For many people, keeping up with email is one of the most challenging and tedious tasks. Organizing your inbox, scheduling emails you plan to send, deciding how to categorize messages, and countless other details can be overwhelming when you’re dealing with large quantities of messages. Fortunately, there are many useful automation tools to help you stay organized.
Top 20 Email Management Tools
1. Boomerang
Boomerang is a useful Gmail tool that lets you schedule both incoming and outgoing emails. You can write an email now and schedule to send it later. You can arrange to get reminders to return to messages at a certain time or date. Boomerang is available for iOS and Android.
2. SaneBox
SaneBox calls itself “AI for your email” and it has many features to support this tagline. The main benefit is that it’s easy to sort your email and eliminate (or postpone) distractions. SaneBox creates folders on any device or platform where you access email, separating those messages you need to see right away and those you can save for later. Other useful features include the ability to instantly unsubscribe from unwanted lists.
3. Front
Front is a great collaboration app for businesses where people and teams need to access messages from multiple sources. The Universal Dashboard displays email, chat messages, SMS, and other messages in one convenient place. Team members can quickly make comments, share drafts, and collaborate with other teams in real-time.
4. Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail is a complete email solution for businesses. While it integrates with the broader suite of Zoho tools, you can use the email function on its own as well. The features include custom domain-based email addresses for everyone in your company, filters to better organize your emails, and advanced collaboration tools that make it simple to assign tasks, share notes, and otherwise communicate with team members. Zoho has several very reasonable plans, starting at $1 per month.
5. Mailstrom
Mailstrom provides an easy solution to the common problem of unwanted messages piling up in your inbox. It lets you keep important messages while deleting the clutter. There’s a one-click Block function that helps cut down on spam. To further cut down on unwanted messages, you can unsubscribe from lists in a single click.
6. Maildrop
Maildrop provides a clever way to cut back on spam by letting you use made-up email addresses. Best of all, you can start using it for free without even signing up. You can use this whenever a website or app makes you sign up and provide an email address and you want to make sure they don’t start bombarding you with unwanted emails.
7. SendGrid
SendGrid is email management software that’s a good choice if you’re looking to scale up your email marketing. This cloud-based software makes it easy to send out newsletters, integrate with social media, track analytics, and more. There’s a free plan that lets you send up to 100 emails per day and a variety of paid plans based on usage.
8. ProtonMail
If you want the ultimate in email security, ProtonMail is worth looking into. Based in Switzerland, ProtonMail lets you send encrypted emails for free. An open-source application, you can use it without providing any information. With end-to-end encryption, you can be fairly certain that your messages are secure.
9. Missive
Missive is a collaboration app that integrates with social media and SMS to help you stay connected with contacts on multiple platforms. It’s typical for teams to engage with clients, prospects, and others on multiple platforms and devices, making it a challenge to keep up with who said what to whom. Missive is a useful tool to keep everyone up to date. There are also customer support features such as chat rooms and live chat. There’s a free version as well as paid plans starting at $10 per month.
10. SalesHandy
SalesHandy is an email and marketing automation tool that has a large selection of capabilities such as email scheduling, tracking, and automated followups. It also has handy shortcuts for inserting templates into Gmail messages so you can quickly create and send messages. SalesHandy has a free plan and several paid plans for businesses and marketing agencies.
11. Hiver
Hiver is email management software that can serve as an alternative to a help desk. Hiver makes it easy to organize your inbox, schedule messages directly from Gmail. There are lots of useful collaborative features such as assigning tasks, tagging messages, and setting reminders for future action. Pricing for Hiver is based on the number of shared inboxes you need as well as access to other features such as analytics, email templates, and more.
12. Streak
If much of your work life revolves around your inbox, Streak can help you get better organized and more productive. Manage your sales pipeline from within Gmail, keep track of job applicants, manage fundraising efforts, track tasks, and projects. It’s easy to track and share information so everyone who sees a message knows exactly what’s been done, who’s worked on it, and what still needs attention.
13. Crystal
Crystal is an AI software that compiles information about people so you can understand more about them before you even meet them. It works with email as well as for phone calls and LinkedIn. Crystal delivers insights about your contacts’ personalities so you can better tailor your messages to suit them. While this can be particularly helpful for sales reps, it never hurts to know more about people. For example, you can better predict if someone prefers a more casual or formal approach.
