Best Superhuman Alternatives for PC & Mac in 2024

The reviews on Google are shouting "overpriced" and "overhyped" when you search for Superhuman, but with over 400K users on waiting lists, it's fair to assume the software should be worth the extra fees.

Still, how long would you wait for access, and will the app meet your expectations?

This article offers a detailed description of the Superhuman email client with its pros and cons, as well as five decent alternatives and more affordable tools that can provide you with a similar experience and even more benefits. This is based on our own experience and user reviews.

If you're eager to know the essentials right away, here's a table to show how different alternatives compare to each other. To get more information, read the full article!

First of All, What Is Superhuman Famous For?

Superhuman (sometimes misspelled as Super human) is a fast high-end email client made by the team of Rahul Vohra, a former video games creator who co-founded a Gmail extension called Rapportive. The app positions itself as an exclusive club where you need an invitation or wait in a queue to get access.

Key Features

The app is exclusive to macOS and iOS Gmail and Outlook users—if you use another email service, this app is not for you. If you fit in this category, you may enjoy the following features:

• Subtle and minimal design. The user interface is fast, light, and appealing. It is intended to increase productivity with keyboard shortcuts and commands to help you reach a comfortable Inbox Zero.

• Superhuman split inbox. This feature enables you to divide your Superhuman inbox into different areas of focus—e.g., work email, personal email, or others (which is quite similar to folders in other email clients).
• Built-in undo send. You can cancel sending an email for up to 10 seconds if you make a mistake. Though other email clients offer up to 30 seconds, it's not about the speed of clicking hotkeys or buttons but the speed of recalling that the message needs editing.
• Built-in read receipts functionality (email tracking). You can enable Read Statuses to know when a respondent opens your email. This is becoming a popular function, so it's not unique to the Superhuman desktop app.
• Email reminders. The app has a snooze button that opens a command dialog where you can specify the time and date of the reminder. This is also a common feature.
• Message scheduling. You can delay sending an email and specify when it should be delivered. This is as well a standard feature for most email apps.
• A command line and keyboard shortcuts. You can perform almost any action using hotkeys or accessing a command bar and typing a request. It is great if you're used to using the keyboard, but it's also not a unique feature.
• High rendering speed. One of the company's goals is to provide the highest speed of message rendering so you can click through emails or get a search result as fast as possible. This is probably the main feature that can hardly be beaten by other email clients—Superhuman's speed is really high.

The Pros and Cons of Superhuman Mail

Overall, the Superhuman app offers a nice minimalistic, non-distractive set of features, but most of them you can find in other email clients, even in Gmail's webmail interface. Moreover, Superhuman is known for many disadvantages, such as:

• A poor set of features. What they position as a minimalistic interface may be interpreted as "basics only."
• Only Google and Outlook are supported. When you use a desktop email client, most likely, you want it to integrate all of your email accounts into a single interface. But here, you can use only your Gmail and Outlook accounts.

• No unified inbox. Even if you use only Gmail and/or Outlook, in the Superhuman app, you don't have a convenient way to check all your accounts in a single flow rather than set aliases and email forwarding, which is, okay, a working way, but doesn't correlate with their "time-saving" brand promise.
• Lack of third-party integrations. It's not a must, but it's nice when you can align your correspondence with your calendar or check your to-do's without switching tabs or apps. Here, it's not possible.
• No easy way to filter messages. This is a very common time-saving feature that lets you sort your incoming mail automatically, even before you can see it. In Superhuman, it's possible only through coding spikes.
• Only for macOS and iOS. Okay, it's a part of their brand positioning, but the app is available only for Mac desktop and mobile users.

So, what you're really paying for is:

• The interface - not all email clients can offer such a nice-looking, clean, distraction-free design, which Superhuman mail definitely has. Many email clients strive for it, but Superhuman has nailed it.
• The speed - emails render under 100 milliseconds, which is quicker than Gmail can show. But do you handle so many emails a day that an average email client's speed is an issue?
• The club - they position themselves more as a club than an email client, and many people want to join what's covered. This is probably the most pricey aspect of the service.

Another perk included in the price is personalized onboarding. After signing up and providing payment method details, you will get a 30-minute session with one of Superhuman's employees, who will guide you through all features and shortcuts. It's a good addition because it helps you learn about their features better and understand how to use them for yourself the best.

Now, let's move to the most sensitive topic, which is the price. Sensitive because Superhuman's email cost is quite high.

Pricing

The app doesn't have a trial or demo version. Superhuman pricing plans include individual users and yearly subscriptions for teams with the following fees:

• Superhuman for individuals - $30.00 for one seat/month
• Tier 1: Superhuman for Teams - $285 per seat for 49 seats/year
• Tier 2: Superhuman for Teams - $270 per seat for 99 seats/year
• Tier 3: Superhuman for Teams - $255 per seat for 249 seats/year

This might be the highest price to date. If you Google "the most expensive email client," you will get at least a dozen hits on Superhuman, including an ad to its landing page.

