How to Create Shared Inbox Rules

Microsoft Outlook shared inbox rules are one of the oldest features of the software. They allow users to set certain rules and actions for new emails that land in the inbox. These rules can be used to delete certain emails, move them to a specified folder or reply to emails.

But creating rules for a shared mailbox in Outlook (part of Microsoft 365) isn’t the most straightforward process.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at how these rules can be set up, the most common problems with shared mailbox rules in Outlook and how can Missive could be a better alternative.

How to Create Rules for a Shared Mailbox in Outlook?

Create rules for shared mailbox in Outlook

Rules in a shared Outlook mailbox are a great way to allow your team to manage incoming emails in a team inbox.

You can create rules to send emails to the right folder to remove certain people from emails so they are only viewed by the right member of the team.

To create rules for a shared mailbox in Outlook, you will need to have full access to the mailbox and be able to log in to it.

If you don’t already have a shared mailbox, follow these instructions first to create one.

Creating Shared Mailbox Rules on Outlook on the Web

To create rules in Outlook on the web you’ll need to open a shared mailbox in a new browser’s window. To do so:

Sign in to your Outlook 365 account on the web.
Click on your name in the top right corner of the window.
Click on Open another mailbox...
Choose the shared mailbox in which you want to add rules by entering its email address.

With that shared mailbox opened you can set up a rule by doing as follow:

In the setting menu ⚙️ located on the top right, select the Inbox and sweep rules in the Mail > Automatic processing section.
In the Inbox Rules window click on the + to create a new rule.
Name your new rule.
From there you can create your rule and set up the conditions, exceptions, and actions you want it to accomplish.
When you’re done, click on Ok to save.

Creating Shared Mailbox Rules on PC and Mac

Outlook 365 on PC

On your PC, open the Outlook app.
In the menu bar click on File and then select Manage Rules & Alerts. You can also access this menu by clicking on Rules and Manage Rules & Alerts in the Outlook ribbon
In the new window, select the shared mailbox from the menu named Apply changes to this folder.
Create a rule by clicking on New Rule.

Outlook 365 on Mac

This menu is only available for managed accounts.

On your Mac, open the Outlook app.
From the menu bar, select Tools > Rules.
In the new window, you’ll be able to select the shared account to which you would like to add a rule.
You can then select the type of information you want, such as From, Recipients, or Subject, by clicking on the arrows in the first box. Make sure to select all the conditions for your rule.
You can add terms by clicking on Add search terms. Add each term you want to the search list.

Can Microsoft Outlook or Office 365 Rules Be Shared?

Microsoft Outlook and Office 365 (recently renamed Microsoft 365) individual rules can be shared with other users in your organization. To do this, you can use the "Rule Sharing" feature in Outlook, which allows you to share your rules with other users in your organization.

On the other hand, rules created for shared mailboxes are already shared among all team members as they are assigned to the specific mailbox. The rules can be created, modified, and deleted by any member of the mailbox as long as they have Full Access permission.

Rules to Manage Your Outlook Team’s Shared Mailbox More Easily

Note: These rules are applicable to those running the old Outlook. The new Outlook removed certain functionality, including rules that customized sounds and printed emails.

1. Send Automatic Replies to Emails

Setting up a rule to automatically reply to certain incoming emails can help you and your team. It can be especially useful to set up for a support inbox as it will let know your customer that you’ve received their messages and that you’ll get back to them as soon as possible.

To do so:

In the Microsoft 365 portal, click on Groups and then Shared mailboxes.
Select the shared mailbox you want to set up an auto-reply to.
On the right of the menu, click on Automatic replies.
Write the reply you want to be sent automatically.

2. Filter emails coming to a shared email alias in folders

Some shared email aliases are really general and broad. It can be useful to filter incoming emails into categorized folders to improve your team's efficiency.

