11 Amazing Email Management Software and Tools

I guess it goes without saying – Email is the most popular customer service channel.

Depending on context, data shows that 93% of customers prefer to use email to get in touch with your business.  So, if you’re choosing a new tool for your customer service team, email management software should be high on your list.  

Below, you’ll learn all about email management tools and discover the 11 best software to consider for your team.

Ready?

What is email management software?

Your customer support team might already communicate with customers using a traditional inbox (such as Gmail or Outlook). Email management software is like an upgrade for your traditional inbox. You link your existing email (or multiple emails) to your email management software, and then, you can start collaborating more as a team. 

Businesses, and particularly customer service teams, use email management tools to handle high volumes of email and support large teams of agents. You could use this type of software for targeted mass marketing emails, too, but in this post we’ll focus purely on customer support emails. It has many features you may need, such as collaboration and communication, analytics and automations that elevate your customer service. 

The best email management software is better than a traditional inbox because your team can access a shared platform. This is a step up from each agent viewing their own version of every email, as in distribution lists for a shared email, which has high potential for conflicts. In email management software, by contrast, you have the opportunity to edit drafts in real-time, track tickets, and much more.

An example of an email management tool.

You can keep track of high volumes of emails, monitor your progress in solving tickets, and split the workload among multiple team members. Your customer support team can more easily communicate with your customers, treating each email as a ticket. 

Most email management solutions sit on top of your regular email inbox and provide extra features for managing your emails.

What are the benefits of email for customer service?

Although you could choose to invest in nearly any customer service channel, you’ll almost certainly encounter roadblocks with each one. Here’s why focusing on email is so beneficial. 

You can keep the pressure on agents lower

One of the many reasons that customers prefer email is the ability to communicate asynchronously. This means that the two parties involved don’t need to be present at the same time. It’s also relatively simple to include colleagues in the email if you need to collaborate on a response. This avoids needing to transfer between different departments and losing momentum in solving the ticket. 

Email can be a lifeline for busy customers who don’t have the patience to wait on hold. Customers are only willing to wait two minutes on hold for an answer to a call, while they are more forgiving of email wait times at 15 minutes. They’ll judge your business harshly if you take too long to respond. 

It’s the most popular customer service channel

According to Statista, 64% of customers used email to contact brands in 2022 (web chat comes second). This makes it the most popular customer service channel. If customers expect to use email but you neglect to reply or offer poor service over email, they may lose faith in your business. 

By using email to communicate with customers, you’re keeping pace with current trends and clearing the path for customers to contact you in their chosen way. 

You can provide more detailed answers

Since email is asynchronous, customers can peruse their emails at leisure. This means you can include longer explanations in your answers to customers that might be overwhelming in another channel such as phone or live chat. You can include screenshots and emphasize certain points. 

Another great thing about using email for customer service is that your customers have access to past emails they can refer to. They always have a record of your interactions in case they need to get in touch again, which is also helpful for future customer service reps. 

It’s one of the most cost-effective customer service channels

Although the relatively minimal cost of self-service customer support is well-documented, using email is still a viable way of keeping costs under control. The average cost of a phone call is $6 or above, while email comes in at between $2.50 and $5. 

With other channels like phone, agents can only focus on one customer at a time and are prevented from performing bulk actions. AI and automations can also play a much more central role with email support, enabling your team to scale more sustainably. 

You must pay agents to staff the phone lines at all times during business hours (average agent salary $35,000 per year), as well as manning the webchat in real-time. With email, agents can batch handle customer requests at times more convenient for them, avoiding service peaks. 

Why do you need email management software? 

There are usually a few core customer support channels that businesses decide they want to invest in. If email is one of them, and you’re spending too much of your time dreaming about inbox zero, email management software can help your customer service team.  

As our founder, Cody Duval, says, “Email management software is the linchpin of exceptional customer service, transforming every email into an opportunity to build trust and demonstrate responsiveness. The right email management software stands as the backbone of successful customer service, enabling teams to deliver personalized, efficient, and timely support.”

A regular inbox is no longer enough for you

You’re convinced of the value of email but your current software is not working for you. You’re relying on Gmail, Outlook or another platform and your team is wasting time wrestling with inbox chaos. 

You’ve heard about email management software and how it can provide many features to make email work better for customer service. While businesses may be able to survive for a long time with inferior tools, email management software will help you do your best work.

