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Email Thread: What Is It & Best Practices
Blog →
by
Ludovic Armand
October 27, 2022
· Updated on
February 14, 2025
You’re probably already familiar with the concept of an email thread or email chain. They certainly have been part of your email inbox at some point, or maybe you still use them for your business communication.
Email threading allows you to trace the history of your emails easily, but it comes with certain disadvantages.
In this blog, we’ll look at email threads' advantages and disadvantages, unspoken email etiquette around email chains, and how you can use Missive to take advantage of the future of email conversations.
An email thread is the chain of messages and replies between you and other people, grouped together in a conversation. When you click "Reply" to a message, your new message is added to the end of the thread so that everyone can follow the conversation.
This way, you can see the whole conversation that has taken place between you and other people. Unless someone is removed from the copy, all recipients will receive all the group messages with their replies.
Email thread replies are typically arranged in chronological order starting from the first reply to the most recent one. This arrangement is helpful for recipients who are following the conversation because it’s organized the discussion in a simple structure.
Email threading can be helpful when you need to refer to a previous conversation.
With email threading enabled in your email client, all replies will automatically use the "RE:" preposition in the subject line and will be grouped in one discussion.
An email thread can be extremely beneficial in several ways for your business communications. Here are some reasons why email threading can be helpful:
First, email chains can help reduce the amount of time you spend managing your inbox. By keeping all messages in one place, you can quickly scan through a thread and get the information you need without having to search through your entire inbox.
A conversation view can help improve communication with your team. By using a group email, you can avoid miscommunication and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Email threads allow you to keep track of an entire conversation in one place by organizing related emails into one group. This can be very helpful when trying to resolve an issue or follow up on a task.
While an email thread can be a helpful way to keep track of related messages, it can also have some drawbacks. Here are some of the disadvantages of email threading:
It can be difficult to follow a thread if it gets too long or if there are too many messages in it. When email threading is enabled, each reply to an email is grouped with the original email and any previous replies.
Additionally, if you delete an email in a thread, it can delete all emails in the thread, which can be frustrating if you only wanted to delete one email.
When an email thread is shared with both people from your organization and people externally, there are high risk of sharing internal communication with the people in the thread outside of your organization.
This happens when people communicate internally about a specific thread and forget to remove the external recipients from the message.
Some email providers do not support email threading, which can make it difficult to keep track of conversations if you switch between providers. If you’re using an email provider that does not support email threading.
Some recipients of email threads may receive irrelevant emails. This is because when someone replies to an email thread, everyone who was originally included in the thread will receive the reply.
This can be a problem if the original email was not relevant to everyone in the conversation or if the reply is not for all the recipients of the emails and is only for internal communication.
Now that we covered the advantages and disadvantages of email chains, here are some unspoken rules to maintain proper "reply all" etiquette.
Email threads are great for a historical log of decision making, it is not good for discussion and even worse for discussion that doesn't involve or require the entire group. By doing the latter, you are stealing attention and time from everyone who has to open that email.
This is obvious but often forgotten, so we wanted to remind you explicitly. Sensitive or private information should always be sent as a separate individual email.
Missive is a collaboration tool for teams built around emails. It’s a great way to communicate with your team and collaborate on emails and other types of communication mediums.
With Missive, you can take advantage of the best email threading practices to make while avoiding all its disadvantages. It’s easy to collaborate and discuss with your team members privately in an email thread with people from outside your organization.
Communications with your colleagues are sent as chat messages directly in the conversation with the emails. It ensures that you don’t send confidential information accidentally to the wrong people.
This way there is no data leak possible, internal communication happens via chat messages, and external communication happens via emails.
Missive also lets you easily share emails with other team members without having to send them a copy of the email. You can either link to an email in a new conversation, mention them in a chat inside the email conversation, or assign a team or someone personally.
Best of all, you can merge all types of messages in one conversation, let it be emails, chats, SMS, social media messages, call logs, voicemail, etc.
The most popular email clients support email threads and enable them by default. However, here’s how to activate it in the most popular email clients:
By default, Email threading is enabled in Google’s email client. Here’s how to manage email thread setting in Gmail.
Email thread is turned on by default in Microsoft’s email client. Here’s how to manage email thread settings in Outlook.
Email thread is turned on by default on Apple’s email client. Here’s how to manage email thread setting in Apple Mail.
In Missive, email threading is always on. As a collaborative app, we think that threading is part of the core experience. However, we do offer an alternative for people who prefer each email to have its conversation.
You can move an email out of its original conversation and into a new one with just one click. This is a great way to keep important emails separate from the rest of the conversation, which can be noisy and overwhelming.
If you decide that you prefer to stick with email threads for your professional discussions, no worries.
Here are a few etiquettes in mind to keep email threads effective.
First, always include a clear and concise subject line that accurately reflects the content of the email. This will help recipients quickly understand what the email is about and whether or not they need to read it.
Even if this rule doesn’t only apply to email strings, it is really important in a thread to be sure the subject line accurately reflects the content of the conversation.
When using a thread to reply to messages, always make sure to stay on topic. If the conversation veers off course, start a new email thread. This will help to keep the discussion focused and avoid getting lost in the messages when trying to follow the conversation.
Email threads are a great way to communicate in emails and organize replies in a nice and sorted conversation. However, if an email thread becomes too long or convoluted, consider moving the discussion to another medium, such as a phone call or in-person meeting.
