Spark

If you're wanting a faster, more organized way to triage through emails than Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail, with a more minimal interface and fewer distractions, then Spark is definitely worth checking out.

Spark works on both Mac and Windows and works with Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, iCloud, and IMAP.

Notifications and Newsletters are automatically grouped together in Spark Mail.

If your inbox is exploding and you've gotten to the point of considering creating a new email address because of too many newsletters and notifications, then Spark can help clean things up relatively easily. Spark Mail's smart inbox feature will group emails into newsletters, notifications, and emails from real people, making your email more manageable out of the gate.

We love that you can collaborate on emails with team members within Spark email. Simply share emails with team members and tag each other in the comments if collaboration is needed. The ability to assign deadlines and team members to specific emails helps eliminate that "who is answering this?" feeling.

You can also have shared inboxes to manage your info@, support@, or contact@ email addresses. Although, beware — this feature is currently only available for Gmail email clients, Mac, iOS, and Android. The desktop version is coming soon!

If team collaboration is your main pain point, or you're a founder looking to delegate your inbox, also check out Missive as it might be a better fit for you.

Spark Mail is super easy to use. If you're looking for an email client that has little to no learning curve, Spark is it. We love that Spark didn't overdo it with features (like many apps do, trying to do too much at once).

Spark is faster than other basic free tools in everyday use. Keyboard shortcuts exist, templates are easier to access, and general navigation feels smoother.

That said, it’s not fully optimized for a deep, keyboard-first workflow. You’ll still rely on your mouse more than you might expect. For many, Spark feels like a productivity improvement, but it's just not the most optimized experience available.

Spark mail allows you to have a unified inbox (aka one inbox for multiple email accounts), so you don't need to have multiple tabs open for your emails anymore. If you have several personal and work email addresses, for example, you can easily add them all to Spark so they show up under one inbox.

But say you prefer to not mix your work emails in with your personal, you can simply toggle off your work email so that it's not a part of the unified inbox, but you can still easily jump into that inbox within the left-hand bar (without opening another tab or app).

On the paid tier of Spark, you get Spark + AI. With Spark + AI, you can ask the AI to generate a reply, change the tone of the email, or shorten or lengthen the response. You can also give Spark 3 emails that "sound like you" so that it learns your tone (this is not as good at Gmail's Gemini AI email assistant though, which uses your entire inbox to learn your tone).

Spark Email AI Response With Prompt

You can also use Spark's AI to summarize a thread.

Spark Email AI Summary Type

Summarize Emails Using Spark Email AI

Spark mail will group together your notifications, newsletters, and 1:1 emails from people, allowing important emails to stand out. A miss here is that there doesn't seem to be a way to customize these groupings to your desire, and some claim that Spark makes mistakes with these classifications, although they are easy to fix with a few clicks.

Spark's mobile app is everything you'd expect from a fast email app. If you're a heavy swipe gesture user, then you will love the mobile app as you can customize your top used actions (e.g. archive, delete, snooze, mark unread).

Some folks said they exclusively check their emails via the Spark mobile app!

Spark is an email client that allows for team collaboration. You can @mention team members under a thread, assign emails to others, and even have someone on your team respond on your behalf. For small teams, this is incredibly helpful in streamlining email response workflows.

While Spark's interface is miles better than Gmail or Outlook, it still feels—well—like email. For instance, Superhuman gives your entire email app a facelift with its beautiful minimal design, consistent colors, fonts, and automatic resizing of emails to make them readable no matter your screen size. While Spark tries to do a bit of this, it's clear that less TLC went into the interface. For instance, in Spark, emails stretch with your screen, making them more difficult to read.

Emails don't re-size, making them more difficult to read.

Spark's integrations are focused around note-taking and to-do list apps that are more consumer-focused than B2B apps. For instance, you can integrate Spark with Evernote, Bear, TickTick, Todoist, or Apple reminders — but these are not apps commonly used by professionals for work. The only B2B-focused integration seems to be Asana at the moment.