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23 min read

The 9 best AI email assistants in 2025

By Miguel Rebelo · August 5, 2025
Hero image with the logos of the best AI email assistants

Email is a digital hydra. For each one you bat out of your inbox, two others take its place. You finally pass the info on to your co-worker, only to drown in a jet of newsletters. Wouldn't it be great if AI could be your personal email Hercules?

The competition for the best AI email assistant software is in full swing. You'll find powerful options that'll help you write emails, improve communication, sort through conversations, or burn a stack of junk mail in a flash. This is a lot more compared with the first-wave AI email apps that just integrated with OpenAI for writing drafts and called it a day.

This time around, I spent two weeks researching and testing the best AI email assistants, and I've put together a shortlist for you to try out—along with apps you should keep an eye on. And in case you'd like to build your own AI-powered email workflows, I've included a quick breakdown of how this technology can help you do just that.

The best AI email assistants

  • Shortwave for AI-powered email search

  • Microsoft Copilot Pro for Outlook for improving communication

  • Gemini for Gmail for Google Workspace users

  • Apple Intelligence for Apple Mail for Apple customers

  • Superhuman for mixing AI generation with message templates

  • Notion Mail for AI-powered inbox filtering

  • Proton Scribe for privacy

  • Edison Mail for AI-powered security

  • SaneBox for keeping your inbox organized

What can AI bring to email?

Since I wrote this article for the first time, a lot has changed in AI email. Model intelligence steadily increased, and software tools to interface with them became more stable and powerful, making apps more reliable over time.

AI still isn't ready to work unsupervised—and that's not the point here, anyway—but it's a great tool to shave minutes off of every message through organization, insights, writing assistance, and automation.

Here are areas where AI can help you do email better. What you're about to read includes some features already present in apps on this list, although some more advanced capabilities only exist in enterprise-grade solutions or custom-built integrations not covered here.

Processing email content

Models like GPT-4o and Claude 4 have a deep understanding of human language, analyzing the content of every email based on any angle you need. Depending on the prompt you attach to the email message you want to analyze, you can:

  • Run sentiment and intent analysis on the message, providing an overview of how the sender is feeling and how they might want to proceed based on their language. This is useful to understand if you need to be more tactful with your reply or can move the conversation forward with confidence.

  • Generate a set of tags to sort incoming emails. Set topics or characteristics, AI processes the message, assigns a tag, and your inbox groups all the messages with the same tag in a filter or view. This helps you batch replies by topic, reducing context switching.

  • Summarize the email or entire email thread, so you don't have to read through 15 replies to understand what's going on. Get the clean gist of the matter in a single paragraph.

  • Optimize your inbox usage by having AI analyze your usage and messaging partners, unlocking things like identification of unanswered high-priority emails, spotting frequent senders and recurring topics, or suggesting inbox cleanup or filtering rules.

  • Get coaching on your email draft by getting feedback on how you might be perceived, including structure, tone, and word usage.

  • Detect data types, extract actions or tasks after detecting them in email content (such as deadlines or next steps), and convert them into calendar events or tasks.

Business intelligence and enrichment

One step above basic processing, AI can use pattern recognition and data integrations to use your inbox as a starting point to look for and surface relevant information.

For example, after extracting all the data from an email thread about a project, you can use AI-enabled systems to gather all the related tasks, all documents, and the contact information of people involved in moving it forward.

This is especially useful if you're a project manager or team leader, as you can get updates and compare project status over time to understand how it's unfolding in near-real-time, and then nudge it forward with a short message.

In sales, enrichment is already popular, using a combination of searching lead databases and AI-powered online research. This can build a holistic view of a person and their company, helping you build a more personalized sales process, driving up closed deals.

Automatic replies, writing, and rewriting

Some replies are pretty straightforward; why are you wasting brain power and keystrokes on writing a short acknowledgement? Most AI email assistants offer generative AI features for writing a reply from scratch based on a prompt, turning your "say yes and set the meet for 5" into a fleshed-out message.

At the same time, you can start using the email draft writing page as a place to dump ideas so AI can turn them into something articulate and professional, ready to send. This can make the experience much more intuitive for you while still offering full context for your recipients, especially if you don't like or have time for writing.

Generative AI also enables multi-language support, making it easy to translate your messages. When you're managing a multi-national operation, it's possible to blast the original email in English and include translations for everyone.

