Superhuman vs HEY Email: Which Premium Email Client Wins in 2026?

Superhuman launched in 2019 after years of hype and a waitlist that felt endless. The pitch was simple: email, but insanely fast. It's basically a souped-up interface that sits on top of your Gmail or Outlook account. You keep your existing email address, and Superhuman becomes your client.

The whole thing is built around keyboard shortcuts - like, aggressively built around them. If you're a mouse user, this isn't for you. The target audience is executives, founders, and people who get hundreds of emails daily and need to process them at lightning speed. I've been using it since late 2023 and honestly, going back to regular Gmail feels like driving a minivan after a sports car.

HEY came out in 2020 from the Basecamp folks (now 37signals), and they had Opinions with a capital O about how email should work. Instead of making traditional email faster, they asked: what if the whole inbox model is broken? So they rebuilt it from scratch. The Screener is the headline feature - new people can't email you until you approve them. Sounds extreme, but it completely stops spam and cold outreach.

You also get separate areas for newsletters (The Feed), receipts (Paper Trail), and the Reply Later queue for emails you've read but need to respond to later. The catch? You need a @hey.com email address, or you pay significantly more for custom domain support. That migration hurdle is real.

The speed is what you're paying for. Everything loads instantly, keyboard shortcuts execute before you finish thinking about them, and the whole app feels like it's running on caffeine. The split inbox is smart: it learns what's important versus what's a newsletter or notification. Search is lightning fast.

The design is clean, minimal, maybe a bit too minimal for some people's taste. There's a mobile app for iOS and Android that's solid, though honestly the desktop experience is where Superhuman really shines. If you're on the go a lot, the mobile app works fine but doesn't have the same wow factor.

HEY's interface is... divisive. Some people love the opinionated design, others find it frustrating. It's not trying to be Gmail, which means you need to rewire your email habits. The Feed looks like a news reader, Reply Later is its own queue, and everything is very deliberately separated.

Performance is fine, not blazingly fast like Superhuman, but perfectly acceptable. The mobile apps (iOS and Android) are well designed and actually mirror the desktop philosophy pretty well. One thing I appreciate: no ads, no tracking pixels loaded without your permission. Your email is just email, not a data collection operation.

Superhuman's workflow is all about speed and efficiency. Hit 'E' to archive, 'H' to snooze, 'Cmd+K' to search. You can blast through 50 emails in minutes once you've got the muscle memory down. The auto-complete for contacts is scary good. Reminders to follow up if people don't reply is clutch for anyone doing sales or partnerships.

Split inbox means newsletters and notifications auto-filter out of your main view. It's basically Gmail on steroids with better shortcuts and smarter sorting. The read receipts tell you when people open your emails, which feels a bit invasive but is useful for business. You can disable them if you're not into that.

HEY's workflow is fundamentally different. Step one: screen your senders. Yes or no, do you want to hear from this person? If no, you'll never see their emails again. If yes, they go to your Imbox (yes, Imbox, not Inbox). Newsletters go to The Feed automatically. Receipts and transactional emails go to Paper Trail.

When you read an email but aren't ready to respond, toss it in Reply Later. The whole system is designed to reduce decision fatigue and stress. The trade-off? If you're used to traditional email, there's a learning curve. Some people love it, some people find it constraining. Reddit's pretty split on this one.

Works with Gmail and Outlook accounts, which covers most people. Calendar integration is solid. You can use it with Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar. If you're in the Apple ecosystem, it plays nice with macOS and iOS.

There's a Chrome extension, desktop apps for Mac and Windows, and mobile apps. It doesn't integrate with a ton of third-party tools, but honestly, it doesn't need to - it's just an email client. If you've built workflows around Gmail filters and labels, you can keep using those. Superhuman adds its own layer on top without breaking your existing setup.

HEY is pretty isolated by design. There's not a ton of third-party integrations because the whole philosophy is to keep email simple and focused. Works on web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Calendar integration is basic - you can see events but it's not trying to be your calendar app.

If you use Basecamp, there's some cross-integration there, but that's about it. The big limitation: if your workflow depends on Gmail integrations with Slack, Zapier, or whatever else, you'll need to rethink things. HEY is deliberately self-contained.

Split inbox is the big one - automatically categorizes emails into Important, Other, and Later. Snippets let you save canned responses for emails you send repeatedly. Reminders for follow-ups are genuinely useful. The undo send works flawlessly (you get a few seconds buffer).

Social media tracking tells you if someone's on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. when you're emailing them, which is handy for context. The onboarding is interactive and actually teaches you the shortcuts instead of just dumping a cheat sheet on you. Also, you can schedule sends for specific times, which is clutch for international teams.

The Screener is the killer feature. Every new sender needs your approval before they can email you. No more spam, no more random cold pitches. The Feed keeps newsletters readable instead of drowning your inbox. Paper Trail for receipts means you can actually find that Amazon confirmation when you need it.

Reply Later queue is brilliant for inbox zero people. There's a 'Set Aside' feature for emails you want to reference later but don't need to respond to. Built-in notes let you annotate emails for yourself. And the privacy thing: tracking pixels don't load unless you explicitly allow them, so senders don't know if you've opened their email.

Straight up: $30/month, or $300/year if you pay annually. No free tier, though you get a 7-day trial to test it out. For that price, you're getting speed, shortcuts, split inbox, and all the features. It's expensive as hell for an email client.

Is it worth it? Depends how much you value speed and how many emails you're processing. If you're getting 200+ emails a day and they're actually important, the time savings might justify the cost. If you're getting 20 emails a day, this is massive overkill and you should just stick with free Gmail.

Personal account is $99/year for a @hey.com address. HEY for Work (custom domain) is $999/year for your first user, then $99/year for each additional user. There's a 14-day free trial where you get a real @hey.com address to test everything. The personal price is way more reasonable than Superhuman's monthly fee, but the migration hurdle is significant.

You're not just switching email clients, you're switching email addresses. That's a bigger ask. For businesses, the $999/year for custom domain support is steep compared to Google Workspace at $6/user/month, but you're paying for the philosophy and privacy features.