7 Best HEY Email Alternatives in 2026 (Without the $99/Year Price Tag)

Why people look for HEY email alternatives

HEY, built by 37signals (the team behind Basecamp), launched in 2020 with a bold pitch: email is broken, and we are going to fix it. The design philosophy is genuinely interesting. Incoming mail gets sorted into the Imbox (important messages), The Feed (newsletters), and Paper Trail (receipts and confirmations). The Screener lets you approve or block new senders before they ever reach your inbox. Spy trackers get blocked automatically. There are no ads, no data mining.

So why switch?

Start with the price. HEY costs $99/year for the personal plan. That makes it one of the most expensive personal email services on the market. For context, most AI email tools offer more features for less.

Then there is the address problem. HEY personal requires a new @hey.com email address. You cannot connect your existing Gmail, Outlook, or work email. You either migrate your entire email life to @hey.com or run two inboxes. HEY for Domains and HEY for Work let you use custom domains, but those are separate, pricier tiers aimed at businesses.

HEY also has no AI features. No summaries, no AI-drafted replies, no action item extraction. In 2026, when the average professional receives 120+ emails per day, manually sorting every message into Imbox, Feed, or Paper Trail takes real time. The workflow is thoughtful but rigid. You either love HEY's opinions or they feel constraining.

Other notable gaps: no IMAP support (you cannot use HEY with third-party email clients), reportedly limited search, and no integrations with external tools. Traditional email filters do not really solve the problem either, but at least they work across providers.

Comparison at a glance

The 7 best HEY email alternatives

Unboxd is an AI email secretary. It connects to Gmail, Outlook, or any IMAP provider, reads every incoming email using AI (OpenAI and Anthropic Claude), and sorts everything into three buckets: Action Items (tasks with extracted deadlines), Highlights (important updates worth knowing about), and FYIs (newsletters, receipts, automated notifications). Instead of opening your inbox, you read a daily briefing.

The parallel to HEY is striking. HEY sorts email into Imbox, The Feed, and Paper Trail. Unboxd sorts into Action Items, Highlights, and FYIs. The philosophy is the same: not all emails deserve the same attention, so triage them into meaningful buckets. The difference is that HEY requires you to manually sort each message, while Unboxd does it automatically with AI. For a detailed comparison, see our Unboxd vs HEY Email breakdown.

Each bucket has intelligent subcategories: bookings, finances, conversations, project updates, deliveries, decisions and approvals, and more. You can also create custom subcategories that the AI populates automatically. Every email gets a short AI-generated title and a paragraph summary (the TLDR), so you rarely need to open the original message. The AI secretary learns from corrections you teach it, getting sharper over time.

On the privacy side, Unboxd uses AES-256-GCM encryption with per-user keys (PBKDF2 key derivation), keyword blocking, and email address blocking. Sensitive emails can be excluded from AI processing entirely. HEY deserves credit for its tracker-blocking stance, but Unboxd's AI email privacy model goes further with configurable encryption and exclusion rules.

Pricing: Plus $7.50/mo, Pro $12.50/mo, Ultra $41.67/mo (all billed yearly). Free trial with no credit card.

After Grammarly acquired Superhuman in July 2025 for over $800 million, the email client is now part of a bundled productivity suite. The $33/month (yearly) Business plan includes Superhuman Mail, Grammarly writing assistance, Coda docs, and Superhuman Go (an AI agent). You can no longer purchase Superhuman Mail as a standalone product. Monthly billing runs $40/month.

If raw speed is what you want, Superhuman delivers. The keyboard-driven interface is the fastest email experience available. Split inbox, read receipts, send-later, undo-send, and AI-powered writing are all polished. Superhuman now supports both Gmail and Outlook, which puts it ahead of HEY on provider compatibility. For a deeper look, see our Unboxd vs Superhuman comparison.

The obvious downside: $33/month ($396/year) makes it nearly four times the cost of HEY. And unlike HEY, there is no free trial. You are paying for Grammarly and Coda whether you use them or not.

Pricing: Business $33/mo (yearly) or $40/mo (monthly). Bundled with Grammarly, Coda, and Superhuman Go.

Spark is a cross-platform email client from Readdle that works on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web. It supports Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and IMAP, which makes it the most broadly compatible option on this list. The smart inbox sorts messages by priority, and Spark +AI can generate replies, summarize threads, and adjust writing tone. Team features like shared inboxes, real-time draft editing, internal comments, and email delegation make it strong for collaborative work.

If your main frustration with HEY is the @hey.com requirement, Spark is a natural alternative. It works with every email provider and every platform. The free plan is generous enough for most personal use. AI features operate on monthly usage quotas rather than unlimited access, which can feel limiting on the lower tiers. For a direct comparison, read our Unboxd vs Spark analysis.

Pricing: Free plan available. Premium $4.99/mo (yearly). Plus $8.25/mo. Pro $16.58/mo. Teams from $6.99/user/mo.