So, what's the bottom line?

Superhuman offers a high-end, yet not too functional, experience—concierge onboarding, a minimalistic, luxury feel, and high speed for all interactions.

Superhuman's email cost may be fair under certain conditions:

• You use only Gmail, Google Workspace, or Outlook
• You only work on an Apple computer or mobile
• Speed is critical for you, even if it's milliseconds
• You don't need to integrate with other types of communication—messengers, meetings, tasks, etc.

Otherwise, you might want to find another solution to try out.

What Are the Best Superhuman Alternatives?

If your work involves a lot of email interactions and you spend hours a day just reading and responding to messages, sure, the Superhuman email client can help you reduce that time.

If Gmail or Outlook isn't the only provider you use or you're not prepared to pay extra just for milliseconds of speed and a luxury brand image, below are five decent alternatives. We selected ones that can be a fair substitute with a nice-looking interface, useful features, and the ability to use almost any email service.

Mailbird

Mailbird is a lightweight yet powerful and fast email client that helps you sync and manage any number of email accounts along with their calendars and contact lists. This makes it a good Superhuman email alternative to consider.

Key Features

Mailbird offers must-have email management features such as snooze, send later, and undo send, but it also has more advanced features that may truly improve your email productivity. It also integrates with many popular tools and messengers, so you can organize your work in one unified interface and reduce your work distractions to a minimum.

Unlike the Superhuman email app, it works with all possible email clients, all supported Windows versions, and the Mac and mobile versions are just around the corner.

Here's what you get:

• Seamless onboarding. Mailbird is very easy to set up. You just need to download the application from the website to install it on your desktop and add all the accounts from any email providers you want to manage in your email client. And voila, you're all done!
• User-friendly interface. Maibird's interface is different from Superhuman's software, but it's also lightweight and clutter-free. In addition, it offers a variety of customization options in its appearance that lets you use the app most conveniently without extra moves.

• Unified inbox. Do you want to have all your email communication in one place? Unlike the Superhuman app, Mailbird offers a very easy and intuitive way to manage all of your email accounts in a single interface. It supports POP3, IMAP, and SMTP, and also you can connect to an Exchange account. There, you can check all your emails in a single Unified inbox or switch between your inboxes seamlessly with just one click.

• Native calendar. Mailbird also has a built-in unified calendar that unites events from all your email accounts that you can open in the sidebar to keep a note of your schedule while processing emails. In comparison, Superhuman only integrates with the Google calendar.
• Contact management. You can organize contacts from different accounts into groups, link related addresses, and merge duplicate contacts.
• Speed reader. This unique feature enables you to go through emails faster and make better sense of what is written. While Superhuman is a fast client in terms of iterations, it doesn't have a tool for quickly reading messages.
• Basic productivity features. As with the Superhuman email app, Mailbird has snooze, undo send, and email tracking features available for all users.
• 24/7 support. You can reach out to Mailbird's support team by email, and the service is free and high-quality.

As a bonus, Mailbird has an additional service, Parakeet, that lets you generate wonderfully-written emails for many business and personal situations. It may save you a ton of time!

Integrations

There are more than 30 valuable integrations with other applications—that's a lot more compared to Superhuman's eight integrations—that you can use right from Mailbird's interface. So there's no need to switch between tabs or screens.

Some of the most popular include:

• Asana - a task manager for individuals and small to medium teams that improves time management, task organization, and collaboration.
• Slack - a popular business messenger for improving team and project communication.
• WhatsApp - one of the top chat apps for business and personal communication you can use alongside your inbox.
• Unroll.me - an excellent tool for managing and organizing subscriptions.
• Dropbox - cloud storage for sharing and collaborating on documents. It also allows you to send files that are over 25 MB.
• Google Workspace - the complete suite of Google's office programs and storage.
• Grammarly - a grammar checker that also helps you improve your writing style.
• ClickUp - a powerful task manager for improving collaboration in teams of all sizes.

All of the above—Mailbird's features and integrations—turn it into a powerful workstation rather than just an email client—still, a very easy and intuitive one.

Pricing

Mailbird offers a free trial where you can test its features and decide if it suits you before paying; it's something the Superhuman email app doesn't provide.

The subscription plans vary based on personal and business needs:

• The Home Use subscription is best for individuals expecting a standard set of tools and features. The price starts at just $3.25 a month.
• The Businesses subscription is best for companies and individuals expecting a full Mailbird experience with more advanced integrations and other perks. The price starts at $4.95 a month, which is also quite reasonable.

With both plans, you can also purchase a lifetime license for $99 and $399, respectively.

Mailbird's Pros and Cons

And now, let's compare Mailbird with Superhuman email:

While Mailbird isn't as fast as Superhuman, it also has a pleasant interface. Mailbird offers a broader set of features and integrations and doesn't require extensive onboarding, unlike Superhuman. It is also more affordable.

