Alrighty vs HEY

HEY is the right pick if you're willing to move to a new @hey.com address, you want every first-time sender screened before they reach you, and you want the same service on your phone and the web. Alrighty is the pick if you want to keep your iCloud, Gmail or Outlook address, read it in a desktop app, and clear out unwanted senders after they arrive. The two are different kinds of product. HEY is an email service that holds your mail. Alrighty is a mail app for the accounts you already have.

The facts about HEY below come from HEY's own pricing, features, FAQ and help pages and the 37signals privacy policy, as of November 2026. Alrighty is our app.

How do Alrighty and HEY compare?

	Alrighty	HEY
What it is	A desktop app for your existing accounts	An email service with its own address and apps
Your address	Keep your iCloud, Gmail or Outlook address	A new @hey.com address, or your own domain on HEY for Domains
Devices	Mac (Apple silicon), Windows, Linux	Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android
Price	14-day trial with no card, then Free or Pro	$99 a year, billed yearly; 30-day trial with no card
Who holds your mail	iCloud, Google or Microsoft, plus a copy on your computer	HEY, on 37signals' servers
First-time senders	Land in your Inbox; Clean up lists the ones you don't want	Wait in the Screener until you say yes
AI	Reply drafts when signed in; your own AI is off until you connect it	No built-in AI on your content; bring your own agent through the HEY CLI
Calendar	None	HEY Calendar included

Can I keep my Gmail or iCloud address with HEY?

Partly. HEY doesn't read your existing account. Its FAQ says "HEY does not import your existing email from Gmail, Outlook, iCloud," "HEY doesn't support IMAP or POP," and "off-the-shelf 3rd party email apps won't work with HEY" (HEY FAQ). What you can do is forward new mail from your old address into HEY, and send from an external address over SMTP (features). For Gmail, HEY lets you "link up your Gmail address from within HEY and send emails from HEY using your @gmail.com address" (37signals).

So with HEY, your old mail stays where it is, and new mail arrives at HEY by forwarding. Your sign-up address is a new @hey.com one, unless you pay for HEY for Domains and move your own domain to HEY.

Alrighty works the other way around. You add the accounts you already have, and their mail, old and new, shows up in one inbox. iCloud connects with an app-specific password (setup), Gmail with Sign in with Google or an app password, and Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live or Microsoft 365 with Sign in with Microsoft. Nothing moves, and nobody needs your new address. Alrighty can't add Yahoo, AOL, Fastmail or other IMAP accounts.

Is HEY's Screener better than Alrighty's Clean up?

They answer the same problem at different moments. HEY asks before. Alrighty acts after.

HEY's Screener. "Screen emails like you screen calls." The first time someone writes, their email waits until you decide whether you want to hear from them again. Approved senders go to the Imbox, "where important, immediate emails go from people or services you care about." Newsletters can go to the Feed, and receipts to the Paper Trail. A Speakeasy code lets a new contact skip the Screener (features). Nothing from a stranger reaches your Imbox until you say yes. The cost is a decision for every new sender, including the ones you wanted.

Alrighty. There is no screener. A new sender's first email lands in your Inbox, the way it does in Gmail or Apple Mail. Then you remove what you don't want:

• Clean up lists the senders you likely don't want, such as scams, cold outreach and newsletters you never open, so you review one list instead of answering each sender.
• Stop mail ends a sender with one action. It unsubscribes every way the message offers (one-click, an email to the list, or the list's web page), archives their mail, and moves new mail from them out as it arrives. It contacts only senders whose mail passed DMARC and wasn't marked spam, so a scammer never learns your address is live.
• Filters catch a kind of mail that comes from a new sender each time, like cold sales, before the list shows it. Mail from people you wrote to is never moved.
• Groups, on Pro, sort Inbox mail into groups you make, so newsletters or receipts can leave the Inbox the way HEY's Feed and Paper Trail do.

If you want strangers stopped before you see a single email, HEY does that and Alrighty doesn't. If you'd rather not answer every new sender, and you'd like to keep your current address, Alrighty fits better. Our HEY alternatives page covers screeners that work on your current address, too.

How much does HEY cost compared with Alrighty?

HEY for You is $99 a year, and "We only offer annual billing at this time." The trial is 30 days, and "We don't ask for a credit card to try HEY." It includes 100GB of storage and the HEY Calendar. HEY for Families is $179 a year for up to four more people. HEY for Domains is $12 per user a month, with the first user at $10, billed monthly, and it has no free trial. Short addresses cost more: a two-letter @hey.com address is $999 a year (pricing). There is no free plan.