Automatic replies aren't the norm in the category yet. Good replies require context, meaning your inbox needs to be connected to your data sources. One of the trends of AI this year is the rise of MCP (Model Context Protocol, a connector standard for data and AI models), which might bring easier connectivity between apps, enabling a wave of hyper-personalized features in the software we use.

Still, if automatic replies are critical, you can consider connecting your email inbox to Zapier and using it to integrate with ChatGPT or other models, so it can generate emails for you and send them automatically. Here are a few examples to show you how it works.

Get an AI-generated daily digest of your emails in Slack

Get an AI-generated daily digest of your emails in Slack
  • Gmail logo
  • Slack logo
Gmail + ChatGPT (OpenAI) + Digest by Zapier + 1 more

Create a ChatGPT assistant to analyze content

Create a ChatGPT assistant to analyze content
  • Google Docs logo
  • ChatGPT (OpenAI) logo
  • Gmail logo
Google Docs + ChatGPT (OpenAI) + Gmail

Send meeting summaries via Gmail with Tactiq and ChatGPT

Send meeting summaries via Gmail with Tactiq and ChatGPT
  • Tactiq logo
  • ChatGPT (OpenAI) logo
  • Gmail logo
Tactiq + ChatGPT (OpenAI) + Gmail

Zapier is the most connected AI orchestration platform—integrating with thousands of apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Use interfaces, data tables, and logic to build secure, automated, AI-powered systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization's technology stack. Learn more.

Multimodality

AI enables multimodality: using voice to manipulate text, text to generate voice, voice to create an image, and so on. There isn't a lot of it in AI email assistants, although some AI personal assistant apps leverage voice frequently to turn it into an instruction or a starting point to write a message.

Definitely check out apps like Martin AI if you're interested, but take it slow: I've seen some personal assistant software pivoting into workflow and sales automation, meaning that category might not have enough demand to build a profitable company from (and hence making them either change their product or leave the market).

What makes the best AI email assistant software?

How we evaluate and test apps

Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

Based on all the possibilities that this technology brings to the table, generative AI isn't enough. The best AI email assistant software needs to go a bit beyond that. Here's what I looked for as I was testing all the apps that claimed to be AI email clients. 

  • Easy email integration. The integration process should be easy and fast with the most popular email services.

  • Inbox management. I prioritized individual inbox management apps. For now, I'm leaving out apps that are focused on sales and outreach or customer service—I'm showing you how AI can transform your personal inbox, whether at home or at work.

  • AI features. I was looking for AI features beyond generative text—for example, things like sentiment analysis, intent detection, automatic labeling, or data extraction.

  • Productivity and automation. AI is one tool out of many, so these apps should offer other features and settings to help you save time and get to inbox zero faster.

  • Data privacy. Your emails are private, so adding an app like this to your collection shouldn't represent a security risk. I read the privacy policy of each app to understand how secure your data will be.

For two weeks, I dug the internet for all the AI email assistants that I could find. I filtered out those that just integrated generative AI into the compose window and was left with a smaller selection. I signed up for each of them, configured the platform until it was ready to use, and sent a few emails back and forth between my email accounts. I played with the settings, observed how well the AI did what I wanted it to, and from there, picked these apps.

The best AI email assistants at a glance

Best for

Standout features

Pricing

Shortwave

Search

Flexible AI assistants; deep integration with Google Calendar

Free plan available; paid plans from $14/user/month

Microsoft Copilot Pro for Outlook

Improving communication

Also unlocks features in other Microsoft apps

Microsoft 365 subscription required, starting at $4.75/month; plans with AI from $129.99/year

Gemini for Gmail

Google Workspace users

Seamless integration with Gmail

From $7/user/month in Google Workspace

Apple Intelligence for Apple Mail

Apple users

AI can run locally on your device

Free

Superhuman

Mixing AI generation with message templates

Lots of great keyboard shortcuts

From $25/user/month

Notion Mail

AI-powered inbox filtering

Really granular filtering options (automatic and manual)

Free to use; from $20/month for AI features

Proton Scribe

Privacy

Zero-knowledge cloud generation service

$19.99/month as part of the Proton Duo plan

Edison Mail

Security

Runs almost entirely on your device

From $14.99/month or $99/year

SaneBox

Keeping your inbox organized

Excellent priority-focused categorization

From $4.13/month


Best AI email assistant for searching email history

Shortwave (Web, Android, iOS)

Shortwave, our pick for the best AI email assistant for searching email history

Shortwave pros:

  • Deep integration with Google Calendar

  • AI assistant is very flexible

Shortwave cons:

  • Interface feels cluttered at times

Sitting confidently on the throne here, Shortwave has the widest range of AI features of all the apps on this list. They all live in the top-right of your screen: click on the magic stars icon there, and a chat window appears docked on the right side. This is the Shortwave AI Assistant.

