Notion has expanded its productivity ecosystem with the release of Notion Mail, joining Notion Calendar and the company's flagship product. This new email client aims to bring Notion's minimalist design philosophy to the cluttered world of email management, but early reviews suggest a mix of promising AI features and notable limitations.
A Minimalist Approach to Email Management
Notion Mail brings the company's clean, text-first design aesthetic to email management. Available now for web and Mac (with iOS in testing), the app offers a refreshing alternative to Gmail's complex interface with fewer menus and more straightforward navigation. Users can customize their inbox layout, adjust information density, and toggle between dark and light modes. The simplified design philosophy aligns with Notion's overall approach to productivity tools, emphasizing customization and clarity over feature overload.
AI-Powered Smart Labeling
Perhaps the most compelling feature of Notion Mail is its AI-powered organization system. During setup, users can choose to automatically sort promotional emails and calendar invites into dedicated sections. More impressively, the app offers an auto label similar button that appears when viewing an email. When clicked, Notion's AI analyzes your inbox to find similar messages based on content and context rather than just matching sender or subject lines. Users can also create custom labels using chatbot-style prompts, with the AI suggesting which emails should be included. While early testing shows the system isn't perfect, it represents a potentially significant improvement over traditional email filtering.
Notion Mail Key Features
- AI-powered smart labeling
- Custom organizational views
- Meeting scheduler integration
- Notion-style slash commands
- AI writing assistance
Custom Views for Personalized Organization
Notion Mail introduces Views - essentially collections of filters that allow users to organize emails in ways that make sense for their workflow. For example, users could create a travel-focused view combining confirmation emails and receipts, or gather newsletters in a dedicated reading space. These views sync back to Gmail as labels, offering a new organizational layer without disrupting the underlying inbox structure. The approach resembles Google's discontinued Inbox app but with less intrusive implementation.
Productivity Features and Slash Commands
As users explore Notion Mail, they discover additional productivity features hidden beneath the minimalist interface. The app supports Notion's signature slash commands for text formatting, but also for inserting meeting scheduling tools connected to your calendar, or templates that can automatically add information like Zoom links or recipient names. Notion's AI can also assist with writing and editing emails. Most features are accessible through a command bar (CMD-K shortcut), though many remain somewhat hidden in the name of simplicity.
Notable Limitations and Integration Issues
Despite its promising features, Notion Mail launches with significant limitations. Currently, it only works with Gmail accounts, with no immediate timeline for Outlook or other email service support. Platform availability is also restricted, with only web and Mac versions available at launch, iOS coming soon, and other platforms presumably further behind. The app doesn't support viewing multiple email accounts simultaneously, requiring cumbersome switching between accounts.
Perhaps most surprisingly, Notion Mail lacks integration with Notion's powerful database capabilities. While the interfaces appear similar, there's no data sharing between Notion Mail and Notion itself. This represents a missed opportunity for creating truly integrated workflows between email and the company's core productivity platform. Additionally, some users have reported issues with the login process when their Notion account uses an email address different from their Gmail address.
Current Limitations
- Gmail accounts only (no Outlook support yet)
- Available only on web and Mac (iOS in testing)
- No multi-account simultaneous viewing
- No integration with Notion databases
- AI features require $8/month subscription after trial period
Pricing and Availability
Notion Mail follows the company's freemium approach. The basic service is free, but users who want to access the AI features beyond a one-week trial period will need to pay USD $8 per month per user, regardless of whether they're on a free or paid Notion plan. For users already subscribed to Notion's Plus, Business, or Enterprise plans, this represents an additional cost that could add up quickly for teams.
A Work in Progress
Notion Mail represents the company's third major product offering, following its core workspace tool and Notion Calendar. While it brings some innovative AI-powered features to email management, the current limitations in platform support, multi-account handling, and integration with Notion's database functionality suggest this is very much a first version. Whether Notion can address these limitations and deliver on the product's full potential remains to be seen.