SaneBox Review (2024)

Is SaneBox it worth it and is it right for you?

SaneBox is an intriguing AI software that can be integrated into your email inbox. Many people are calling it a way to triage your inbox in the background as you work. However, does it live up to the hype of being able to restore email sanity?

What is SaneBox?

SaneBox is an email management software that plugs into Gmail, Exchange, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, IBM Notes, and anything email-related.

What does SaneBox do?

SaneBox is probably most suited for anyone who uses an email client or service that they want to set up a better email management system.

In the background, this can range from filtering unimportant emails to optimizing your email setup by using AI to better organize what comes in and what goes out. A lot of people tend to plug SaneBox in because they want to try and filter what things are coming into the inbox more suitably. This goes for a lot of busy professionals that want to try and reduce overload.

Initial Impressions of SaneBox

Let’s explore the best features & not so good ones inside of SaneBox

We first checked out SaneBox probably around 5 to 6 years ago and personally, I have been using it myself in the background on top of Superhuman for quite a while. What I would say is it does take a while to set up in terms of utilizing the full functionality like training, the deep cleans, and also some of the do not disturb modes.

There’s a lot of tools that can be really functional, but it’s probably worth it. I would probably say 30% of my email weight is taken out whilst using SaneBox, and I barely notice it in the background as it cleans everything that comes in.

Feature Spotlight: Email Training

Used for Training Your Inbox

SaneBox begins to filter unimportant emails out of your inbox and into specific folders like SaneLater and SaneBlackHole.

This actually is as simple as dragging and dropping inside of SaneBox, which means that you can start to train your emails and utilize AI at the same time. For example, when I started dragging a few newsletters a few years ago, it would automatically understand that those types of newsletters that come into my system should be coordinated into those relevant folders.

And if I found that I didn’t ever want to see a specific email again, there’s a feature called SaneBlackHole folder which allows you to send any unwanted newsletters to now. Some providers and email clients actually have unsubscribe functions, and there is the ability to click in and unsubscribe, but the SaneBlackHole worked a lot faster as I felt sometimes the email didn’t really unsubscribe even though I went through the cordial processes.

Feature Spotlight: Do Not Disturb

Used for Reminding You

SaneReminders is a way to quick way to send an email out of your inbox and comes back at a more suitable time. Now, to be honest, not all email clients have this, but for me, I actually use this in Superhuman a lot, so I don’t really need this in SaneBox.

However, for those who don’t have that functionality inside their email client, this works really well, and you can also turn on something called do not disturb which will hold all of your mail until you’re ready. This is really suitable for those who want to be able to block any emails coming through and then have a flood of them when they’re actually doing the email itself for email productivity. This is either a plus or negative.

Some people like to be able to do that batch processing of all emails at once, but for others, this might be a bit too much because they just sort of getting every email at once, so it’s really up to you, but the concept itself is a popular one that even apps like Boomerang have offered but SaneBox managed to do it a lot better and a lot easier inside of the account.

Feature Spotlight: SaneNoReplies

Used for Holding Email to Reply To

There’s a feature called SaneNoReplies which is really helpful if you’re looking to keep track of un-responding emails.

For somebody that gets a lot of emails but wants to follow up on a routine basis but doesn’t want to have to use snooze, this is actually a really helpful folder to be able to just filter things into. You can keep track of those un-responding emails, and then what you can do is if you want to use the same feature that I mentioned a moment ago, you can use that when it comes to sending the email out.

Pros & Cons of SaneBox

Here’s our experience of using SaneBox and what was good and bad in a quick round-up:

Using SaneBox Daily: Experience

So, as I mentioned, I’m a user of SaneBox, and to be honest, when I initially captured the idea, I wasn’t really fully sold on it.

But what really struck me was the amount of weight that it took out of my email, and it’s something that I’ve definitely don’t see a road going back because taking that weight out of my email, whilst it can be done by some email clients like, for example, Hey Email is a good way to train your email from scratch, but it is quite a lot of effort to start a new domain and begin a whole new productivity process with your email while SaneBox sort of does it all in the background without you having to move to any different experience or different client.

For me, it works really well with Superhuman, which is my go-to email client.

How much does SaneBox cost?

SaneBox has a 2 week trial, but starts at $7 per user, per month.

SaneBox Pricing & Plans

Is SaneBox good value?

SaneBox is good value depending on how much weight you put on your email. If you're a busy professional who uses it daily to handle hundreds of emails and you spend 1hr clearing noise, that is unimportant, then it is obviously valuable.

SaneBox Comparisons with Other Apps

There are alternatives to SaneBox, the likes of email, but we haven’t yet tested this one as of this moment of review.

Verdict: Should I get SaneBox?

So, should you get SaneBox? This is an interesting question.

I think if you spend a considerable amount of time on email and email is something that you use for your income or your work, I feel like it’s worth taking a look at least at SaneBox. If you use an email client, then it’s really helpful to just plug it into that and take the weight out of your email. Once you start using it, the training does take a couple of weeks to fully get there, but once you do, it can really pay off in the long term.

For example, remember the first 3 to 4 weeks being one where I had to train SaneBox little, but even since I did an onboarding, the AI systems actually work a lot stronger. So, I would say this is great for anyone who wants to keep their email client but wants to take the weight out of it in the background.

Is SaneBox easy to get started with?

SaneBox is pretty easy to get started with a two-week trial, and you can pretty much choose from a basic plan all the way to a fully fledged plan for you to coordinate all your email in one location, and there’s a dashboard which is like a portal for organizing what you want to see and what tools you want to use, sort of like a plug-and-play type experience.

Best SaneBox Alternatives

The only alternative that we know is Clean Email.