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Revo vs Shortwave: Which email AI is best?
Revo delivers 10x better emails by giving you the full picture across all your tools, ensuring every draft is powered by your team's collective knowledge rather than just your inbox history.
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While Shortwave offers excellent AI features for Gmail users, it's limited to a single email platform. Revo connects your email to your full business context: CRM, meetings, documents, metrics, regardless of which inbox you use.
What makes Revo the best alternative - a deep dive.
A flexible system that evolves with how your company thinks, builds, and decides.
Pricing
Individual: $22.50/ User/ Month
Collaborative: $37.50/ User/ Month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Business: $24/ User/ Month
Premier: $36/ User/ Month
Max: $100/ User/ Month
Email AI Drafting
Learns from your style across email, Slack, and internal project docs
Only learns voice from your emails
Knowledge Sources
Integrated with Jira, Linear, Slack, Notion, and 40+ other tools
Limited to your email history & web browsing
Document Memory
Native Knowledge Hub: Full folder hierarchy and deep sync with Drive, Confluence, & Notion
Analyzes attachments in threads
Platform Ecosystem
Universal Support: Full support for Gmail, Outlook, Slack, and an integrated workspace
Primarily a Gmail enhancement (no Outlook)
Meeting Intelligence
Action-Driven: High-quality video, searchable transcripts, and auto-synced action items
Scheduling and basic assistant tasks
Ready to try Revo?
Free 7-day trial. Cancel anytime.
See the difference
Same email. Two AI tools. Watch what happens when one knows your business, and one doesn't.
Shortwave is a capable AI email client - but it has critical limitations for business users.
Gmail-only restriction
Shortwave only works with Gmail/Google Workspace. This completely blocks approximately 60% of business users on Microsoft 365/Outlook. No Yahoo, iCloud, or other providers either.
Revo works across email platforms and connects to your full business context.
No CRM integration
Shortwave lacks dedicated CRM workflow support. Beyond basic automatic BCC for HubSpot/Salesforce, there's no deep integration for sales teams.
Revo connects your CRM data directly into your intelligence layer.
Paywall-gated basic features
Read receipts locked behind $24/month Business plan. Free tier requires "Sent with Shortwave" signature, unprofessional for business use.
Core intelligence features available across all tiers.
Early-stage product
With 9Mfundingand9Mfundingand1.9M ARR, Shortwave is still early-stage. Some users report eventually leaving due to workflow mismatch.
Revo is enterprise-ready with proven reliability.
Ready for an AI that actually knows your business?
Shortwave is excellent for Gmail users. But if you need cross-platform intelligence across your entire workflow — Revo was built for you.
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Strong reviews: G2 4.4/5 (68 reviews), iOS App Store 4.8 stars, Android 4.5 stars.
What users like
- Excellent AI features for Gmail
- Fast keyboard shortcuts
- Smart email bundling
- Clean interface
What users complain about
- Gmail-only is a dealbreaker
- CRM integration lacking
- Expensive for SMBs
- Some returned to Gmail despite using Shortwave
Who founded Shortwave?
Founded 2020 by Andrew Lee (CEO), Jacob Wenger (CPO), and Jonny Dimond (CTO). All three were core developers at Firebase before Google's acquisition. Andrew Lee was Director of Engineering at Google post-acquisition.
Funding
- Series A (April 2020): $9 million
- Investors: Union Square Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Afore Capital
Revenue
$1.9M ARR (2025), 17 employees.
Pricing
- Free: 90-day history, "Sent with Shortwave" signature
- Business: $24/month (billed annually)
- Premier: $36/month (billed annually)
- Max: $100/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Andrew Lee has appeared on multiple podcasts discussing Shortwave's AI-first approach.
Podcast appearances
- Cognitive Revolution (March 2025): "Inbox Agents, Hyper-Growth & Hiring AI Managers"
- The Gradient Podcast: "How AI will Shape the Future of Email"
- AI Summer Podcast: "Running an AI-focused startup"
Press coverage
- TechCrunch: "Shortwave email client will show AI-powered summaries automatically"
- TechCrunch: "Shortwave gets $9M to bring back Google Inbox"
- The New Stack: "How Shortwave Wants To Reinvent Email With AI"
If you've tried Shortwave and found the Gmail-only restriction limiting, you're not alone.
The core limitations:
- Gmail-only, excludes Outlook/M365 users
- No CRM integration for sales teams
- Basic features paywalled
- Early-stage product
Revo takes a different approach.
Revo works across email platforms and connects to your full business context.
Compare Revo to other tools.
FAQ
Got questions? We’ve got expert-backed answers to help you navigate every step of your journey.
This is where Revo leaves other tools behind. Revo doesn't just "search" your tools when you get an email. Instead, it builds and maintains Intelligence Modules—a living memory of your company that updates in real-time.
The Difference: Revo already knows the status of every project, the decision made in this morning's meeting, and the latest Slack update before you even open your inbox.
Example: When a client asks, "Is the bug fixed?", Revo doesn't have to go look it up. It already knows the fix was shipped in v2.4 this morning and drafts the confirmation instantly based on that verified fact.
No human at Revo ever reads your emails. Revo is an automated infrastructure. We use secure APIs (the same ones Gmail/Outlook use) to structure context—like identifying a project deadline—and draft your reply. We are SOC 2 and ISO 27701 compliant and certified, and your data is siloed. It is never used to train public AI models. You own your data, period.
Absolutely. While Revo makes you faster individually, it makes teams significantly smarter. When your team uses Revo, you build a Shared Intelligence. Your drafts can reference context from a meeting your co-founder had, or a ticket your engineer just closed, ensuring everyone speaks with one unified voice.
Yes, if you want it to. Revo includes a high-fidelity Meeting Recorder that joins calls (Google Meet, Zoom, Teams) to capture decisions and action items. This "Meeting Intelligence" is instantly fed into your context modules, so your email drafts normally know what was discussed 5 minutes ago without you typing a summary.
Ready to try Revo?
Free 7-day trial. Cancel anytime.