The most unique possibility it offers is AI-powered email search. You can ask questions to your inbox to surface old, forgotten conversations without actually having to get lost in the mess. More than this, it can extract data from email threads ("make a list of all the tasks in the website redesign project"), generate content ("write a tweet based on my emails about productivity"), or answer your questions ChatGPT-style.

Email and calendars usually go hand in hand. In Shortwave, you can schedule meetings or new events in natural language, with something as simple as "schedule a meeting for me and John in 2 days at 6pm." I used this exact prompt, and the meeting appeared on my calendar. I didn't have to do anything else. And if you don't know your availability, just ask, and you'll get a breakdown of your open slots for the near future.

The AI features used to be spread out across the interface, marked by the magic stars icon, but that's changing. Most of the actions now run on the dedicated chat window on the left side of the screen, where you can get tips for organizing your inbox, get email thread summaries, and interact with external connected apps. The biggest native integrations include Notion, HubSpot, and Asana.

And then, on the right side of where you write your replies, there are the magic stars again: you can generate a message from scratch or based on a prompt. This takes the action back to the sidebar, but you can easily add the AI output to a new reply and keep the conversation flowing.

A bit of disappointing news: Shortwave only works with Gmail accounts for the time being, so if you're doing email with other providers, you'll have to sit out. Here's hoping it'll integrate with more inboxes in the future.

Shortwave price: Free plan available; paid plans from $14/user/month

Best AI email assistant for improving communication

Microsoft Copilot Pro for Outlook (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS)

Microsoft Copilot Pro for Outlook, our pick for the best AI email assistant for improving communication

Copilot Pro for Outlook pros:

  • Tends to get the newest OpenAI models quickly

  • Also unlocks AI features in your other Office apps

Copilot Pro for Outlook cons:

  • No integration with non-Microsoft email inboxes

Microsoft's AI expansion continues with the release of Copilot Pro. Outlook is one of the apps that gets a boost, with three shiny AI features that, while not groundbreaking, are really well-implemented and easy to use. And, since we're talking about a tech giant, this list could expand quickly.

The first one is straightforward: you can write emails from scratch using AI. When writing a new email, look to the right half of the toolbar, click on the Copilot icon, and select Draft with Copilot. That will open the settings, where you can type your prompt, set the tone and length, and then start generating.

The second one is thread summarization: like others on this list, you can get a big-picture view of a conversation in a list of topics. Unlike others on this list, Copilot adds little numbers in superscript that you can use to jump to the message where that topic is discussed. Super helpful for searching your conversations for specific statements.

But the last one really surprised me. Called Coaching by Copilot, you can have your email message analyzed to see how the tone, content, and structure of the email will impact the receiver. I wrote a general project kickoff email to test this, and it told me I could be more enthusiastic, show appreciation for the reader's contribution, and break down the topics for higher clarity. This comes with a few example sentences, so you know how to take the first steps. A well-written email can save you a lot of headaches along the way, so I find this very helpful to manage projects, provide updates, and make communication more effective.

Outlook wraps it up with a nice touch: if you generate an email with AI and click to send right away, it'll show a pop-up reminding you that AI may be inaccurate, inviting you to revisit the content before pushing it out.

And, of course, this isn't the only place where you'll be getting AI. You'll also get Copilot features to help write documents in Word, generate presentations in PowerPoint, and analyze data in Excel. Plus, you can integrate Microsoft Outlook with Zapier to connect it to all the other apps you use at work. That means creating AI-powered workflows that can automatically draft emails and send information from your inbox to all the other apps you use at work. Learn more about how to automate Outlook, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Create tasks in Microsoft To-Do from new Microsoft Outlook emails

Create tasks in Microsoft To-Do from new Microsoft Outlook emails
  • Microsoft Outlook logo
  • Microsoft To Do logo
Microsoft Outlook + Microsoft To Do