Emails are not a chat. Other tools like Missive will be best suited for chatting and exchanging with your colleagues.
An email thread can quickly become confusing if people are not clear about what they are replying to. When replying to an email, always include a reference to the original message so that the recipient knows which part of the conversation you are replying to.
If the original message is no longer visible in the thread, quote it in your reply so that everyone can see what you are referring to. This will help to keep the conversation flowing smoothly and prevent misunderstandings.
Threads can quickly become confusing and difficult to follow when too many people are in CC (carbon copy) or BCC (blind carbon copy).
Only use cc and bcc when absolutely necessary to avoid overwhelming recipients and cluttering up the thread. When in doubt, it’s usually best to leave people off the cc or bcc list.
Email threading can be a useful tool, but it’s not for everyone. Some people prefer to keep their messages separate, and others find that email threading makes it harder to find the messages they’re looking for. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether email threading is a helpful feature or a hindrance.
An email thread is a sequence of messages with the same subject organized into a conversation. When you reply to a message, the new message is added to the end of the thread.
You usually can "reply" or "reply all" in most email clients. The first option replies just to the form, and reply all replies to From + TO + CC.
To remove someone from an email thread simply remove their email address from the CC or BCC section of the email.
There’s no doubt that email threading is a convenient way to keep track of conversations, especially when multiple people are involved. But threads are actually a hindrance to productivity, as it can be difficult to follow a conversation. It also poses a security risk as it can be easy to accidentally share internal communication outside the organization.
With new tools, like Missive, that enable teams to collaborate outside the regular emails there is no doubt that a collaborative inbox will soon replace the traditional email thread.
July 24, 2025
6 Fyxer AI Alternatives: From email clients to add-on tools
We cover Fyxer AI’s key features and compare them to alternatives like Gmelius and Missive, helping you choose the best tool for your inbox.
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.
Fyxer AI is an AI assistant that connects to your Gmail or Outlook inbox. It does three things well:
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:
We'll start with similar functionality and interface and work our way down the list.
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:
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:
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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, 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.
March 25, 2025
Outlook vs Gmail for Business: Which is better?
Welcome to the great business email debate—Gmail or Outlook?
Welcome to the great business email debate—Gmail or Outlook?
Emails are the lifeblood of many businesses. They’re how people inquire about your services, it's how you communicate with clients and vendors, and maybe it's even how you communicate internally with your team.
We'll be doing an in-depth analysis of the two big email providers (Gmail vs Outlook). And give you the information you need to make a decision on which email service you'd like to build your communication system from.
We'll be going over:
There are two ways to create an email with Google.
You can either have a free, personal email address that ends in @gmail.com, with limited storage (15gb across your Google Suite), or you can pay for Google Workspace (Gmail for business) and create an email address with your business domain: @yourcompany.com, have more storage, and more admin/security controls over your email service.
The Google Workspace business plans vary:
Whether you have a Gmail account or a Google Workspace account, your inbox will look similar.
This is where Google shines. Their real-time collaborative documents were a game changer when they launched back in 2006 and has become the preferred tools for many organizations since.
When looking at Gmail's security measures for Google Workspace accounts, here are two that stand out:
Gmail uses TLS for email transit and has encryption at rest and in transit.
With over 1.8 billion Gmail users worldwide, there are some very well known issues and tradeoffs within the Gmail's functionality. Here are three common ones:
Like Gmail, Outlook is Microsoft's free, personal email service; Microsoft 365 is essentially Outlook for business, equivalent to Google Workspace.
Here's an overview of the Microsoft 365 plans (assuming an annual payment, as of April 1, 2025):
With thousands of enterprise customers, Outlook's security and privacy are tuned for those standards.
And just like Gmail, Outlook uses TLS encryption for email in transit. And data at rest is also encrypted.
As with most decisions in life, it depends.
Google Workspace is collaborative at its core, though its shared inbox and email automation options are more limited.
Microsoft Outlook is more robust in it's DNA overall, but can feel overly complex and lacking in modern design.
If your business prioritizes simplicity and collaboration with clients, team members, and vendors—I would err on the side of Gmail and Google Workspace.
If you work in a field with a lot of sensitive information (i.e. law, accounting, etc), then I would err on the side of Outlook and their very high standard for security controls.
Whether you choose Gmail or Outlook, there are some business email hygiene factors to follow:
Neither Outlook or Gmail was really designed for teams. They added on some lightweight features (shared mailboxes), but if you truly live in your inbox everyday, replying to clients, team members, and vendors—you'll want something designed specifically for team collaboration and shared inboxes.
That would be us—Missive!
Missive is an email client that sits on top of your chosen email service—whether that's Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, or Apple Mail.
It has all the features that are loved in Gmail and Outlook—labels, rules, snoozing, but supercharged with more functionality. Including AI powered rules that allow for auto-translation, auto-labeling, and so much more.
But don't just take our word for it, here's Arif, a lawyer and long time Outlook user, who recently signed up for Missive:
When I open Missive, I can hit Inbox Zero quickly. I never had that feeling with Outlook.
And here's Pat, a property manager and Gmail user, who recently signed up for Missive:
We’ve tried so many shared inbox solutions. Missive was unexpectedly powerful. Suddenly, we weren’t scrambling over lost emails or letting days slip by.
So whether you're Team Gmail for business or Team Outlook for business—you can try Missive today and get the best collaborative email client for businesses.
