Spark is an email client designed to support both individual users and teams in managing their inboxes. It integrates with widely used tools for task and team management and includes AI-powered features that help automate certain aspects of communication. Spark is commonly used by startups and independent professionals. However, the app has some limitations.
In this article, we’ll discuss the essential features an email client should offer, explore the common issues users face with Spark Email, and review five of the best Spark Email alternatives, including a Spark email alternative that might suit your needs better.
(Image source: Spark Mail)
Spark features overview
Spark stands out with a range of features aimed at making email management easier and more collaborative:
Integrations: Connects with popular services and productivity tools.
AI features: Uses AI to help draft emails, generate quick replies, and improve writing quality. These premium features are part of Spark’s premium plan, which also includes advanced security and an enhanced user experience.
Calendar and meeting notes: The built-in calendar allows users to manage events and take meeting notes directly from the inbox.
Smart inbox: Automatically sorts emails by priority, grouping newsletters and notifications separately from important messages. Additionally, smart folders improve email organization by allowing users to categorize and manage their emails more efficiently.
Snooze emails: Allows users to temporarily remove emails from their inbox and have them return at a specified time.
Reminder to follow up: Lets users set reminders to revisit or follow up on emails.
Smart notifications: Enables notifications only for important emails. The focused inbox feature further improves email management by organizing messages and helping users stay focused on important communications.
Team collaboration: Allows real-time collaboration on email drafts.
While Spark Mail offers a range of productivity features, many users have reported issues with app functionality that impact their overall user experience, making them consider switching to other email clients. Here are some of the most common challenges:
Broken email threads: Users have found that long email conversations can break after about 15-16 messages, making it difficult to keep track of ongoing discussions. Many users have experienced frequent bugs that contribute to this issue.
Unstable Windows app: The Windows version of Spark Mail may crash or become unresponsive. Users have experienced the “white screen of death,” which requires force-closing and restarting the app.
Lack of AI features: Spark + AI is available as part of the premium subscription and can generate email responses or edit text. However, users have noted that the AI-generated replies sometimes feel unnatural or overly enthusiastic.
Memory leaks: Some users have reported that Spark slows down over time due to memory leaks and other persistent performance issues.
Syncing and cross-device issues: Syncing between devices can be unreliable. Actions like moving or pinning emails on one device do not always reflect on another.
Lack of customer support: Responses from the support team are often slow, and some issues remain unresolved even after several updates.
Additionally, Spark's user experience is often criticized for its lack of intuitiveness and the presence of unwanted features, such as watermarks in emails, which significantly impact user satisfaction.
28% of an employee’s workweek is spent reading, composing, or responding to emails, according to the McKinsey Global Institute’s research. The main goal of an email client is to reduce the time spent on correspondence and meeting coordination and to improve email and team productivity. A user-friendly interface is a key factor in achieving these goals. How to choose the right one? Have a look at the key features to consider when choosing an email assistant for your business.
Summarization: Does the client provide summaries of conversations and documents?
External content handling: Can you upload and share files easily?
Integration: Does it integrate with popular project and team management tools?
Security: Are user data securely protected?
Memory: Does it remember past conversations and context?
Knowledge management: Can it organize team information and make it easy to find?
Advanced features and functionality
When selecting an email client, modern features like AI assistance and automation can make a big difference. They help users manage email faster, stay organized, and minimize manual work.
AI email assistant: Help users sort and prioritize their emails, ensuring that important messages are not overlooked.
Automation: Helps in scheduling emails and setting follow-up reminders that can save users valuable time and increase productivity.
Unified inbox and cross-platform integration: Consolidate emails and messages from multiple accounts and platforms (Slack, WhatsApp, Gmail, Outlook, etc.) into one hub to avoid switching between apps.
Advanced email organization: Features like smart inbox sorting, priority tagging, customizable folders, and bulk actions help keep your inbox clean and focused.
Thread summarization: AI-generated summaries of lengthy email chains make it easier to catch up on conversations without reading every message.
Integration with productivity apps: Connections with calendars, task managers, CRM systems, and note-taking apps help embed email workflows into your broader productivity ecosystem.
Multilingual support and instant translation: For global teams, real-time translation and multilingual support facilitate smooth communication across language barriers.
Considering these advanced features and collaboration tools ensures that you choose a tool that not only handles email but actively supports your team’s productivity and collaboration needs.
Top 5 alternatives to Spark Mail
If Spark Mail isn’t meeting your needs, there are several strong email apps that serve as excellent Spark Mail alternatives, offering better stability, smarter AI, and improved collaboration. Here are five top picks:
1. Tanka
Tanka is an AI-powered messenger designed to simplify communication processes, team collaboration, and knowledge management. Tanka can handle large datasets by organizing and summarizing conversations, meeting notes, and documents. Tanka uses long-term AI memory, smart replies, and easy integrations with other tools to simplify teamwork and make data easier to find.