Send emails in Microsoft Outlook for new items in Notion databases

Send emails in Microsoft Outlook for new items in Notion databases
  • Notion logo
  • Microsoft Outlook logo
Notion + Microsoft Outlook

Dispatch emails in Microsoft Outlook with new leads in Facebook Lead Ads

Dispatch emails in Microsoft Outlook with new leads in Facebook Lead Ads
  • Facebook Lead Ads logo
  • Microsoft Outlook logo
Facebook Lead Ads + Microsoft Outlook

Important: Copilot only works with email addresses ending in Microsoft-related domains, such as @outlook.com, @live.com or @hotmail.com. This may be related to privacy policy reasons. For example, I wasn't able to get it to work with a Gmail account. And while we're talking about privacy, it isn't very clear if, as a personal user, your data will be used for training or fine-tuning models. For companies, the data governance settings you have in place will apply when dealing with Microsoft's LLMs, except if you're using plug-ins or internet-connected generation.

Microsoft Copilot Pro price: Microsoft 365 subscription required, starting at $4.75/month; plans with AI from $129.99/year.

Best AI email assistant for Google Workspace users

Gemini for Gmail (Web, iOS, Android)

Gemini for Gmail, our pick for the best AI email assistant for Google Workspace users

Gemini for Gmail pros:

  • Seamless integration with Gmail

  • Plenty of starter and follow-up prompts

Gemini for Gmail cons:

  • Lots of potential, but feels a bit underpowered at the moment

Google is deep in the AI game as well. Like Microsoft, it's releasing AI tools for Docs, Sheets, and of course, Gmail. To unlock these possibilities, you'll have to either subscribe to a Google Workspace plan or get a Google One AI Premium subscription for your personal account.

You'll notice the Gemini icon at the top right of every Workspace app. When you click it in Gmail for the web, a side tab opens with contextual suggested actions. For example, when you open it while viewing your inbox, you can ask for a summary of your unread emails. The AI will sweep through your messages and present them there, ready for follow-up questions. You can also track orders from the same spot—it's a straightforward way of keeping tabs on your stuff without sifting through confirmations, notifications, and receipts.

When opening an email, you can summarize the contents and ask for a reply draft, from the side tab or straight from the email. Gemini will generate it and place it in the input field, ready for tweaks. And if you need extra context to reply to your emails, you can have Gemini use Google Search to look up relevant information and then improve the response. Just keep in mind that chat history isn't saved here, so if you refresh your browser, your conversation will be lost.

Gemini itself doesn't integrate with Zapier, but Gmail does, so you can automate your inbox however you want. For example, you can generate a to-do list from your inbox, easily save email attachments, or send notifications from your inbox—and you can use Zapier's built-in AI at any step of the process. Learn more about how to automate Gmail, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Save new Gmail emails matching certain traits to a Google Spreadsheet

Save new Gmail emails matching certain traits to a Google Spreadsheet
  • Gmail logo
  • Google Sheets logo
Gmail + Google Sheets

Save new Gmail attachments to Google Drive

Save new Gmail attachments to Google Drive
  • Gmail logo
  • Filter by Zapier logo
  • Google Drive logo
Gmail + Filter by Zapier + Google Drive

Send emails via Gmail when Google Sheets rows are updated

Send emails via Gmail when Google Sheets rows are updated
  • Google Sheets logo
  • Gmail logo
Google Sheets + Gmail

Gemini price: From $7/user/month (billed annually) in Google Workspace

Best AI email assistant for Apple customers

Apple Mail with Apple Intelligence (iPhone, Mac, iPad)

Apple Intelligence in Apple Mail, our pick for the best AI email app for Apple users

Apple Mail pros:

  • Part of a broader AI feature set for Apple devices

  • AI can run locally on your device

Apple Mail cons:

  • Requires a compatible Apple device

Apple Intelligence is out in the world: you can now create images on your device, generate text anywhere there's an input field, or even remove intrusive details in photos you've taken in the past. AI also extends into Mail, offering the baseline set of features to help you save some time.

First, transparency: although I own an iPhone, I'm below the hardware cutoff point, which means that my device is incompatible and can't run the AI processes. What you're about to read is a roundup of online product reviews from a combination of established sources and a few Reddit posts for unfiltered feedback. The coverage is mixed, with tech reviewers excited about the summarization and prioritization features, and users frustrated with some inaccurate decisions and patchy overall experience.

