Billions of people use Gmail every month and it’s not hard to see why. email is at the core of many workflows and gmail is a really great inbox. It’s familiar, sure, but it’s also powerful, with features like automatic filters.
And yet, there are a lot of things that gmail can’t do, at least not right out of the box. this is where gmail plugins and extensions come into play. These tools make Gmail even more powerful by adding new features or connecting other apps. These are some of the best gmail plugins and extensions out there.
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gmail addons: add features without installing anything
third-party extensions and services: add powerful features to gmail
exit your inbox with zapier
gmail addons: add features without installing anything
Google added a panel to the side of Gmail in the summer of 2018. This row of icons is easy to miss, but you shouldn’t. Clicking on one of these icons opens a sidebar, and this sidebar is where the gmail plugins are located.
by default, there are three icons, all google applications: calendar, tasks and save. these aren’t really plugins because they are enabled by default, but we start here because they show you what a good gmail plugin can do. let’s start with google calendar. click that icon and to see today’s appointments in the sidebar, as shown above. this is already very useful, right?
But the real magic happens when you open an email. you can turn any email into an event on your calendar with a couple of clicks. tasks and continue working in a similar way, allowing you to add items from your inbox to a to-do list or a note-taking app, respectively.
It’s hard to overstate how useful this can be, especially if email is central to your workflow. But we don’t have to stop with these three apps because there are many gmail plugins that you can install. To get started, simply click the + button at the bottom of the sidebar.
This will load the google workspace marketplace for gmail, which contains all sorts of integrations you can add to this sidebar. These plugins also work on the mobile version of Gmail, which is not the case with any of the browser extensions that we will describe later. these are some of the best gmail plugins we’ve found.
dropbox or box: quickly share files in the cloud
stop uploading files to gmail if they are already in the cloud. dropbox for gmail and box for gmail allow you to browse and attach files from those two cloud storage services, which means you can share files or entire folders with just a couple of clicks. This is particularly useful if you’re using a chromebook or mobile device, but even on your computer, it’s nice to have direct access to your cloud storage. It’s also possible to save email attachments directly to your cloud storage, saving you the hassle of downloading them only to re-upload them so you can send a file in an email.
price of dropbox for gmail: free
box for gmail price: free
trello: turn any email into a card
Want to quickly send the content of an email to trello? trello for gmail makes it easy. just open an email, click the trello icon in the sidebar, then choose a destination board and list. By default, the subject will be the name of the card and the body of the email will become the description, but you can edit everything before sending it to trello. it’s a simple integration, sure, but useful for project management.
trello for gmail price: free.
zoom: start or schedule a video chat
Sometimes a video or voice call can quickly resolve something that would otherwise require five emails. Zoom for Gmail makes it easy to start a video conference with anyone you email. just open an email, click the zoom button in the sidebar, and then send the invite to everyone in the thread. you can start the meeting immediately or schedule it for later. it’s a useful tool, especially if everyone in your organization already uses zoom.
zoom for gmail price: free.
zapier: instantly send emails to other apps
many apps don’t offer a gmail plugin, which is where zapier for gmail comes in. This simple tool allows you to send your currently open email to apps like Asana, Evernote, Slack, and OmniFocus with a single click. you’ll set up a custom automation, called zap, and once you do, it’s just a matter of opening the sidebar and clicking a button.
zapier for gmail price: free.
third party extensions and services: add powerful features to gmail
gmail plugins are great but not that powerful: they can add information to the sidebar, and that’s it. this is by design, but it is not always enough. Fortunately, there are also browser extensions and third-party services, giving you even more control to customize your Gmail settings. These won’t work on the Gmail mobile app, sure, but they’re powerful tools that give you even more control. here are some of the best.
todoist for gmail (chrome): integrate a more powerful to-do list
many tasks start and end with communication, so having your to-do list close at hand while you check emails can help you keep all your to-dos in one place. Gmail offers built-in support for Google Tasks, but what if you prefer Todoist, one of the most popular to-do apps on the planet right now? that’s where todoist for gmail comes in. This browser extension adds Todoist to Gmail, in the form of a popup that sits next to any email you’re composing. here you can quickly manage your tasks and even turn an email into a task with a couple of clicks. this is required for anyone who uses both gmail and todoist, so install it now if that’s you.
