In a time where we are inundated with a stream of endless content, ads and emails staying productive can be a difficult task. These days an average inbox is polluted with snappy headlines that ask you to engage with websites that you didn't even know existed.

This is exactly the kind of clutter you don't want to see every time you open your email or try to work on your business. So, we have devised a list of apps that will hopefully declutter, your clutter, streamline communication with clients and customers and help you get back to being the best boss you can be.


Marketed as Trello for Email, Sortd brings the power of a task manager to your inbox. You can now prioritize your emails, set follow ups, highlight what's important and more.

Sortd for Gmail

If you are working sales you can use it to segment your prospect into different stages of the sales cycle.  And it's available as a mobile app for iOS and Android.

An overall great addition to your suite of email productivity tools, and perfectly complements the rest of the apps in this article.


If you're somebody who finds themselves constantly contacting people outside of your organization (i.e. in the form of outreach, or research/recruitment etc) then FullContact is an essential contact management and discovery tool.

FullContact (available for Gmail, iOS, Android, Windows & MacOS

FullContact can also be used for lead research and generation. Simply compose a new email through Gmail and if the email address you are sending to is valid there is a high chance that FullContact has information about that person (they boast a database of over 20 million records).

If you don't have the email of your prospect, you can also test different variations of it (i.e.,, by placing them in your 'To' field and FullContact will test each one and until it's got a match at which point it will display information about that person.

Sick of going back and forth trying to find a suitable time when scheduling meetings? Well, with you can make that a thing of the past. (Email Meeting Scheduling Demonstration)

Personally, this is one of my favorite tools as it saved me an incomprehensible amount of time, particularly when doing outreach to a large number of people.

When you want to schedule a meeting simply click on the button that appears in your message body, and it will pop up with a calendar in which you can add the times you are free. The app will then go ahead and add those times to your email so that your recipient can simply click on a time that works for them, and the meeting will automatically be added to both of your calendars.

Boomerang For Gmail

There are other extensions that allow you to schedule email to send later, but they are generally heavier apps bundled with a lot of other stuff. If you want a simple extension that nicely fits into your Gmail window then Boomerang is the app for you.

Boomerang for Gmail (email scheduler and snoozer and 'send later')

Here are some of the features it offers:

  • Email scheduling
  • Boomerang Responsible (suggests how likely your email is to get a reply)
  • Email scheduling based on behavior (i.e. if no reply, if opened but no reply etc).

Boomerang is a nifty little tool from a great team that regularly updates it. You can use it to maximize your productivity by not having to constantly check your email, or even if you want to pretend that you have been working all night to your boss by scheduling an email to go out to him early morning or night ;)


If you haven't heard of Crystal yet then you're in for a somewhat creepy surprise. Crystal determines how to send the perfect email based on analysis of your recipient's personality.

Crystal's unparalleled accuracy is sometimes scary but useful

Frankly the accuracy is quite shocking, and their database size is equally impressive. You can try it out on yourself if you want to get an idea of how Crystal works.

Similar to Boomerang it fits nicely into Gmail and depending on the objective of your email (i.e. get a coffee meeting, ask for a raise, follow up after a sale etc) Crystal will tell how to word your email (and any later interaction) for the highest chance of achieving your objective.


We all make mistakes. We're human after all (apologies to all the canine, feline readers). So, instead of letting those mistakes go unnoticed next time you are writing an important email Grammarly will notify you of spelling errors, sentence failures, and grammatical faux pas.

grammarly for Chrome (available on other platforms too)

Additionally, once you activate Grammarly it will start working in every text field that appears in your browser. That means whatever you write online, be it an email, document or blog post-Grammarly will be working to improve your writing.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, and I'm sure I'll update it in the near future. But at the risk of going on for too long, I decided to include only my favorite and most used apps.

Please feel free to send in your personal recommendations and if I like it I'll add it to the list!


I was in two minds whether to include MixMax on this list because I personally don't use it. But, I figured it is a lovely tool and a lot of my friends who do use it are incredibly happy with it.

MixMax is the swiss army knife of Gmail apps. It offers so many features from email scheduling to appointment scheduling all the way to bulk sending and email tracking, that there is a little bit of a learning curve. However, once you do get it, there is no reason why MixMax can't become a part of your Gmail arsenal.

The app is beautifully designed and has support for both Gmail and Google Inbox.

Edit: September 19th, 2017.


If you want to keep your email campaigns within Gmail then SalesHandy is one of the most seamless tools for the job. With everything from unlimited email tracking to mass personalization. SalesHandy is an affordable solution to running your B2B email campaigns.

Here are some notable features:

  • Auto Follow Ups (those things I always talk about)
  • Mail Merge / Personalization
  • Plenty of CRM Integrations


I was in two minds about listing GMass in this blog post because I consider a trade secret and because we are currently figuring out potential collaboration opportunities so I didn't want to plug a company that GuessBox may be associated with (in the interest of staying impartial).

That being said, Gmass is hands down one of the most powerful email marketing tools around today. From SendGrid integration to auto-follow ups it is a must have for anybody with a Google Apps account, and perfectly complements the leads generated by GuessBox.

Notable Features:

  • Google Sheets Integration
  • Advanced Reporting (opens, clicks, bounces, replies etc)
  • Automatic Follow Ups
  • Email Scheduling

Bookmark and share this post because I update it regularly as I receive new recommendations for useful apps and tools.

Edited: 01.08.2018