Inbox by Gmail alternatives, feature by feature

No app today has everything Inbox by Gmail had, so the best Inbox by Gmail alternative depends on which part you miss. Alrighty is the pick if you miss bundles that take routine mail out of the inbox, and your mail is iCloud and Outlook as well as Gmail. It has no snooze and no pins. Shortwave comes closest to Inbox as a whole, for Gmail: bundles, done, snooze, sweep and delivery schedules. Spark has snooze, pins and a done button for free on every device. Superhuman sorts mail into splits and adds reminders, at a price. And Gmail itself took over snooze, nudges and Smart Reply.

Most Inbox alternative lists were written in 2019, the year Inbox closed. Some of the apps they name are gone, and none of them says which Inbox feature you actually get back. This page maps each Inbox feature to the apps that have it today.

How we checked

We read each app's own product, help and pricing pages, and Google's own post about the shutdown, on November 4, 2026. Every fact about another product links to its source. For each app we noted which of Inbox's features it has, what it costs, which accounts it takes, and where it processes your mail. "Not stated" means the vendor's pages we read don't say; it does not mean the app can't. Alrighty is our app, and it's listed first.

What happened to Inbox by Gmail?

Google closed Inbox by Gmail at the end of March 2019 and moved some of its features into Gmail. Google announced it on September 12, 2018, in a post titled "Inbox is signing off: find your favorite features in the new Gmail" (Google).

In that post, Google called Inbox "a great place to experiment with new ideas like snoozing emails to later, as well as try the latest AI-powered experiences like Smart Reply, Nudges and high-priority notifications." It said it had "taken popular Inbox experiences and added them into Gmail," and that "All your conversations are already waiting for you in Gmail." The transition guide that post links to no longer loads.

So snooze, nudges and Smart Reply live on in Gmail. Bundles, pins and the sweep button did not. Shortwave makes the same point on its blog: Google "failed to integrate core Inbox features, like pinning, bundling, and bundle delivery."

Each Inbox feature, and who has it today

This is the table most lists leave out. Each row is something Inbox did. Each column is an app you can use today.

Inbox feature	Alrighty	Shortwave	Spark	Superhuman	Gmail
Bundles (routine mail grouped out of the inbox)	Groups you describe; grouped mail leaves Inbox	Bundles by label, sender or category	Smart Inbox categories, Group by Sender	Split Inbox and Auto Labels	Category tabs
Bundle delivery at set times	No	Delivery schedules	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Done	Archive	Done	Mark as Done	Shortcuts; Auto Archive	Archive
Sweep a whole bundle at once	Check all, or Stop mail for a sender	Mark an entire bundle done	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Snooze	No	Yes	Yes, free	Yes	Yes
Pins	No	In its 2023 post; current guide says stars	Pin	Not on its plan table	No, per Shortwave
Reminders	No	Not stated; has todos	Reminders	Remind Me	Not stated
Smart Reply	Suggested reply drafts in your voice	AI replies in your voice	Spark +AI, on paid plans	Instant Reply	Smart Reply
Accounts	iCloud, Gmail, Outlook	Gmail and Google Workspace	iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, IMAP	Gmail, Microsoft 365	Gmail

Inbox by Gmail alternatives at a glance

App	Price	Runs on	Where your mail is processed	AI
Alrighty	14-day trial with no card, then Free or Pro	Mac (Apple silicon), Windows, Linux	Your computer; AI features send what they need to its server	Your own AI off until you connect it; reply drafts on when signed in
Shortwave	From $30 a seat a month	Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android	Shortwave's cloud, on Google Cloud	Built in
Spark	Free; Plus $99 a year, Pro $199 a year	Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android	Spark's servers for some features	Paid plans
Superhuman	From $25 a member a month, billed yearly	Mac, Windows, web, iPhone, Android	Its pages disagree	Starter and up
Gmail	Free	Web, iPhone, Android	Google's servers	Built in

Alrighty: best for Inbox-style bundles with more than Gmail

Alrighty is a mail app for Mac, Windows and Linux that puts iCloud, Gmail and Outlook accounts in one inbox. It is not a copy of Inbox. It shares one idea with it: mail you don't need to answer shouldn't sit in your inbox.

