It only takes two inches of water to drown—so how many emails does it take for you to drown in your inbox? Today, business professionals receive on average 136 emails per day, and if you factor in that each email takes between 2-3 minutes to read, that means it would take you 5-6 hours a day to just keep up with your emails. There has to be a better way to keep your head above water.
Fortunately, email-organizers like SaneBox are here to help. Rather than have to swim through all your emails yourself, sifting through what is important and what is junk, SaneBox uses AI to help you organize your inbox, and get your time back. Let’s jump into our SaneBox review to see what it can do for you!
What Is SaneBox?
Stared in 2010, SaneBox uses Artificial Intelligence to analyze your emails, learn what is important to you, and put distracting emails into a separate folder so you can focus on what matters. There’s nothing to download, and nothing to install. It works with all email providers and on all devices—and we mean all. PC or Mac, Gmail or Exchange, Outlook or Yahoo Mail, IBM Notes or any other mailing system—SaneBox can work with it.
Along with its long history comes its prestigious partners—SaneBox has been trusted by companies like Adidas, eBay, Coca Cola, and more. It’s a simple tool, but a powerful one—and it can help you surf above the waters of your inbox.
How Does SaneBox Work?
SaneBox’s program itself is very simple. It establishes a secure connection with your email server, and as it analyzes emails, requests your email server to move those emails to the appropriate folder. It does this using AI—a system built to continue learning better what is important to you. It decides important based on what emails you open, which emails you respond to, how quickly and how often you open or respond to them, and your history with a certain sender.
SaneBox doesn’t look at the content of your emails, only the headers. This allows for better security, and privacy.
That’s the simple basis of SaneBox—but it has plenty of tools to help you customize.
When you create your SaneBox account, you sign in with your email, and give it permissions to access your email account. SaneBox offers you a walk through and tutorial—though the truth is, if you know how to use folders in your email, you know how to use SaneBox.
There are quite a few folders you can utilize (though some plans only allow you to use a certain number). SaneNews is a pre-built folder, that takes newsletters and mailing lists—things that you want to read, but that aren’t urgent, and can be distracting. SaneCC are for emails you are CC’d in—so you don’t have fifty responses piling up in your inbox. SaneDIY is for email that require you to do something, and are archived after they’ve been in the folder for a while. Snooze folders are helpful as well, allowing you to come back to something when it’s applicable.
It’s a good idea to check over these folders on occasion, but SaneBox also sends you a daily Digest email, that summarizes all the unimportant emails, saving you even more time.
Once you’ve set up or selected the folder you would like to use, SaneBox takes a few minutes to go through your inbox, filing and organizing everything into its proper place. Ideally, the only things left in your main inbox will be real people and really important emails. However, as you start the AI may make a few mistakes—but you can easily retrain it by moving the email into your inbox folder. The AI will then recognize that sender is important, and won’t make that mistake again. (Have just one email that you want to keep, but the rest from that sender is unimportant? Use the “move once” button to keep that single email.)
SaneBox also has some other tools to help you keep things tidy. SaneBlackHole folder holds all those emails you don’t want to hear from again. Put one email in there, and all future ones from the sender go into this folder, and ultimately the trash. This protects you from spam, as clicking “unsubscribe” can indicate that your address is a valid one, so you’ll only be sent more spam emails. It also helps protect real (but ones you’re not interested in) businesses, as it keeps them from getting penalties of being marked as spam.
You can also take advantage of the reminders feature. This allows you to follow up with people you’ve emailed, but that haven’t responded to you. This also allows you to send reminders to yourself—simply CC <date>@sanebox.com, and SaneBox will remind you of that email on that date. SaneBox also offers a Do Not Disturb feature, which will hide away all emails from your inbox for a period, and allows you to set up an “away” message.
How Much Does SaneBox Cost?
SaneBox likes to have fun with their names—they call their different levels Snack, Lunch, and Dinner. Snack is their simple service, costing $7 a month (All plans are 35% off if you purchase a year’s subscription). This level gives you the basic AI program, allows you to use up to 10 reminders a month, and one extra folder. That one folder isn’t very much, so this level isn’t very practical for everyday needs.
The next level is Lunch, which costs $12 per month. This gives you an allowance of 250 reminders per month, as well as 5 extra folders. This is the most efficient plan, and the one you will most likely take full advantage of.
Finally is the Dinner level, costing $36 per month, and giving you full range to use as many folders as you wish, and as many reminders or other tools. SaneBox also offers some discounts for educators, government agencies, and non-profits, so check out to see if you could get an additional 25% off.
Tips For Using SaneBox
One way to be more productive with your inbox is to “never read an email twice.” This allows you to save mental energy. SaneBox is set up perfectly for this. If it will take less than 2 minutes, answer the email, but if not, move them to a folder. Another way to take advantage of SaneBox’s system is to take the important emails, and transform them into tasks, so you accomplish everything you need to. (Check out our reviews of Todoist and OmniFocus, both great task-tracking programs you could use for this!)
Have emails that aren’t urgent, or currently actionable? Move them out of your inbox into a “defer” folder. This makes it where you’re not always looking at them in your inbox, and keeps you from spending your mental energy on those emails!
SaneBox also has a massive resource of email tricks, to help you streamline your inbox, and no longer be crushed by mountains of emails.
Conclusion: SaneBox
SaneBox is simple, but powerful. By removing distracting emails from your inbox, it allows you to focus on what’s important. Their reminders are a convenient tool to make sure you don’t forget about something important, and their BlackHole folder saves you from spam emails. While the useful level does have a higher price, a clear inbox is worth the price of three cups of coffee. SaneBox is a great tool to help you simplify your life.