Core features of Tanka:
AI-powered long-term memory: Remembers past conversations, projects, decisions, and shared knowledge, ensuring the AI assistant is always up-to-date, providing more relevant and personalized support over time.
Unified messaging across platforms: Integrates with Slack, WhatsApp, Outlook and other tools, bringing all your team's communication channels into one platform.
AI Assistant: Learns from your team's conversations, providing smart replies, reminders, summaries, and proactive suggestions built to your business context.
Smart email messaging automation: Drafts emails and messages using AI-powered suggestions, ensuring consistent, professional communication with less effort.
Advanced search capabilities: Quickly finds past messages, emails, or key discussions with AI-powered search that understands natural language and remembers context.
Intelligent collaboration: Provides reminders and summaries of important emails or messages, helping your team stay on track and aligned.
AI search: Tanka’s AI assistant searches internal chats, documents, and shared knowledge using team memory. Results clearly show their source, making it easy to find relevant information.
Team Wiki: Serves as a shared AI knowledge base that organizes and customizes information by team, project, or department to make information easy to find and keep everyone aligned.
Co-memory: Helps in uploading project documentation, reports, and other key resources to a shared memory space. Everyone in the group can access and contribute to this knowledge.
Instant translation & voice chat: Supports instant translation, voice and video chat, making cross-language collaboration easier.
Blocking senders: Excludes specific senders from Tanka’s memory.
Security: Uses AES-256 encryption, strict access controls, and complies with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 standards to protect sensitive business data.
Use cases:
Team communication: Teams can use AI-generated, context-aware messages to maintain clarity and consistency in daily communication.
Onboarding support: New employees receive AI-generated summaries of key conversations and documents. Information remains easily accessible through AI-powered search.
Project tracking: Managers can rely on automatic summaries and real-time updates to stay informed about project progress without needing frequent check-ins.
Client management: Teams keep detailed interaction histories, making it easier to maintain personalized communication and follow up effectively.
Cross-border collaboration: Built-in translation and time zone support help global teams work together more smoothly, regardless of location.
Marketing teams: Marketers can use AI to quickly locate past campaign data, generate content drafts from notes, and keep messaging aligned across channels.
2. Superhuman
(Image source: Superhuman)
Superhuman is a premium email client designed to work with Gmail and Outlook. It’s a good choice for those who need to process hundreds of emails daily without missing important messages.
Core features of Superhuman:
Auto labels: Automatically categorizes incoming emails into predefined groups such as marketing, cold pitches, or personal messages.
AI-assisted writing: Uses AI to transform notes into email drafts that reflect the user’s writing style.
Instant reply generation: Automatically drafts suggested replies to incoming emails.
Thread summarization: Creates concise summaries of long email threads to provide users with quick insights into the main point.
Natural language search: Allows users to search their inbox using everyday language queries.
Read receipts: Provides real-time notifications showing when recipients have opened emails.
Scheduling: Extracts meeting details from emails and suggests optimal times for calendar events.
Translation: Translates emails, supporting international and multilingual teams.
Reminders and follow-ups: Sets reminders to revisit emails, and suggests follow-ups if a message goes unanswered.
Use cases:
Executive communication management: Executives can use AI-powered summaries to quickly scan and prioritize hundreds of daily emails.
Client relationship management: Sales and client-facing professionals can use AI to maintain consistent, personalized communication, and track when clients read important messages.
International teams: Superhuman’s translation and time zone features make it easier to collaborate across borders and languages.
Canary Mail is an AI-powered email client that combines advanced AI, strong security, and privacy features to help individuals and teams manage multiple accounts. Canary Mail is also a secure email client available for macOS and iOS devices, offering encryption and privacy-focused features.
Core features of Canary Mail:
Unified inbox: Keeps all conversations in one place.
AI assistant (Sidekick): Canary’s conversational AI can summarize long threads, draft replies, answer questions about inbox, and help users find key information instantly.
Smart prioritization: The AI learns which contacts and emails are most important to users, automatically highlighting priority messages and filtering out distractions.
Read receipts: Tracks when your emails were opened.
Snooze & custom snooze times: Temporarily remove emails from users’ inbox and have them return when they’re ready.
Newsletter management: Organizes subscriptions in a dedicated section and easily unsubscribes users from unwanted lists.
Email templates: Saves and allows to reuse common email formats.
Strong security: PGP encryption, SecureSend for encrypted delivery without setup, two-factor authentication, and advanced phishing/impersonation protection.
Use cases:
Working with clients: Sales, legal, and consulting teams can use read receipts, templates, and AI summaries to maintain fast, responsive, and consistent communication.
Privacy-conscious users: Anyone handling sensitive data benefits from PGP encryption, SecureSend, and strict privacy controls.
Multi-account management: Freelancers and small business owners can consolidate personal and business accounts into one unified inbox.
Teams handling large volumes of email: Project managers or support teams can automate thread actions and leverage AI prioritization to stay organized.
Airmail is an email client for macOS and iOS that supports multiple accounts and integrates with third-party apps. It is designed for users who manage high volumes of email and need extensive customization options and advanced organization and productivity tools.