To do so:

Create a new rule by following the steps above.
As the condition select Move messages with specific words in the subject to a folder as the template and click on Next.
Next, select the condition you want to be met for this rule to apply. For example: with specific words in the subject. Once selected click on Next.
Next, we want to select the action the rule will perform. This time let's select: with specific words in the subject. Click Next.
Lastly, you can select an exception when you don’t want to apply. If you don’t want an exception, click on Finish without any options selected.

3. Automatically Filter out These Annoying Outreach Emails

Like almost anyone at this point, your inbox is probably bombarded with unwanted or annoying outreach emails

There are a few different approaches you can take to automatically filter them out. The most commonly used is to use a spam filter, which can automatically identify and move spam emails to a separate folder or mark them as spam. Most email providers, like Outlook, include one built-in.

But some of them still manage to slip into the cracks. Another approach you can take is to create custom rules in Microsoft 365 to automatically move or delete emails that match certain criteria.

To do so:

Create a new rule by following the steps above.
As the condition select Move messages with specific words in the subject to a folder as the template and click on Next.
Next, select the condition you want to be met for this rule to apply. For example: with specific words in the subject. Once selected click on Next.
Next, we want to select the action the rule will perform. This time let's select: with specific words in the subject or body. Click Next.
Enter the words you want to trigger the rule, such as "outreach" or "sales pitch".
Lastly, you can select an exception when you don’t want to apply. If you don’t want an exception, click on Finish without any options selected.

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Common Problems with Shared Mailbox Rules in Outlook

There are several common problems that users may encounter when working with rules in a shared mailbox in Microsoft Outlook.

The most common problems tend to be related to permissions and configuration, and can usually be resolved by an administrator with the appropriate knowledge and experience.

Inability to create or modify rules: In some cases, users may not have sufficient permissions to create or modify rules in a shared mailbox. This can be due to the mailbox being set up with the wrong permissions, or the user not having the appropriate permissions.
Rules not applying to all messages: If the user has created a rule that is supposed to apply to all messages in the mailbox, it may not be triggered for messages sent to a specific email address or folder. This can be due to a misconfiguration of the rule, or the mailbox not being set up properly.
Rules not working properly: In some cases, rules may not work as intended, or may not be triggered at all. This can be due to a number of factors, such as incorrect settings or conflicting rules.
Inability to customize rules for individual users: Shared mailbox rules are typically applied to all users, which may not be suitable for everyone.
Potential for rule conflicts: Shared mailbox rules may overlap or conflict with each other, leading to unexpected behavior or incorrect application of rules.
Not enough space: Outlook's inbox rules are limited to 256 KB in both the web and desktop apps. You will need space in your mailbox for each rule you create. The space limit only applies to enabled *inbox *rules.

Even if you’re following the shared mailbox best practices and setting up rules correctly in Microsoft 365, it can be hard to manage all your team inboxes in Outlook.

How Do Missive Rules Compare to Shared Mailbox Rules in Outlook?

Outlook rules are a good way to manage shared mailboxes, but they are not the most straightforward to set up and are, not to say the least, basic. When trying to manage a shared inbox, team collaboration and workflow efficiency is the key to success.

Missive rules are a powerful way to automate your team's workflows. They work the same way Outlook 365 rules and Gmail filters do. When the rule conditions are met, the automated actions defined on the rule are triggered.

However, as opposed to Microsoft 365 rules, they can be executed when any message, let it be an email, SMS, tweet, DM, Facebook message, WhatsApp, or Missive Live Chat comes in or out of your inbox. They can also be defined by some user actions like applying/removing a label, changing the status of a conversation (assigned/closed/reopened), or posting a new comment in a conversation.

In addition, Missive offers a powerful way to use rules for better teamwork and productivity. For example, you can:

Round-Robin assignment to only employees online: With rules, you can automatically assign conversations to selected coworkers on a cyclical basis. Incoming conversations are rotated to online team members in the order they are received.

Round-robin conversation assignment method

Make sure all emails get a reply on time: With time-based rules, you can respect your Service-level agreements (SLA). Rules can notify stakeholders when a message hasn’t been answered in the appropriate time and send auto-response messages to customers when the SLA has been breached.

