Most people start their email journey with one of two email providers, Outlook or Gmail. They are the starter Pokemon of the email world. But your needs for email changes drastically from your teenage years (when you likely got your first email address) to your professional, career working years. In this article, we'll go over a few Gmail alternatives that are more suited for the business world than your iloverainbows52@gmail.com email address.

Before we get into specific Gmail alternatives, we need to talk about what Gmail is.

There are two distinct parts to Gmail: Gmail the email service provider and Gmail the email client. 

Think about this like your faucet vs. your municipal water service. The email service is your municipal water service, it's responsible for: 

• Hosting your mailbox (like the water reservoir)
• Delivering email across the internet (like pipelines)
• Ensuring uptime, spam filtering, and data storage (like pressure and purity controls)

The email client is your faucet, you get to decide whether it's easy it is to use, serves it's function, and is aesthetically pleasing based on your tastes.

You can swap out either independently or you can swap out both at the same time. This is important because we will break down the Gmail alternatives into "water service" and "faucet" options. Most people are typically looking to replace Gmail as the email client (faucet) and keep the Gmail water service exactly as it is, but we'll give you the best email options for both. 

3 Gmail Alternatives: Email Providers

Gmail's email infrastructure stands out amongst other options. Unlike Outlook or other IMAP email providers, Gmail doesn't use IMAP for storage. It has it's own custom-built, cloud-first infrastructure and it's own indexing logic, which are two of the big reasons Gmail's search function is often touted as the fastest.

When we're evaluating email providers, we're looking at these criteria: 

• Reliability and uptime—99.9% uptime is a good standard
• Security and privacy—TLS encryption, multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption
• Storage and archiving—information architecture, data location, and search scope will impact how quickly you find what you're looking for
• Cost—prices by user, features, and storage

Bring your email addresses, and let's get into it. 

Protonmail or Tutanota: The security-forward Gmail alternatives

If you're looking for more security and privacy features than Gmail, then you'll want to swap in Protonmail or Tutanota as your email service provider. They both offer true end-to-end encryption which Gmail does not. 

Protonmail allows you to use other third part email clients on top of it, while Tutanota requires you to use the Tutanota specific email client.

Pros:

• Advanced spam filtering and detection
• Lots of privacy-first functionality like end-to-end encryption and password-protected, encrypted emails

Cons:

• Very few third-party integrations
• Free plans aren't super usable with 1 GB of storage. 

Pricing: Both have free plans, with paid plans starting from $3-5/month. 

Summary: To get more secure email infrastructure as an individual user, choose Protonmail or Tutanota. If you want to be able to use a different faucet (aka. bring your own email client), use Protonmail, if you don't care, Tutanota comes with a branded secure email client. 

Outlook: The enterprise Gmail alternative 

If you're looking for an alternative with better compliance controls, Outlook is the gold standard amongst email providers. 

Features like Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Advanced eDiscovery makes Outlook the go-to option for larger enterprises in highly regulated fields like healthcare. Gmail offers strong security but Outlook has finer controls and customizations, including various options around data residency.

Pros:

• Lots of admin controls available on business and enterprise plans
• Deep integration into Microsoft 365's suite of tools
• Some automation with shared rules

Cons:

• Search will likely feel less accurate and slower than Gmail's search

Pricing: For Microsoft 365 (built for businesses), plans start at $6.00/user/month. 

Summary: Gone are the days of Outlook just being a classic hotmail email address. Outlook can be a great option for those who need granular admin controls and want the gold standard in enterprise email security. 

iCloud Mail: The Gmail alternative for Apple users

If you own an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook... and you prefer Apple's privacy-first data handling, iCloud Mail is a great Gmail alternative. 

Pros:

• Works seamlessly on Apple devices
• Mail Privacy Protection and Hide My Email are nice privacy features out of the box

Cons:

• You share your iCloud storage with other Apple apps, so 5 GB get used up fast

Pricing: Free for up to 5 GB of storage. iCloud+ starts at $0.99/month for 50 GB of storage.

Summary: iCloud Mail can be a great Gmail alternative if you're an Apple user through and through, and you're already paying for iCloud storage for your other apps. The out-of-the-box privacy options are also a nice to have.

4 Gmail Alternatives: Email Clients

If you're reading this section, you probably want to keep Gmail's email service as your email infrastructure. We don't blame you, we recommend it as our email provider of choice. That being said, the Gmail inbox interface and functionality has a lot to be desired. Here are some of our favorite Gmail alternatives for a more seamless inbox. 

