13 Best Gmail Inbox Management Tools to Boost Productivity

Are you struggling with Gmail productivity? Looking for inbox management tools that would help you boost productivity in Gmail?

FACT: Gmail is beyond excellent. But it’s not perfect, and sometimes, you need to expand it with other tools to supercharge the experience.

Email is a necessary part of work and personal life, and added features on top of Gmail can save you a lot of pain and time. If you love using Gmail to manage your email, you’ll adore add-on productivity tools to increase functionality and extend capabilities. 

Built-in Gmail productivity features

We’ll get to the third-party productivity tools for Gmail in a minute, but first, we’re going to take a look at the native productivity features that come built-in with Gmail. 

Schedule send

This was only achievable through a third party, but now you can schedule a send in Gmail for some time in the future. That means you can compose now and send it later at a time that is more convenient for the recipient. If you write an email late at night but want to hit another’s inbox first thing in the morning, Gmail makes that possible with schedule send. 

Keyboard shortcuts

Gmail has a wide range of keyboard shortcuts you can use to automate certain actions, such as archiving emails or marking them as read. Saving time instead of manually performing actions speeds up inbox management. 

Labels

Use labels within Gmail as a replacement for categorizing so you can easily sort and manage your emails. You could set up rules to automatically label certain emails to improve productivity. 

Filters

Filters allow you to apply particular parameters within Gmail to filter out emails as you search or tidy your inbox. 

Smart Reply

Increase the speed of composing replies with Gmail’s AI tool Smart Reply, which suggests what to type next. 

Undo send

Undo sending an email up to thirty seconds after hitting the send button to catch mistakes quickly. 

Snooze an email

Receiving an email in your inbox doesn’t mean you have to deal with it instantly – hit snooze and schedule a future reminder to enable you to return to the Gmail message later. 

What are the benefits of using Gmail for email?

If Gmail is so great, you may ask, why might you boost productivity for Gmail? Isn’t there a better tool that provides more features and benefits? The answer is that the Gmail app is such a well-supported tool that a wealth of developers have built products that work directly with Gmail. This means you can stay within your favorite email client while massively enhancing how you work, which no other tool offers. 

Even natively within Gmail, there are many features for managing email more effectively, which other tools struggle to compete with. You might find a few features elsewhere, but not as many as Gmail has, which is amazing for a tool with a free plan. If you already use Google Workspace with products such as Drive, Meet, and Calendar, then Gmail is a no-brainer. 

If you’re an organization, you can virtually guarantee that your employees will be familiar with Gmail, thus eliminating the adoption phase. Tools such as Keeping that integrate directly with Gmail for productivity are also easy to learn and get your team up and running within minutes. 

How can you boost productivity for Gmail?

You might have a vague feeling that you want to boost Gmail productivity but do not know where to start. Well, that’s precisely what this article is for. To manage your Gmail inbox efficiently, you’ll need to look at some third-party tools to make your life easier. We’ve developed a few areas of Gmail that would benefit from boosting productivity, typically because Gmail’s native features don’t quite cut it. Gmail is powerful, but it can’t do everything. 

Shared inbox

Multiple people accessing the same email address create untold problems for your inbox, especially when using this address for a business function such as customer support. Tools integrate directly with Gmail to allow you to turn it into a shared inbox, with added functionality such as multiple logins and ticket assignments.

Using Gmail as a shared inbox with a third-party productivity app means you don’t have to switch to a new tool to improve customer support. As long as you have a custom domain for your Gmail account, you can turn Gmail into a full-featured shared inbox that is far superior to workarounds such as Google Groups or Collaborative Inbox and works with multiple Gmail accounts. 

Manage spam

0.5% of the average Gmail inbox is spam, which might not sound like a lot, but all spam distracts from your ability to reach inbox zero. Although Gmail has excellent spam filters, there are apps you can use to increase your ability to manage your inbox and ensure you only receive the emails you want. 

Encrypt outgoing emails

Natively, Gmail is equipped with basic encryption for supported providers, but you might want to ensure that your outgoing emails are fully encrypted and protected from malicious parties. The limitation of basic Gmail is that emails are only properly encrypted if sent to another Gmail account. 

Create professional signatures

In the native Gmail settings, you can create one email signature with basic formatting, so changing your email signature to a more professional design would be desirable. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to create great signatures for your whole team automatically? The good news is, there is. 

Grammar and spell check

Gmail is natively equipped with the ability to spell check your emails and assess the grammar, but there are tools to take this process to the next level, so every email is well-written and eloquent. You can even use AI to completely rewrite your emails or start from scratch with prompts to enhance your productivity significantly. 

Access more shortcuts

If you access Gmail normally, you might not be aware that there are many shortcuts you can use to supercharge your productivity. There are tools available to make learning the numerous shortcuts much easier so you can be faster and more efficient when managing your email inbox. 

Lockdown your inbox

It might sound counterintuitive, but sometimes spending less time on email means avoiding your inbox so you don’t waste excessive time on unnecessary tasks. Some people find it helpful to lock their inbox so they can focus on other things for a while, coming back to their emails with a fresh perspective. 

Turn emails into tasks

Task management software for Gmail will allow you to convert emails into tasks and manage your tasks and resolve them when they’re done. Integrating tasks with emails could be key to unlocking your productivity. 

