Top 5 SaneBox alternatives – tried and tested

SaneBox is one of the most popular email management apps currently on the market. People use it because it's inexpensive, AI-powered, and feature-rich.

SaneBox's Email Deep Clean feature is designed to help you clear out old emails you no longer need. This tool can save the day when you're running out of storage space and your inbox is getting slower.

SaneBlackHole is another amazing SaneBox feature. It adds a dedicated SaneBlackHole folder to your mailbox. SaneBlackHole is a fantastic alternative to unsubscribing and a great way to remove pushy people and companies from your inbox.

When you move emails into this folder, you instruct SaneBox to automatically send and store all future messages from these senders there as well. What's more, SaneBox moves these emails to the trash when they're seven days old.

While SaneBox offers an impressive set of features that help you organize your mailbox and save time, there are no hard and fast rules about how to use them.

Plus, users have complained that SaneBox's customer support team isn't always helpful, so you might need to look for answers on your own.

Finally, SaneBox doesn't have a free plan and its pricing starts at $7 per month or $59 per year. Given the fact that SaneBox's entry-level plan, Snack, allows you to pick and use only two features, it's safe to say its pricing isn't competitive.

Luckily, there are numerous powerful and affordable alternatives to SaneBox that provide excellent customer service. Mailbutler is at the top of the list.

5 best SaneBox alternatives in 2024

1. Mailbutler: Best overall SaneBox alternative

Mailbutler is the number-one alternative to SaneBox for two main reasons: it's packed with easy-to-use email inbox management features and offers reliable customer support.

Snooze

The smart email management app helps its users clean and organize their mailboxes as well as reach inbox zero with its Snooze feature.

The Mailbutler Snooze feature lets you temporarily remove non-urgent emails from your inbox and reply to them whenever it suits you. Don't worry, you can find all your snoozed messages in a dedicated Snoozed folder in your email client.

Mailbutler allows you to decide how long your snoozed emails stay hidden - hours, days, or even weeks. This gives you the chance to organize your messages around your workflow as opposed to adjusting your work schedule whenever you receive an email.

Once the Snooze time runs out, your messages will automatically reappear at the top of your mailbox so you can work on them right away.

To maintain a healthy work-life balance, Mailbutler lets you customize your Snooze options so your emails never return to your inbox outside your working hours.

Email Notes and Tasks

Mailbutler's Email Notes and Tasks features are designed to help you manage your inbox more effectively as well. You can use them to turn important messages into notes and automated tasks so you don't forget to take action.

Message Templates and Email Signatures

Finally, you can make use of Mailbutler's Message Templates and Email Signatures features to automate your inbox management.

You can use Mailbutler to create multiple go-to email replies for various scenarios and add them to your compose window with just a few clicks. This is the easiest way to ensure you follow adequate email etiquette every time you hit send.

The Email Signatures tool, on the other hand, helps you stay professional and maintain brand consistency. You can choose one of Mailbutler's pre-designed email signature templates, fill in your contact information, and write a nice closing sentence. Once your email signature is good to go, you can add it to your outgoing emails with just a few clicks.

Customer care and pricing

When it comes to customer care, Mailbutler has a dedicated Support Center and a series of easy-to-follow tutorial videos. It also offers 24/7 email support to all its users.

In addition to a 14-day free trial that gives you access to all premium features, Mailbutler has four paid plans. Its pricing starts at $4.95 per user per month or $49.50 per user per year.

SaneBox vs Mailbutler: Summary

• Both SaneBox and Mailbutler provide smart email management features, but Mailbutler is much more intuitive and user-friendly
• Mailbutler has a comprehensive Support Center and a dedicated tutorial videos page, while SaneBox's customer support resources are limited and basic
• SaneBox's cheapest plan costs $7 per month and includes only two features, while Mailbutler's least expensive plan comes in at $4.95 and gives you access to multiple inbox-boosting features, including Snooze, Email Notes and Tasks, Message Templates, and Email Signatures

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2. HEY

With its innovative email management solutions and elegant design, HEY is another superb SaneBox alternative. HEY has redefined email by introducing a number of bold features to your mailbox. Here are some of the most important ones:

The Screener

This feature allows you to screen your emails, i.e. decide whether or not you want to receive more messages from someone who has emailed you for the first time. Don't worry, if you choose to screen someone out, they won't get notified.