Mailspring

Mailspring is another Superhuman alternative tool that helps you boost your productivity and send better emails by helping you create a unified inbox. It's popular with Mac users because of its more convenient and advanced features.

Key Features

Here's what you can get from Mailspring:

• Multiple accounts. The app enables viewing all connected accounts in one inbox. Though there's no way to distinguish what account an email belongs to, you can use this functionality to organize all your communication into folders and search across all accounts.

• Contact profiles. Mailspring lets you enrich contact details with information like your social media profiles and a bio.
• Message scheduling. You can set an email to be sent at a specific time, which is useful when you communicate with someone in a different time zone or during other working hours.
• Email snoozing. You can remove an email from your inbox, and it will return at a more convenient or relevant time.
• Email translations. Mailspring can translate the messages you receive right into your inbox, which is handy when you have a foreign colleague or friend.

Integrations

Unfortunately, Mailspring doesn't offer any integrations with third-party apps.

Pricing

Mailspring offers a free version, though it comes with limited functionality. For example, you won't be able to snooze emails, enable read receipts, or use the send later function. The complete features set is $8 a month.

Mailspring's Pros and Cons

And now, let's compare Mailspring with Superhuman email:

Mailspring doesn't offer much more than Superhuman in terms of functionality, but it supports most email providers, works on popular desktop platforms, and it's much cheaper. Though it sometimes has syncing issues:

Spark

Spark is a smart inbox management tool that helps you reduce clutter in your email, build better email management habits, and improve team collaboration with a shared inbox feature and some unique properties. For example, it has a home screen that shows new emails or directs you to check your inbox—quite convenient!

Spark supports Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Key Features

It's not very multi-functional but quite a well-done minimalistic email client with an Apple-style design and shared inbox feature for better team collaboration and multiple account management.

Here are the main things you get with Spark:

• Smart inbox. It not only unifies but sorts your emails by priority, so your personal communication will come up at the top of the inbox, and newsletters will go to the bottom.
• Search tool. You can filter emails by content, date, and attachments.
• Built-in calendar. You can manage your schedule without using any additional application. Again, it's what Superhuman lacks despite their emphasis on productivity.
• Email templates. You can add common messages and answers as templates and use them for quick replies. And this is quite a powerful addition to a standard email toolkit.

Not too much? True. But it's a really good tool that inspired the creation of many other email clients on the market.

Integrations

Spark offers several integrations with essential third-party tools, including Evernote, Trello, Todoist, and Zoom.

Pricing

Spark offers a free version that doesn't include shared inboxes. Paid subscriptions start at $6.39 per user monthly.

Spark's Pros and Cons

And now, let's compare Spark with Superhuman email:

Unlike Superhuman, Spark works on most devices and supports most email providers.

BlueMail

BlueMail allows users to connect unlimited email accounts and manage them in one place. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile platforms.

BlueMail also has a clean design, though a bit unconventional (it may need some getting used to), and it's a good addition to our list of Superhuman alternatives to consider.

Key Features

Bluemail positions itself as a free, well-designed cross-platform app designed to manage both emails and calendars. Well, they nailed it—events and meetings often come along with emails. And here's exactly what you can get from BlueMail:

• Smart push notifications. Since the app works on mobile devices, it offers customizable push notifications so you can keep up with your emails.

• Unified inbox. BlueMail groups multiple accounts into one inbox so you can manage all correspondence in one place.

• Integrated calendar. There's a built-in calendar, so you don't need to switch apps when you check your schedule.
• Group emailing. You can group contacts and use them when emailing instead of adding each individual address in the compose window.
• Cross-platforming. It's the most cross-platform email client on the list: Bluemail can run on macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and Linux.

One of Bluemail's distinguishing features is their conversation interface, which looks more like messages than emails. For many, it's easier to read conversations this way rather than in the classical one:

Integrations

BlueMail doesn't offer any third-party integrations at the moment.

Pricing

You can use the full version of the product for free. Paid versions, though, offer more collaborative features like a corporate dashboard.

• The Business plan costs $5.50 per user per month.
• The Enterprise solution is $12.00 per user per month.

BlueMail's Pros and Cons

And now, let's compare Mailbird with Superhuman email:

Its speed aside, BlueMail is very similar to Superhuman in terms of functionality. However, it supports all major operating systems and has a free version.

Conclusion

Many people say the Superhuman app is overrated. Others wait in the queue for months and pay quite expensively to become a part of the club. So is Superhuman worth it? It is if it pays off—you only use Gmail or Outlook on Apple devices, and you don't need any other functionality besides basic email management features. If that's what you need, they do it really well.

If you need to manage emails from different providers, as well as messengers, calendar events, tasks, video meetings, and more, an alternative such as Mailbird will be your better choice than Superhuman mail. Try it for free and see the difference!