The Superhuman Alternative That Automates the Email, Not Just the Triage

TL;DR: Superhuman is the best speed-and-shortcuts email client on the market — and it costs ~$25–33 per user per month. Owlu is a free, AI-native email client that takes a different bet: instead of helping you process email faster, it runs your email for you through chat-built workflows with human-in-the-loop control.

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See the side-by-side comparison

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Why people look for a Superhuman alternative

If you're here, you've probably hit one of these:

• "It's great, but it's $30/user/month — forever." Superhuman is a premium-priced tool, and for a solo lawyer, a one-person business, a freelancer, or a five-person team, that's a real recurring line item. Multiply by seats and it adds up fast.
• "Faster triage didn't change the volume." Superhuman makes inbox-zero feel achievable. But you're still the one reading, writing, and sending every email. The volume doesn't shrink.
• "The AI is nice, but it's still an assistant." Superhuman AI drafts replies and summarizes threads. That's useful, but it doesn't send a personalized newsletter to 200 clients, auto-schedule meetings from inbound threads, or run a multi-step follow-up sequence. It helps you write one email faster.
• "I don't want to learn a shortcut system." Superhuman is optimized for keyboard-first power users. If you don't live in shortcuts — or don't want to — most of the value evaporates.
• "My inbox has sensitive content." Legal, patent, medical, and financial correspondence sometimes rules out any tool that stores email in a third-party cloud.

If any of those sound familiar, keep reading.

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Owlu in one paragraph

Owlu is an AI-native email client where you set up automations by chatting or building a no-code workflow. It can send personalized emails at scale, auto-schedule meetings, extract insights from your inbox, generate documents, and run web searches — all triggered by email events. A human-in-the-loop layer lets you review and approve AI actions before they go out, and your feedback sharpens the automation over time. Email data stays on your device, and we're Google CASA Tier 2 certified. The core AI features are free.

Start using Owlu →

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Superhuman vs Owlu — at a glance

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Where they really differ

1. Different jobs to be done

Superhuman is unambiguously the best tool on the market if your job is "get through this inbox faster." Keyboard shortcuts, Split Inbox, Snippets, Read Statuses — every design decision is in service of triage speed. Owlu is built for a different job: "I don't want to be the one processing these emails at all." Instead of shaving seconds off each email, you set up a workflow once and Owlu handles the repetitive flow — watching for inbound, classifying, replying in your tone, logging to a database, scheduling follow-ups.

If your real problem is triage speed, Superhuman is the right tool. If your real problem is that email is work you'd rather not be doing, that's what Owlu is for.

2. Pricing and the solo-professional math

Superhuman's pricing reflects what it is: a premium tool for people who can expense it. Starter is ~$25/user/month annually, Business ~$33, Enterprise custom. For a solo lawyer, a freelancer, a one-person founder, or a five-person team, that's a real monthly cost that compounds with headcount. Owlu's core AI features are free. The Free plan limits you to one workflow sheet; the planned Pro tier (~$30/month) removes that limit. You can get the full product running without a credit card.

3. Assistant versus agent

Superhuman added AI in 2024 (Superhuman AI: auto-draft, instant reply, summarize). It's capable, and it's honest about what it is: an assistant layer that helps you process email faster. Owlu is AI-native from the foundation. Workflows run end-to-end — a single workflow can receive an inbound email, extract structured data, compose a personalized reply, route it through a human-review gate, send it, update a contact record, and schedule a follow-up in your calendar. The AI isn't helping you do your email. It's doing the email.

4. Keyboard-first versus chat-first

Superhuman's interaction model is keyboard shortcuts you learn once and use forever. Owlu's is chat and visual workflow-building. You describe what you want in plain language and Owlu returns a workflow you can review and adjust. Neither is universally better — they just fit different people. Power users with years of keyboard muscle memory love Superhuman. People who want to describe an outcome and have something work love Owlu.

5. Personalized mailings — the unaddressed middle

Here's a gap neither Superhuman nor traditional mail tools close: sending many personalized emails. Superhuman helps you write one at a time, with Snippets for reusable blocks. Mailchimp or Stibee help you send one generic email to many people. Owlu sits in the middle: take a list of 200 clients, and each one gets a genuinely tailored email based on their context from your past correspondence, every draft reviewable before it sends. For a solo lawyer sending a weekly client newsletter, that's the capability gap that matters most.