You can keep your existing email address and start using it for email management. Customers won’t experience any service disruption.   

You need a better way for the team to work together

In the early days of growing a business, you might have relied on one person to manage a customer inbox. As your customer service team grows, you need a better way for individuals to work together. Email management software is the answer for teams with a higher volume of customer emails. 

Some ways to do this include assignment, email templates, and prioritization. These features clear a path for greater teamwork and collaboration in your business.  

You want to boost your team’s productivity

Managing a high volume of emails can often be a significant time sink and source of frustration for businesses. The failure to manage the queue can result in lost customers. Email management software can boost your productivity in a number of ways, such as providing analytics that could give you insight into areas you want to improve.

Even small features such as shared templates enable agents to reuse common replies, saving time. Internal shared notes facilitate speedy communication inside the tool and avoids the need to switch to an external platform. Automations eliminate many manual processes such as tagging. These small wins add up to massively boost your team’s productivity.  

You want to create a better customer experience

86% of customers will pay you more for a great customer experience. You want to improve CX in any way you can. 

With email tools, you can treat customers in a less reactive way because you have access to the full range and history of communication with them. You may also be able to integrate with other essential business tools such as ecommerce platforms.

These enable you to track customer orders right from your emails, massively speeding up and improving the experience for customers. There is no way you could accomplish this with traditional email inboxes. 

How Keeping integrates with Shopify  

You need to appear more professional to customers

Relying on traditional email to support customers is not as credible as using a dedicated email management tool. Upgrading your software ultimately comes across as more professional for customers, because you can use shared templates, collaborate on responses with shared notes, and integrate with ecommerce tools that show customer orders. 

Private notes keep you in sync

Your team is able to connect the dots and provide the level of service of a much larger business – even if your team is still small. Everyone is one the same page, and customers feel satisfied with your service. 

You’re planning to automate processes

Another reason you might invest in email management is because your current ways of working aren’t as efficient as they could be. Technology can often be a massive help in this area. 

As Groove says, automate processes, not relationships in customer service. One of the goals of implementing email management software is to automate tedious and repetitive processes. With customer service automation, your skilled agents are then free to help more customers. The good news is, you can automate many administrative tasks, such as routing tickets and tagging them. This provides consistency and saves valuable time.  

You want to control unnecessary costs

Most businesses are already likely using email for customer service, since an email inbox is a standard tool. Switching to another platform such as live chat or phone could be a costly investment versus simply scaling up what you are already offering and improving the quality of your email customer service.

In fact, the cost of bad customer service for businesses is estimated to be more than $3.7 trillion annually. It’s worth focusing on the right tools rather than trying to cover every possible channel, which could result in poor service. 

You want to scale your business

If your team of agents is small, it’s likely you can make do with a traditional inbox for customer service email. It’s not too difficult to collaborate, track tickets, and ultimately help customers. As your team expands and so does your company, you soon find these tools are insufficient. 

A team of many agents needs features such as collision detection, assigning tickets, prioritization and tags to work collectively on tickets. In order for your business to scale and maintain a high quality level of service, you need an email management tool to support your business. 

You need to manage multiple email accounts

Email management software is the best way to manage multiple email accounts. Instead of switching between different logins and losing track, the inbox is clearly divided into any account that you connect with your software. 

In certain tools such as Keeping, you can manage as many email addresses as you like. This means that your team can all monitor addresses such as support@company.com, sales@company.com and info@company.com from the same inbox. 

Multiple mailboxes in keeping

What are the core features of email management software?

You’ve got a few options to choose from when it comes to email management tools, but they all have a number of features in common. These features define the true purpose of this type of software. 

Collaborative dashboard

When your users log in to your email management system, they are all greeted by the same collaborative dashboard. Instead of individual inboxes, users all see the same emails, reports, templates and more. Agents can see at a glance which tickets are waiting for their attention and each email status. 

Creating workflows

Creating workflows is a cinch in email management software. You can set up your automations and rules once, and they will work until you press pause. This makes the administrative load of managing an email inbox much lighter, since so much of the heavy lifting is done for you. Workflows also create consistency in how you handle each new ticket.

Workflows in Keeping 

Reporting and analytics

One of the most notable missing features from traditional email is reporting and analytics. Key customer service metrics are essential for tracking the health and improving the performance of your team. You could have access to email response time tracking, for example, or new tickets based on tags. 