Automatically apply labels to conversations

Automatically assign sent emails to authors: With rules, you can auto-assign emails to the author. It can be useful if many employees send cold emails to customers using a common shared email account. By doing this, if the recipient replies, only the author will receive it in their inbox.

Description	Auto-assign sent emails
Conditions	Email account is sales@mycompany.com
Actions	Assign sender

Add special notes to communication: With a simple rule, you can automatically add a note to each email. People in the team can use this information to better meet the needs of that customer.

Automatically add notes to any conversation — A big warning your employees won’t miss.

There’s also the possibility of creating custom rules to automate your workflow. We’ve compiled a list of 15 templates to help you get started.

Still have questions? Learn how Canny’s team is taking advantage of Missive’s rules to be more efficient with their inbox or book a demo!

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:

Individual features and functionality
Collaboration and team features
Security and privacy
Pricing

Feature	Gmail / Google Workspace	Outlook / Microsoft 365
Collaboration	Real-time co-authoring in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides. Emphasizes simple, cloud-first collaboration.	Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) supports real-time co-authoring. Integrates with Microsoft Teams, though less “cloud-native.”
Organization	Uses labels (multiple labels per email). Automatically groups messages into threads based on subject.	Folder-based; each email can only reside in one folder. Offers rules for automated sorting.
Storage	Free 15 GB across Google services; paid tiers from 30 GB up to 5 TB per user (or more in Enterprise plans).	Business Basic starts at 50 GB mailbox + 1 TB OneDrive. Enterprise plans allow up to 100 GB mailboxes and more advanced features.
Security & Privacy	Confidential Mode (not full end-to-end), machine-learning spam detection, encryption at rest/in transit.	Office Message Encryption, Microsoft Defender (anti-phishing), Information Rights Management (IRM), TLS encryption at rest/in transit.
Offline Mode	Primarily in Chrome; up to 90 days cached locally. Can be less reliable on other browsers.	Offline support through Outlook’s OST files. Often more robust for large mailboxes.
Shared Mailbox	Same interface as a personal inbox, minimal collaboration tracking. Good for addresses like info@ or sales@.	Shared mailboxes can integrate with SharePoint, Power Automate for ticketing. Collaboration steps may rely on Microsoft Teams notifications.
Search	Fast email/attachment search. Emails over ~102 KB get “clipped” in web UI, but not blocked from sending.	Searches email, attachments, contacts, events, tasks. More comprehensive but can be slower with large mailboxes.
Pricing	Personal (free) or from $6/user/mo (Business Starter) to $18/user/mo (Business Plus). Enterprise tiers also available.	Starts at $6.30/user/mo (Business Basic), up to $23.10 for Business Premium. Enterprise from $36–$57/user/mo.

Gmail and Google Workspace

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:

Business Starter ($6/user/month) with 30 GB of storage/user
Business Standard ($12/user/month) with 2 TB of storage/user
Business Plus ($18/user/month) with 5 TB of storage/user
Enterprise (custom pricing)

Whether you have a Gmail account or a Google Workspace account, your inbox will look similar.

Features and functionality

Labels
- Gmail labels are incredibly flexible and meant to be the main organizational feature.
- You can use Gmail labels for everything from light project management (To-do, in-progress, blocked, in review) to client filing (names of each client account or project code), to topical sorting (personal, travel, etc)
Categories
- Gmail can auto-detect what they think an email is about, and assign it to one of their four default categories: Primary, Social, Promotional, and Updates.
- This default functionality was introduced in 2013 and can be changed in settings.
Search
- Gmail's search is fast and quite accurate at surfacing relevant results. You can filter by sender, date range, or labels. Note: Gmail's search content is primarily looking at email and attachments, and actively ignores items like calendar events and tasks.
Calendar
- The default calendar app of the Google Suite offers up some helpful business tools. Outside of the standard ability to create an event and invite attendees, you can easily create scheduling links to share and it's smart enough to detect event invites in your Gmail inbox, and auto-create them in your calendar.

