The inbox you want holds only the mail that needs you. Filters you write in your mail settings can get you part of the way, for the senders you thought of. Sortmail gets you the rest of the way: it sorts every message as it lands, including mail from senders no filter anticipated, and shows you why it put each one where it did.
What filters give you, and what they cost
Filters are free and exact. A filter does precisely what its search says, the moment mail arrives. For a handful of senders that never change, that is useful. The cost is everything the search did not anticipate:
- New senders are invisible to them. The first receipt from a new shop, the first notice from a new app, last week’s new newsletter: each lands in the inbox until you notice and edit a filter.
- They break when senders change. A new sending address or reworded subject line and the filter silently stops matching.
- They cannot tell apart two messages from one place. A person at a company and that company’s automated system share a domain, so a filter catches both or neither.
- They cannot read intent. "Could you send this over by Thursday?" has no keyword in common with the next question someone asks you.
- They overlap silently. Two filters can match the same message, and nothing warns you when they conflict.
- They do not explain themselves. When a message goes somewhere odd, you find out why by reading the whole filter list.
Each of those is an edit you make by hand, and the edits never stop, because your mail never stops changing.
What Sortmail does instead
It sorts by kind of mail, not by matching text
Every message lands in one of five categories: Actionable, Personal, Receipts, Newsletters and System, which you can rename, recolour or add to, up to 8. A first message from a new sender is sorted without anyone writing anything: its headers or, with model sorting on, a short masked extract decide where it goes.
It keeps what is good about filters
Sortmail has rules, and they are as exact as filters: sender is, sender domain is, subject contains, body contains (which needs model sorting on, because only then is the text fetched) and has attachment. Your rules decide before anything else, and when two match, the same one wins every time. A rule involves no model at all. If none matches, Sortmail checks the headers for a mailing list or an automated sender, and only if that is inconclusive does a language model read a short, masked extract.
Corrections become rules
When Sortmail files something wrongly, you move it, and that correction becomes a rule for that sender’s address in the same step. On Gmail you can do it from any Gmail app by moving the message between Sortmail labels. You are, in effect, maintaining filters, but only when something is actually wrong, and without opening a settings page.
It tells you why
Every message’s page says what decided it, one of your rules, a header signal, the model or your own correction, and how confident the decision was. The Overrides screen lists every rule your corrections created, and you can remove any of them.
Side by side
- Setup: filters need one search per group of senders, written by you. Sortmail needs a mailbox connected; five categories are ready and your last month is sorted before you pay.
- New senders: filters miss them until you add them. Sortmail sorts them on arrival.
- Changed senders: filters stop matching. Sortmail still places the mail by what it is.
- Mistakes: with filters, you find and edit the right search. With Sortmail, you move the message and a rule is written.
- Explanations: filters give none. Sortmail shows the reason and confidence for every message.
- Oversight: filters have no summary. Sortmail sends a daily digest of what stayed and what was filed and why, at the hour you choose.
- Where results live: both in your own mailbox. Sortmail files into ordinary labels (categories, on Outlook), and they stay if you ever leave.
- Safety: Sortmail only labels and archives. It never sends, drafts or deletes: our code calls no send, draft or trash endpoint, and a test fails the build if one is added.
- Privacy: message bodies are never stored, your mail is never used for training, and model reading can be switched off per mailbox.
- Cost: filters cost your time, every week. Sortmail is one flat price with every feature and unlimited sorting of new mail.
Moving over from filters
You do not have to switch everything at once. Sortmail sorts the mail that reaches your inbox, so anything an existing filter archives on arrival stays where the filter put it. Keep a filter that forwards mail or stars one important sender, and let Sortmail take the long tail your filters never caught.
Compare on your own mail
Connect a mailbox and Sortmail sorts the last 30 days of your inbox (up to 1,000 messages) free, showing where each message would go and why. It is a preview rather than a trial: nothing is written to your mailbox, no labels and no archiving, until you choose a plan. You judge it on your own mail before you pay anything.
That is the clearest comparison there is: your filters on one side, and what Sortmail does with the same month of mail on the other, including every message your filters let through.
One plan, with every feature in it: $8.99 a month, $79 a year or $139 for 2 years at the founding price, limited to the first 500 subscribers and locked for as long as the subscription runs. A year costs less than 9 months of monthly, and 2 years less than 16. After the founding seats it is $12.99 a month, $99 a year or $169 for 2 years. Cancel in one click in Billing.