If you are looking for a way to tame a cluttered inbox, three names tend to come up: SaneBox, Clean Email, and Sortfully. All three promise a calmer inbox but take very different routes. This comparison focuses less on feature checklists and more on the questions that shape your day-to-day experience: how each tool decides where mail goes, how much of your mail it needs to access, and whether it relies on AI or on rules you can predict.
A quick note: competitor details change, and the points below are summarised in good faith at a general level. For anything specific to your decision, check each vendor's current website.
The core question: how does each tool decide where mail goes?
This is the difference that matters most, because it determines how predictable the tool feels.
- SaneBox is best known for AI-driven priority filtering. It learns from your behaviour to decide which messages matter and which can wait, sorting them into areas like a "later" folder. It adapts; the trade-off is that the decision is a learned judgement rather than a fixed rule.
- Clean Email is best known for bulk cleanup and rules. It groups mail so you can clear large volumes quickly, unsubscribe in bulk, and apply rules. The emphasis is on cleaning up what is already there.
- Sortfully files by the sender's organisation domain, deterministically. Every message from a given organisation lands in one place — no learning curve, no model guessing: your overrides first, then a fallback to the organisation domain via the Public Suffix List.
That last point is worth unpacking.
Organisation-domain grouping, explained
Most large senders use more than one address. Stripe might send from news@stripe.com and from notifications.stripe.com; a rule-by-rule approach needs a separate rule for each. Sortfully uses the Public Suffix List to recognise that both belong to the same organisation, so they land together in a single Stripe folder automatically. You map an organisation once instead of maintaining a growing list of address rules. If you have ever wrestled with brittle filters, our companion piece on Outlook rules vs automatic filing may help.
How much of your mail does each tool read?
This is where Sortfully takes a deliberately narrow approach.
- Tools that classify by importance or content generally need to look at more of the message to decide. That is a reasonable choice for what they do, and each vendor publishes its own privacy terms, which you should read directly.
- Sortfully is content-blind by design. It never reads message bodies or attachments — enforced by a hard-coded metadata allow-list and a CI build gate, so a build that tried to touch content would fail before it shipped. Sortfully reads only routing metadata: sender domain, folder, received time, read/unread state, categories, and identifiers.
For the full detail, see content-blind by design. There is a detailed log — on by default, switchable off during setup before you connect your mailbox — that adds only the subject line and sender address to your own audit log; nothing leaves for analysis.
AI versus deterministic rules
- SaneBox leans on AI/behavioural learning as a core part of its value.
- Clean Email combines rules and automation with grouping to handle volume.
- Sortfully uses no AI at all — no model, no classifier, no LLM, and your mail is never sent to any third-party AI service. Filing is fully deterministic, so you can always say exactly why a message went where it did. The honest trade-off: Sortfully will not infer "importance" for you, because that is not what it sets out to do.
Provider support: many providers versus Microsoft-native
This is a real, practical difference and may decide the matter on its own.
- SaneBox and Clean Email support many providers — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, IMAP and others. If your mail lives across several services, that breadth is valuable.
- Sortfully is Microsoft-native only. It works with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 — work or school accounts and personal Outlook.com — through Microsoft Graph. It does not support Gmail or other providers. If you live in Outlook, that focus means tighter integration; if you do not, a broader tool fits better.
Move or tag, and how reversible it is
- Sortfully gives you two modes per mapping: move mail into a subfolder, or tag it with a coloured category. Mix the two freely. By default it files messages only after you have read them, with an option to file on delivery. Everything is reversible with undo, and messages are always moved, never deleted.
- The competitors offer their own mixes of foldering, labelling, archiving and bulk actions; check their current sites for the exact behaviours and how each handles reversal.
At a glance
The Sortfully cells below are precise. The SaneBox and Clean Email cells are general, well-known characterisations only — please verify against each vendor's current site, as features and policies change.
| Dimension | Sortfully | SaneBox (general) | Clean Email (general) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mail provider support | Microsoft Outlook & Microsoft 365 only (via Graph) | Many providers (check site) | Many providers (check site) |
| How it decides filing | Deterministic: your overrides, then organisation domain (Public Suffix List) | AI / behavioural priority learning (check site) | Rules, grouping and bulk cleanup (check site) |
| Reads message content? | No — content-blind, enforced in code + CI gate | Reads more to classify; see their terms | Reads more to group/clean; see their terms |
| Uses AI? | No AI anywhere | AI is a core part of the approach (check site) | Rules/automation focus; check site for AI use |
| Move or tag | Move to subfolder or tag with a coloured category; mix freely | Foldering / labelling (check site) | Foldering, archiving, bulk actions (check site) |
| Pricing model | Per connected mailbox (to be confirmed) | Check current site | Check current site |
Pricing model
Pricing structures differ, and competitor prices change, so check their sites for current figures. Sortfully will be billed per connected mailbox, with Standard and Business tiers (Business adds team management); final pricing is being confirmed before launch. Sortfully is in a private, invite-only beta — see the pricing page for the latest.
Security and control
Beyond filing, Sortfully uses delegated per-mailbox access rather than tenant-wide permissions, encrypts tokens at rest, and is built to be GDPR and UK-GDPR ready. You get an exportable CSV audit log, can disconnect at any time, and have a 30-day data recovery window. As always, review each competitor's own security documentation for a like-for-like comparison.
Which is right for you?
There is no single winner — it depends on what you want your inbox tool to do.
- Choose SaneBox if you want a tool that learns what is important and triages priority across many providers, and you are comfortable with an AI-driven approach.
- Choose Clean Email if your main goal is bulk cleanup, unsubscribing, and rules across several providers.
- Choose Sortfully if you live in Outlook or Microsoft 365, want predictable, deterministic organisation by sender organisation, and care about a tool that is content-blind by design and uses no AI — with the privacy guarantee enforced in code, not just promised in a policy.
If that last description sounds like you, you can join the waitlist and we'll email you when it opens. And whichever tool you are weighing up, take a few minutes to read each vendor's current site and privacy terms before you decide.