Still, Apple Mail with Apple Intelligence will help you with:

  • Email prioritization, bumping up the messages it thinks are more important for you based on usage patterns

  • Thread summarization, generating a snippet of large emails, making them more digestible

  • Generating and regenerating text; no more uncertainty when writing from scratch or triggering someone else with an unintentionally aggressive email

To extend the AI capabilities, Apple Intelligence integrates with ChatGPT as an add-on, bringing the power of OpenAI's models into play. You can opt in to this integration; once you do, it becomes unclear what happens behind the scenes. Does every generation stay locally on your device for extra privacy? Are your requests routed to OpenAI for processing? It's hard to find these answers online, so if you want to be super safe, choose to opt out of this add-on.

Despite the reviews and lack of clarity, Apple has a long history of producing market-changing products, and the seeds are there for making AI shine: the newer iPhones all carry the A18 processor, capable of running models locally. With this hardware as a base, it's a question of time until the product teams expand the feature set to become more personalized, effective, and time-saving.

Apple Mail price: Free with your Apple device (requires a compatible device)

Best AI email assistant for mixing AI generation and message templates

Superhuman (i0S, Android, Chrome, Mac)

Superhuman, our pick for the best AI email assistant for keeping your inbox organized

Superhuman pros:

  • Split your inbox by topics to organize messages

  • Powerful keyboard shortcuts

Superhuman cons:

  • Not as many AI features as the other options

AI saves time when writing emails, but it might fail to produce the exact results you're looking for. This is especially true if you've crafted the perfect outreach email or the ideal company presentation paragraph. Recently acquired by text-checking giant Grammarly, Superhuman will help you balance both: the speed of AI generation and the precision of your existing messaging.

As a keyboard-driven app, you'll have to learn the shortcuts to move around quickly. This adds a bit of a learning curve at the start, but it'll feel great once you grasp the basics. Let's walk through the process of writing a new email with AI and your templates:

  1. When reading an incoming email, press Enter to reply. 

  2. Start by generating with AI: hit Ctrl + J, write a short prompt, and send it. 

  3. Then, you can use the snippets feature to add pre-written blocks of text: click anywhere on the message, tap the ; key, and select the one you want. It'll land exactly on that part of the email.

While Superhuman comes with a few stock snippets, you'll need to add your own. Head to the Snippets screen (click the hamburger menu, and select Snippets, or hit G followed by ;), and add as many private or team snippets as you need. They can be full messages with attachments or short blocks of text detailing a product or service you offer. You can customize them with variables, so the fields update based on the message sender.

On top of this generative AI tool, you'll be able to summarize any of your email threads: hit M while reading to do so. If you need to travel back in time to find answers, you can use AI-powered search to surface information. The user interface is minimalist, offering tools to split your inbox based on email types and a way to mark your emails as done, useful for tracking what's still to do.

Caveat time: look at that price tag. All this could be yours for (at minimum) $25 per user per month. Steep, I know. But if you love a polished user experience that turns email into a mini-game, you'll be happy with how much Superhuman can make the road to inbox zero fun again.

Superhuman price: From $25/user/month (billed annually)

Looking for a more affordable alternative to Superhuman? Spark includes AI templates, letting you save commonly-used messages, with customizable variables that autofill based on the email thread content.

Best AI email assistant for AI-powered inbox filtering

Notion Mail (Web, Mac)

Notion Mail, our pick for the best AI email assistant for AI-powered inbox filtering

Notion Mail pros:

  • Deep automatic and manual filtering features

  • Very intuitive

Notion Mail cons:

  • Minor bugs

Reading through all the emails in your inbox can feel like slowly going insane. A newsletter from your favorite creator saying your industry is dead because of AI. Your co-worker passing on an asset pack for a project. The odd spam message that made it through the filter, inviting you to invest in an oil company. It's hard to stay on topic when everything is bunched up in a tangle. Notion Mail is here to smooth it out.

When you look at the top right of the inbox, you'll see the Auto Label button. This is the AI-powered inbox filtering feature: you can type a prompt describing the messages you want to filter, and Notion Mail builds that filter for you. In the future, any message with those characteristics will be placed in a separate tab, with the option of removing it from your inbox for extra focus. It accepts a wide range of prompts, from "meeting request notifications" to "spammy emails from people I don't know."