todoist price for gmail: free
inbox when ready (chrome, firefox, edge): hide emails by default
we’ve all done it. you open gmail, intending to send an email to a specific person. sees some unread emails, so opens them first. then you forget who you intended to email. is a problem, and inbox when ready can help. this chrome extension locks your inbox when you first open gmail and offers a button you can click to open it. this means you won’t see any email when you first open the app, which hopefully forces you to be a bit more intentional about when it is and isn’t the time to look at your unread messages. now you have no excuse to put off writing that important email.
inbox pricing when you’re ready: The free pro version is $4 per month.
checker plus for gmail (chrome): check multiple email addresses without opening gmail
You probably have multiple gmail accounts: perhaps one for work and one for personal use. switching between those accounts in your browser can be a hassle. That’s where Google Chrome Extension Checker Plus for Gmail comes in. Click the Checker Plus icon in your browser’s extensions bar and you’ll get easy access to all your inboxes in one window. There you can manage all your emails as you would in a dedicated tab for Gmail: read, archive, delete or mark messages as spam, or even compose a new message or send a reply, no matter what page you’re on. It’s the fastest way to check emails without having gmail open.
checker plus price: free
clearbit connect (chrome): find out more about your contacts
Ever get an email from a stranger and wonder who that person is? clearbit connect can tell you. or maybe you’re the stranger who needs to send cold emails to others. Clearbit Connect can help you there too, helping you find email addresses by company, rather than having to search for them yourself. when composing an email, click the clearbit icon to search for company email addresses. Or, when viewing an email, clearbit connect will offer information about the sender and company, along with social links, in a sidebar.
price for clearbit connect: free (up to 100 email lookups per month)
sortd (chrome): Turn emails into to-dos on a kanban board
Looking at a long list of email messages is neither inspiring nor encouraging. If you use your email inbox as a to-do list but want a better bird’s-eye view of what’s to come, check out sortd. gmail plugin transforms your inbox into a kanban board. (If you’re not already familiar with it, kanban is a popular project management method that gives you a holistic view of everything you’re working on, with cards arranged in lists on a simple drag-and-drop board.) sortd, you can drag emails to custom lists for better organization. you can have lists that correspond to gtd’s productivity philosophy, such as next actions and someday/maybe, or you can have your own special lists. Either way, this is a better visual way to classify and group your emails at a glance.
price ordered: free; premium features like additional dashboards starting at $6 per month per user
hubspot sales (chrome): track emails and manage your contacts
hubspot, the customer relationship management (crm) tool, helps thousands of businesses manage their leads and convert them into users. With the hubspot sales chrome extension, you can get that marketing power delivered to your inbox. When viewing an email, for example, you can get more details about the sender, like details about the company they work for, and add the contact to hubspot with a single click. save emails you send as templates to quickly reply to similar emails, see who has opened your emails, log emails into hubspot crm by clicking a checkbox, and get other hubspot sales features within gmail without having to to switch to another tab or app.
hubspot sale price: free
mailstrom (web): get zero inbox
Do you have hundreds or even thousands of messages in your inbox weighing you down? You could declare “email bankruptcy,” archive all those emails, and try to start over, but what if you lose some important ones? mailstrom helps you quickly go through large batches of emails at once and handle them once and for all. The app groups related emails into different categories, such as send time, email size, and sender, giving you more control than standard gmail filters.
mailstrom pricing: Free for up to 5,000 new emails; basic plan from $9/month
exit your inbox with zapier
Your inbox probably isn’t where you want to spend the day, so instead of adding workflows within gmail, use zapier to automatically take your next steps elsewhere. If Zapier’s Gmail plugin isn’t right for you, you can still use Zapier to automate your emails.
Here’s how to automate your inbox with zapier, so you can do things like turn emails into tasks, automatically save attachments, keep an email log, or automatically send personalized emails. you can even parse emails with zapier’s email parser to have templates of incoming emails, like amazon receipts and contact form emails, bypass your inbox and go straight to a spreadsheet, email app accounting or a project management tool. Learn more in our email analytics guide.
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how to automate your inbox with an email scanner
automate your inbox with these tips, tools and templates
This post was originally published in November 2017 by Melanie Pinola.
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