Shortwave

What is Shortwave?

Shortwave is an email application that connects directly to Gmail or Google Workspace. Rather than functioning as a general-purpose chatbot or a separate mailbox provider, it works with the user's existing email and reflects actions such as archiving, labeling, and deleting back to Gmail.

Its main purpose is to reduce the manual work involved in reading, finding, writing, and organizing email. The AI assistant can work with messages and threads, while Shortwave's inbox, labels, todos, calendar features, shared threads, and integrations provide a broader workflow around email.

How people use Shortwave

Searching and understanding email

Shortwave supports natural-language email search, so users can describe the information they need instead of relying only on exact keywords. The assistant can search across email, summarize long conversations, identify action items, extract dates, and analyze multiple messages. It can also analyze supported attachments, including PDF and text files.

This makes Shortwave more than a conventional email search box, but it remains focused on the user's mailbox rather than acting as a general research engine. Its value is highest when the required context is already in email.

Writing and responding

The assistant can draft replies, rewrite existing messages, and adjust tone. It can use previous sent email to provide more personalized writing assistance. Users can also ask it to create scheduling messages or translate email content. These features are intended to speed up routine correspondence while leaving the user in control of the final message.

Inbox organization and recurring rules

Shortwave can identify important messages, group action items into todos, archive lower-priority email, and apply labels. Its AI filters allow users to describe inbox rules in natural language. Depending on the instruction, a filter can label, archive, delete, star, or prioritize incoming messages.

This is one of the product's more distinctive workflows: instead of manually building every rule around fixed conditions, users can describe the type of email they want handled. The usefulness of the result still depends on reviewing rules and ensuring that important messages are not incorrectly classified.

Calendar and team workflows

Shortwave connects email activity with calendar tasks. It can check availability, create calendar events, extract event details from messages, and help write scheduling emails. Teams can share live threads, add private comments, assign owners, use shared labels, and track completion around email conversations.

These capabilities make Shortwave particularly relevant to teams whose work is coordinated through email. It is not a full project-management workspace, but it can turn conversations into more visible tasks and ownership signals.

Integrations and automation

Paid plans include AI integrations and MCP support. Shortwave can connect the assistant to services such as Notion, Asana, HubSpot, Zapier, Salesforce, Slack, and Calendar, with availability and setup depending on the integration. MCP support can extend email workflows into external tools, although the documentation describes it as beta and limits the number of active tools.

For example, an email-based workflow might use the assistant to find a customer conversation, summarize it, and work with connected business information. This is different from using a standalone automation platform such as Zapier Agents: Shortwave starts with the mailbox and email context, while an automation product generally coordinates actions across a wider set of applications.

Local MCP servers are supported in the desktop application. Users evaluating this functionality should account for the additional setup and the fact that Shortwave does not provide a verified general-purpose public API.

Platforms and account requirements

Shortwave is available on the web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Direct sign-in requires Gmail or Google Workspace. Other providers may be usable through forwarding and Gmail Send As configuration, but Microsoft 365 and Exchange are not directly supported.

This dependency is central to the product choice. Shortwave is best understood as an AI-focused Gmail client, not as a universal email application that can natively manage any provider. Organizations built primarily around Microsoft 365 or Exchange should treat that limitation as a major evaluation point.

Pricing and access

Shortwave has a continuing free plan and offers a 14-day trial for paid functionality. The current paid plans documented in the research are Business at $30 per seat per month, Premier at $45 per seat per month, and Max at $120 per seat per month.

Paid tiers primarily expand AI usage, search history, integrations, web browsing, attachment analysis, and AI-filter capacity. Usage varies by plan and intelligence level. For example, the documented Business limits include roughly 150–300 Standard-intelligence AI requests per day, while the plans differ in the number of threads that can be included in AI search and the number of AI-powered filters available. These limits can also vary with request complexity.

An enterprise-specific plan was not verified. Larger organizations should therefore review the documented administrative, security, identity, and usage requirements rather than assume that the highest listed plan provides every enterprise control.

Privacy and data considerations

Shortwave processes email content, attachments, and related account data to provide search, threading, labeling, AI assistance, and other features. It states that data is stored in Google Cloud, encrypted at rest with AES-256 and in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher, and handled with subprocessors including Google Cloud, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Pinecone.

The company states that customer data is not used to train third-party large language models and that most AI workloads use open-source models running on hardware it controls. The product also reports security controls and compliance work including CASA Tier 2, an annual security audit, Google verification, audit logging for internal data access, and support for SOC 2 Type II and GDPR-related requirements. These statements should be reviewed against an organization's own compliance requirements.

Shortwave allows users to delete their account and associated data, but specific standard retention periods for every category of email and account data were not verified. Teams handling confidential or regulated communications should review the current privacy and security documentation before deployment.

Who should use Shortwave?

Shortwave is a good fit for Gmail and Google Workspace users who want AI-assisted inbox triage, natural-language search, fast drafting, thread analysis, calendar coordination, and shared email workflows. It is especially relevant to founders, executives, sales and support teams, and other knowledge workers whose work is centered on email.

It is less suitable for users who want an independent email provider, native Microsoft 365 or Exchange support, a general-purpose chatbot, or a public developer API. It may also be a poor fit for teams that need deeply documented enterprise identity and compliance controls beyond those currently described.

Shortwave compared with adjacent AI tools

Unlike a general-purpose assistant such as Claude, Shortwave is built around a live email environment and can take mailbox-oriented actions such as labeling, archiving, drafting, and scheduling. Unlike a document-centered workspace such as Notion AI, its primary context is Gmail and Google Workspace email. Its strongest use case is therefore not open-ended conversation; it is reducing friction in an existing email workflow.

Bottom line

Shortwave is a specialized AI email client rather than a replacement for Gmail's underlying mailbox. Its main advantages are natural-language access to email, useful drafting and summarization, inbox automation, calendar assistance, and collaboration around shared threads. The most important trade-offs are Gmail dependence, limited direct support for other email providers, variable paid-plan usage limits, beta MCP functionality, and the absence of a verified general-purpose public API.