Gmail's collaboration and team tools

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.

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides
- Compared to Microsoft, these tools were built with real-time collaboration first. If you plan on working on documents and files with other people, Google is the way to go.
Google Drive—cloud file storage and sharing.
Google Chat—Instant messaging.
Gmail Shared Mailbox
- The most common use case of a shared inbox is a businesses' info@, sales@ and support@ inboxes.
- The shared inbox allows multiple people to login and access, without sharing passwords.
- Gmail's shared inbox has the exact same interface as its regular inbox. You're able to label, filter, and search in the shared inbox just as you would your personal.

Gmail's security and privacy

When looking at Gmail's security measures for Google Workspace accounts, here are two that stand out:

Confidential mode—it's not quite end-to-end encryption, but it does allow users to set expiration dates, revoke access, and restrict forwarding/printing of emails.
Anti-phishing protection—using machine learning, Gmail will often flag suspicious attachments, links, or spam emails with a prominent orange banner.

Gmail uses TLS for email transit and has encryption at rest and in transit.

Common user complaints

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:

Email size limits—Gmail truncates emails at 102 KB; requiring you to click a "view more" link to read long emails in it's entirety If you have lengthy emails to send, you'll likely get frustrated by this limitation.
Threaded emails—Gmail sorts related emails into a single thread, and they'll group them based on subject lines and reply sequences. That's helpful if you're receiving duplicate newsletters (you just want to see one new email for all those duplicates), but if your client is sending you different topical emails with the same subject line, Gmail will also group them together.
Offline mode—Gmail's offline mode works best on Chrome, and has been reported to be less reliable on other browsers or operating systems. Local storage capped at 90 days of email history, so any older emails will not be accessible until you're connected to internet again.

Outlook and Microsoft 365

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):

Business Basic ($6.30/user/month) with 50GB email storage and 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage.
Business Standard ($13.13/user/month) with all of the above, plus desktop versions of Microsoft Office apps (5 devices per user).
Business Premium ($23.10/user/month) with all of the above, plus security features like Microsoft Defender for Business and device management tools for company devices.
Enterprise (ranges from $36-$57/user/month) with Exchange Online email hosting, large amounts of mailbox storage (100 GB/user), and more advanced security and privacy controls. Typically Microsoft 365 enterprise plans start at 300 users.

Features and functionality

Outlook Folders
- The biggest difference between labels and folders (Gmail vs Outlook), is the one-to-one relationship. One email lives in one folder at a time in Outlook, where as one email can have multiple labels attached to it in Gmail.
- Many users appreciate the drag and drop functionality within Microsoft Outlook, that allows you to easily move an email from one folder to another.
Outlook Search
- Outlook's search function goes beyond emails and attachments, pulling in contacts, calendar events and tasks. It's more comprehensive than Gmail's search, but that also impacts it's speed. It’s often slower, especially with large mailboxes.
Outlook Calendar
- Outlook's default calendar has a very deep integration with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office. So if you use Microsoft everything, keeping the Outlook Calendar will be a smoother experience.
Outlook Rules
- Outlook has two main types of rules. The first will only run if your Outlook email is open (like a notification sound), and the second will run on the mail server all the time (i.e. sorting certain emails into certain folders, custom spam/junk mail removal, auto-forwarding emails when you're OOO, etc). The second set of rules is primarily for incoming emails, which depend on if/then statements and doesn't allow for more complex conditions (if/else) or preferences.