• Groups, in place of bundles. You name a group and describe it in a sentence, such as "receipts and order confirmations." Alrighty's AI files new Inbox mail that fits into that group as it arrives, and grouped mail leaves the Inbox list. Groups show in the sidebar. When you make a group, Alrighty looks through your Inbox from the last 90 days and shows what it would file, and nothing moves until you say so. A group can also have rules (the sender, subject or body contains a word), and rules run on your computer.
• Stop mail, in place of sweeping the same sender every week. Inbox let you sweep the promotions bundle each day. Stop mail ends a sender's mail in one action: it unsubscribes every way the message offers, archives their mail, and moves their new mail out as it arrives.
• Clean up. It lists the senders you probably don't want, such as scams, cold outreach and newsletters you never open, so you can stop them all at once.
• Search that finds what you remember. It runs on your computer and matches meaning as well as words: "when is my flight" finds the airline's confirmation. Ask a question and get the answer with the emails it came from.
• Suggested replies. Signed in, opening a reply starts a draft in your voice, written from what you sent that person before. It's always a draft. You send it.
• Your own AI. Claude, ChatGPT's desktop app, Codex, Cursor or a local model can read and search your mail, and work in a window you watch. Nothing sends until you click Send.

Where your mail goes. Your mail stays with iCloud, Google or Microsoft, and Alrighty keeps its copy and its search index on your computer. Your passwords and sign-ins stay on your computer, encrypted with a key from your system's keychain. To sort mail into a group by its description, Alrighty sends only each email's sender, subject and the start of its body to its server, which asks an AI model. Suggested replies and Clean up also send the emails they need. Signed out, nothing goes to Alrighty's server.

Price. A 14-day trial with no card, then a Free plan or Pro. Sorting into groups is part of Pro and the trial. The Free plan has no sorting into groups.

What it can't do. This is the honest part for an Inbox fan. Alrighty has no snooze, no pins and no reminders, so an email you can't deal with yet stays in the Inbox. There's no delivery schedule for a group. There's no iPhone, Android or web app, so you can't clear mail from your phone. It takes iCloud, Gmail and Outlook accounts only, not Yahoo or other IMAP. It has no calendar. It's a new app with no long track record.

Pick it if you have more than one kind of account, and what you miss most is routine mail out of your way, with the senders you never wanted stopped for good.

Shortwave: closest to Inbox by Gmail, for Gmail

Shortwave calls itself "the best Inbox by Gmail replacement," and on features it's the closest. Its setup guide says bundles group "related email threads together as a single item in your inbox," and "You can snooze, delete, or mark an entire bundle done." That last part is Inbox's sweep.

• Bundles. You turn them on in Settings, Inbox Setup, Bundles & delivery schedules. There are built-in label bundles "like Newsletters, Promotions, and Travel," bundles for your own labels, and contact bundles for "specific senders, mailing lists, and channels."
• Bundle delivery. Delivery schedules let routine mail "arrive all at once at times you choose throughout the day or week," as Inbox's bundle schedule did. The guide's example sends newsletters on Saturdays at 8am.
• Done and snooze. Shortwave keeps Inbox's done as its own action. Its 2023 comparison post also lists pin. The current setup guide talks about stars and todos instead, so check pins in the app before you rely on them.
• Todos. "Turn your emails into todos," with notes, on its home page.

Price. The pricing page lists Business at $30 a seat a month, Premier at $45 and Max at $120, each with a 14-day free trial. The home page says "Get started for free" with "No credit card required." The pricing page didn't show what a free account includes.

Where your mail goes. "All Shortwave data is stored in Google Cloud's highly secure & compliant data centers," and besides Google Cloud it uses "OpenAI, Anthropic, and Pinecone" (security).

What it can't do. It's for Gmail and Google Workspace. Microsoft 365 and Exchange are "not supported at this time," and iCloud works only by forwarding (Shortwave). There's no unified inbox by default. Our Shortwave alternatives page covers the AI side in more depth.

Pick it if all your mail is Gmail and you want Inbox's bundles, done and sweep back, on your phone as well as your computer.

Spark: best free app with snooze, pins and done

Spark has the most Inbox features on a free plan. Its pricing page lists Smart Inbox, Unified Inbox, Snooze, Set Aside, Reminders and Mark as Done among the essentials, with unlimited accounts. Its home page names "Priority and Pin functions" and Group by Sender.

• Bundles, in a fixed form. Smart Inbox sorts unread mail into People, Notifications and Newsletters, with Pins for mail you pinned (Spark). You can move a sender to another category, but you can't add your own.
• Snooze. "Snoozing an email removes it out of your sight completely and makes it reappear in your inbox at a specific time" (Spark).
• Done. Mark as Done clears a message, as Inbox's check mark did.

Price. Free. Plus is $10 a month or $99 a year, and Pro is $20 a month or $199 a year (pricing). Spark's AI is on the paid plans.

Where your mail goes. Spark says some features "require our server-side email processing to work," and it stores the login for IMAP, AOL and Exchange accounts, encrypted (privacy). Our Spark alternatives page covers this.

