Get Organized: 5 Apps to Whip Your Inbox Into Shape

Keeping up with email is an ongoing battle for many people. But there are a number of email clients and related services that can help you manage your mail without losing your marbles.

Most of these apps work by pulling your existing emails into a new interface, which comes with better tools and filters for managing the messages. In other words, you don't have to sign up for a new email address, but you will be looking at a totally different application when you go to reply, delete, sort, or forward your messages. These email clients also let you connect to more than one email account, so you can consolidate, say, your Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook.com, and other accounts into one place.

One of my favorite email services, SaneBox, works a little differently by letting you keep your existing user interface and instead working its magic from the inside. You give it access to your account, and it automatically starts filtering your inbox based on some pretty smart inferences it learns by analyzing your email history. More about SaneBox below.

Here are five of the best email clients and services that come with great features for helping you get a grip on your inboxes.

Inky

Free and simple, Inky is an email client app that easily connects to and consolidates numerous email accounts, and gives you special filtered views that help you see only important messages. One of those special views is the Filtered Inbox, which shows only personal messages across all of your email addresses, but not newsletters, daily deals, or social notifications. Another view is called Notes, and it's a novel feature I haven't seen in other email clients. Notes are emails that you sent to yourself to remember something. With an Inky app for Windows and Inky for Mac as well, it's well suited for people who are computer switch-hitters. Inky's draw is its simplicity, so it's better for the average person just trying to keep up with email than for power users.
Price: Free
Platforms: OS X, Windows, iOS (Android in the works)
Use it if: You struggle to keep up with multiple email accounts but are not an email power user.

IQTell

IQTell is a Web-based email client that pulls into one view multiple email accounts, calendars, contacts, and even aspects of your Evernote account. In other words, it consolidates not just email, but also other productivity apps and functions. You can manage projects, your to-do list, all your email accounts, and more from this one interface. With a free IQTell account, you can sync email (up to five accounts), calendars, contacts, and Evernote during a 60-day trial. A $5.99 per month Premium account removes the time limit, and a $9.95 per month account lets you add up to 15 email accounts.
Price: Free (limited); $5.99 to $9.95 per month
Platforms: Web, iOS, Android
Use it if: You want to roll your email usage into one window with other productivity tasks, and you like working in a Web app.

Mailbird

Windows users looking for a highly customizable desktop client for multiple email accounts should definitely try Mailbird. People often compare it with the now-defunct Sparrow email client for Mac. It has a few neat features, such as Speed Read, which flashes in quick succession each word contained in an email in large typeface, so you can get the gist of the message without having to scroll. A feature in the works and coming out soon, called Wingman (shown above), shows you an email productivity report. A free Mailbird account lets you connect up to three email accounts (IMAP and POP3) and gives you basic features, but you won't get a quick previewer for attachments in emails or a snooze button. The snooze button lets you temporarily dismiss messages from your inbox so that they reappear later as unread mail. With a paid plan, you'll get all the features, and you can connect unlimited accounts.
Price: Free (limited); $12 per year; $45 lifetime
Platforms: Windows 7, 8, 10
Use it if: You want a Windows client for accessing all your email accounts in one highly customizable place.

Mailbox

The free Mailbox app is an email client that encourages you to do something with emails you receive. Mailbox is all about taking action. It's a mobile-first app that takes advantage of swipe gestures to make processing emails quicker and easier. All you do is swipe on a message left or right with a half swipe or long swipe to perform different actions, such as archiving messages or deleting them. My favorite action in Mailbox is snooze. I can't believe more email accounts don't offer it. Snoozing a message means Mailbox will temporarily hide it until a time you choose (e.g., this evening, this weekend, tomorrow), when it will reappear as a fresh, unread message. Snoozing is an ideal solution for people who use their inbox as their to-do list and often need to get non-task emails out of sight for a little while.
Price: Free
Platforms: OS X (Mavericks and later), iOS, Android
Use it if: You use your inbox as your to-do list and often need to "snooze" important emails.

SaneBox

SaneBox is my favorite tool, bar none, for getting a grip on a messy inbox. The secret is it works with your existing email account, so you don't have to learn any new apps or interfaces. When you sign up for SaneBox, you give it permission to go into your email account to do its magic. SaneBox analyzes the emails you have, your history of replying to people, and other details to figure out the difference between important emails and unimportant ones. Then, SaneBox automatically starts filtering your inbox for you, sending unimportant messages to a new folder called SaneLater so that the only messages left in your inbox are the most important ones. In the image shown above, SaneBox would put all the red messages into the separate folder and leave only green messages in your inbox. If an important message accidentally gets swept into the SaneLater folder, it teaches SaneBox to treat future messages from this person as important. It's super smart and incredibly easy to use.
Platforms: Any
Price: $7 to $36 per month
Use it if: You get a lot of unimportant and unsolicited email, and you want to continue using the email interface you've always used.