Outlook's team collaboration tools

Word, Excel, PowerPoint
- The original productivity office suite focused on individual usage. There's a reason why Excel is still the market leader for those who need deep functionality. In recent years, Microsoft added collaborative features to all these tools, however they've been known to be less seamless compared to Google Workspace.
OneDrive—cloud storage and file sharing.
Microsoft Teams—team chat and video conferencing.
Outlook Shared Mailbox
- It’s very similar to Gmail’s shared mailbox, but with one key difference: you can integrate an Outlook shared inbox with ticketing (Share Point) and automation (Power Automate) tools that are included in the Microsoft 365 suite. This would allow you to create and track "tickets"—particularly helpful for your support@ inbox.
- This functionality is limited and has a heavily reliance on notifications and collaboration outside of the inbox (in Microsoft Teams).

Outlook's security and privacy

With thousands of enterprise customers, Outlook's security and privacy are tuned for those standards.

Office Message Encryption—send encrypted emails with controls on whether those emails can be forwarded, printed, or copied.
Advanced Threat Protection/Microsoft Defender—essentially Microsoft's version of anti-phishing protection. It does offer real-time URL scanning through its Safe Links feature.
Information Rights and Management—allows users to control forwarding/copying of email contents.

And just like Gmail, Outlook uses TLS encryption for email in transit. And data at rest is also encrypted.

Common user complaints

Search Delays/Freezes—because Outlook has a more comprehensive search (looks for things beyond email and attachments), and because they support larger inboxes, it means search is often really slow or doesn't work at all.
Visibility Issues in Shared Inboxes—though Outlook has shared mailboxes, there is a lack of functionality around coordination or collaboration. So though multiple people can be in your sales@ inbox without privacy issues, you still don't know who's working on which email.
Mobile Outlook apps are missing features—you can't create rules and automations, advanced search strings aren't supported, and there are no custom views.

So which email service is better—Gmail vs Outlook?

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:

Don't share passwords to share inboxes
Say no to forwarding if you need to collaborate
Always have anti-phishing and spam protocols in place for your team. Test often.

Which email service is best for teams?

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.

Email is the medium of business. It's how requests, deals, hires, are started and made.

Most businesses live in their inbox, whether they like it or not. And that inbox is likely an Outlook inbox — over 3.7 million companies use Microsoft Outlook for email management.

The are two main reasons for that:

Outlook is the default email client for Microsoft 365 which is a suite that many businesses use—Excel, Word, and Teams.
They offer enterprise-level security, compliance, and control—GDPR, HIPAA, encryption, granular user permissions—you name it.

However, like Word or Excel, Outlook was made mostly for enterprise solo use. It wasn't made for collaboration, even as the world of business and email moved towards needing more and more collaboration.

In 2025, several tools meet the security and control standards of Outlook while offering far more powerful inbox collaboration and coordination features suited for modern businesses.

We'll cover what to look for in an Outlook email client, introduce the six most popular third-party options, and break down their key differences.

Here are the key features we looked at for Outlook email clients:

User interface and experience
Security and privacy
Customization options
Collaboration features
Productivity features
AI specific features

All options have desktop and mobile email apps and support IMAP, MAPI, and POP3.

Plus, we'll cover a range of price points for the best Outlook alternatives—including ones that are free email clients.

Email Client	Best For	Collaboration Features	AI Features	Security & Compliance	Pricing
Missive	Teams needing shared inboxes	Shared inbox, @mentions, assignments	AI email routing & automation	SOC 2 Type II, GDPR compliant	From $14/user/month
Thunderbird	Open-source enthusiasts	Limited (via add-ons)	AI-powered add-ons	Basic security, no external audits	Free
Mailbird	Managing multiple email accounts	None	Basic AI email drafting	GDPR compliant, no external audits	Free / $4.99/month / One-time $99.75
eM Client	Powerful search & customization	Shared folders & calendars	Basic AI email drafting	GDPR compliant	From $39.95/year or one-time $188.95
Apple Mail	Mac users wanting a simple inbox	None	None	Apple’s built-in security	Free
Superhuman	AI-powered productivity	@mentions in Team Comments	AI search & email drafting	SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001	$25/user/month

Missive

Missive is a collaborative inbox for teams that run on email. This means it is designed with collaboration as a priority, featuring contextual in-email chat using @mentions—eliminating the need for forwarding.

