Notion Mail reviews (2025): A Gmail killer or just a pretty wrapper?

Let’s be honest, Notion is trying to take over our entire digital life. What started as our favorite app for notes and wikis has grown into a full-blown ecosystem, first with Notion Calendar and now with Notion Mail. The ambition is pretty obvious: they’re building a suite of tools to go head-to-head with giants like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.

With every new launch, the hype is massive. But so is the big question everyone’s asking: Is Notion Mail actually a game-changing new email client, or is it just Gmail with a slick new coat of paint?

We’ve waded through all the latest Notion Mail reviews and spent some quality time with the app to give you the real story. We’ll break down its features, its AI smarts (or lack thereof), its surprising limitations, and the pricing, so you can figure out if it’s the right inbox for you.

What is Notion Mail?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, you need to know what Notion Mail is, and what it isn’t. This isn’t a new email service like Gmail or Outlook that gives you a new address. Think of it more as a stylish "wrapper" that you put on top of your existing Gmail account to give it a fresh look and a few new tricks.

Its backstory is also kind of interesting. Notion bought a privacy-first email client called Skiff, which was a big deal for its end-to-end encryption. But instead of building on that, they repurposed the tech into a Gmail-only client and ditched the privacy features that Skiff users loved. That’s definitely something to keep in mind if data security is a top concern for you.

A Notion-style skin for Gmail

The biggest selling point for Notion Mail is its design. It copies the clean, minimalist vibe of the main Notion app, promising a calmer, more organized inbox than the chaos we’ve all come to accept from the standard Gmail interface. For now, it only works with Gmail and Google Workspace accounts. If you’re on Outlook, iCloud, or anything else, you’ll have to sit this one out.

Notion Mail’s features and user experience

While the minimalist design is the first thing you’ll notice, Notion Mail does have a few unique tricks up its sleeve to help you organize your inbox differently. Let’s review the key features that make it stand out from your regular old Gmail.

Custom inbox views

Instead of Gmail’s standard tabs (Primary, Promotions, Social), Notion Mail lets you build your own custom "Views." If you use Notion, think of them like filtered databases. You could create a view that only shows emails from your top clients, another for newsletters you actually want to read, and a third for all your flight confirmations. You get to define the rules based on sender, keywords, or labels.

But here’s the catch: setting up these views is a manual, time-consuming process. It's all on you.

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Unlike tools built for business, they don’t come with pre-built workflows for common tasks like handling support tickets or tracking sales leads. You’re the one who has to do all the heavy lifting.

The Notion block editor and snippets

When it’s time to write an email, Notion Mail uses the same block editor and slash commands (the / key) that you already know from the main app. If you’re a Notion veteran, this feels incredibly natural and smooth.

It also has a feature called "Snippets," which is a nice upgrade from Gmail’s canned responses. You can save and reuse email templates with dynamic placeholders for things like a person’s name or a specific link. If you send a lot of repetitive emails, this is a genuinely handy feature that makes composing messages feel much more efficient than in Gmail.

Notion Mail’s AI and integration: A big missed opportunity?

Alright, this is where we get to the biggest gap between what everyone hoped for and what Notion actually delivered. It’s a complaint you’ll see in almost all Notion Mail reviews. We were all dreaming of a deep, seamless connection between our emails and our Notion workspaces. The reality? It’s not even close.

AI-powered auto-labeling and drafts

Notion Mail does have a couple of AI features. You can use plain English to create rules that automatically label incoming emails, and you can ask the AI to help you write replies. On paper, that sounds fantastic.

But there are two problems. First, these features aren’t really free. The app itself is, but its best AI tools are locked behind a paid Notion AI subscription, which is an extra $10 per user per month. The free plan just gives you a small taste, so the "free" app quickly becomes a paid one if you want the features they advertise most. Second, the AI-generated drafts often sound a bit robotic and generic, since the AI doesn’t learn your personal writing style from your past emails.

The surprisingly weak Notion integration

The integration with the main Notion app is, to put it bluntly, a letdown. You can @-mention a Notion page to drop a link to it in an email. And… that’s about it.

This is probably the biggest disappointment for anyone already living in Notion. You can’t turn an email into a to-do item. You can’t link a customer email to their profile in your CRM database. You can’t use an email to update a project’s status. The connection is superficial, not functional.

For any team that needs to turn conversations into action, this is a deal-breaker. A support team using a helpdesk like Zendesk or Intercom needs AI that does more than just link to a document. This is where a purpose-built tool shines. For example, an AI support agent like eesel AI connects directly to your helpdesk and all your knowledge sources (including Notion) to actually resolve support tickets, draft replies that sound like your best agents, and sort incoming issues automatically. It turns chatter into trackable results.

Key limitations and potential deal-breakers

While Notion Mail is a decent first attempt, a few major limitations stop it from being a serious email client for most people, especially teams trying to get work done.

It’s a solo act: No team features

This one is huge. Notion Mail is built for one person and one person only. There’s no shared inbox, no way to collaborate on a draft, and you can’t assign emails or leave internal notes for your colleagues.

This makes it completely useless for any team that relies on email to work together, like customer support, sales, or recruiting. In contrast, platforms like eesel AI are designed for teamwork from day one. They offer tools like an AI Copilot that helps multiple agents write better replies faster and an AI Agent that can handle frontline questions on its own, freeing up your human team for the tougher problems.

No unified inbox

You can link more than one Gmail account to Notion Mail, but there’s no unified inbox to see everything at once. You have to click and switch between each account manually. This makes managing a work email, a personal email, and a side-hustle email a total pain. For anyone juggling multiple inboxes, this is a non-starter.

Limited app availability

At launch, Notion Mail was only available on the web and a Mac app, which was a major roadblock for anyone who needs to check email on their phone. They’ve since released an iOS app, but it’s still missing some features from the desktop version. And if you’re a Windows user, you’re still out of luck, no dedicated app for you.

Notion Mail pricing

The pricing can be a little confusing, so let’s lay it out clearly. The Notion Mail client is free to use with any Notion plan, even the free personal one. But, and this is a big but, the flashy AI features for organizing and drafting emails are locked behind the paid Notion AI add-on.

The bottom line: To get the full experience that Notion advertises, you’re looking at spending at least $10 per user per month, on top of any other Notion subscription you might already be paying for.

Who is Notion Mail really for?

After digging through all the Notion Mail reviews and trying it out ourselves, the final word is pretty clear. Notion Mail is a beautifully designed email client that offers a clean, quiet alternative to the often overwhelming Gmail web app.

But its weaknesses are just as clear.

• It’s a good fit for: Solo Notion fans who only use a single Gmail account, do most of their work on a desktop, and don’t mind paying extra for AI features to make their inbox look a little nicer.

• It’s not a good fit for: Anyone who manages multiple email accounts, teams that need to work together, Outlook or iCloud users, people who live on their phones, or businesses that need AI to solve actual problems, not just tidy up an inbox.

At the end of the day, Notion Mail feels more like a cool experiment than a true replacement for your current email client or a serious tool for work. It’s a nice-to-have for a very specific type of person, but it’s definitely not the Gmail killer we were hoping for.

A better choice for team productivity and support

While Notion Mail is busy giving your personal inbox a makeover, real teams need tools that actually improve productivity and automate workflows.

eesel AI connects with the tools your team already lives in, like Zendesk, Intercom, Slack, and yes, even Notion, to deliver AI agents that can resolve support tickets, draft replies in your brand’s voice, and triage issues 24/7. Instead of just reorganizing your inbox, you can put it on autopilot. You can get started in just a few minutes and see for yourself how much time your team can save.