Every price below was read off the vendor’s own live pricing page on 7 September 2026. Five vendors render their prices client-side and would not show us a number; we say which.
Two things have changed that most articles have not caught up with. Superhuman no longer sells a standalone email plan — email is now one product inside a $33-a-month bundle. And classic Outlook for Windows is not dying in 2026; Microsoft’s own documentation says it is supported until at least 2029.
Superhuman is now a bundle, and email is a Business-tier feature
Grammarly acquired Superhuman the email client in July 2025, and in late October 2025 Grammarly Inc. renamed the entire company Superhuman. Coda, also acquired, became Superhuman Docs on 8 July 2026. So “Superhuman” in 2026 means four things under one brand: Mail, Go (the AI assistant), Docs, and Grammarly itself.
| Plan | Annual per member/month | Monthly | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Grammarly, Docs, Go |
| Pro | $12 | $15 | Grammarly, Docs, Go |
| Business | $33 | $40 | Mail + everything above |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Mail + SSO, DLP, BYOK, analytics |
You can no longer buy the email client on its own tier. The old roughly-$30 email app is now a $33-a-month bundle in which email is one of four products. If you want Superhuman Mail and nothing else, you are paying for Grammarly and Docs whether you use them or not.
We could not verify seat minimums on Business, or whether legacy standalone subscribers were migrated, grandfathered or repriced. Their /security and /trust pages both returned 404.
Classic Outlook is safe until at least 2029
You will see “classic Outlook dies in 2026” repeated widely. It is wrong. Microsoft’s own migration guidance sets out three stages, and commits that existing classic Outlook installations through perpetual and subscription licensing “will be supported until at least 2029.”
- Stage 1 — Opt-in. New Outlook off by default. It reached general availability on 1 August 2024.
- Stage 2 — Opt-out. New Outlook on by default, classic still available. Admins get at least 12 months’ notice.
- Stage 3 — Cutover. Cannot switch back. Again at least 12 months’ notice in production rings.
Microsoft has published no firm date for Stage 2 or Stage 3, and has repeatedly pushed this back. The 2026 dates in circulation refer to Office 2021’s own lifecycle, not to classic Outlook.
That said, plan for it. New Outlook for Windows is a web app in a shell: it drops COM add-ins, some PST workflows, and for a long stretch full offline parity. Audit your add-ins now, because that is what breaks. You have runway, not immunity.
The prices
| Product | Plan | Price | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shortwave | Business / Premier / Max | $30 / $45 / $120 per seat/mo | Monthly pricing only shown; tiers differ by AI quota |
| Spark | Free / Plus / Pro | $0 / $10/mo or $120/yr / $20/mo or $240/yr | Free tier has unlimited accounts |
| HEY | For You | $99/year | Annual only, 100 GB, 30-day trial no card |
| HEY | For Domains | $12/user/mo (first user $10) | Monthly only, custom domain |
| Missive | Starter / Productive / Business | $14 / $24 / $36 per user/mo | Up to 5 / 50 / unlimited users. No free plan |
| eM Client | Personal lifetime | $59.95 one-time | Perpetual, lifetime upgrades, 1 user / 3 devices |
| eM Client | Personal subscription | $39.95/year | Or Business $49.95/yr per device |
| Mailbird | Pay Once | $99.75 one-time (list $399) | “Lifetime Updates” is a separate $69 add-on |
| Canary Mail | Growth / Pro+ | $36/yr / $100/yr | Pro+ adds PGP, SecureSend, phishing detection |
| Microsoft 365 | Personal / Family / Premium | $99.99 / $129.99 / $199.99 per year | On Family and Premium, AI is for the owner only |
| Thunderbird | Desktop | $0 | Free and open source |
| Thunderbird Pro | Early Bird | $6/mo paid annually | Still in beta, waitlist waves, full launch expected 2026 |
Could not verify: Proton Mail Plus and Unlimited (placeholders rendered as $XX.XX, though a “save XX%” promo banner confirms one exists); all Fastmail prices; Google Workspace per-user prices; and Tuta’s Revolutionary and Legend tiers. All four inject prices client-side. Storage tiers and billing terms were readable in every case; the dollars were not.
The one-time-purchase survivors
Perpetual licensing is nearly extinct in email. Two mainstream clients still sell it, and only one of them does it honestly.
eM Client is the cleanest perpetual deal left. $59.95 personal or $79.95 business per device, one-time, with “Lifetime Upgrades” stated plainly on the pricing page. It did not quietly move to subscription — it runs both models side by side, and the annual subscription at $39.95 is priced so the perpetual pays for itself in 18 months. Both paid tiers now include the AI add-on. The free licence is capped at two accounts and is personal, non-commercial only. Mobile apps are free and need no licence.