You can assign or watch emails, and every action is logged—giving you visibility into emails and tracking who did what and when.

On top of that, Missive supports all email providers (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Apple Mail, etc) and you can have multiple accounts (personal and business).

Under the hood, Missive has a powerful automation engine, allowing you to do things like:

Route emails from a specific sender to certain people/teams.
Create a service level agreement (SLA) with notifications to ensure a high standard of service.
Have AI read and understand the contents of an email to see if there's a deadline, label as urgent if there is, and assign it to a senior staff to reply.
Have AI read and understand the contents of an email to see if it's spam, and automatically trash.

From a security perspective, Missive meets the same gold standard as Outlook. They have an SOC 2 Type II report, encryption of data at rest and in transit, and they are GDPR compliant.

For pricing, Missive plans start at $14/user/month on an annual plan.

One thing to note, if you use folders in Outlook, they are called labels in Missive.

In the same way that some teams prefer Google Docs to Word because of their collaboration functionality (commenting, multi-player drafting, etc) — you may prefer Missive as your email app to Outlook, if you find yourself hitting reply all and forward all the time.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird stands out as the only open-source email client.

It's a community-driven, free email client, that has been around for nearly two decades. With a thriving online community and an ecosystem of 1200+ add-ons (including AI-powered ones to help you draft replies), it's considered one of the best email apps for those prioritizing a free and open sourced solution.

If you're looking for an email client that has more collaboration functionality, Thunderbird's collaboration features come mostly from its third-party add-ons—things like mail merging and adding notes/comments to emails. Which makes collaboration possible, but likely a little unreliable given the nature of third-party connections failing from time to time.

From an organization perspective, Thunderbird calls their version of "folders", tags. Functionally, they are the same.

Thunderbird is a very privacy forward email app with built-in filters for phishing/spam and remote image blocking.

Though, it doesn't have the same compliance certifications (i.e. SOC or ISO) due to it's free and open-source nature.

Mailbird

Mailbird is for those of you who have way too many email accounts. It's known for it's unified inbox, where you're able to flow multiple accounts into the same consolidated inbox view.

Mailbird doesn't offer any features related to collaboration or coordination. It's more of a productivity improvement for Outlook power users who would like to integrate a few popular apps into their email workflow and see all emails in one place.

From an AI perspective, Mailbird offers simple AI drafting through ChatGPT.

Of all the Outlook alternatives on this list, Mailbird has the most similar user experience to Outlook—for example, their naming conversions are the same (folders are folders, and not labels or tags).

For security and compliance, Mailbird is only GDPR compliant and does not have any external audits or certifications.

For pricing, Mailbird has a free version as well as a premium version that's $4.99/user/month. There is also a pay once option to buy the product outright at $49.50 (standard) or $99.75 (premium).

If you manage multiple Outlook accounts and need a unified inbox for all your emails, Mailbird might be the perfect solution.

eM Client

eM Client is a very similar email client to Mailbird. Most of their features are productivity focused for individuals—shortcuts, watch/snooze, configurable layout.

The most unique and powerful feature for eM Client is their search. Not only does the search cover all messages in your inbox, it can also search within certain types of attached files—think PDFs, Word docs, etc.

On the collaboration front, they don't have much beyond the ability to share folders (aka. labels), calendars, and accounts.

Like Mailbird, eM Client offers basic AI drafting to assist with typos and tone in your replies.

On security and compliance, eM Client is GDPR compliant (though possibly outdated with 2018 references) and does not have any external audits or certifications.

For pricing, eM Client has a sharp distinction between personal and business plans. There is a free plan for non-commercial use. The paid plans can be an annual subscription or a one-time payment.

The personal plan (without AI features) is $39.95/year or $49.95 as a one-time payment.

The business plan (with AI features) is $49.95/year or a one-time payment of $188.95.