14. NetHunt
NetHunt is a CRM and email management system that’s easy to use while letting you automate a variety of tasks. You can quickly create customized email campaigns and monitor performance. It also provides lots of useful integrations, including G-Suite, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MailChimp, Trello, Google Contacts, and many others. You can choose among several affordable plans and try out the system with a 14-day free trial.
15. DeliverySlip
DeliverySlip, which is now part of the Zix software suite, provides email encryption, electronic signatures, web forms, and other features that help make your email more organized and secure. As more business transactions are conducted with electronic signatures, it’s useful to have a system for collecting and verifying e-signatures in several formats. DeliverySlip also lets you securely share files of any size from Google Drive, Sharepoint, and local drives so you don’t have to worry about file size limits.
16. EmailAnalytics
If email plays a large role in your business, EmailAnalytics can help you track analytics, manage tasks, and improve productivity. It helps sales teams and other professionals the ability to visualize tasks in Gmail and G-Suite. EmailAnalytics is great for companies that need the very latest stats. You can get reports showing real-time analytics to track productivity, identify promising leads, compare the performance of different individuals and teams, and more. Pricing starts at $5 per user and you can take advantage of a 14-day free trial.
17. ActiveInbox
ActiveInbox is a Chrome and Firefox extension that lets you turn Gmail into a task manager. For professionals who are bombarded with emails, it can be quite useful and liberating to have an app that categorizes messages and sets reminders. For example, if an email tells you about a meeting tomorrow at 11 AM, ActiveInbox will extract the details and remind you, even if you put the original message aside. ActiveInbox offers personal plans for just over $4 per month and a team plan supporting up to 999 Gmail accounts, for just over $12 per month.
18. Spark
Spark is an efficient email client for Mac and iOS users. It has tools such as Smart Inbox to automatically categorize your messages. Smart Search lets you easily find messages using natural language search. There are plans for both individuals and teams. The free version supports two collaborators while paid plans that allow for unlimited collaborators start at just over $6 per month.
19. Clean Email
As the name suggests, Clean Email is a simple tool but one that performs the valuable function of clearing out your inbox. If you’re like many professionals, your inbox fills up faster than you can empty it. With Clean Email, you can easily organize your inbox, categorizing messages, and deleting the ones you don’t need. There’s also a simple unsubscribe function. Pricing starts at $8 per month for a single account.
20. WiseStamp
WiseStamp lets you create professional and attractive email signatures for any purpose. It’s often advantageous to create customized email signatures depending on the recipient. With WiseStamp, you can do this in minutes. You can select among hundreds of templates to cover almost any topic or industry. You can get the basic version for free while the pro version lets you create multiple signatures for around $6 per month.
Top 5 Strategies for Managing Your Email
The above are some of the best tools to help you get control over your inbox and email activities. Now let’s look at some effective strategies to help you make the most of your tools.
1. Create a Schedule
Rather than checking and responding to emails at random points during the day, set aside a specific block of time for this. For example, you might attend to email at 9 AM, then again at 4 PM. Experiment until you find the optimal schedule and then stick to it. This way, you won’t be constantly distracted by every message that comes along.
2. Reply Quickly
Not all emails demand a response. For those that do, respond as promptly as possible. If you reply to a message immediately, you no longer have to worry about it. Before thinking that you’ll deal with it later, ask yourself how long it will take to complete the task right away.
3. Categorize Messages
Even though there are multiple tools to help you categorize emails, many people fail to use them. Even Gmail lets you split messages into several categories. The categories you create depend on your needs. No matter how you organize your inbox, you’ll find it’s easier to manage it when every message is placed in a clearly-marked folder.
4. Limit Subscriptions
Many of the messages you receive daily probably come from lists that you signed up for. Several of the tools listed above make it easy to unsubscribe from lists. You can also do this manually. Cutting down on the number of lists you opt into in the first place is a simple way to reduce the size of your inbox. Before signing up for anything, ask yourself if you really have the time and interest to read messages on this topic every day.
5. Outsource
One way to take control of your email is to outsource as many tasks as possible. You could have a virtual assistant open your messages and categorize them for you. VAs can also be trained to respond to queries, cutting back on the amount of email that requires your personal attention.