Integrations

Your team will rarely use a single customer service tool. Integrations with other customer service platforms can be very appealing, such as live chat, a CRM or even an ecommerce solution. This means you can hop between your tools without switching tabs or requiring login credentials, and benefit from a bird’s eye view of every customer. 

Spam defenses 

Although traditional email tools like Gmail or Outlook do a good job of defending against spam, better software can provide even more sophisticated spam protection. Spammy emails are sent to junk even before you have time to notice them, reducing inbox clutter and helping agents focus on the emails that matter. 

Autoresponders

When customers get in touch, they need to know you have received their email. Or they might email again. Sending out an automatic, carefully crafted autoresponder assures customers that you are dealing with their request. 

AI features

Businesses are excited about the possibility of implementing AI (Artificial Intelligence) in their customer service email. When it comes to composing, editing, and interpreting email, AI is certainly in a position to help. Certain tools also allow you to analyze performance with the assistance of AI, leading to greater insights.   

Organizational capabilities

Large volumes of email also require better organization, with features such as assignment, prioritization, and tagging. These features are either limited or unavailable in traditional email software, making such tools ill-suited for organizing high volumes of customer email. 

Top 12 email management tools

1. Keeping

Keeping (disclaimer – this is our tool,) is one of the best email management tools out there. This is because Keeping balances a wide range of features with a simple interface, streamlining the transition from a traditional inbox. If you’ve been wondering how to track emails, prioritize tickets, share notes, and more, Keeping is the answer. 

Keeping eliminates the need for other software tools by enabling you to manage every element of your email within the inbox. Teams can chat, tag each other, and manage their own tickets in their own private inbox, always synced with the rest of the team. 

Access shared notes in Keeping

Easily control who has access to your shared email address in Keeping. Manage multiple email accounts with the shared workspace. Revoke access for team members who leave the department. Working collectively also provides the option to track performance in analytics. This allows you to improve customer service over time and manage workload. 

A few of Keeping’s top features are: 

• Collision detection
• Autoresponder
• Assignment
• Prioritization
• Shared notes
• Automations and rules
• Integrations
• Analytics
• Shared templates 

What makes Keeping different?

Integrating directly with Gmail makes Keeping one of the easiest tools to adopt for managing your email. The same smooth interface is available, while agents have access to better features than they would with a Google Groups collaborative inbox. 

So even if you love Google Workspace and don’t want to switch to a new platform, you can still adopt Keeping. Avoid the hassle of learning complex software and struggling under the weight of features you don’t actually need.  

What are the benefits of Keeping?

Keeping elevates traditional email by making it truly collaborative and helpful. You can hold on to everything about email that makes it an appealing medium while eliminating the bottlenecks. 

Our customers say it best:

“I like how easy it is to use Keeping straight from my Gmail inbox. In our company, many of us manage one group email inbox inside G-Suite. For a year we did this without Keeping and several emails got missed, and it was hard to know who responded, when they responded and which required follow up. 

“Keeping makes it really simple to keep track of this. We totally rely on this tool daily now, very grateful for it. Their customer support is also really great. I emailed them a simple question and they responded quickly and thoroughly. It is also very easy to download the app and add the plugin to my Chrome bar. Their library of tutorials and resources is also very robust in teaching people and teams to use the tool.”

Katie L, small business – via G2. 

2. SaneBox

SaneBox is a trainable AI assistant that helps you get rid of inbox clutter. Organize and prioritize email automatically with SaneBox. You receive daily updates about the platform’s activities as well as any other email activity. Keep track of emails that customers have not replied to automatically with the SaneNoReplies folder. 

The great thing about SaneBox is it works with any email client. It supports PC or Mac, and desktop or mobile. Agents who switch devices or platforms as a result of hybrid working will appreciate this feature. 

SaneBox works by analyzing the interactions you have with your email and taking smart actions. This means that the more you use SaneBox, the smarter it becomes over time. SaneBox never actually reads your email. It simply analyzes your header contents. 

Pros

• Applies AI to your emails to manage them more easily making SaneBox an inbox assistant 
• Complies with security concerns about customer data by only reading titles of emails

Cons

• Doesn’t include collaboration features for agents hoping to manage an inbox
• Better for controlling spam than supplementing customer service

Pricing

$7 per month. 

