Shortwave vs Ellie

Shortwave is an AI email client built by former Google engineers that wraps Gmail with inbox organization tools and an agent you can prompt to search, write, schedule, and filter mail. It runs on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows and syncs with Gmail accounts. The app positions itself as a spiritual successor to Google Inbox, with bundles, splits, and keyboard shortcuts at the center of daily triage.

Most Gmail add-ons bolt on one feature. Shortwave treats the whole inbox as a workflow surface: you triage with bundles and todos first, then ask the agent to draft replies, run natural language search across years of mail, or spin up filters written in plain English. That combo of Inbox-style organization plus a prompt-driven assistant sets it apart from Superhuman-style speed clients and basic AI summarizers.

Sales reps, founders, and support leads use it to split high-priority threads, track read receipts, and share live threads with teammates without pasting screenshots into Slack. Teams on Gmail who miss Inbox bundles or want calendar-aware scheduling from inside mail tend to stick with it once they adopt the Shortwave Method triage flow.

Ellie drafts email replies in your voice inside Gmail or Outlook before you hit send. Connect your inbox and wake up to responses already sitting in your Drafts folder, written in the thread context and matched to your tone. You review every message before it goes out; Ellie never sends on its own.

Most email assistants generate generic text you still have to rewrite. Ellie trains on up to 200 of your sent emails on the Casual plan (1,000 on Business) and pulls from a knowledge base you upload so replies cite your actual policies and CRM data. Business and Professional plans add background auto-drafting and auto-categorization, while Casual users trigger replies manually through a browser extension in Gmail, Outlook web, or Fastmail.

Support teams, founders, and sales reps drowning in inbox volume use Ellie to clear reply backlogs. Plans range from $19 per month for 25 daily replies to $79 per month for unlimited replies and up to 3 connected accounts per user. A 7-day free trial requires no credit card, and Microsoft 365 customers can buy through AppSource.