Missive: Gmail alternative for teams

If you have dozens of aliases for different email accounts, mixing personal and business, trying to MacGyver it all into the traditional Gmail interface. You already know how that won't work for long—Missive is a way better way to handle email as a team.

Missive allows you to connect all your Gmail email accounts (and any other email accounts), you can see all your emails in one place, while being able to collaborate on emails internally, via comments, as a team. You can even draft emails with someone in real time, send and receive using shared aliases and shared signatures. No more forwarding emails back and forth or wondering if someone is working on responding to a customer.

Missive allows you to bring your own email provider, while giving you a way more team-friendly faucet.

Pros:

• Supports multiple email accounts and any email provider
• Fast, intuitive inbox interface
• Lots of team-oriented features like internal comments
• Flexible automations and deep integration ecosystem (including OpenAI)

Cons:

• No offline mode
• Calendar functionality is basic

Pricing: Free plan up to 3 users and 15-days of history. Paid plans start at $14/user/month. 

Summary: Missive is the best Gmail alternative for teams, it's as intuitive and fast as Gmail but has a lot more functionality under the hood. Users often say, "if Slack and Gmail had a baby, it would be Missive."

Zoho Mail: Gmail alternative for new tool suites

Zoho Mail is one product amongst a large suite of Zoho-branded tools. Zoho Calendar, Zoho Calendar, Zoho ToDo, Zoho Chat (aka. Cliq) and more.

Zoho Mail as an email client isn't particularly innovative or sleek, but it does have an above-average attachment file size at 1GB on their paid plans and it has affordable custom domains.

If you care more about volume of features for your dollar, than the snappiness of the email client, then Zoho Mail might be a good fit. 

Pros:

• Very affordable with plans starting at $1/user/month
• Has advanced admin controls (i.e. eDiscovery) at reasonable prices

Cons: 

• Not a very inspiring or delightful email client
• Suite of tools is less intuitive than Google Suite 

Pricing:  Mail Lite starts at $1/user/month, additional storage sold separately.

Summary: If you care about function over form, and you want a similar enough set of tools that comes easily integrated into your inbox, then Zoho Mail might be a decent Gmail alternative. For us, it would be tough to give up Gmail's speed and native integration with Google Suite (i.e. Google Drive) for a small saving in costs. 

Shortwave: An AI-first Gmail alternative 

Ah, an AI-first email client. Shortwave is the only email client on this list that has taken a new approach to helping you search your inbox. It's AI-forward search mixes in a LLMs and other models to generate it's results. Whether or not it is better than Gmail's search architecture is yet to be seen, but it is different. 

Beyond search, Shortwave has integrate AI into every part of the email experience. AI can help you draft emails, organize your inbox, and more. 

Pros:

• Lots of AI features
• Has read receipts, team collaboration, and automations
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts

Cons:

• Limited third-party integrations
• AI search quantity is limited depending on plan

Pricing: Individual users have a free plan to start, business users start at $24/user/month.

Summary: If you're looking for an AI-forward Gmail alternative that has some team collaboration feature, Shortwave might be a good Gmail alternative.

Apple Mail: Apple-centric Gmail alternative

If you use iCloud Mail as your email service provider, Apple Mail is a no brainer email client alternative to Gmail. 

Especially if you're using Gmail's free personal email service, where you get unsolicited ads in your inbox, Apple Mail has no ads in it's email interface, just a very simple and beautifully designed experience. Like most Apple products. 

Pros:

• Already installed in all Apple products
• Supports multiple email providers

Cons:

• Interface isn't meant to support many email accounts

Pricing: Free

Summary: If you're looking to move away from Gmail because of Google's stance on privacy, and you're already deep in the Apple ecosystem with lots of iCloud storage, then Apple Mail is your best email alternative to Gmail. 

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If you're looking for more email clients that work with Gmail, notable private email mentions include Fastmail and Mailfence.

Whether you're looking for Gmail alternatives because you're replace your email "faucet" or you're replacing Gmail as email service, we hope you're able to find an option that fits your needs. 

As AI continues to grow in popularity, email management is one of the most competitive spaces for AI tools. Fyxer AI has gained a lot of attention, promising to save you one hour a day as your AI assistant dedicated to meeting and email management.

This article will break down what Fyxer AI is and some alternatives that exist in the market. 

