Alternative to Apple Mail: 3 options reviewed

While Mac’s native email client may be sufficient for casual everyday use, some users might find it too limiting. It lacks integration with other productivity tools like Notes and Calendar, and there’s no support for third-party tools and add-ons.

Email organization could also use some refining, most notably the platform’s approach to labels. You can only flag emails under different colors without the ability to set up custom labels.

This guide will teach you what to look for in an email client and review some of the best platforms on the market to help you explore the available options and choose the best alternative to Apple Mail.

Excluding personal preferences as a subjective factor that varies significantly among users, there are four universal attributes of an email client you should consider when browsing different options:

1. User interface

2. Email organization features

3. AI-powered automation

4. Cross-platform support

5. Pricing

A poorly designed user interface can cause various bottlenecks and damage productivity. Your email client should ensure seamless correspondence by eliminating clutter and intuitively placing all the necessary functions.

Some of the main features of a well-designed Mac email client include:

• Minimalism: Packing an email client with too many functions, accent colors, and commands makes it hard on the eyes, so your email client should feature a clean, simple interface. 

• Inobtrusive email composing: You should have a clear overview of your inbox while composing an email so that you can reference specific threads when needed. Gmail’s web app is an example of a platform that doesn’t do this well—when you’re composing a new email, it opens an immovable window that blocks your inbox.

• A clear view of the key commands: Your email client should make it easy to compose emails and manage incoming mail by adapting the layout depending on your actions and highlighting the most relevant commands.

Keep reading: Find out how Gmail compares to Apple Mail in our in-depth comparison guide.

As mentioned, Apple Mail isn’t the most robust solution when it comes to email management and organization. This may not be a problem if you only email occasionally, but frequent and advanced users need a rich set of organization tools.

Your email client should also take some of the organization off your plate. For instance, it should automatically filter out spam, phishing, and other useless and potentially harmful emails. Most email clients aren’t foolproof regarding spam detection, but you can still find a platform that minimizes the manual work necessary to remove unwanted mail.

Smart inboxes are another useful feature, the implementation of which can vary significantly between platforms. Outlook, for example, uses the Focused Inbox that shows you the most important mail based on the sender and your correspondence history. Gmail has a similar feature that automatically categorizes promotional and social emails into dedicated folders.

Keep reading: Have you been dreading decluttering your inbox? Our simple guide shows you how to delete promotions in Gmail quickly.

Due to the recent surge in AI-powered solutions, some email clients have incorporated AI into email management, with varying results. 

Apple Intelligence in Apple Mail focuses primarily on assisting with email composition and summarization. It can refine your writing and quickly grasp the essence of a message. However, it lacks the proactive, automated workflow enhancements that some alternatives offer. 

Exploring these advanced AI-assisted email alternatives can significantly boost your workflow if you’re a high-level user who faces a high volume of emails. Instead of manually sorting, filtering, labeling, and prioritizing emails, AI can help you handle these tasks intelligently, learning from your email behavior to make your workflow truly seamless. 

For instance, these AI-powered email clients can automatically categorize your emails into specific labels and sections based on simple prompts, not complex filter rules. This level of automation significantly reduces your manual input and shortens the time spent on routine processes. 

When you combine AI-powered automation with other built-in productivity tools, your email becomes more than a tool for communication; it becomes a cohesive and powerful workspace where you can get things done. When choosing an alternative to Apple Mail, consider the level of AI-powered automation you need and whether your preferred tool can meet your needs.

Apple is well-known for its cohesive but closed ecosystem. Many Mac apps and platforms—including email clients—are exclusive to macOS and don’t support Android, Windows, and other operating systems.

Opting for such an email client makes it hard to stay on top of your correspondence. You won’t always be near your laptop, so your email platform should offer cross-platform support to ensure you can see and respond to important emails on the go.

The good news is that this criterion doesn’t significantly narrow your pool of options, as most email clients offer at least a web app you can access from most devices. Of course, having a dedicated app is still preferable since mobile web apps might be inconvenient and hard to navigate.

Many Mac users stick to Apple Mail because it’s pre-built and free to use. There are no premium versions that would keep essential functions behind a paywall, so you get most features an average user needs.

Luckily, you don’t need to invest to switch to another provider because there are various options with rich free plans. When comparing them, make sure the provider doesn’t charge for the most important features, such as the following:

• Sufficient storage

• Mailbox organization and workflow enhancement

• Spam protection and other email management measures

If you do want a premium solution, assess the value for money offered by each provider, as it can vary significantly between services.

