Notion releases an AI-powered email client for Gmail

Summary

Notion released Notion Mail, an AI-powered email client for Gmail that integrates with the rest of Notion’s workflow management platform, on Tuesday. Notion Mail connects to Notion users’ Gmail accounts and uses AI to help users organize their emails, draft responses, schedule meetings, and search across messages. Any Notion user can sign up, and Notion Mail’s AI capabilities are free with monthly usage limits or unlimited through a paid tier. Notion Mail enters an increasingly crowded category of companies looking to improve email inboxes with AI. Superhuman, one of the larger players, has raised $108 million in venture funding for its client that isn’t tied to legacy email providers like Gmail or Microsoft Outlook. Fyxer, which connects to Gmail and Outlook, raised $10 million last month. It’s also worth noting that many of the features Notion Mail is offering are also available from providers like Gmail, which uses AI to sort emails, craft responses, and suggest meetings. Jason Ginsberg, an engineer who worked on Notion Mail, told TechCrunch that the idea behind Notion Mail wasn’t to attach AI to an existing inbox, but rather give users the ability to use AI to build a custom inbox organized and configured how they want. “The way we built Notion Mail is almost down to the building blocks, or the fundamentals of how email works,” Ginsberg said. “It’s really modular. And what that means is, like, instead of just going to settings and there’s just what we’ve decided, you actually can configure Notion Mail in ways we can’t even imagine — all different permutations, so that it actually works the way you prefer.” Notion Mail’s infrastructure came from Skiff, an end-to-end encrypted collaboration platform Notion acquired in 2024 for an undisclosed sum. Ginsberg co-founded Skiff, which also included an email product. According to Ginsberg, one of Notion Mail’s more notable features is the ability for users to separate their inbox into “views” or folders. The feature uses...