But that's not the end of it. The Notion AI feature set is also available here: tap your space bar to start generating an email from scratch or regenerating something you wrote. When you open an email thread, you can find a short summary at the top with the gist of the conversation, helpful to get a big-picture view of a big thread and understand where things are.

The look and feel of the app takes after Notion workspace, as if your inbox crashed with a database that you can filter. If you already love this experience, you'll see it applies to emails really well, helping you create as many views (filters) as needed to keep your inbox clean and sorting/sectioning those views for extra productivity.

It's a relatively new product, launched earlier this year, but surprisingly complete considering what a modern inbox should do: email scheduling, inserting meeting availability, templates. It's not deeply integrated with Notion proper or with Notion Calendar yet, though that's the expected trajectory.

Notion Mail price: Free to use; AI features are part of Notion AI, available on the Business plan for $20/month (billed annually).

Best AI email assistant for privacy

Proton Scribe (Web)

Proton Scribe, our pick for the best AI email assistant for privacy

Proton Scribe pros:

  • Zero-knowledge cloud generation

  • Downloadable version

Proton Scribe cons:

  • Actual AI features aren't as robust as the others on this list

Originally brainstormed among the halls of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Proton Mail first appeared as a privacy-oriented email service, protecting you from snooping, nuclear strikes, and government interference—that's Swiss law, everyone. Riffing on this track record, Proton Scribe is a Proton Mail writing assistant that brings AI features into the email client without compromising your data.

Every time you use an AI feature in another app, a request flies out to a server owned by OpenAI, Google, or any other provider. While the standards for data transmission are generally high, you don't really know what happens during the generation process—are they keeping your data for training? Will a human reviewer see your emails if there's an issue? Proton Scribe answers these questions in two ways:

  • It offers a zero-knowledge cloud generation service. This means that every request that you send to their secure servers is deleted after it runs. No one at Proton knows what you sent over to the AI model, so they can't share it with anyone—or, worse, have it stored in a database that a hacker can try to break into.

  • It offers a downloadable AI model you can use to run the inference process yourself. This means you'll have the AI running on your computer, and the Proton Mail app will be in charge of controlling it.

Regarding the actual AI features, it doesn't do a lot when compared with others on this list—not yet, at least. Built into the email composer, Scribe can write a new draft from scratch, improve an existing one, proofread what you write, or apply style and structure changes. When starting or continuing a thread, look for the pencil with the magic stars to open up the options.

If you want to go full private and use the AI model in your computer, make sure you've got hardware: the minimum requirements for Windows users are a dedicated NVIDIA or AMD GPU with at least 6GB of RAM, along with other special architecture requirements—and the rest of your computer should be reasonably powerful, too. This makes the entry-level for full privacy a bit high, especially if your company's IT strategy involves low-end laptops connected to a beefy internal corporate network for the heavier work. But is it cool hearing your laptop's fans roar as it generates a new email? You bet. Under your fingers, something is thinking.

Proton Scribe price: Included in the Proton Duo plan for $19.99/month

Best AI email assistant for AI-powered security

Edison Mail (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS)

Edison Mail, our pick for the best AI email assistant for security

Edison Mail pros:

  • Fast and lightweight

  • Runs almost entirely on your device

Edison Mail cons:

  • No support for high-encryption standards such as S/MIME or PGP

We like to think phishing happens to other people, not us. But if you're tired at the end of the day, it's easier to click a link you think is safe and open a Pandora's box of cybersecurity issues as a result. If you and your company are a high-value target for the black hats, Edison Mail can add an extra layer of protection to prevent security breaches.

Starting off, it blocks spy pixels and read receipts, displaying a green shield to let you know they were removed. It includes smart spam filtering that lets you block senders, bulk delete messages, and easily unsubscribe to newsletters. And to make sure your messages are for your eyes only, the mobile app offers Touch/Face ID to unlock your emails.

As to the advanced security features, Edison Mail keeps track of your email communication patterns, running plenty of checks to make sure you're talking to the right people, not the hackers. It performs backend checks for the sender's mail server, looking it up over 70 spam databases and historical trends. On top of that, it parses the signatures in your emails, and automatically updates caller ID on your phone to reveal the name of who's calling you, just in case you haven't added their contact yet. This makes it easier to filter out cold calls from those of people who have your consent to connect.

