Shortwave alternative if you want the AI check without replacing Gmail
Shortwave replaces Gmail with an AI-first client from $24 a seat. Presend stays inside Gmail and checks what you send — secrets, missing attachments, AI slop, your own rules — for $3. It does not summarise, search or triage; that is the point.
Shortwave is for people who want AI to read their inbox for them and are willing to move into a new client to get it. Presend is for people who want to stay in Gmail and have AI watch what goes out. They do not overlap. If summaries and AI search are what you use Shortwave for, stay. If you tried Shortwave for the safety net and found the migration was the cost, Presend is the safety net without the move.
What Shortwave does
Shortwave is an AI-native email client that replaces Gmail's interface with bundles, thread summaries, natural-language AI search over years of history, and an AI writer. Plans are per seat and billed annually — Business around $24, Premier $36, Max $100 on annual billing, higher month to month — with a 14-day trial and no free tier. It is Gmail-only.
Why people look elsewhere
- It replaces Gmail. The whole team migrates or nobody does, and the mobile app is part of the move.
- No free tier and $24-plus per seat a month adds up across a team.
- Gmail only; Outlook users are out.
- All the intelligence points inward. It reads your inbox brilliantly and does nothing about what you send.
Side by side
| Shortwave | Presend | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Replacement Gmail client | Extension inside Gmail / Outlook Web |
| Thread summaries, AI search, bundles | ✓ | – |
| AI writing from a prompt | ✓AI Write | –rewrites your draft only |
| Stops a send carrying a secret or PII | – | ✓ |
| Attachment / link mentioned but missing | – | ✓ |
| AI-slop and voice check | – | ✓ |
| Your own rules | – | ✓plain English, one severity each |
| Outlook support | – | ✓Outlook Web |
| Works in Slack, LinkedIn, other web apps | – | ✓ |
| Free tier | –14-day trial | ✓25 AI checks a day |
| Pricing | From about $24 per seat monthly on annual billing | Free / $3 / $29 per user |
Inbound Tools and Outbound Tools
Shortwave and Presend are both "AI for email" and they have almost nothing in common. Shortwave reads. It summarises threads, searches years of history in plain language, bundles newsletters, and drafts replies. Presend writes nothing and reads nothing in your inbox. It looks at one thing: the draft in front of you, at the moment you send it.
If your problem is too much incoming email, Shortwave is a good answer and Presend is irrelevant. If your problem is the message you cannot take back — the pasted key, the missing attachment, the customer's number in the wrong thread, the draft that reads like a chatbot — Shortwave has no opinion, and Presend was built for exactly it.
The Migration Question
Shortwave replaces Gmail. New interface, new mobile app, and for a team, a decision everyone makes together or not at all. That is fine if the payoff is a client you prefer. It is a heavy price if what you wanted was one feature.
Presend is an extension. Gmail stays Gmail; Outlook on the web stays Outlook. A pill appears near the send button, a panel shows findings beside the draft, and the send gesture is intercepted only when a finding is classed as risk. One person can install it. The team does not have to agree.
Gmail-Only Versus Everywhere
Shortwave works with Gmail accounts. Presend runs in Gmail and Outlook Web, guards plain-Enter sends in Slack, checks LinkedIn DMs and posts and X, and covers every other textarea and contenteditable on the web — Notion, Jira, Zendesk, HubSpot — found structurally rather than by a per-site list. Rules are filtered by channel, so email checks stay in email while secrets, PII and slop run everywhere.
What the Check Consists Of
Ten built-in rules: credentials by known prefix and by sentence label, SSN and card patterns, attachment and link mentioned but missing, external recipients listed by address, empty subject, missing sign-off, AI phrasing with suggested replacements, banned phrases, and a company named in the subject but not the body.
Then two engines. A slop detector — a deterministic catalog of model tells — returns clean, traces or slop and needs no history. A voice check compares the draft against your own sent messages, locally, and returns a verdict with the drifting sentences underlined; it abstains until it has enough of your writing rather than guessing.
Then your rules, written in plain English with one severity each, shared across the org on Team.
Pricing
Shortwave has no free tier: a 14-day trial, then from about $24 per seat a month on annual billing. Presend is free for twenty-five AI checks a day with local rule checks and voice scoring unlimited, $3 a month for Pro, $29 per user per month for Team. Different products, different prices, and no reason you cannot run both — Presend's extension works inside Shortwave's web client too, since it is a compose box like any other.
Stay with Shortwave if
- AI search over years of email is part of how you work now.
- You like the bundled inbox and the migration is already done.
- Everyone is on Gmail and nobody needs Outlook.
Switch to Presend if
- You want to stay in the Gmail interface you know.
- You have Outlook users on the team.
- The thing you need AI for is the message going out, not the ones coming in.
Pricing, checked September 11, 2026
- Shortwave
- Business about $24 per seat per month on annual billing ($30 monthly), Premier $36 ($45), Max $100 ($120). 14-day trial, no free tier. Checked September 2026 against shortwave.com/pricing and independent roundups.
- Presend
- Free: 25 AI checks a day, local rule checks and voice scoring unlimited. Pro $3/month. Team $29/user/month.
Vendor pricing changes; verify at the vendor's own page before you decide.
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