Best Email Management Software Tools & Apps (Top 10 2023)

Introduction

Everyone’s got an email. But some of us need to use email like a pro business tool. For that, you’ve got to go beyond basic webmail or standard email clients.

You need the best email management tools to add on to your Gmail, Outlook, or whatever email platform you use. These email management tools help you get through your inbox faster, focus on your most important messages, and create more professional emails.

We compare the 10 best email management apps. Before that, here’s a quick rundown of what email management software can do.

Email management tools comparison chart (top 10 highest rated)

What is email management software?

Is email management software the same thing as webmail? Or an email client? The answer is: Not exactly.

Webmail vs. email clients vs. email management software

Webmail apps are familiar platforms like Gmail or Hotmail. It’s often a free email SaaS (software as a service). This means the email platform is hosted remotely on servers. So too are all your emails.

What is an email client? These tools are more professional platforms. Microsoft Outlook is the most well-known email client. These email platforms are more often hosted on-premise on your own personal computer or servers. Most email clients are not free.

Email management software is mostly add-ons like extensions and plugins. This means you continue to use your regular email software but with extra useful features. Email management tools exist inside your Gmail or Outlook. They could be simple buttons or full-on sidebars.

You get many of the common email tools with email management software. These include:

• Snooze

• Follow-ups

• Read receipts

• Reminders

• Send later

• Undo send

• Unsubscribe

But the best email management solutions offer more robust features. Here’s a rundown of some:

Email sorting

Email management tools help you de-clutter your inbox. They can review the content of your old and new emails and group them based on importance. They can also identify ads or spam and get those out of view. You can also use standalone tools, such as KanbanMail, for this process, so keep that in mind before choosing the right email management software for your needs.

Meeting scheduler

Lots of email management tools have calendar features that work inside your email. It lets you send your available times to recipients. They can pick a slot in your schedule from your email. This will automatically create a calendar event.

Workflow automation

This is a useful extension for marketing and sales emailing. It lets you create sequences of emails to go out automatically when triggered. A trigger can be someone entering their email on a sign-up page, or when abandoning a shopping cart. 

Email collaboration

Email management software offers many collaboration tools. They can serve as chat apps directly inside your email platform. This lets teams share emails, add notes, and delegate tasks to one another. Shared inboxes are also common.

Customer service

Email management tools are useful for customer support teams that use email. It lets agents turn emails into support tickets and then track them. These tools use a lot of the same collaboration features, like chats and notes.

Templates

Email management software offers many templates. They could be for specific purposes, like reaching out to leads. You can often customize templates with simple drag-and-drop. Templates can make emails way more professional-looking or more beautiful.

User data enhancement

Some of the best email management tools help you understand more about the people you communicate with. They gather data from social media and other resources to create rich contact profiles from the people sending you emails.

Intelligent analysis

The best email management software goes beyond sorting and templates. Using AI, they can analyze the content of an email. They can determine the sentiment of the writer. Or they can intelligently group the emails based on subject matter.

New layouts

Some email management tools want to break away from the standard email layout. With lots of threads and replies and forwards, it could be hard to follow a conversation. Email management may offer clearer ways to read through an email thread.

Analytics and reporting

Emails generate lots of data. Some of the best email management software gathers that data and offers valuable insights. It shows you email open rates and click-through rates. Team leaders can see average response times or the number of back-and-forths between an agent and a customer. 

What is the best email management software? Here’s our top 10 list:

Time to look at the vendors of the 10 best email management solutions. We look at their specific strong points and list their top features. Also suggested is for whom each email SaaS is best suited. Some of these good email management tools and apps are even free. 

Boomerang (Best email management software overall)

Boomerang used to be called Baydin. The new name reflects the speed and accuracy of sending and receiving emails.

The main point of Boomerang is to let users send and receive emails faster. The idea is to boost personal productivity by shortening the time you spend on emails. Boomerang is an extension for Gmail and Outlook. It also works with mobile devices like iPhones and Android devices. It adds the ability to send emails later. You can also set follow-up reminders for important messages. This tool takes some emails out of your inbox to avoid clutter. Boomerang archives those emails until you schedule to see it again. You can also adjust reminders to only kick in if nobody responds in a certain time. Boomerang lets you create calendar events with one click from inside an email. There’s also an AI editor to help you compose emails. Finally, there’s an inbox pause feature. This stops your email from bothering you while you want to focus on other things.

There are free versions of Boomerang for Gmail and Outlook. Both have personal and pro versions for $4.99 and $14.99 per month. Boomerang premium for Gmail is $49.99 per month. For Outlook team prices contact Boomerang.

Boomerang is best for:

• Personal use

• Freelancers

• Startups 

• Fast emailing

• Follow-ups

• Gmail account

• Microsoft Outlook account

Website: Boomerang

SaneBox (Top email sorting software)

SaneBox is a company out of Boston that was founded in 2010. The founders had previous experience in online gaming. But with SaneBox they’re not playing around.