The built-in "Reply Later" workflow

Whenever you get an email that you want to respond to but can't do it right away, you can move it to a dedicated "Reply Later" pile at the bottom of your inbox so you don't lose track of it.

The "Focus & Reply" mode

This functionality lets you eliminate distractions, highlight all of the emails you've marked "Reply Later," and respond to them one by one without having to look back at your inbox.

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The Imbox (not a typo)

As a HEY user, the Imbox is where you can find important emails from people and businesses you've screened in. The Imbox is divided into two sections, "New For You" and "Previously Seen," for better email management and organization.

The "Bubble Up" functionality

This feature allows you to put non-urgent emails away for a while and have them float back to the top of your inbox when you have time to work on them.

Pricing

HEY beats SaneBox on the pricing front as well. Apart from a 14-day free trial, HEY also offers two paid plans: HEY and HEY for Domains.

The HEY plan costs $99 per year billed annually which breaks down to $8.25 per month for a full year of service. Yes, it's more expensive than SaneBox's two-feature Snack plan, but it comes with all of HEY's core email-redefining features, spy pixel blocking, 100GB of storage space, and a @hey.com email address of your choosing.

3. lockrMail

lockrMail is another great SaneBox alternative. This email productivity tool is designed to help you "organize and protect your inbox." It integrates with all email clients and works with both personal and work-related email accounts.

Functionality

lockrMail provides you with a secure email address that acts as a pre-filtering tool. As a filtering service, lockrMail sits between email senders and your inbox in order to give you full control over what emails get delivered, where, and when.

Here's an example of how lockrMail works. Let's assume you want to register on the New York Times' website. Using your lockrMail email address to do so will give you the chance to set unique delivery settings for the popular news brand - allow, block, or filter.

As you can see, lockrMail enables you to personalize your mailbox, i.e. get emailed only by the brands you want to hear from.

Pricing

lockrMail is a free email filtering service. If you're looking for an alternative to SaneBox that can help you reduce inbox clutter and improve your email management efforts, then lockrMail might be ideal for you.

However, if you're on the hunt for a more powerful SaneBox alternative, the two apps mentioned above might be much more suitable for you.

4. Clean Email

Clean Email is an inbox management tool that helps you "clean your inbox of emails you don't need." It works with many free email providers, including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Hotmail, and Outlook.

Clean Email makes for an amazing SaneBox alternative because it's packed with practical inbox-cleaning features, including:

Quick Clean

Clean Email's Quick Clean tool is designed to serve as the very first step when cleaning up your email inbox. It combines the most commonly deleted messages into categories such as "social notifications" and "emails older than 3 years." You can either move these messages to the trash folder or archive them in bulk with just one click.

Smart Views

The Smart Views functionality groups similar types of emails together by applying predefined filters to your mailbox. This lets you sift through and sort your messages much more efficiently.

Unsubscriber

Clean Email's Unsubscriber is designed to help you get rid of any unwanted newsletters or subscriptions. You can use this functionality to instruct Clean Email to send unsubscribe requests on your behalf. Clean Email will block mailing lists and email senders that don't respect those requests or don't even have an unsubscribe link.

Auto Clean

Last but not least, Clean Email allows you to automate your inbox cleaning routine. You can apply Auto Clean rules and actions to your incoming emails without any manual work.

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You can instruct Clean Email to automatically remove, archive, move, or label all the messages that match the rule of your choice as they arrive in your mailbox. This is an extremely convenient way to keep your inbox clean and organized at all times.

Pricing

Clean Email has a free trial that allows you to clean, (re)move, and apply labels to 1,000 emails. If you want to take action on more than 1,000 emails, you need to purchase a subscription.