Mailbird’s is worse than it looks. “Pay Once” at $99.75 buys the app — but “Lifetime Updates” is a separate $69 add-on. Read that carefully: a one-time purchase that does not include future versions unless you buy an upgrade pack is a perpetual licence for today’s version. The permanent “75% off $399” framing is the usual sign that $399 is a fictional anchor.
Thunderbird is the true zero-cost perpetual: free, open source, no licence to expire. Everyone else — Superhuman, Shortwave, Spark, HEY, Missive, Proton, Tuta, Fastmail — is subscription only.
Client or service? The distinction that decides your lock-in
Most comparisons blur this, and it is the most consequential thing on the page.
| Type | What it is | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Mail client | Software that connects to an account you already own | Thunderbird, eM Client, Mailbird, Apple Mail, Canary, Spark, Outlook |
| Mail service | You must use their hosting — the address, storage and servers are theirs | Proton, Tuta, HEY, Fastmail, Gmail, Thunderbird Pro |
Then there is the group buyers most often get wrong — clients that refuse arbitrary IMAP:
- Superhuman Mail: Gmail/Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 only. No generic IMAP.
- Shortwave: Gmail/Google Workspace only. There is no IMAP path at all.
- Missive does support generic IMAP alongside Gmail and Microsoft 365 — but its collaboration layer lives on Missive’s servers.
And two hybrids that trip people up. Proton and Tuta are services that also block third-party clients by default. Proton requires Proton Mail Bridge, which needs a paid plan and runs on desktop only. Tuta offers no IMAP at all — its encryption model precludes it. So “I’ll just use Thunderbird with Proton” costs you a paid plan plus a bridge, and with Tuta it is simply impossible.
Fastmail is the outlier: a service with full standards IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV and JMAP. Point any client at it and leave whenever you like. That is why it keeps appearing in least-lock-in recommendations.
Whose servers is your mail actually on?
This is the most consequential question in 2026 email, and almost nobody asks it. Fast search, cross-device sync, snooze, send-later, push notifications and every AI feature are vastly easier to build if the vendor holds a copy of your mail. Most modern clients therefore hold a copy — and most do not say so on the marketing page.
Shortwave — confirmed server-side, and admirably candid about it
From its own security page: Shortwave syncs with Gmail and stores that data in Google Cloud data centres. Stored data is encrypted at rest with AES256 and in transit with TLS 1.2+. Its AI sub-processors are limited to OpenAI, Anthropic and Pinecone — Pinecone being a vector database, which means your mail is embedded and indexed for semantic search. The majority of AI workloads run on open-source models on hardware Shortwave controls, and it commits that your data will never be used to train third-party LLMs.
That is an unusually honest disclosure and, on the merits, a decent one. But the architecture is unambiguous: Shortwave holds an indexed copy of your Gmail. Its AI search could not work otherwise.
Spark — the reformed case
In 2019 Spark drew heavy criticism because account credentials were held on Readdle’s servers to power push notifications, and users found out through third-party reporting rather than from Readdle. The current privacy policy says credentials are now stored only as a token that Readdle cannot retrieve, and that most email data is processed locally on the device.
Server processing is confined to named exceptions: shared emails, shared drafts, send-later and AI features. AI inputs go to Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Vertex, which may retain inputs for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring. Spark states it does not use your data to train any model.
That is real improvement and worth crediting. But note what the exceptions include: send-later means your unsent message sits on Readdle’s servers until the send time, and every AI action ships message content to one of four cloud vendors.
Direct device-to-IMAP — the quiet option
Thunderbird, eM Client, Mailbird, Apple Mail and classic Outlook connect from your machine to your mail host. No third party is inserted. Their search is local, which is why it is slower and less clever than Shortwave’s. That is the trade, stated plainly.
Canary Mail is direct-to-IMAP and additionally offers on-device AI options alongside cloud AI, which makes it the most privacy-defensible AI email client here. We could not verify the precise split of which features run locally.
The rule to carry away: any AI feature that summarises, drafts, prioritises or semantically searches your mail sends message content off your device, unless the vendor explicitly says it runs locally.
On read receipts, a word
Two different things get called read receipts. A real receipt asks the recipient’s client for permission. Tracking pixels do not ask — a 1×1 invisible image loads from the sender’s server and reports open time, count, approximate location and often device. That is surveillance of a private act, without consent, by default.
Mailbird sells “unlimited email tracking” as a headline Premium feature. Superhuman built read statuses into its core loop. Meanwhile Apple Mail, HEY, Proton, Tuta and Fastmail all block or proxy remote images by default, and privacy proxies pre-fetch images, generating phantom opens.
The result in 2026 is that open-rate data is substantially fictional. If you are choosing a client partly for tracking, you are buying a degraded signal and imposing a cost on your recipients.