SaneBox is all about getting serious. The focus of SaneBox is to help you pick out your important emails. It cuts through lots of email clutter and sorts your email inbox using AI. It can hide emails from annoying senders. All the distracting and non-important emails go into a SaneLater folder. SaneBox’s AI always improves its ability to know which emails are important when you move emails to the correct folders. This email service lets you use do-not-disturb tools for periods of concentration. You can snooze emails. There is a one-click unsubscribe tool. And you can track when someone doesn’t reply to your email. Sanebox works with any Google account, Microsoft 365 or iCloud. It can also work with email accounts from any email address as well as IMAP accounts.

There are three SaneBox pricing tiers. They go for $00.16, $00.27, and $00.82 per day. Or, $59, $99, $299 per year.

SaneBox is best for:

• Freelancers

• Startups

• Small businesses

• Important emails

• AI email sorting

Website: SaneBox

EmailAnalytics (Good email management for analytics)

To put it bluntly, EmailAnalytics is like Google Analytics but specifically for Gmail accounts.

EmailAnalytics is good for individuals and for team collaboration. This is one email service which is especially good for customer support. It is also useful for sales. It helps users understand a range of email data. It shows you things like the average response times of each user. EmailAnalytics shows email activity by the hour or by the day. You also see who from your team members are the top email senders and email recipients. It categorizes emails and even breaks them down by word count. All analytics are dished up in real-time. Team leaders can take advantage of EmailAnalytics to segment their agents into groups. It can even be used for friendly inter-office competitions. EmailAnalytics is fully compatible with G Suite.

EmailAnalytics is $15 per user per month. If you have more than 5 team members, contact them for a discount.    

EmailAnalytics is best for:

• Startups

• Customer support

• Sales teams

• Team leaders

• Analytics and reporting

• G Suite users

Website: EmailAnalytics 

Hiver (Best email management tool for customer service)

Out of Bengaluru, India, the Hiver team claims to have a “borderline devotional love for email.” Need they say more?

Hiver is an email management tool for customer service. It lets support agents help users directly within Gmail. A shared inbox makes collaboration easier. Support team leaders use Hiver to delegate emails to agents without forwarding. You can categorize emails with tags and review them later, as well as @mention people. Coworkers can add notes to emails to help give context to each other. Hiver does collision alerts which stops two people working on the same email. You can take common or popular emails and turn them into customizable templates. Next, Hiver lets you create smart rules for workflow automation. This takes care of repetitive tasks like during support triage. You also get a full suite of analytics tools. Hiver measures support progress against SLAs. Finally, it offers customer satisfaction surveys. 

Hiver Lite only gets you 1 shared inbox and costs $7 per user per month billed annually. Hiver Growth gets you 15 shared inboxes at $22 per user per month billed annually. Pro and Elite versions are $37 and $57 per user per month billed annually. 

Hiver is best for:

• Startups

• SMBs

• Customer support

• Team leaders

• Analytics

• Email delegation

• Customer surveys

Website: Hiver 

Mailstrom (Top email management software for freelancers)

Look carefully, it’s MailSTROM, not STORM. It’s a whirlpool, not a downpour. What’s that got to do with email? Who knows.

Mailstrom is all about cleaning up that inbox. Perhaps the whirlpool metaphor works because it sweeps in and clears out all the clutter. Mailstrom is an extension with Google, Outlook and Yahoo. It also works with some other email providers. One of its main tools is the bulk action. You can delete and unsubscribe to thousands of emails with a few clicks. It goes beyond artificial intelligence to guess which emails are important. It does this by bundling up related emails so you can take bulk actions on the group. You can also customize the “hacks” that Mailstrom uses so it learns your personal preferences. There’s extra spam and phishing protection and high-level encryption too. 

The basic Mailstrom is $9 per month and is only good for 1 email account. Plus is good for 3 email accounts and is $14 per month. Pro can add up to 20 email accounts and is $29.95 per month. 

Mailstrom is best for:

• Individuals

• Freelancers

• Startups

• SMBs

• Bulk unsubscribe

• Bulk delete

Website: Mailstrom 

Gmelius (Good email management tool for small business)

The seeds for Gmelius were planted in an Oxford Uni dorm room. The company has since blossomed into a Silicon Valley darling. 

Gmelius puts team collaboration up top. This email management solution is designed to work right in G Suite. It goes great with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Meet and Google Photos. It also integrates with Zoom, Slack and Trello. Gmelius gives users a shared inbox with real-time team communication. Emails can be delegated and monitored by the delegating manager. It lets you create Kanban boards inside Gmail. It does this by recognizing tasks which can become Kanban cards. Kanban templates can be stored as well. There is simple workflow automation to put repetitive tasks on autopilot. SLAs and deadline targets are easy to manage. Gmelius also offers a calendar scheduling tool. You can share availability over email and users can pick appointments.

Gmelius offers a free version. Premium versions cost $9, $19 and $49 per user per month billed annually.     

Gmelius is best for:

• Startups

• SMBs

• Team collaboration

• Shared inbox

• Task management

• Kanban boards

• Appointment scheduling

Website: Gmelius 

SalesHandy (Best email management software for sales)

SalesHandy wants to get to the point: This email management tool is all about boosting sales and ROI.