What is Fyxer AI

Fyxer AI is an AI assistant that connects to your Gmail or Outlook inbox. It does three things well:

1. Triaging and categorizing emails
2. Auto-drafting replies in your voice and tone
3. Being your note taker on meetings (and giving you a scheduling link)

It genuinely feels like a capable assistant that manages your email directly within your existing Gmail/Outlook inbox. There's no new interface to learn, no complex installation. Just an organized "person" who opened your messy inbox and took over, in a way that still granted you control over what's sent out. 

Within 10 minutes of setting up Fyxer AI, all my emails were auto-tagged into one of their default labels (I use Gmail): 

To enable auto-drafting of replies, you have to give Fyxer AI's draft prompter a bit of context related to your tone and business. 

And here's what an auto-drafted reply looked like: 

This is a great experience for anyone who wants to stay in the Gmail or Outlook interface, but really need on-going organization and administrative help because of the high volume of emails that they handle personally. 

Like Superhuman, Fyxer AI is focused on inbox throughput—how much faster can you process your emails. Although that's an important goal, often times, it's the wrong goal. 

Maybe the question is whether you should be replying to most of those emails in the first place, which we'll get into for some of the Fyxer alternatives.

When looking at Fyxer AI alternatives, we included 3 types: 

1. Similar functionality and similar interface (Gmelius, Hiver)
2. More functionality and different interface (Missive, Shortwave)
3. Similar functionality across multiple independent tools (Clean Email/SaneBox + Copilot/Gemini + Granola AI) 

We'll start with similar functionality and interface and work our way down the list. 

Gmelius - Gmail-only Fyxer alternative

Like Fyxer, Gmelius exists on top of your existing Gmail interface so you have a familiar experience with new functionality. 

Gmelius also has an AI-powered assistant that auto-categorizes and can draft replies on your behalf. There are small details between the two options, for example: 

• By default, Fyxer will only draft replies for the emails that are auto-labeled "to respond". Gmelius will try to respond to every email, but for those that they detect as promotional, they will add a note saying they didn't respond because it is a promotional email. It's a small detail, but the execution of Fyxer's approach feels smoother. 

On the other hand, Gmelius is also a collaboration focused tool instead of a purely productivity focused tool like Fyxer, which means Gmelius has more functionality for teams that work together within an inbox. They have the ability to chat internally on emails, assign emails to others, create automations that run based on certain AI tagging, SLA escalation, and more.

Both Gmelius and Fyxer have a closed AI assistant, meaning you're not able to bring your own AI key and select the models that you work with. This is great for those who don't really have a preference on which AI model they prefer.

From a pricing perspective, Gmelius is a little bit more expensive than Fyxer: 

• Starting at $24/user/month billed annually compared to Fyxer's starting at $22.50/user/month billed annually. 

If you're looking for a Fyxer alternative that is a little more oriented to teams but has much of the same functionality and interface, then Gmelius might be the one. 

Hiver - Customer support Fyxer alternative

Similar to Gmelius, Hiver integrates directly into your existing email client, giving you a familiar interface to work with. Unlike Gmelius, Hiver supports Gmail and Outlook accounts. 

Like Fyxer, Hiver has an AI-powered email assistant that can help you auto-draft emails and auto-label emails based on their contents. Though, like Gmelius, it's not quite as simple as Fyxer's default experience since Hiver's core users are customer support teams working out of shared inboxes.

If you're an executive that's just looking to replace Fyxer's lightweight functionality, without any of the team related features like collaboration, automated workflows, analytics, or SLA monitoring, then Hiver might be a little overkill.

Could you get it to work? Absolutely. Will it feel like it was built for your use case? Probably not.  

From a pricing perspective, Hiver's plans that include AI start at $19/user/month billed annually. However, there are limitations on how many AI-drafted replies you can have (20/user/day). 

Missive - Fyxer alternative for teams 

Now we're moving onto tools with more functionality than Fyxer, but will also have a less familiar interface.

Missive is an email client for teams that need to collaborate in their inbox. Like Fyxer, you can create AI-powered email assistants that help you triage, label, and draft replies. Unlike Fyxer, Missive is way more flexible in implementation, which depending on who you are, could be a good or bad thing. 

Missive allows you to bring your own AI key and choose your own model. That means if you want to use a specific model for drafting emails versus triaging, you can fine tune that experience.

Since Missive is a collaborative inbox meant for your whole team, your AI assistant can assign and triage emails to the right people, instead of just sorting it in your own inbox. Imagine an old client emails you because you have a long standing relationship, but it's a question meant for your support team.