AI in email: what is real
| Tool | What it does | Cost on top | What it sees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail + Gemini | Summarise threads, draft and refine, side-panel Q&A over mail and Drive | Bundled into Workspace tiers; Starter gets limited AI, Standard+ expanded | Stays inside your Google tenant; Workspace terms exclude training on customer data |
| Outlook + Copilot | Summarise, draft in your voice, tone coaching, inbox prioritisation, catch-up briefings | Included on Personal/Family/Premium — but owner only on Family and Premium | Microsoft tenant |
| Shortwave | Genuine semantic search across your whole archive, AI filters, an assistant that acts on mail | $30 / $45 / $120 per seat/mo — the tiers are purely AI quota | OpenAI, Anthropic, Pinecone; no third-party training |
| Superhuman | Superhuman Go, AI inbox organisation, personalised writing, CRM enrichment | Bundled into the $33 Business tier | Unverified — security pages returned 404 |
| Canary Mail | Compose, summarise, prioritise | $36/year — a tenth of Shortwave | On-device options available |
| Spark | AI meeting notes | 40/month on Plus, unlimited on Pro | Four cloud AI vendors, 30-day abuse retention |
The skeptical bottom line. AI in email reliably does three things in 2026: summarise long threads, draft first-pass replies, and answer questions about your archive. Everything else — autonomous triage, agentic follow-up — is supervised at best. Thread summarisation is genuinely useful on long threads and near-useless on short ones, which are most threads.
Semantic search over your own archive is the one feature that genuinely could not exist before. It is also the one that requires handing a vendor an indexed copy of your mail. That is the trade, and it should be a conscious one.
Migration: what actually breaks
Moving clients is easy. Moving providers is hard. Swapping Thunderbird for eM Client changes nothing on the server — your IMAP mail stays where it is and the new client re-syncs. What you lose is client-local state: snoozes, local filters, tags never written back as IMAP keywords, and add-ons.
Moving providers is where things break. Expect to lose server-side filter rules (no portable format exists), aliases and catch-all configuration, and — most painfully — delivery reputation plus every service that has your old address on file. Read and unread state usually survives an IMAP-to-IMAP transfer. Gmail labels do not survive, because labels are many-to-many and IMAP folders are one-to-many: a message in three labels arrives as three copies, or one.
On protocols: POP downloads and classically deletes from the server — one device, no sync, your only copy is local. IMAP keeps the server authoritative. JMAP, Fastmail’s modern replacement now also on Thunderbird’s roadmap, is faster and push-native but narrowly adopted. In 2026 there is no defensible reason to choose POP except archiving a dying account.
The two portable export formats are mbox (one file per folder, what Google Takeout produces) and EML (one file per message, the most universal). The method that always works: point Thunderbird at both the old and new accounts at once and drag folders across. Slow, unglamorous, moves everything.
Your own domain is the whole defence
If your address is you@yourdomain.com, changing provider is a DNS record change plus a mail copy, and nobody who emails you ever notices. If it is you@gmail.com or you@hey.com, changing provider means telling every bank, employer and service you have ever used — and permanently losing anything you forget.
A domain costs about the price of a coffee per month and is the single highest-leverage decision in this entire article. Note the corollary: HEY for You at $99/year gives you a @hey.com address with no custom domain. That is lock-in by design. HEY for Domains at $12/user/month is the version to buy.
Which one, for whom
“I want Gmail to be less bad”
Two paths. Free: turn on Gmail keyboard shortcuts, multiple inboxes and aggressive filters. That is better than most people expect and costs nothing. Paid: Shortwave at $30/seat/month is purpose-built on Gmail and its AI search over your archive is the real thing — accepting that it holds an indexed copy on Google Cloud. If you want speed and keyboard flow rather than AI archaeology, Superhuman Mail does it better, but only at $33/member/month bundled with three products you did not ask for.
Privacy-first
Proton Mail if you want the ecosystem and zero-access encryption — noting a third-party client needs a paid plan plus Bridge. Tuta if you want German jurisdiction and full encryption including subject lines, accepting that there is no IMAP at all, so you use Tuta’s apps forever.
But if your concern is commercial surveillance rather than a state adversary, Fastmail plus your own domain is the better engineering answer: no ads, no scanning, full standards support, and you can leave in an afternoon.
A team sharing an inbox
Missive, clearly. $14/user/month up to five users, $24 up to fifty, $36 unlimited, with team chat threaded next to the email, assignment, and generic IMAP support so it is not a Google-only tool. It is a real shared-inbox product rather than a personal client with sharing bolted on.
Linux
Thunderbird, and it is not close — free, native, full offline, PGP built in, and the only one with a serious extension ecosystem. Missive, Proton and Tuta also ship real Linux desktop apps. eM Client, Mailbird, Apple Mail and Superhuman are all unavailable.