You can try out SalesHandy with any email. Or you can add it as an extension to Gmail for Chrome or Outlook. It lets you set up automated follow-ups for single emails. It’s easy to create a multi-stage sequence. And you can always personalize parts of the sequence. Then there is email tracking, one of the main features of SalesHandy. It sends read receipts to let you know when someone has opened your email. You also get stats on email open rates, and you can track email replies. Email tracking tells you which links inside an email get clicks. The same thing goes for attachments. You can track attachments as they get forwarded around. There are a range of email template features for both Gmail and Outlook. Finally, there is email scheduling and a mail merging tool.

There is a free plan for SalesHandy. Paid plans go for $9, $22 and $49 per user per month billed annually.  

SalesHandy is best for:

• Self-employed

• Startups

• SMBs

• Large businesses

• Sales teams

• Email marketing

• Email tracking

• Email campaigns

• Templates

Website: SalesHandy 

Clean Email (Top personal email management software)

Clean Email began as a homegrown SaaS in 2015. Now over tens of thousands of users are getting their inboxes cleaned with this email management tool.

Clean Email aims to get you through inbox overload. The point is to separate the important messages from the lesser ones so you waste less time sorting it out. You can sign in to Clean Email with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail or Office 365. For the most part Clean Email is a bulk action tool. It lets you delete, archive, move or label emails as a group. You can also teach Clean Email to do these things automatically. Other bulk actions include unsubscribe, block and report spam. You can also bulk mark emails as read or unread. Clean Email then rearranges your inbox by groups. These include unread emails, or emails that are older than a certain time. In the end, Clean Email can remove or classify thousands of emails quickly. 

Clean Email is $7.99 per month for 1 account, $9.99 per month for 5 accounts, and $19.99 per month for 10 accounts.

Clean Email is best for:

• Individuals

• Freelancers

• Startups

• Small businesses

• Bulk actions

• Automated actions

Website: Clean Email

Yesware (Good email management tool for Office 365)

Yesware is a sales productivity tool that lives inside Gmail and Office 365. The app boasts over one million downloads.

All of Yesware’s tools are geared toward networking and closing deals. The email tracking notifies you in real-time when people open your emails. It also pings you if they click links or open attachments. All this data feeds into Yesware analytics. You can create prospecting marketing emails as automated workflows. There are also follow-up email templates. Yesware does the basic meeting scheduling tasks. It integrates with calendars and there are meeting templates. You get a link for the meeting you can share by email. Finally, Yesware integrates with the business social media site LinkedIn. Salesforce also integrates with Yesware.

The pro version of Yesware is $14, the premium is $25, and the enterprise is $55, all per month billed annually.

Yesware is best for:

• Sales teams

• Startups

• SMEs

• Large businesses

• Marketing automation

• Meeting scheduling

• Office 365

Website: Yesware 

Edison Mail (Best free email management software for Mac)

Edison is a smart little firm with offices across the States and China. The cofounders had previous experience at Nuance Communications. 

There’s a solid desktop version of Edison Mail you can get at the Mac App Store. They’ve got mobile apps for iPhones and at the Google Play store. Edison runs on Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo, and Office 365. Otherwise any IMAP email will do. Edison runs off a simple slogan. No ads, just mail. The app’s assistant puts emails into categories. You can get specific categories like flight notification, and package tracking. It also identifies emails you should unsubscribe to. There are other bulk subscription options. Edison Mail has some nifty tools. It lets you block read receipts. There are custom snooze and unsend options too. For the mobile versions you have a dark mode. Finally the mobile swipes are customizable. 

Edison Mail is free. They use data to generate revenue. But they wipe all your personal information before taking the data.     

Edison Mail is best for:

• Individuals

• Freelancers

• Startups

• Desktop Mac users

• Ad blocking

Website: Edison 

Conclusion

No more should we settle for the few features our email apps provide. With the best email management software out there, we can turn our basic Gmail or Outlook into a multifunctional productivity machine. There are even great free options out there like Boomerang, Edison Mail and Gmelius.

Coupled with some email management tips, you are in for an unbeatable combo that will help you cut down inbox time and become as efficient as possible, at least when it comes to emailing. 

So whether you want more good free email management tools or the best email management solution, we hope this article has helped stick the right ideas into your inbox.

FAQs

How do you manage email overload?

Email overload is when your inbox is so cluttered, and it’s hard to know which emails are important and which ones are not. There are many good email management tools to help with email overload. Some of the top email sorting software out there includes Boomerang, SaneBox and Mailstrom.

How do I make my email look professional?

You can make your emails look professional with good email management software that includes email templates. Email templates are specific to tasks or industries. By picking the right email template, your emails will appear very professional. Email management platforms like Hiver, SalesHandy or Yesware all offer great email templates.

Which is better: Gmail or Outlook?

Both Gmail and Outlook have their strengths. Gmail is free and easy to use. It’s hosted on Google’s servers so you can access it anytime, anywhere. Outlook is more professional. It backs up everything on your computer which is better for privacy. Gmail integrates with G Suite apps while Outlook integrates with Office 365.