Shortwave
Summary
Email clients fragment across tabs, Slack threads, and half-finished drafts — and by the time you've context-switched three times, the original ask is buried under forty unread messages. Shortwave is built to collapse that loop, using an AI agent to organize, draft, search, and schedule directly inside your inbox.
The core workflow runs through natural-language prompts: ask the AI to triage your inbox, draft a reply in your own voice, or surface a contract buried six months deep, and it acts — no separate app required. The AI filter layer lets you write inbox rules in plain English, which means non-engineers can manage label logic that previously required a developer's Zapier setup. Tasklet integration extends this into 24/7 background automation, connecting to over 3,000 external apps. The ceiling appears when you need logic that branches based on what a previous step returned — the prompt interface handles linear tasks cleanly but complex conditional workflows push you toward Tasklet, which is a separate product your team must also learn and maintain.
Bottom line: Pick Shortwave if you're a high-volume Gmail or Outlook user who wants AI triage, voice-matched drafting, and team commenting without leaving your inbox — but plan on managing two products the moment your automation needs conditional branching across external systems.
Pricing Plans
SubscriptionLast verified 2 weeks ago- Price
- $30/mo
- Free Tier
- 14 day free trial
Business
Everyday AI productivity
- Full standard search history
- Standard intelligence
- More AI usage
- 5 years AI search history
- Max 50 threads per AI search
- 3 AI-powered filters
- AI integrations & web browsing
- AI autocomplete, summaries & attachment analysis
- Read statuses, link tracking, snippets & more
Premier
Advanced intelligence for complex workflows
- Everything in Business, plus...
- Advanced intelligence
- 2x more AI usage
- Unlimited AI search history
- Max 100 threads per AI search
- 10 AI-powered filters
- Smarter AI answers with 2x context tokens
Max
Our most powerful models & features
- Everything in Premier, plus...
- Expert intelligence
- 6x more AI usage
- Max 150 threads per AI search
- 50 AI-powered filters
- Smarter AI answers with 3x context tokens
View full pricing on shortwave.com →
Pricing may have changed since last verified. Check the official site for current plans.
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Pros
Sign in to edit- AI learns your writing style from sent email history, so drafted replies match your voice rather than sounding like a template — which means you're editing for content, not rewriting for tone.
- Plain-English inbox filter rules translate directly into running automation scripts, so non-technical team members can build label and archive logic that previously required a developer or a no-code tool subscription.
- Shared threads, private team comments, and email ownership assignment turn a shared inbox into a tracked collaboration layer, so context stops getting lost in Slack screenshots pasted from the inbox.
- AI-powered search reaches across attachments and full thread history, so finding a specific contract clause or a quoted price from eight months ago takes a prompt instead of a manual scroll.
- Delivery scheduling and prompt-triggered calendar creation let you batch when email hits your attention, which means context-switching during deep work drops without requiring calendar and email apps to be open simultaneously.
Cons
Sign in to edit- Multi-step conditional automation — branching based on what a previous step returned — is not handled inside Shortwave itself; the vendor routes this to Tasklet, a separate product. Teams that adopt both are managing two systems, two login contexts, and two debugging surfaces when a workflow breaks.
- No API and no self-hosted option mean teams with data residency requirements, enterprise security review mandates, or plans to integrate Shortwave's AI layer into internal tooling hit a dead end immediately — at which point they evaluate tools like Front or Superhuman that offer API access or on-premise options.
- The AI agent's task execution is prompt-driven and synchronous by default; teams needing workflows that trigger automatically from incoming email signals — without a human initiating a prompt — must configure that layer through Tasklet rather than Shortwave's native interface, adding setup overhead the product's marketing understates.
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About
- Platforms
- Web, desktop, mobile
- API Available
- No
- Self-Hosted
- No
- Last Updated
- 2026-06-26T14:30:58.280Z
Best For
Who it's for
- Professionals and teams handling high email volumes
- Users needing AI assistance for writing and organization
- Gmail and Outlook account holders seeking advanced filters and automation
What it does well
- Organizing and summarizing long email threads
- Drafting and personalizing email replies via prompts
- Searching email history with AI filters
- Scheduling deliveries and setting reminders
- Collaborating on shared inboxes with team comments
Integrations
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Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Shortwave free?
- Shortwave has a permanent free tier alongside paid upgrades (paid plans from $30/mo). You can keep using a baseline version indefinitely without paying.
- Is Shortwave open source?
- No — Shortwave is a closed-source tool. Source code is not publicly available.
- What platforms does Shortwave support?
- Shortwave is available on: Web, desktop, mobile.
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Curated lists that include this category
Shortwave sits on top of Gmail and Outlook accounts and replaces the native inbox experience with an AI-assisted layer that handles organization, drafting, search, and scheduling through a single prompt interface. The vendor describes its core product as the ‘Shortwave Agent’ — you describe a task in plain language, and the agent executes it: identifying priority emails, sweeping low-signal threads, creating calendar events by checking availability, or writing a reply that matches your established writing style. Split-inbox tabs, bundle grouping for newsletters and promotions, and email-to-todo conversion are available as structural inbox tools independent of the AI layer.
The differentiating feature the vendor emphasizes is voice learning: the AI reads your sent email history to calibrate tone and phrasing, so drafted replies are personalized rather than generic. The AI filter system extends this further — you write automation rules in plain English (‘label everything from my domain as internal and archive newsletters older than two weeks’), and the tool translates them into running scripts. For teams, shared threads, private comments, and assignable ownership make the inbox a collaboration surface rather than an individual silo.
Shortwave fits professionals and small teams who live in email and want to stop losing time to triage, drafting, and search. The friction point surfaces when automation needs grow beyond single-step prompts: the vendor explicitly positions Tasklet, a sister product, as the solution for 24/7 multi-step workflows connecting to Slack, Notion, Asana, HubSpot, and 3,000+ other apps. That means teams with complex automation requirements are operating across two products with two learning curves rather than one. There is no self-hosted option and no API, so teams with strict data residency requirements or plans to embed Shortwave’s capabilities into their own tooling hit a hard wall.
The Tasklet integration is described as handling automatic reply drafting, team comment insertion, and external app connections — it is not bundled into Shortwave itself but positioned as an add-on for teams that need automation running continuously without manual prompts.