The same is true for drafting replies, instead of just drafting replies based on your own personal inbox, Missive's AI automations can help your whole team auto-draft replies to customers. 

That's critical if you're handling hundreds if not thousands of emails every day. You can get the most common questions taken care of by an AI assistant. 

Where Missive lacks compared to Fxyer is it's scheduling and calendar functionality. Missive has a calendar that's good for team visibility but it's lacking any AI assistant features. 

From a pricing perspective, Missive is comparable to Fyxer at $24/user/month for plans that include AI automations. 

Shortwave - Full-featured Fyxer alternative

If you're looking for an AI-powered email client, essentially Fyxer but with more features, then Shortwave might be a good fit. 

Shortwave has all of Fyxer's AI assistant features right out of the box—auto-drafting emails, default AI categorization, calendar scheduling—and they have some team collaboration features as well. 

Since Shortwave is it's own email client, it looks and feels quite different from Gmail and Outlook. It also only supports Gmail accounts. They say there's a workaround for Microsoft 365, Outlook and other email providers, but it's essentially forwarding your email account to a Gmail account, to connect to Shortwave. 

If you don't want or need the level of customization and flexibility that Missive has, you don't care to BYOK (Bring your own keys), and you use Gmail/Google Workspace—Shortwave could be a good Fyxer alternative for you. 

From a pricing perspective, Shortwave is the exact same pricing as Missive at $24/user/month for plans with full fledge AI functionality. 

Spike - Conversational Fyxer alternative

Spike turns email into a conversational tool, making it a powerful Fyxer alternative. It transforms your cluttered inbox into a streamlined, chat-like feed that organizes messages by sender. This intuitive design simplifies lengthy discussions by eliminating repetitive headers and signatures, allowing you to focus on the actual conversation.

Like Fyxer, Spike uses AI to manage your inbox. It's priority inbox functions like Fyxer’s auto-tagging, automatically separating important mail from newsletters and promotional content. Spike’s AI can also summarize entire email threads and suggest replies, mirroring Fyxer’s core productivity features.

Where Spike stands apart is its focus on team collaboration, with features like group chats and notes.

From a pricing perspective, Spike's pro plans start at $5 per month.

Clean Email + Copilot

If you mostly loved Fyxer for it's ability to sort and organize emails, there are AI-powered tools like Clean Email that focus exclusively on that. And for your drafting needs, you can use Copilot or Gemini (depending on if you're a Gmail or Outlook user) as your AI assistant to help draft the occasional email. 

Like Fyxer, Clean Email is a tool that works within your existing email client. It has some predetermined categories that it will suggest and label your emails as, and it can learn your preferences over time. 

Copilot is a general AI-assistant that comes free with the Microsoft suite. You can use simple prompts like: Check for typos and make it more professional.

Or more complex prompts like: 

You're an executive assistant replying to emails on my behalf. Make sure to take into consideration the existing tone of the conversation and match it. If it's a customer or prospective client asking about a specific product question, use https://learn.missiveapp.com/ to find the answer. Do not make up any information. 

From a pricing perspective, Clean Email is $9.99/month/email account and Copilot has a free plan typically included in your Microsoft 365 subscription, with Pro plans starting at $30/user/month. 

SaneBox + Gemini

An alternative to Clean Email and Copilot would be SaneBox and Gemini. Incredibly similar functionality and features, with minor differences around user interface. Gemini would also be a better fit for anyone already in the Gmail/Google Workspace ecosystem. 

Where SaneBox stands out in comparison to both Clean Email and Fyxer is it's third party integrations. By offering connections to other popular tools like ToDoist, SaneBox allows you to create basic automated workflows within your inbox. Something in between Missive's super flexible and powerful automations and Fyxer's one and only integration to HubSpot. 

From a pricing perspective, SaneBox starts at $7/user/month with some usage limits. Google's Gemini has a free option, with paid plans starting at $19.99/month

Which Fyxer AI alternative is right for you?

Fyxer AI offers a compelling solution for tackling email management, seamlessly integrating with your Gmail or Outlook to help you regain valuable time. Its strengths in triaging emails, drafting replies, and note-taking make it a strong contender in today’s crowded AI productivity tool landscape.

However, it’s worth considering various alternatives like Gmelius, Missive, Spike, or Shortwave, each bringing unique features and interfaces that could better align with your specific needs.

As AI productivity tools continue to innovate and redefine how we interact with our inboxes, exploring your options will ensure you find the perfect fit to enhance your productivity.