Alrighty has a 14-day trial with no card, then a Free plan or Pro. The Free plan has a small monthly AI allowance and no sorting into groups. Pro adds both. Storage isn't part of Alrighty's price, because your mail stays with iCloud, Google or Microsoft under the plan you already have.

Does HEY have AI?

Not built in. The 37signals privacy policy says "Our products don't include built-in AI features that process your content" and "we don't use your content to train AI models" (37signals).

You can bring your own. The HEY CLI connects agents such as Claude Code and Codex, and hey mcp serves HEY as an MCP server. HEY's help page says an agent can "sort your Screener, clear out Reply Later, draft a reply," and that "the agent can write as well as read." A --read-only option limits it to reading (HEY help). You install it with a command in Terminal.

Alrighty has both kinds. Its own AI: when you're signed in, opening a reply starts a suggested draft in your voice, written from what you sent that person before, and Clean up sorts senders in the background. You can also ask a question about your mail and get the answer with the emails it came from. These send the emails they need through Alrighty's server to OpenAI and other model companies, so if you want no AI touching your mail, HEY's policy is the stricter one. Signed out, nothing goes to Alrighty's server.

Your own AI: Alrighty's MCP server is built in, with nothing to install in Terminal. Turn it on with Connect AI and Claude, ChatGPT's desktop app, Codex, Cursor or a local model can read and search your mail (setup). The AI can also work in a window you watch, and nothing sends until you click Send.

Who holds your mail?

With HEY, HEY does. "We store on our servers the content that you upload or receive." HEY encrypts personal data in its database, and "HEY is not end-to-end encrypted (we still hold the keys)." 37signals' products are "primarily housed in the United States," and "No 37signals human looks at your content except for limited purposes with your express permission" (37signals, FAQ). HEY also "blocks these trackers and tells you who's spying on you."

With Alrighty, your mail stays with iCloud, Google or Microsoft. Alrighty keeps its copy and its search index on your computer, and your sign-ins stay on your computer, encrypted with a key from your system's keychain. No Alrighty server holds them. Images load through a proxy with no cookies, so the sender never sees your computer's address, though a tracking pixel still shows the mail was opened.

What does HEY do better than Alrighty?

• It runs everywhere. Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. Alrighty has no phone or web app.
• It screens strangers first. Alrighty doesn't.
• A calendar and more. The HEY Calendar, Reply Later, Set Aside, Bubble Up and Journal come with it.
• No built-in AI on your mail. If that matters most, HEY says so in writing.
• An established maker. HEY comes from 37signals. Alrighty is new, with no long track record yet.

Which should you pick?

• You want to keep your iCloud, Gmail or Outlook address and read it on your computer: Alrighty.
• You'd rather clear unwanted senders in one pass than approve every new one: Alrighty.
• You want search across all your accounts and the AI you already use in your mail: Alrighty.
• You're happy with a new address and want every stranger screened first: HEY.
• You need the same mail on iPhone, Android or the web: HEY.
• You want no built-in AI anywhere near your mail: HEY.

See all of Alrighty on the features page, or browse more comparisons.

Questions

Can I use HEY in Apple Mail or Alrighty?

No. HEY doesn't support IMAP or POP, and its FAQ says "off-the-shelf 3rd party email apps won't work with HEY." You read HEY mail in HEY's own apps.

Can I move from HEY to Alrighty?

For new mail, yes. After a paid first year, HEY can forward mail sent to your @hey.com address to your iCloud, Gmail or Outlook address, which Alrighty reads. Old mail is different: HEY lets you "export an MBOX file with all your email and attachments any time," but Alrighty reads accounts, not MBOX files, so import that file into Apple Mail, Gmail or Outlook, as HEY's FAQ suggests.

Does Alrighty block first-time senders like HEY?

No. A new sender's first email lands in your Inbox. Clean up then lists the senders you likely don't want, and Stop mail ends each one. Stopped mail goes to Archive, not Junk.

Is HEY worth $99 a year?

It depends on whether you'll change your address. HEY's Screener, Feed and Paper Trail work only on mail that reaches HEY, so you get the most from it when people write to your HEY address. If you'd rather keep the address you have, an app like Alrighty works on the accounts you already pay for or use for free.