Heavy keyboard user
Superhuman Mail still sets the bar, but entry is now $33/member/month bundled. Shortwave is close and Gmail-native. The free alternative most people dismiss too quickly: Gmail with shortcuts enabled, or classic Outlook, whose keyboard model is deeper than anything else on Windows.
Business on Microsoft 365
Stay on Outlook, but plan for the new client. Classic is safe until at least 2029 with twelve months’ notice before each stage, so the migration is real but not urgent. Audit COM add-ins now — that is what breaks.
The zero-cost option
Thunderbird as the client, on a Gmail or Proton Free account, with eM Client Free as the Windows alternative. Total: $0. You give up AI, cloud snooze sync and shared inboxes. You keep full offline access, PGP, every platform including Linux, and an architecture where no vendor sits between you and your mail.
For a large fraction of people this is genuinely the correct answer, and the industry has an obvious interest in never saying so.
Questions people ask
Is Superhuman still worth $30 a month?
That plan no longer exists in that form. Email now lives on the $33/member/month Business tier alongside Grammarly, Docs and Go. If you use all four it is arguably better value than before. If you wanted fast email only, you are subsidising a writing assistant and a docs app.
Do I have to move off classic Outlook this year?
No. Microsoft’s own guidance says classic Outlook is supported until at least 2029, with twelve months’ notice before new Outlook becomes the default and again before cutover. Start auditing add-ins; do not panic-migrate.
Can I use Thunderbird with Proton Mail?
Only with Proton Mail Bridge, which requires a paid plan and runs on desktop only. With Tuta, no — there is no IMAP.
Which email apps can read my mail?
Any app whose search or AI is fast across your whole archive is almost certainly holding a copy. Shortwave says so explicitly. Spark says most data is local but that shared mail, shared drafts, send-later and AI go through its servers. Superhuman’s equivalent document was not reachable. Thunderbird, eM Client, Mailbird, Apple Mail and classic Outlook connect directly and hold nothing.
Is there still a proper buy-once email client?
Yes: eM Client at $59.95 personal or $79.95 business per device, one-time, with lifetime upgrades stated on the pricing page. Mailbird sells a “Pay Once” licence at $99.75 but charges $69 extra for the Lifetime Updates add-on. Read that before buying.
Do read receipts actually work?
Increasingly not. Apple Mail, HEY, Proton, Tuta and Fastmail block or proxy tracking pixels by default, and privacy proxies pre-fetch images and generate phantom opens. You get worse data than you think, while surveilling people who did not consent.
What is the cheapest way to get AI in my email?
Canary Mail Growth at $36 a year. Compare Shortwave Business at $360 per seat per year. Canary does less — no deep semantic search across years of archive — at a tenth the cost, with on-device options.
Should I buy a domain?
Yes, before you choose anything else. It converts every future provider decision from a migration crisis into a DNS change.
What we could not verify
- Proton Mail Plus and Unlimited prices — rendered as placeholders. A “save XX%” promo exists but not its size. The business pricing page returned 404.
- All Fastmail prices — injected client-side after country and term selection. Storage tiers and the 1/12/24/36-month terms were readable.
- Google Workspace per-user prices — behind an interactive calculator. Only the 16% annual saving, the 300-user cap and the Gemini-by-tier split were readable.
- Tuta Revolutionary and Legend base prices — only the “save 50%” badge and family add-on rates rendered.
- Superhuman seat minimums, the fate of legacy subscribers, and any first-party statement on mail storage, retention or AI sub-processors — the pricing page was JS-rendered and both security pages returned 404.
- Missive’s annual versus monthly split — the page advertises 20% off annual but shows identical figures for both cycles.
- Canary Mail lifetime prices — the page offers lifetime options while stating “no monthly subscriptions” and showing monthly figures. Only the annual figures should be quoted with confidence.
- Commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on pricing and Apple iCloud+ tiers — not fetched.
- Thunderbird Pro final pricing — only the Early Bird beta plan is published; general availability pricing does not exist yet.
- Shortwave’s data retention periods and Spark’s current push-notification architecture — neither is stated.
- Classic Outlook Stage 2 and Stage 3 dates — Microsoft has published none.
The short version
- Buy a domain first. It is the single highest-leverage decision here, and it makes every later choice reversible.
- Superhuman email is now a $33/month bundle with three other products. There is no standalone plan.
- Classic Outlook is safe until at least 2029. Audit your add-ins, do not panic.
- eM Client at $59.95 is the last honest buy-once client. Mailbird charges $69 extra for future versions.
- Fast search means a vendor holds your mail. Shortwave admits it; Spark names its exceptions; Superhuman’s documentation was unreachable.
- Tuta has no IMAP and Proton needs a paid Bridge. Plan for that before committing.
- Canary Mail is AI email at $36/year against Shortwave’s $360.
- Thunderbird plus your own domain costs nothing and is genuinely the right answer for a lot of people.
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