your messages without any manual configuration needed.
When you find a message that's worth responding to in one of your mail splits, you can instantly compose a reply using the Snippets feature, which are smart email templates that support variables like {first_name} to automatically populate based on your recipient.
Manual replies are made easier thanks to Autocomplete and Autocorrect, which work in the background to catch typos and suggest completions for email addresses, names, and common phrases.
When you receive a message from someone that's not worthy of your time, then you can take advantage of Unsubscribe and Block features to keep your inbox clean and focused.
The Unsubscribe feature simplifies the process by extracting unsubscribe links from emails and providing shortcuts for easy access. Users still need to manually complete the opt-out process.
When an email lacks an unsubscribe link, the app offers the option to block the sender upon receiving an unsubscribe command.
Time-sensitive messages are handled elegantly with Superhuman's Send Later feature, which lets you compose messages when convenient and configure them to arrive at optimal times for your recipients.
💡 What impressed me during testing was that if you receive a reply from the recipient before your scheduled message is sent, the app prevents the awkward situation of an automated follow-up being sent after a response has already been received.
The app also includes a robust Undo Send feature that has saved me multiple times when I've spotted a typo or forgotten an attachment right after hitting send. Just don't get used to it too much (like I did) because then you might find yourself in an awkward situation when using other email clients that either don't have this feature or only give you a few seconds to recall a message.
The true power of these and other Superhuman mailbox productivity features becomes apparent when you master its extensive keyboard shortcuts.
While many email software options offer basic shortcuts, Superhuman takes this to the next level: every action has a corresponding shortcut, from composing emails (C) to archiving (E) to jumping between splits (G then I ).
While there's definitely a learning curve, the Command Palette (accessed via Cmd + K or Ctrl + K) serves as a universal search for any command you can't remember.
The keyboard shortcuts make it easier to practice Superhuman’s streamlined "Inbox as a To-do list" philosophy, which advocates for making just three decisions when handling incoming messages:
- Do It Today: Keep the email in your inbox (press J on desktop or swipe left on mobile) to handle it during your current workday.
- Do It Later: Use the Remind Me feature (press H) to snooze the email until you actually need it. You can quickly type natural language like "next week" or "tomorrow morning," and the email will return to your inbox at the perfect time.
- Done: Archive the email (press E on desktop or tap the checkmark on mobile) to move it out of your inbox.
Whether this approach is better than the common habit of using unread status or stars as task markers is something you have to decide for yourself.
Bringing Your Inbox and Schedule Together
The Superhuman email client recognizes that the ultimate goal of most messages is to drive action. When it comes to work, this often means scheduling tasks/events and collaborating with others on projects. That's why Superhuman thoughtfully integrates calendar management and team collaboration features directly into the email experience.
For instance, when someone suggests a meeting time in a mail, Superhuman automatically detects the date and time mentioned and displays your availability right in the sidebar. You can see at a glance whether you're free and even create a new calendar event with just a few keystrokes. The app supports integration with all major video conferencing platforms, including Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
💡 One of my favorite discoveries while testing was the Share Availability feature. Instead of the usual back-and-forth of "When are you free?" emails, you can quickly insert available time slots directly into your reply. Your recipient can then click to select a time, and the meeting is automatically added to everyone's calendars.
The Shared Conversations feature is a boon for team environments as it lets you loop in team members on email threads without cluttering them with forwards or CCs, while Team Comments enable private discussions about emails right within the thread—perfect for getting quick internal feedback on customer communications without creating separate chat threads.
The app also includes Team Read Statuses and Reply Indicators, which help prevent duplicate responses by showing when colleagues are actively viewing or drafting replies to shared emails. These features, combined with the ability to share mail templates through Team Snippets, create a cohesive environment for team communication.
📌 Needless to say, these collaboration features provide the most value when your entire team adopts Superhuman. If you're the only one in your organization using the app, you'll miss out on much of this functionality.
Supercharging Your Mail Experience With AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere these days, and the Superhuman email app is no exception. First Superhuman AI email features debuted in February 2024, and several more have been introduced since then.
The centerpiece of Superhuman's AI email management capabilities is the Auto Summarize feature. Every conversation thread gets a one-line summary at the top, which updates automatically as new replies come in. The summaries are remarkably accurate at capturing the key points of discussions, so I could very often grasp the essence of a thread just from the summary without needing to read the entire conversation.
To save you time spent on message writing, there's the Write with AI feature, which can transform rough ideas into polished emails in seconds. Unlike more generic AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini, Write with AI learns your writing style from your sent emails to automatically generate content that maintains your voice and tone.
For Business plan subscribers, Superhuman offers advanced AI features like Instant Reply, which attempts to draft responses to incoming emails automatically, and Instant Event, which streamlines calendar management by analyzing email content and automatically suggesting event details.
The Ask AI feature, also available only with the Business plan, understands context and can search across multiple conversations to find relevant information when presented with prompts such as "Find all emails about the marketing budget."
Even at the current stage, the Superhuman AI email features are all useful, and it's virtually guaranteed that they will only get better with time. I personally wouldn't become a Superhuman Business plan subscriber just to access them, but they make for an excellent bonus when combined with Superhuman's core productivity and collaboration features.
Is Superhuman Super-Secure?
Superhuman operates as a local client on your computer, so sensitive data stays on your device rather than being stored on Superhuman's servers. When data does need to be transmitted between your Superhuman client and remote servers, all connections are encrypted to prevent unauthorized access.
The company has also obtained SOC 2 Type II certification, which verifies that they follow strict information security policies and procedures. For enterprise customers, Superhuman offers additional security features like Single Sign-On (SSO) and advanced user provisioning through SCIM. Regarding regulatory compliance, Superhuman adheres to major data protection frameworks including the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
However, where things get more nuanced is in Superhuman's use of AI features. While the company states they only allow their AI service providers to use your data for providing specific features like email drafting and summarization (not for training their models), this still means your email content is being processed by third-party AI systems. If you're handling particularly sensitive communications, this is something to carefully consider.
In fact, if privacy is your top priority, you might want to think twice about using any third-party email client that requires full access to your messages. For comparison, Clean Email takes a more conservative approach by only accessing email headers and envelope information to enable its inbox organization features.
Is Superhuman Email Worth It?
- Clean, distraction-free interface
- Powerful inbox management features
- Advanced AI capabilities for productivity
- Robust security measures and compliance
- Strong team collaboration tools
- Integration with major calendar and conferencing tools
- High subscription cost
- Limited to Gmail and Outlook accounts
- No traditional free trial available
After thinking about the conclusion to this Superhuman email review for quite a while, I can say that the answer to the question in the heading above depends entirely on how you use email and what you value most in an email client.
Learning how to use Superhuman email effectively requires commitment—both to master its extensive keyboard shortcuts and to adopt its opinionated approach to inbox management. But for the right user, that investment can pay significant dividends.
If you don't see yourself to be Superhuman's target customer, then Clean Email provides a reliable alternative that can enhance your email experience without breaking the bank.
💡 You can also explore other alternatives to Gmail and Outlook or read our comparisons with other top email clients like Gmail vs. Apple Mail for more solutions that better match your needs and budget.