Core features of Airmail
Multiple email addresses: Airmail allows users to manage multiple email addresses in one unified inbox.
Multi-account support: Manages unlimited accounts, including Gmail, GSuite, iCloud, Exchange, Office 365, Outlook, IMAP, and POP3.
Unified inbox: Allows to view all emails from different accounts in one place, with the option to exclude specific accounts.
Smart inbox: Automatically filters out newsletters and low-priority emails.
Snooze and scheduled sending: Temporarily removes emails from users’ inbox until they’re relevant, and schedules emails to be sent at the optimal time for recipients in any time zone.
Customizable notifications: Set per-account notifications and interactive push alerts, including location-based notifications.
Apple ecosystem integration: Supports Siri and Shortcuts for automation, Handoff between Mac and iOS, and an Apple Watch app for glanceable notifications and quick actions.
Templates and signatures: Allows users to create, save and use multiple templates and signatures.
Use cases:
Users who need custom workflow automation: Users who want to speed up repetitive tasks can create custom actions, such as applying labels, forwarding emails, and archiving, with a single tap or swipe. This is especially useful for professionals managing high email volumes who want to automate sorting and processing.
Apple ecosystem power users: Those deeply invested in Apple devices benefit from Airmail’s integration with Siri, Shortcuts, Apple Watch notifications, and iCloud syncing of settings and signatures.
Privacy-conscious users: Privacy mode blocks tracking pixels and processes data locally on your device, appealing to users concerned about email tracking and data security.
Thunderbird is a free, open-source email client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile platforms. Thunderbird has no ads, no data mining, and prioritizes user privacy and control.
Core features of Thunderbird
Free and open-source: No cost to the user and no advertisements.
Advanced security features: Includes end-to-end encryption and phishing protection.
Unified inbox: Manages multiple email accounts in one place or keeps them separate.
Integrated calendar and tasks: Built-in calendar, event reminders, and task management keep schedules and communication in sync.
Strong security: Supports S/MIME and OpenPGP encryption, phishing protection, and remote content blocking.
Message templates and quick replies: Lets users create and reuse templates for faster responses.
Use cases:
Multi-account management: Professionals and organizations who need to manage several email accounts, including personal, business, and project-specific addresses, can do so in one unified interface.
Privacy-conscious users: Individuals and businesses that prioritize data privacy and want to avoid ad-based or proprietary clients.
Open-source advocates: Users who value transparency, community-driven development, and the ability to customize or extend their email client.
Researchers and project managers: Those who need advanced search, tagging, and filtering to organize large volumes of correspondence and documents.
Nonprofits and educational institutions: Organizations looking for a cost-effective, secure, and ad-free solution for staff or students.
How to choose the right productivity tool for your team
The right email client can transform how your team communicates and gets work done by addressing individual or organizational needs. Here’s what to consider:
Team size and communication style: Smaller teams may require simple messaging; larger or remote teams often need smarter collaboration and knowledge sharing to save time and improve efficiency.
Tool integration: Choose a solution that connects with the platforms you already use to avoid app-switching and context loss.
Workflow and knowledge support: Look for features like shared wikis, searchable history, and real-time collaboration to keep everyone aligned.
AI memory and insights: Email clients with long-term memory and smart suggestions help your team stay informed, automate follow-ups, and reduce repeated work.
Why Tanka stands out
Tanka offers several advanced features that make it a stronger choice than Spark and other competitors:
AI-powered long-term memory: Unlike Spark and Superhuman, Tanka remembers past conversations, projects, and decisions, so your team never loses context.
Unified communications hub: Tanka brings together Slack, WhatsApp, Gmail, Outlook, and more into one platform, reducing tool overload.
Context-aware AI assistance: Tanka’s AI provides smart replies, proactive reminders, and follow-up suggestions based on your team’s unique workflows and history, not just generic responses.
Knowledge management: With features like Team Wiki and Co-memory, Tanka helps teams build and access a shared knowledge base, making onboarding and project tracking easier and more reliable than Spark’s basic email search.
Real-time collaboration across channels: Tanka enables teams to collaborate on projects, track updates, and manage tasks across multiple platforms, not just within email threads.
Automated scheduling and preparation: Tanka helps users better prepare for meetings by analyzing chats, emails, and documents shared—automatically generating concise summaries, action items, and even reading users’ calendars to identify availability and suggest optimal meeting times, which Spark and other tools do not offer natively.
Dynamic adaptability: Tanka learns from your team’s habits and preferences, optimizing workflows and task prioritization over time for maximum efficiency.
Recommendation
For teams that want centralized communication, AI-driven knowledge retention, and simplified workflows, Tanka is the best choice. Its AI-powered memory, cross-platform integration, and advanced collaboration features make it especially valuable for teams handling large volumes of data or complex projects.
Tanka remembers every thread, task, and conversation—so you can focus on what matters. Try it now.
