Best Email Management Tools to Clean Your Inbox With in 2024

Even with the rise of instant messaging, email is still where the most important communication happens. The problem is that this essential hub for professional and personal communication can easily become cluttered and overwhelming. A disorganized inbox can lead to missed opportunities, decreased productivity, and unnecessary stress. 

To help you maintain a clean and efficient inbox, we've compiled a list of the best email management tools available in 2024. These tools will enable you to streamline your email experience so that you never miss an important message or waste time searching for a specific email.

1. SaneBox 

SaneBox is an AI-powered email management service whose developers proudly claim that it can save you up to 3 to 4 hours per week. The service can be used with just about any email provider, including Gmail, Microsoft 365, Apple iCloud, and Yahoo! Mail, because it supports IMAP, Microsoft Exchange, or ActiveSync mail server technologies. 

The SaneBox approach to email management revolves around several key features that you can use to automatically gather old, unimportant emails, permanently remove unwanted newsletters and senders from your inbox, snooze emails to temporarily get them out of your inbox, and more. 

When testing the service, I was able to declutter one of my old, neglected Gmail accounts in just an hour, and that was with me still learning the ropes. 

As every best email management tool should, SaneBox is committed to security and privacy. The service only looks at basic email information like the sender, subject line, and date, and never stores full emails or attachments. More importantly, it never sells or shares the little information it collects with third parties.

Highlights: 

• Automatically sorts incoming emails based on importance
• Works with all major email services and servers
• Many highly effective email management features
• Choose a pricing tier that best suits your needs 
• SaneBox prioritizes your privacy and security

Pricing: SaneBox offers three main pricing plans starting at $7 per month for one email account and two features, up to $36 per month for four email accounts and all features. Annual and bi-annual billing options are available with discounts. A 14-day free trial is provided for each plan.

2. Mailbird

While SaneBox focuses on AI-powered organization, Mailbird is an email client that empowers users to manually streamline all of their inboxes from a single place. That's right, you can use Mailbird to connect multiple email accounts, regardless of the provider, and manage them all from a unified inbox. This centralized approach to email management makes it simple to stay on top of your communication.

Once you have achieved the desired level of organization, you can continue to rely on Mailbird to maintain your clean inbox and improve your email management experience with its speed reading features, powerful search functionality, or the ability to temporarily remove messages from your inbox and have them reappear at a later time. 

Mailbird is a desktop application for Windows, so you'll need to look for alternatives if you're using a different operating system. I recommend Thunderbird (multi-platform) and Airmail (macOS). 

Highlights: 

• Manage all your email accounts from a single interface
• Personalize your interface to suit your style and workflow
• Increase your reading speed with the built-in speed reader
• Quickly locate emails and attachments with powerful search capabilities
• Prioritize your focus by snoozing less urgent emails

Pricing: Users can start with a free plan, which provides basic functionality. For more advanced features, the Standard Plan is priced at $3.25 per user per month when billed annually, or a one-time payment of $99 with the option to add lifetime updates for an additional $10 per year. For the most comprehensive suite of features, the Premium Plan costs $5.75 per user per month, or a one-time payment of $399 with lifetime updates available for $20 per year. 

3. Clean Email

As its name suggests, Clean Email is an email management tool that can help you organize your inbox and keep it clutter-free. Well, it's actually a collection of tools that you can use to unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters, block senders, clean up old emails, organize your inbox into smart folders, or automatically handle incoming messages, just to give a few examples. 

Moreover, Clean Email comes with limited but very useful email client capabilities, allowing you to reply directly to messages from its interface. This feature is especially useful for those quick responses or when you need to manage your communications without switching between different applications.

Just like SaneBox, my favorite email management tool, Clean Email is compatible with various email providers, including Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and AOL, and you can access it from any platform. The tool is designed to respect your privacy and keep your data safe, with a commitment to never sharing or selling your personal or email data. 

Highlights:

• Organizes your inbox into smart folders using rules and filters
• Unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and block senders
• Clean up old emails and remove clutter from your inbox
• Limited email client capabilities for replying to messages
• Compatible with various email providers

Pricing: Clean Email offers a free plan that allows you to clean up to 1,000 emails. For more advanced features and higher email limits, you can choose from the following plans 1 account ($9.99/month), 5 accounts ($19.99/month), 10 accounts ($29.99/month). All plans come with the ability to cancel or change plans at any time, and you can share accounts with friends and family if you purchase the 5 or 10 account plans.

4. Cleanfox 

Developed by Foxintelligence, an e-commerce market research company, Cleanfox is an email management tool designed to help you declutter your inbox while contributing to a greener environment. 

How so? Well, it takes electricity to send and receive emails and store them on servers. In fact, a single email is responsible for emitting about 10g of CO2 per year. Cleanfox helps reduce this impact by making it easy for you to unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and delete old emails, which in turn leads to less data being stored on servers and less energy being consumed.

Cleanfox is available on multiple platforms, including web, iOS, Android, and as a Chrome extension, and you can get started with it in no time thanks to its intuitive user interface. Simply connect your account, and Cleanfox will then present you with a list of your newsletters, allowing you to choose whether to keep your subscription and old emails, keep your subscription and delete old emails, or unsubscribe and delete old emails. 

Highlights: 

• Easily unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and subscriptions
• User-friendly interface and simple setup process
• Available on the web, iOS, Android, and as a Chrome extension
• No subscription or licenses needed
• Presents an eco-conscious approach to inbox management 

Pricing: Cleanfox is completely free to use. The service generates revenue by collecting anonymized data from users' inboxes for statistical purposes related to e-commerce market research.

5. Unroll.me 

Unroll.me is a free email management tool that helps you declutter your inbox by unsubscribing from unwanted newsletters and consolidating important subscriptions into a daily digest called the Rollup. 

Indeed, Rollup is Unroll.me's standout feature, allowing you to curate a personalized newsletter filled with your favorite subscriptions. That way, you can remain informed about shopping deals, travel deals, lifestyle blogs, news updates, and social media notifications without receiving an overwhelming number of messages on a regular basis. 

Unroll.me is for iOS and Android, and it's completely free to use. The service is supported by the data it collects, which is used to create market research products and datasets, so your data is technically the price you pay. These days, Unroll.me is transparent about its data collection practices, but it wasn't always like this, and the email management tool faced a massive backlash in 2017 after it was discovered it was sharing more user data than initially disclosed.

Highlights:

• Quickly unsubscribe from unwanted emails with a single click
• Organize subscription emails into a convenient daily digest
• Interface offers a clean, intuitive way to manage subscriptions
• Doesn't cost anything to use
• Native apps for iOS and Android mobile devices 

Pricing: Unroll.me is completely free to use, supported by the monetization of collected user data. Unfortunately, the service isn't available in the EU. 

Wrapping Up

With so many email management tools available, choosing the right one depends on your individual needs and priorities. If you're looking for an AI-powered solution that can automate the organization of your inbox, SaneBox is a great option (and my personal favorite!). For those who prefer a more hands-on approach, a feature-rich email client like Mailbird might be a better fit. Regardless of which tool you choose, taking steps to organize your inbox can significantly improve your productivity and reduce stress.