3. DragApp

Drag is another tool that you can use with Gmail. It particularly focuses on managing your emails in a visual way. Any team, from customer service, to IT, to HR, can use Drag to respond to stakeholders. Add tasks, checklists and task notes to emails for greater productivity. 

Turn your Google Workspace into boards to easily track your email instead of viewing every item in a traditional list. Activity logs tell you which actions Drag has performed for you, while sorting and filtering boards helps you find information much more quickly. 

Drag is so much more than email management. Send scheduled email sequences so your team never misses following up on an email again. Eliminate busywork with complex automations and rules that you can set to move emails between different boards, for example. 

Pros

• Uses a visual board system to organize tasks that relate to emails
• Automatic tagging for cards streamlines processes

Cons

• Similarities to a project management system rather than an email management tool
• Longer app loading times can result if Drag struggles with high volumes of emails 

Pricing

$0 per user for up to three users. 

4. Microsoft Outlook

Image source

Microsoft Outlook is one of the most popular email tools for business, used by over 40% of organizations. It’s part of Microsoft 365 which also includes other well-known platforms such as Word and Excel. You can use Outlook as a common mailbox for customer service teams, with the ability to send an email from a shared address.  

The big advantage of an Outlook shared mailbox is that it appears next to all of your other mailboxes. Your customer service shared mailbox is easily accessible. In this way, Outlook works as an effective email management tool. 

Your shared mailbox calendar also gets added to your Outlook calendar, helping your team to stay organized. You also have a shared contact list that everyone on your team can see. 

Pros

• Stay comfortably within the Microsoft ecosystem and integrate with popular tools
• Clearly see incoming emails that need attention

Cons 

• Limited collaboration features when compared with similar tools
• Lack of analytics for tracking email performance

Pricing

Part of Microsoft 365 (Microsoft’s suite of office tools) starting at $6.20 per user per month. 

5. Gmail

Another popular tool for email is Gmail, which can be upgraded as a Collaborative Inbox for teams working on customer service emails. This feature is free and offers some of the features contained within the more mainstream tools, although it also has limitations. 

Long-standing users of Google Workspace may enjoy staying within its ecosystem to manage email. If they can use it for customer service email, all the better. As we have already mentioned, there are some alternatives available.

Google Workspace for business is becoming increasingly popular, although Google still has not developed a tool aimed specifically at customer service email.  

Pros

• Confidential Mode sets expiries on emails and requires respondents to verify by text
• Integrate with other Google Workspace apps such as Google Chat, Google Meet, and more

Cons

• Not designed specifically for customer service so is lacking some important functionality
• More difficult to manage multiple email accounts than other solutions

Pricing

Starting at $6.31 per user per month for Google Workspace (Google’s suite of productivity tools).  

6. Zendesk

Zendesk helps you manage your incoming emails with ticketing. You can combine email with other forms of support such as messaging and help centers to bring all your customer tickets into one platform. You can customize Zendesk to suit any type of business. 

The customer hub means that customers are notified when your support team has received their request. Agents can work together collaboratively with routing, time tracking and service level agreements which elevate customer service to a more professional level. 

A unified agent workspace makes the task of managing customer requests much easier. Access every element of the interface you might need during an interaction in one dashboard. Customize workflows, set up automations and route tickets to scale your customer service effortlessly. If you can imagine it, you can probably accomplish it in Zendesk. 

Pros

• Use unlimited email addresses for your account in the same inbox
• Full-featured help desks means you can provide support on any channel

Cons

• Can be too complex for the needs of many businesses, and therefore hard to learn and use
• Using Zendesk for large teams becomes very costly as the number of seats climbs

Pricing

Starting at $57 per agent per month. 

7. Front

Front is a help desk that primarily focuses on email. With a streamlined user interface that is easy-to-use, simple features laid out intuitively, and powerful automations and integrations, Front is a top choice.

More personal than a help desk and more efficient than using email on its own, Front combines the best of both worlds. Bring multiple channels together in the same platform, and route messages based on data such as relevant keywords or account information from Salesforce. Create much more powerful workflows using Front. 

Front is built to facilitate teamwork with the ability to draft shared responses and chat internally over tickets. Front integrates fully with third-party platforms and displays customer data such as order history and past conversations for a more holistic view. 

