Alrighty vs Spark

Pick Spark if you want one free app on your computer and your iPhone or Android phone, with a calendar, team features, and room for Yahoo, AOL or any other account. Pick Alrighty if you have iCloud, Gmail or Outlook accounts and want your logins kept on your computer instead of a company's servers, plus one click that ends a sender's mail for good.

The facts below come from Readdle's Spark pages and our own, checked in November 2026, with a link for each one. Alrighty is our app. Spark does several things we don't, and we list them.

Alrighty vs Spark at a glance

	Alrighty	Spark
Runs on	Mac (Apple silicon), Windows, Linux	Mac (macOS 12 or later), iPhone, Windows, Android
Accounts	iCloud, Gmail, Outlook.com and Microsoft 365	iCloud, Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, Yahoo, AOL and others
Price	14-day trial with no card, then a Free plan or Pro	Free; Plus $10 a month or $99 a year; Pro $20 or $199
Where mail is kept	With your provider, plus a copy and search on your computer	With your provider; Spark's servers for push and team features
Logins	On your computer, encrypted	On Spark's servers: an access key, or your password for some accounts
Unwanted mail	Stop mail, Clean up, Filters, phishing checks	Gatekeeper for new senders, block a sender or domain
AI	Some starts by itself when signed in; your own AI is off until you turn it on	Spark +AI on paid plans, "disabled by default"

Is Spark free, and what does each one cost?

Both have a free plan. Spark's is the bigger one. Its pricing page gives Free users "Unlimited Email Accounts," Smart Inbox, smart notifications and a calendar. The paid plans:

• Plus: $10 a month, or $99 a year. Adds Spark +AI, the AI Assistant, 40 AI meeting notes, templates and team features.
• Pro: $20 a month, or $199 a year. Adds unlimited meeting notes, Autopilot, Auto-Drafts and read statuses.
• Enterprise: priced on request.

Spark offers "a seven-day free trial for both Plus and Pro when you subscribe directly in the app," and one subscription covers Spark on all your devices.

Alrighty has a 14-day trial with no card. After it you keep the Free plan, which has a small monthly AI allowance and doesn't sort mail into groups, or you move to Pro, which does both. Pro's price isn't set yet.

Does Spark store your email password?

For some accounts, yes. Spark's privacy page says that for "Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo, we store an application-specific token," so Spark doesn't have your actual password. For "AOL, Exchange and custom IMAP accounts, this access token is your email login and password." Spark says its databases are encrypted and that "we additionally encrypt your password in the database." It calls an app-specific password "a must for iCloud accounts."

Spark keeps these on its servers because some of its features run there:

• Push notifications. "Spark syncs the subject and a part of your message, encrypts this information and stores it on its secure servers." It deletes that data "in 4 hours after sending a notification."
• Team features. Shared emails and comments, shared drafts, shared links and delegation "require our server-side email processing to work."
• Send Later. Spark stores a scheduled message, encrypted, until it goes out.

Spark runs on Google Cloud, hosted in the US. It is open about all of this, and it explains why.

Alrighty works the other way around. Gmail connects with Sign in with Google, Outlook with Sign in with Microsoft, and iCloud with an app-specific password, and all of them stay on your computer, encrypted. No Alrighty server holds them. Your mail stays with Apple, Google or Microsoft, and Alrighty keeps its copy on your computer.

What does leave your computer: when you're signed in, Alrighty's AI features and Clean up send the emails they need to Alrighty's server, which passes them to an AI model. More on that below. Our list of private email apps for Mac compares how other apps handle this.

Is Spark's AI on by default?

No. Spark's pricing FAQ says "Spark +AI is disabled by default," and you manage it in Settings under Spark +AI. It's a paid feature with a monthly quota, and Free users get "a limited free preview" through the AI Assistant. Spark's AI security page says it runs on "the Azure OpenAI Service," which "will not retain the data for more than 30 days" and "does not use this data to train models."

Here Spark is more opt-in than Alrighty, and you should know it. Alrighty has no single AI switch. Signed in, two things start by themselves:

• Opening a reply starts a suggested draft in your voice, written from your past emails to that person. It stays a draft until you send it.
• Clean up sorts your senders on the server in the background.

Those send the emails they read through Alrighty's server to OpenAI (replies and answers) and TypeSafe AI (Clean up). Signed out, nothing goes to Alrighty's server.

The part that stays off is the AI you bring. Claude, ChatGPT's desktop app, Codex, Cursor or a local model can read and search your mail only after you turn on Connect AI. Spark has nothing like it: its AI is its own. If you'd rather have no AI in your mail at all, see our email apps without AI.