Beyond the security features, Edison Mail includes a wide AI feature set, so you won't have to sacrifice productivity to sleep easy at night. It comes with AI search and filtering, with smart folders that grab and organize messages for you, and generative AI for writing drafts powered by Meta's Llama. Since this AI model is open-license, the app's development team set it to run on your device, adding an extra layer of privacy, even if it can come with performance issues for older devices.

Overall, Edison Mail is a solid app across the board for people who care about their security while keeping up with some AI features. It's not the most productivity-focused of the bunch, but if you have a lot to lose from a data breach, it's probably your best bet at staying safe.

Edison Mail price: Mail+ plan is $14.99/month or $99.99/year (subscription available via mobile app only).

Best AI email assistant for keeping your inbox organized

SaneBox (add-on)

SaneBox, our pick for the best AI email assistant for keeping your inbox organized

SaneBox pros:

  • Very hands-off after setup

  • A SaneLater folder for low-priority emails

SaneBox cons:

  • The interface is pretty dated; doesn't instill a lot of confidence

SaneBox is really lo-fi. It sits in the background doing its thing. Once you go through onboarding and finish tweaking the settings, you won't have to constantly log in to it. You can just use your inbox normally (on any client or device), and it will keep working.

When you start the configuration process, you can list the labels you'd like to use or have SaneBox do that for you. It'll go through your inbox to weed out newsletters, conversations with friends and family, system messages from the apps you use, and a lot more. Once you finish running it, a few things will happen:

  • You'll see all your emails split by category, and you can easily trash useless messages (for example, email notifications from your apps).

Then, after that deep clean is complete:

  • The important emails will stay in your inbox, so you can focus your attention on them first.

  • All lower-priority emails will be added to the SaneLater folder. You can visit it once per day to read everything. It's best to visit it frequently during the first weeks of using SaneBox: it's still training, and its accuracy will improve over time. You can help train the model by dragging unimportant emails from your inbox to the SaneLater folder.

  • You can create folders for any kind of topic or group of people, drag emails into those folders, and SaneBox will pick up on your intentions. It'll start funneling similar emails in the future.

If you're getting a lot of annoying messages from a single sender, you can throw them into the SaneBlackHole: it'll get all follow-up emails into its gravitational pull, so you'll never hear from that person or organization again.

All these AI-powered sorting features will make sure that your attention will always be on your critical emails, keeping your inbox clean and organized throughout the day.

SaneBox price: From $4.13/month (paid biyearly)

Other AI email assistants to watch

There are a couple of AI email apps that didn't quite make it due to my strict criteria, but I'd still like to share them with you. As they grow, they may incorporate more AI features or become better for personal inbox management, so definitely keep an eye out for them.

  • Mailytica leans customer service, using AI to handle repetitive emails at scale. You'll have your own model trained with your company's messages, access email classification, email reply suggestions based on blocks (not on generation), sentiment analysis, and plenty of advanced features to save time and improve consistency.

  • EmailTree used to be part of this list, but the pricing is now a better fit for customer support teams juggling email and Zendesk tickets. It offers AI and advanced automation features to help you tackle emails quickly and accurately.

Simplify email with Zapier

I love the inbox zero feeling. I confess I've been having it less and less, so it's time to side with the bots. Having AI in your inbox means you'll be able to be more agile with important messages, handle the lower-priority ones gracefully, and throw the rest out the window.

While we're still waiting for more competition when it comes to AI email assistants, the apps above are a good start. You can also create your own AI email workflows using Zapier. Here are a few ways you can make it happen:

  • Use AI to automatically write business emails, sales emails, or email summaries straight from the other apps you use most.

  • Build a customized system with the Zapier Interfaces AI email assistant template to automatically categorize incoming emails, summarize each email's content, and record all your emails in Zapier Tables.

  • Use Zapier Agents to build an AI email assistant equipped with your live business data. Zapier Agents can monitor incoming communications and alert you to priorities, review emails and then notify you via Slack about anything urgent, or automatically draft email responses with AI.

Here's a template to get you started.

AI Email Assistant Template

Automatically categorize, summarize, and manage emails from one place using AI.

Try it

Related reading:

  • 7 ChatGPT prompts that will generate great sales emails

  • How a contractor with dyslexia uses AI and Zapier to write business emails

  • The best AI scheduling assistants

  • Shortwave vs. Superhuman: Which should you use?

  • The best AI newsletters

This article was originally published in September 2023. The most recent update was in August 2025.

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