SaneBox takes the simplest possible approach: it filters your inbox in the background, sorting messages into smart folders (SaneLater, SaneNews, SaneBlackHole, SaneNoReplies) without replacing your email client. It works with any email provider and any email client. There is no app to install, no new interface to learn. SaneBox has been around since 2011 and analyzes your email behavior over time to learn which senders and messages matter to you.

HEY's Screener feature (approve or block new senders) is philosophically similar to SaneBlackHole, where you drag an email to permanently block that sender. The difference: SaneBox works with whatever email setup you already have. No new address, no new client. The tradeoff is that SaneBox only filters. No AI summaries, no action item extraction, no drafting help. It moves emails into folders. That is the entire product. For more detail, read our Unboxd vs SaneBox comparison.

Pricing: Snack $7/mo (1 account, 2 features). Lunch $12/mo (2 accounts, 6 features). Dinner $36/mo (4 accounts, all features). ~20% savings on annual billing.

Shortwave was built by ex-Google Inbox engineers, and it shows. The conversation bundling groups related threads in a way that feels natural, and the AI features (smart summaries, Ghostwriter for drafting, AI-powered search) are well-implemented. Tasklet connects email actions to Slack, Notion, Asana, and HubSpot, which gives it integration depth that HEY completely lacks. The free plan is functional for personal Gmail users, though it appends a "Sent with Shortwave" signature to outgoing emails.

Shortwave shares some of HEY's weaknesses, though. It only supports Gmail and Google Workspace. No Outlook, no Yahoo, no IMAP. If you left HEY partly because of provider lock-in, Shortwave trades one form of lock-in for another. The paid Personal plan starts at $8.50/month, and the Pro plan (full AI, Google Workspace) is $14/month yearly. For details, see our Unboxd vs Shortwave comparison.

Pricing: Free plan available. Personal $8.50/mo (yearly). Pro $14/mo (yearly). Business $18/mo (yearly).

Notion Mail is a minimalist email client built into the Notion ecosystem. If you already use Notion for project management, the integration is the selling point: AI-powered labeling, contextual reply drafting that pulls context from your Notion workspace, and snippets for frequently-used responses. The design is clean and opinionated, similar to HEY's aesthetic sensibility. It connects to Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.

The appeal is narrow but genuine. If Notion is your workspace hub, adding email reduces context-switching. AI features (drafting, labeling) require a paid Notion plan with AI access ($10/month add-on, or included in the $20/month Business plan). The limitations are significant: Gmail-only, no Outlook, no IMAP, and no dedicated mobile email app. Like HEY, it is design-forward. Unlike HEY, it does not require a new email address. See our Unboxd vs Notion Mail comparison for details.

Pricing: Free with any Notion plan. AI features require Notion AI ($10/mo add-on) or Notion Business ($20/mo).

Inbox Zero is an open-source AI email assistant (AGPL-3.0, 9,000+ GitHub stars) focused on automation. Connect it to your Gmail, define AI-powered rules, and let it auto-archive newsletters, draft replies to common questions, block cold emails, and track follow-ups. The bulk unsubscribe tool and inbox analytics are useful additions. The open-source codebase means you can self-host the entire thing for full privacy control.

HEY's Screener concept (manually approving new senders) maps loosely to Inbox Zero's cold email blocking, but Inbox Zero's approach is automated rather than manual. The tool is best for technically-minded users who want custom workflows. The interface is functional rather than polished, and there is no Outlook support. Read our Unboxd vs Inbox Zero comparison for a deeper look.

Pricing: Basic $12/mo (analytics + unsubscribe). AI Assistant $24/mo (full AI automation). Co-Pilot $499/mo (human-assisted). Self-hosting is free.

How to choose the right HEY replacement

Some of these tools work together. You could use Spark as your email client with SaneBox filtering in the background. Or keep using Gmail and add Unboxd for AI-powered daily briefings with action items. The right combination depends on what specifically frustrated you about HEY. For a broader overview, see our complete guide to AI email tools in 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Why are people looking for HEY email alternatives?

HEY costs $99/year, requires a new @hey.com address on the personal plan, has no AI features, and its opinionated workflow does not suit everyone. Some users want the same inbox-rethinking philosophy without the limitations. The lack of IMAP support also means you cannot use HEY with third-party email clients, which feels restrictive.

What is the best free alternative to HEY?

Spark Mail offers the most fully-featured free plan among HEY alternatives. It includes smart inbox sorting, multiple account support, and works across Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web. Notion Mail is also free if you already have a Notion account, though it is Gmail-only. Inbox Zero can be self-hosted for free. Unboxd offers a free trial with no credit card required.

Which HEY alternative works with my existing email address?

All seven alternatives on this list work with your existing Gmail or Outlook address. Unboxd, Spark, and SaneBox also support IMAP providers. HEY personal requires a @hey.com address; only HEY for Domains lets you use custom domains at a higher price.

Which alternative has a similar philosophy to HEY?

Unboxd shares HEY's philosophy of triaging email into meaningful buckets, but uses AI instead of manual sorting. HEY's Imbox/Feed/Paper Trail maps roughly to Unboxd's Action Items/Highlights/FYIs. The key difference: Unboxd does this automatically. You do not need to train it by dragging emails into categories.