To use Clean Email's features with one email account, you need to pay $9.99 per month. However, if you purchase Clean Email for 5 email accounts and share them with your friends or family, you'll pay $19.99 per month which works out as less than $4 per account.

As you can see, Clean Email can be much more affordable than SaneBox.

5. Unroll.Me

Last but not least, Unroll.Me is a decent SaneBox alternative for people looking for a free unsubscribe app. It's available on iOS and Android, and supports popular email providers such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL.

Functionality

Unroll.Me is designed to help you declutter your mailbox by deciding how to handle your subscriptions. You can opt out of receiving emails, keep messages from brands you like, and "roll up" the ones you haven't yet made up your mind about, into a daily digest pile.

With Unroll.Me's new list view, you can see all the subscriptions in your inbox and act on them as you please. To save time and energy, Unroll.Me gives you the chance to unsubscribe, keep, and roll up subscriptions in bulk.

Pricing

Unroll.Me doesn't charge its users for its service. However, it uses advanced software that detects commercial messages, selects purchase information, and sells it to third parties.

Fortunately, Unroll.Me doesn't sell any personal details like your name, address, email, or anything else that could identify you. If you don't want any of your inbox information to get sold off to the highest bidder, then you should definitely go with another app from this list.

We asked real users why they liked Unroll.me better than SaneBox. James Palestini answered:

Unroll makes it easier to manage my email overload and stay on top of important messages, as I cannot un-see important messages. Unroll.me can be a good alternative to SaneBox if you are looking for a more simplified and streamlined approach to managing your email inbox. Additionally, it's more affordable than SaneBox.

Bonus alternatives

Newton Mail

As someone who's very keen on productivity and email management, I have found that using an alternative to Sanebox, such as Newton, is a better fit for my needs. Newton Mail offers a clean and straightforward interface, but also has powerful features such as read receipts, snoozing emails, and send later.

The customer support is also excellent. Newton has an undo send feature that allows me to recall an email after sending it by mistake; this is a game changer for me. Newton also has a Clean Up feature which automatically organizes my emails based on my preferences.

Matt Janaway, CEO, Marketing Labs

Gated

I've been using Gated as an alternative to other email management tools because it puts the control completely in my hands. There's no AI or ML reading my emails and trying to decide what's important and what's not - the regular organization of my inbox remains in place. I use the priority inbox in chronological order.

Instead, it uses a donation and allow-list system to identify which emails should make it to the inbox and which should go to a special folder for later review. It instantly cut the noise of my inbox down by 95%+. Now I can power through my inbox in a few minutes per day, rather than play the constant game of whack-a-mole I was before.

Dan Ahmadi, VP International Marketing, Branch

Boomerang

Another alternative to SaneBox is Boomerang. It is an email management tool that allows users to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders for follow-up emails, and track whether emails have been opened. Boomerang also allows users to create custom email templates for frequently sent messages. This can save time and streamline communication.

Danny Dorsey, CEO, Everlast Recovery Center

SaneBox FAQs

Is SaneBox free?

SaneBox offers a 14-day free trial but doesn't have a free version. Its cheapest plan (called Snack) costs $7 per month and entitles you to two features. As a Snack user, you can add only one email address to your account.

Does SaneBox work with Gmail?

Yes, it does. SaneBox works with Gmail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo! Mail, and many other email service providers that offer IMAP, EWS, OWA, or Active Sync.

Is SaneBox secure?

Yes, it is. In addition to going through Google's verification process, SaneBox is continuously audited by a third party. SaneBox also lets you, the user, take part in its bug bounty program if you think you've stumbled upon a security bug.

Summary

Although uniquely useful and smart, SaneBox is not a great option for non-tech-savvy users or people who want to start cleaning and organizing their inboxes right away.

Mailbutler, on the other hand, is an intuitive email management app with a quick and smooth learning curve. On top of this, Mailbutler's pricing plans offer greater value for money as they come with many inbox-enhancing features.

Other reliable alternatives to SaneBox include HEY and lockrMail. The former comes with a wealth of useful features, while the latter is a powerful filtering service.