Automatically video call or record

Sometimes, email isn’t enough, and you’ll want to jump on a call straight from your inbox. Happily, you can integrate video-calling with your Gmail inbox, schedule meetings to stay up-to-date with your appointments, and record your screen to share with recipients. 

Top 13 best tools to boost Gmail productivity

Now, we will look at the best Gmail tools to boost productivity and management that work cleverly with Gmail’s existing features. 

1. Keeping

Keeping is our very own shared inbox tool that lets you take your existing Gmail account to the next level. A seamless integration functioning as an extension for Gmail, once you install Keeping your customer support team can all begin to access your shared email address, or addresses. Keeping is not only a shared inbox but also enables you to deal with multiple inboxes. 

Suitable for teams that want to use Gmail to help their customers but are struggling with the native features, Keeping enables advanced features such as collaboration and communication. It is undoubtedly the best tool for organizing your Gmail inbox.

If you’re wondering whether Keeping is for you, ask yourself whether you can keep supporting customers in your current way. Customers deserve the very best, and Keeping remains invisible while powering up your team without requiring training. 

As soon as you install Keeping you can begin improving your customer support. For example, save email templates for reuse by your whole team. It’s our answer to an external help desk, but works right inside Gmail for a smooth and familiar workflow. All the usual help desk features are available alongside your normal Gmail platform to make email a breeze. 

2. Unroll.Me

Use Unroll.Me to unsubscribe from newsletter subscriptions that are cluttering up your inbox. This tool is only available outside the EU so if you live within that area you will not be able to use Unroll.Me. Although you can manually open every unwanted email and click unsubscribe, you could alternatively automate this process with Unroll.Me. 

3. Simple Gmail Notes

One feature sadly lacking from Gmail is the ability to create notes on your emails, but Simple Gmail Notes allows you to do this and create much more context surrounding your correspondence. It’s available through the Chrome Web Store as a free extension. 

4. FlowCrypt Gmail Encryption

If security and privacy is a concern then you’ll definitely want to use FlowCrypt to encrypt your outgoing emails. It’s a Chrome extension that you can install instantly to enable end-to-end encryption on every email you send. 

5. Mailstrom

If you’re depressed at the sight of your chaotic inbox you can use Mailstrom to clean up hundreds or even thousands of emails at once and reduce inbox clutter. You can even unsubscribe from unwanted emails to keep your inbox organized in the future and focus only on essential emails. You can view messages by sender, subject, category, or many other parameters. If you’re looking for a tool to clean your Gmail inbox, try Mailstrom.

6. Any.do

Any.do is one of the many project management apps for tasks and projects that you can use to enhance your productivity. Categorize, chat directly on tasks, and customize workflows, while integrating directly with Gmail to forward any email to create a task. Use Any.do directly within Gmail to avoid switching apps. 

7. Remind Me

Similarly to Any.do, Remind Me allows you to automatically create a reminder from incoming emails and is an extension available from the Chrome Web Store. It essentially sets an alarm clock in the browser for important messages, which means it is very simple and you can use it to avoid forgetting crucial tasks. 

8. WiseStamp

Change your email signatures to professional-looking designs that will elevate your personal or professional brand. You can connect your Google Workspace account with WiseStamp’s app and automatically populate employee accounts with their new signatures. 

9. Zoom for Gmail

Many people love Zoom and the good news is the Zoom app integrates directly with Gmail from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Seamlessly connect with associates through video calling, schedule a meeting for later or view your upcoming calls. 

10. BombBomb

Particular individuals who need to record their screen and share it with recipients will love BombBomb, which allows you to totally streamline this process. You can either record your screen or camera and then automatically send this over email using the BombBomb app which integrates directly with Gmail. 

11. Grammarly

Grammarly is a popular spell check and grammar app which offers a useful integration with Gmail. Grammarly makes suggestions as you compose an email in Gmail, so you can eliminate mistakes, improve your tone and increase the chances of a positive response. AI helps you write brand new emails with thoroughly fleshed out content instantly. 

12. Inbox When Ready

Inbox When Ready is a Chrome extension that allows you to protect your focus minimizing the total amount of time you spend in your inbox. You essentially lock your inbox for a set period of time to encourage you to address your email in batches rather than constantly being chained to your inbox, as well as hide your inbox while you compose until you need to see it. 

13. KeyRocket

KeyRocket is a tool that tracks your activity within Gmail and lets you know when there is a keyboard shortcut available that could streamline your workflow. This considerably speeds up the process of learning new shortcuts faster and supercharges your productivity as a result. 

Wrapping up

Although Gmail is very powerful in many ways, you can use the tools mentioned here to boost productivity and management for your emails, getting more done in less time. Don’t feel you have to be limited to Gmail’s basic capabilities since there is a huge ecosystem out there for those individuals and businesses who want to add extra features to their Gmail inbox. 

If you adopt a tool like Keeping, you will be able to fully extend the capabilities of Gmail to turn it into a full-fledged help desk. Spending too much time wrestling with email is time away from more productive tasks. Email should be a joy, not a burden, and used as a way to connect and communicate with other email recipients. 

Using Gmail to support customers is fully possible if you use an extension like Keeping to boost productivity and email management. Google Workspace fans will be happy to know they can stay within their favorite platform while achieving immense business value. You can definitely organize a Gmail inbox if you have the right tools.