What it can't do. Its three categories are fixed. Its pages don't describe a delivery schedule or a sweep for a whole category.

Pick it if you want snooze, pins and done for free, on a phone and a computer, with more than Gmail.

Superhuman: best for Inbox's speed, with reminders

Superhuman replaces bundles with splits. Split Inbox lets you "Split out emails from your team, your VIPs, or your most used tools" (Superhuman). Auto Labels classify mail such as marketing, cold pitches and social updates, and move it from Important to Other (Superhuman).

• Snooze and reminders. Its plan table lists Snooze, Remind Me, Auto Reminders and Auto Archive.
• Smart Reply's heir. Superhuman AI includes Instant Reply and Auto Summarize on Starter.

Price. Starter is $25 a member a month and Business is $33, both billed yearly. Each plan bundles Mail with Grammarly, Docs and Go.

What it can't do. It's "Built for teams that use Gmail or Outlook," so iCloud and Yahoo are out. Pins and a delivery schedule are not on its plan table. Its pages don't agree on where your mail is stored. See our Superhuman alternatives.

Pick it if you're on Gmail or Microsoft 365, you miss how fast Inbox felt, and you'll pay for it.

Gmail: the free place Inbox's features went

Gmail is where Google put Inbox's features, and for many people it's enough. Google's own post names snooze, Smart Reply and Nudges as the Inbox ideas it brought over.

• Snooze. "When you snooze an email, the email is removed from your inbox temporarily in Gmail. Your email comes back to the top of your inbox when you want it to" (Google).
• Tabs, in place of bundles. The Default inbox sorts mail into Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums (Google). Updates holds "Automated confirmations, notifications, statements, and reminders that may not need immediate attention." Unlike bundles, each tab is a separate list, not a group inside your inbox. You can't add a tab of your own.
• Done. Archive does the same job. Shortwave notes that the done check mark itself is gone.

What it can't do. Shortwave says Google never brought over pinning, bundling or bundle delivery, and Google's pages we read describe none of them. Google makes no Gmail app for the Mac; our Gmail app for Mac page covers the options. To keep a sender out for good, our guide to blocking a sender in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail has the steps.

Pick it if snooze was the Inbox feature you used most, and you want free and nothing new to install.

Which Inbox habit matters most to you?

Inbox fans tend to miss one of three habits. Pick the app by the one you miss.

• "My inbox showed only what needed me." That's bundles. Shortwave has them for Gmail. Alrighty has groups you describe, across iCloud, Gmail and Outlook. Gmail's tabs are the free, rougher version.
• "I snoozed everything and hit done." That's snooze and done. Spark has both for free on every device. Shortwave and Superhuman have them too. Alrighty doesn't have snooze.
• "I pinned what mattered and swept the rest." That's pins and sweep. Spark has pins. Shortwave sweeps a whole bundle. If the sweep was mostly the same promotions every day, Alrighty's Stop mail ends those senders instead, so there's nothing left to sweep.

For the habit of an empty inbox itself, see our best inbox zero apps. For sorting by rules, labels and AI, see our best email organizer apps.

How to choose

• iCloud, Gmail and Outlook on a computer, routine mail grouped out of the Inbox, unwanted senders stopped: Alrighty.
• Gmail only, the closest thing to Inbox with bundles, sweep and delivery schedules: Shortwave.
• Free snooze, pins and done, on your phone and computer: Spark.
• Speed, splits and reminders on Gmail or Microsoft 365, paid: Superhuman.
• Free, with snooze and nothing to install: Gmail.

See everything Alrighty does.

Questions

When did Google shut down Inbox by Gmail?

Google announced on September 12, 2018 that it would say goodbye to Inbox by Gmail at the end of March 2019. It moved snooze, Smart Reply and Nudges into Gmail, and all Inbox conversations stayed in Gmail.

Can I get Inbox by Gmail back?

No. Google closed it in 2019 and kept its conversations in Gmail. Shortwave is the app that most directly copies its bundles, done, snooze and sweep, for Gmail accounts.

Does Gmail have bundles like Inbox?

Not quite. Gmail's category tabs sort mail into Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums, but each tab is its own list, and you can't add your own tab. Shortwave and Alrighty group mail you describe or label, and Shortwave can deliver a bundle at set times.

Which Inbox by Gmail alternative works with iCloud or Outlook?

Spark takes iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and IMAP accounts. Alrighty takes iCloud, Gmail and Outlook. Superhuman takes Gmail and Microsoft 365. Shortwave is for Gmail and Google Workspace.

Is there an Inbox by Gmail alternative with snooze for Mac?

Spark, Shortwave and Superhuman all have snooze and Mac apps. Gmail has snooze on the web. Alrighty has no snooze.