Pros

• Set up a self-service knowledge base included with Front to deflect customer inquiries 
• Front includes insights into customer health based on conversations and interactions

Cons

• It’s not that easy to find old messages in Front
• There are issues with the way that Front groups emails into threads, making them harder to manage

Pricing

Starting at $59 per agent per month

8. Missive

Missive is another great tool for managing team email. It also supports SMS and webchat, so you can bring many of your channels together in one shared inbox. A clear layout means any team can learn to use Missive in minutes, accelerating collaboration and productivity. 

Active members and observers are two distinct roles within Missive, where one receives notifications and the other doesn’t. Missive is a comprehensive tool for managing shared email, with collaborative drafts, multiple signatures and canned responses ready to go. 

With tasks and calendars, Missive provides comprehensive functionality for managing customer inquiries and needs within your team. It’s likely you will only need this one tool even if you need to support multiple organizations within Missive. 

Pros

• Full-featured tool that covers the majority of daily customer service tasks
• Collaborate on email entirely through Missive, without relying on communication tools like Slack

Cons

• Can be hard to discover everything about the product on your own
• Some users think Missive lacks integrations with popular tools such as Telegram, Zoho or Monday

Pricing

Starts at $0 per month for up to three users. 

9. Mailbird

Mailbird is particularly suited to managing multiple email accounts all in one platform. This even works if you are using different email providers, meaning no more logging in and out of your respective accounts. 

It’s intended for Windows so consider this solution if you’re struggling to get the most out of Outlook for your customer service team. Although designed more for individual business email accounts, certain features will still come in handy such as scheduling email, read receipts and undoing sent email. 

Mailbird for business is also available so you can connect with productivity and collaboration apps, add unlimited accounts to your unified inbox, and use the easy migration feature. 

Pros

• AI-powered email authoring makes composing customer emails quicker
• Native to Windows means Mailbird works well in your environment

Cons

• Lack of availability through the cloud makes Mailbird limited in some cases
• Missing some key customer service features such as analytics and automations. 

Pricing

Free.

10. Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail is an email tool for business. Since Zoho also offers other apps such as a CRM and help desk, you have options for many integrations that make your customer service team more productive. Calendar, tasks, notes and contacts within Zoho Mail give you the ability to track anything to do with customers. 

Even better, Smart Events allow you to create events automatically. So if you have appointments with customers, you can easily schedule these in Zoho Mail. Adding tasks also helps you break down projects into smaller steps. 

In the control panel, you can manage all aspects of security and restrictions to ensure only the right people have access to your mailboxes. 

Pros

• Other useful tools are available along with Zoho Mail through simple integrations
• Robust security features such as two-factor authentication and encryption

Cons

• Zoho Mail is not that straightforward or easy to use
• It’s difficult to integrate with tools outside the Zoho ecosystem

Pricing

Starting at $1.01 per user per month. 

11. Freshdesk

Similarly to Zoho, Freshworks makes Freshdesk  as part of a suite of tools aimed at improving customer service. Freshdesk is a basic team inbox with many helpful features for collaboration and organization. Freshdesk is a tool on par with Zendesk. 

Links with community forums, handy integrations with a self-service knowledge base, and chatbots powered by Freddy AI make Freshdesk a full-service solution. Support customers from every angle using email as a starting point. 

Interact further with customers through satisfaction scores and feedback surveys to understand how they feel about your service. Use the data to improve your service and answer the most pressing questions from your customers.  

Pros

• Robust routing capabilities and automations make Freshdesk a powerful tool
• Unified workspace keeps every agent on the same page no matter the channel

Cons

• Relies on outsourcing some basic features to third-party app integrations instead of including them natively to the platform
• Freshdesk contains features aimed more at managing larger teams which means you might pay for functionality you don’t use

Pricing

Starts at $0 per user per month. 

Master your inbox with Keeping

Email management tools are built for teams. Email is not a solo activity in customer service. That’s all you need to know. If you want to go beyond the siloed workings of individual agents, adopt a tool like Keeping and make your customers happy. Customers will certainly notice the shift.

Keeping is a natural evolution from a traditional email tool such as Gmail or Outlook. You can accomplish so much more without clunky workarounds or compromises. Say goodbye to the unwieldy spreadsheets slowing you down.