To shorten your search for the best alternative to Apple Mail, we’ve compiled a list of three top contenders:

1. Spark

2. Canary Mail

3. Notion Mail

Spark is considered one of the best email clients for Mac, as confirmed by its Apple Editors’ Choice award on the Mac App Store. It’s free to use and comes with various welcome features, most notably:

• Unified inbox for managing your mail in one place

• Smart inbox that separates incoming mail into several categories (Personal, Seen, Notifications, etc.)

• Snooze and send-later functions

Spark also offers a +AI Compose feature that lets you write, edit, and reply to emails with the help of an AI-powered assistant. This feature isn’t available with the free plan, though, so you’ll need to upgrade to a premium tier to use it.

If you decide to do so, you have two options depending on whether you only need Spark for yourself or your team:

1. Premium Individual: $4.99 per month (billed annually)

2. Premium Team: $6.99/user per month (billed annually)

Paid plans may only be worth it if you need advanced features, such as the gatekeeper option that scans the email from a new sender to let you decide whether you want to engage with it or remove it immediately. This is more of a nice-to-have than something you’ll need, as you can make the same assessment without a dedicated feature.

Spark is available on most Apple devices (including the Apple Watch), Android, and Windows. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a web version, which might be an issue if your app crashes.

Canary Mail is another multi-platform email client with a well-optimized macOS version. It features a clean, modern design without much clutter, enabling a smooth emailing experience. It also comes with a few helpful organizational features, most notably:

• 1-click unsubscribe to stop unwanted mail

• Mail Cleaner that helps you keep your inbox neat more easily

• Newsletter management for staying on top of promotional correspondence

Still, Canary Mail’s standout feature is Sidekick AI, which performs several accommodating actions. Besides helping you compose an email, it can summarize a received message to give you the highlights. It also prioritizes your incoming emails based on your prior behavior, helping you see all important messages.

The main downside of Sidekick AI is that only the composing feature is available with the free plan. To unlock the other two, you must upgrade to the Pro plan, which costs $20 per year. Canary Mail also offers the Enterprise plan for business users, starting at $100/user per year.

While Canary Mail uses end-to-end encryption, only paid plan users can access it. Besides, the platform uses the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) protocol, which is considered outdated due to significant vulnerabilities. 

SecureSend is a fairly new feature, which Canary Mail claims is also a form of end-to-end encryption. However, this feature is only available in the paid plan.

Notion Mail is an AI-first email client that gives you complete control over your workflow. Unlike traditional email clients like Apple Mail, it goes beyond surface-level email management, offering intelligent features that streamline your daily tasks. Some of these features include:

• AI-powered summarization: Instantly grasp the essence of lengthy email threads with quick summaries of the text.

• AI autopilot: Set up simple AI-powered prompts to automatically sort and prioritize your emails, which will help reduce inbox clutter.

• Customizable views: Create custom views of your inbox and adapt your email experience to your specific needs each time. 

• Snippets: Quickly insert pre-written email templates into your emails to swiftly respond to common inquiries, saving you time. 

• Effortless scheduling: Schedule meetings directly from your email using the short command /schedule or by inserting a scheduling button, such as Calendly, via Notion Calendar booking links. 

• Powerful search: Quickly find emails with advanced search criteria such as sender, recipient, subject, or keywords.

• Seamless Notion integration: Connect emails to your Notion workspace to create a unified and interconnected workspace where information flows seamlessly from your email to other tasks. 

Notion Mail’s intuitive interface makes it easy to leverage these powerful features, regardless of your technical expertise. It’s available on all web browsers, Android, iOS, and Windows devices, ensuring you can stay productive wherever you are.

Notion Mail is free, and it comes with a comprehensive set of productivity tools and powerful AI-driven features. The platform also fully integrates with Notion Calendar, which helps you manage your schedule, coordinate events, and sync your calendar with your email, providing a unified view of your day. 

To get started with Notion Mail, all you need to do is sign up using your Gmail or Google account! If you need access to more advanced AI features outside the built-in ones, get the Notion AI add-on.

Bonus read: Browse our resources below to see how other popular email providers stack up against each other and find more alternatives:

• Apple Mail vs. Outlook

• Office 365 vs. Outlook

• Zoho Mail vs. Gmail

• Tutanota vs. Proton Mail

• Proton Mail vs. Gmail

• Zoho Mail vs. Office 365

• Gmail app alternative

• Fastmail vs. Proton Mail

• Alternative to Zoho Mail