Gatekeeper or Stop mail: which stops unwanted mail?

They solve different halves of the problem. Spark's Gatekeeper stops new senders at the door: "The first time someone emails you, Spark screens the sender," and you accept or block them. You can also "block a specific sender or domain." Spark's unsubscribe guide has you open an email from Newsletters or Notifications, press Cmd-K for the Command Center, and pick Unsubscribe.

Alrighty doesn't screen first-time senders. A new sender lands in your Inbox. Alrighty goes after the senders already there:

• Stop mail unsubscribes in every way the message offers, archives that sender's mail, and moves anything new from them out as it arrives. One action, not three.
• Clean up finds the senders you likely don't want, such as scams, cold outreach and newsletters you never open, and lets you stop them all at once.
• Filters catch a kind of mail that comes from a new sender each time, like cold sales. Gatekeeper asks you about each one. A filter moves them all to Archive without asking.

Alrighty unsubscribes only from senders whose mail passed DMARC, so a scammer never learns your address is live. Stopped mail goes to Archive, not Junk.

If you get a lot of mail from strangers you'd rather vet one by one, Gatekeeper fits that habit better.

Does Spark work with iCloud and Outlook?

Yes. Spark's home page lists iCloud, Google, Outlook, Exchange, Yahoo and IMAP, and its Mac App Store page adds AOL, Hotmail and GMX. It takes more kinds of accounts than Alrighty.

Alrighty takes iCloud, Gmail, and Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live and Microsoft 365, all in one inbox. It can't add Yahoo, AOL, Fastmail or any other provider. If one of your addresses is on that list, Spark is the one that fits.

Which one searches your mail better?

Spark's home page makes no claims about search. Its AI Assistant, on paid plans, offers to "Find, summarize, and take action on anything in your inbox."

Search is one of the things Alrighty is built for. It runs on your computer and matches what you mean as well as the words you type: "when is my flight" finds the airline's confirmation. One search covers every account. You can also ask a question and get the answer with the emails it came from. That answer is written by OpenAI, so the emails it reads go through Alrighty's server. Our search docs explain how it works.

What does Spark do better?

• Phones. Spark runs on Mac, iPhone, Windows and Android. Alrighty runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, with no iPhone or Android app.
• More accounts. Yahoo, AOL, Exchange and other providers, unlimited on the free plan.
• Calendar. Free includes one. Alrighty is mail only, with no calendar.
• Teams. Shared drafts, comments and delegation.
• Meeting notes. Spark's AI can transcribe and summarize meetings.
• Monthly billing at a price you can see today.
• AI that waits. Spark +AI is off until you turn it on.
• Track record. Readdle ships Spark often, and Alrighty is a new app.

Which should you pick?

• Your mail is iCloud, Gmail and Outlook, and you want your logins kept on your computer: Alrighty.
• You want newsletters and cold outreach gone with one click, including the ones already in your inbox: Alrighty.
• You want Claude, ChatGPT or a local model to read your mail, with you clicking Send: Alrighty.
• You need the same app on your iPhone or Android phone: Spark.
• You have a Yahoo, AOL or other account: Spark.
• You want to approve every new sender before they reach you: Spark.
• You work in a team and share drafts: Spark.

Our Spark alternatives list compares Spark with other Mac apps, and the features page shows the rest of Alrighty.

Questions

Does Spark read my emails?

Spark's servers handle part of your mail for push notifications, team features and Send Later. It says notification data is encrypted with a key kept on your device and deleted 4 hours after the notification is sent. Spark +AI, when you turn it on, sends the text it works on to Azure OpenAI.

Is there a Spark Premium plan?

Spark's pricing table lists Free, Plus, Pro and Enterprise. Its FAQ still says Spark +AI is on "Premium, Plus, and Pro plans," and the Mac App Store still lists Spark Premium purchases at $7.99 and $59.99. The pricing page doesn't say whether new users can buy Premium.

Which Macs do Spark and Alrighty run on?

Spark's Mac App Store page says it "Requires macOS 12.0.0 or later." It doesn't mention Apple silicon either way. On a Mac, Alrighty needs Apple silicon. If yours has an Intel chip, Alrighty won't run on it.

Does Alrighty have an iPhone app?

No. Alrighty runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, with no phone app. If you read mail on your phone, keep your provider's app or Apple Mail there. Your mail stays in your account, so both see the same inbox.