6. Data handling

Superhuman stores email in the cloud, like most modern email clients, and that works fine for the majority of teams. Owlu stores email data locally on your device, and the AI layer talks to that local store. User content isn't used to train models. We're Google CASA Tier 2 certified. For sensitive-inbox professionals — lawyers, patent offices, consultants under NDA — that's often the deciding factor.

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Who should stay with Superhuman

Be honest with yourself. Superhuman is the right tool if:

• You process 100+ emails per day and every second of triage time matters
• You've already built muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts and love working that way
• You value the polished UX and it's part of why you're productive
• You can expense the per-seat cost without thinking about it
• Your main pain is triage speed, not volume or repetition
• Your use case is individual productivity, not team workflow automation

Who should switch to Owlu

Owlu fits if:

• You're a solo professional or a small team (1–50 people) where per-seat pricing stings
• You realized faster triage didn't actually shrink your email workload
• You run repeatable email flows: client newsletters, intake emails, follow-ups, admin correspondence
• You want the AI to do things, not just suggest things
• Your inbox is sensitive (legal, patent, medical, financial) and local-first storage matters
• You'd rather describe a workflow than memorize shortcuts

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What switching actually looks like

You don't leave Gmail. Owlu is a client that sits on top of your existing Gmail account, so the data switching cost is close to zero:

1. Connect your Gmail account via OAuth — permissions explained up front.
2. Describe your first workflow in chat. For example: "When a new client intake email arrives, classify it by matter type, draft a tailored response referencing our previous threads, and put it in a review queue for me to approve before sending."
3. Review the generated workflow, tweak triggers and review steps, run it.
4. Keep Superhuman running in parallel during the transition if you've built up muscle memory you don't want to lose overnight.

There's one honest cost: if you've internalized Superhuman's keyboard shortcuts, you'll have to adjust to a different interaction model. Owlu is chat-first and workflow-first. The trade you're making is shortcut muscle memory for automation that runs without you.

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Early user voices

"메일링을 자동화할 수 있으면 좋을 것 같다." — early user, solo professional

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"직원이 메일 회신을 안 줘서 거래처와의 거래가 끊겼다." — the exact scenario Owlu is built to prevent.

We're early. We don't have customer logos to show off yet. What we have is a product built around one specific problem: email is the center of a lot of businesses, and almost nobody has connected it to real action.

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FAQ

Is Owlu actually free? What's the catch? The Free plan is limited to one workflow sheet. The planned Pro tier (~$30/month) removes that limit. Core AI features — chat-built workflows, personalized sending, human-in-the-loop review — are on the free plan.

Do I need to leave Gmail or my existing email provider? No. Owlu connects to your existing Gmail account via OAuth. Your emails stay where they are. (Superhuman also sits on top of Gmail/Outlook, so this is similar.)

How is Owlu different from Superhuman AI? Superhuman AI is a writing assistant — it helps you draft, summarize, and reply faster. Owlu is a workflow engine — it runs full multi-step email flows (receive → classify → act → log → follow up) with optional human review at any step.

I love Superhuman's speed. Will I lose that? Owlu is optimized for different work. If your priority is keyboard-speed triage, Superhuman is genuinely better at that specific job. Owlu wins when your priority shifts from "process email faster" to "stop being the one processing these emails."

Can I use Owlu on a free Gmail account? Yes. You don't need a paid Workspace plan — or a paid anything — to use Owlu's core AI features.

Is my email data safe? Owlu is Google CASA Tier 2 certified. Email data is stored locally on your device, and user content is not used to train models.

Can I run Owlu alongside Superhuman? Yes — they both sit on top of Gmail, so you can keep Superhuman for triage while letting Owlu run workflows in the background. Many people do this during a transition.

What can Owlu do that Superhuman can't? Personalized mailings to contact lists, autonomous meeting scheduling, insight extraction across email history, document generation, web search as part of a workflow, and multi-step automations with structured human-review gates.

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Start free

If Superhuman's speed is the answer to your email problem, stay with Superhuman. If the answer you actually need is "less email to process, not faster processing," Owlu is built for that — and it's free to start.

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See how workflows work →

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