Both one-time payment options do not include future feature updates. You can purchase lifetime upgrades separately at $90 per license.

If you're looking for a slightly more productive version of Outlook and you want a free email app because you're not using it for commercial purposes—then eM Client might be a good option.

Apple Mail

If you're a Mac user and you really don't want to download another email client. Does the out-of-the-inbox (get it?) mail app from Apple work well for Outlook?

Well, compared to Thunderbird, Mailbird, and eM Client—Apple Mail isn't going to give you any increased functionality.

If you use Apple Mail as your Outlook email client, you won't have the integrated calendar or task management, and you'll have to remember that folders are "labels" in Apple Mail.

The good news is that Apple Mail can support multiple accounts from multiple providers (via IMAP and SMTP standards), so if you have a Gmail account and an Outlook account that you would like to unify into one very well designed, simple inbox—Apple Mail can do that.

If you want a free email client with a cleaner design than Outlook and don’t require advanced features, Apple Mail might be your best option.

Superhuman

When Superhuman first came out, it was solely focused on Gmail and Google email users. As of May 2022, they also support Outlook users.

From a user interface perspective, Superhuman is the most distinct of this list. It looks nothing like an Outlook inbox, so if familiarity is a requirement, this might not be a good fit.

Superhuman offers several AI-powered features, the most notable being its ability to answer questions about your inbox.

Instead of traditional search (even as powerful as eM Client's), you can ask your inbox direct questions. Instead of needing to remember a file's name to look for a specific piece of information, you could say: What was the price that John from ACME quoted me?

On the collaboration front, Superhuman offers the ability to @mention your colleagues through Team Comments.

From a security and compliance perspective, they are compliant with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, CCPA, and GDPR.

For pricing, Superhuman is on the higher end of these email clients, starting at $25/user/month on an annual plan.

Use Cases and Scenarios

To summarize our options for the best email client for Outlook users, we sorted them into two categories:

Individuals (You just want a better client for yourself)

Thunderbird—you want open-source and lots of plug-in options
Mailbird—you want Outlook, but a unified inbox
eM Client—you want robust search
Apple Mail—you want a better design, with less functionality
Superhuman—you want AI and shortcuts galore

Teams (You want an email client for coordination and collaboration within a team)

Superhuman—you just want to be able to @mention instead of forward
Missive—you want shared inboxes, internal @mentions, shared labels, canned responses, watch/assign... basically the best email client that's collaboration-first

We hope this has been a helpful overview of the types of email clients that are out there for Outlook users. If you're interested in Missive, continue on and we'll get into some tactical information.

Recent heavy Outlook users who made the switch to Missive:

Stephanie at Lighting Dynamics, manages 100+ email quotes a day. Her team used to use Outlook for email management:

With traditional Outlook forwarding, once an email was out of the shared inbox, there was no visibility. We never knew if it had been handled. It was chaotic.

And now, with Missive: "Missive checked all our boxes. It was a huge relief to see we could maintain the shared inbox model—without building custom software from scratch."

Or Kason, from i-SOLIDS, who grew his sales team beyond himself:

We got to a point where we weren't providing the same level of communication, response, and service that allowed us to get to this point. We were relying on Outlook email and it was like 'are you responding to that or am I?'

And after a month with Missive, Kason recommends: "Don't think about just choosing a tool for today but this tool needs to work for scale too—that's a major decision factor."

How Missive integrates with Outlook

Create a free Missive account
Select your email provider (either Microsoft 365 or Outlook most likely)

Determine how much history you would like to sync (only paid accounts have unlimited history)

Repeat for as many different email accounts (shared or personal) as you need.
You have the option to sync contacts and calendar as well.

Get a detailed walk through of how to configure Outlook to Missive, including terminology differences to get you acclimated to your new inbox.

So what's the best email client for Outlook users?

Well like most things, it depends. If you're a team who lives in their inbox day and day out, and you're looking a collaboration-first inbox—we hope you'll give Missive a try.

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