7 Best Unrollme Alternatives to Use in 2024

Adrian Vicol avatar
Adrian Vicol
Updated on Oct 20

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7 Best Unrollme Alternatives to Use in 2024

Introduction

So you came across Unroll Me and you want to understand some of the downsides and explore the possible other Unroll Me alternatives out there. We made a list and detailed comparison between the different applications, so you can take the decision for yourself:

  1. AgainstData
  2. Sanebox
  3. LeaveMeAlone
  4. Clean Email
  5. Trimbox
  6. CleanFox
  7. Mailstrom

Why should you opt for a Unroll Me alternative?

Out of all of the email management and unsubscribe applications out there, this is probably the worst rated one of them all, simply because they have failed at their mission and have largely turned against their users by monetising their data.

We tried to look for customer opinions related to this service and the things that emerged were disturbing to say the least. The application has 50% of all reviews as 1 Star on Trustpilot:

The use of the application actually generates more spam in the user's email address.

User review of Unroll me about generating spam

Angry customers that have had their data misused and now are having more problems than before using the app. This issue seems to permeate through time with a wide range of reviews from 2019 all the way to present day.

User review about Unroll me about missuse of data

Maybe most disturbing of all Unroll Me was part of a class action lawsuit that aimed to bring together individuals who have been affected by the behaviour of the company related to their personal data. This was widely talked about in the media.

Printscreen from court class action lawsuit against unroll me


We looked at several key aspects to identify the best email management application for your use case

Look & Feel: how an application looks matters, so we tried to look at how the applications look on different screen sizes and how fast it takes them to load

Onboarding experience: how complicated is it to set up the application and correctly adjust the different features

Features: we started to by listing and analysing the main features, such as email folder sorting, bulk delete options, unsubscribe and data deletion

Security and privacy: are the applications protecting user data or does their business model require the monetisation of user data

Trial options and Pricing: we included details about whether they include trial versions and how much do the different subscription plans cost.

Sustainability: we looked if using the application has any benefit to the environment and fighting climate change.

Customer support: A good measure of an application's success is how well it manages to listen to its customers and resolve their issues.

Unroll Me and alternatives

Unroll Me is on the market for some time now, even if it had constant problems with their privacy scandals. The user interface looks a bit dated and not a lot of work has been put in the application recently, so no new features have been introduced. There are however a lot of Unroll Me alternatives out there that we are going to deep dive into now


1. AgainstData

AgainstData is the best Unroll Me alternative by far. Firstly, users can enjoy the application’s benefits without the privacy related concerns that Unroll Me is famous for. Secondly, there a lot more features to be enjoyed with AgainstData like the ability to see the companies that hold your data and the feature allowing you to send deletion requests to selected companies.

AgainstData works on all Gmail hosted email accounts, with a simple and fast login process.

Why AgainstData is a better alternative to Unroll Me

The main differentiators between AgainstData and Unroll Me has to do with the business model. AgainstData is a user privacy centric application that charges a subscription for the service. Unroll Me on the other hand relies on a business model where it monetises user data and offers the application for free. This is a major roadblock for anybody serious about privacy and who wants to use an unsubscribe app to clean their email.

StatsAgainstDataUnroll Me
Look & Feel
Onboarding experience
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer support
Trial Version

Look & Feel

  • AgainstData has a much fresher look than Unroll Me and a very intuitive user interface.
  • Unroll me seems to be a bit “empty” with the sidebar navigation just boasting its two main features of unsubscribe and rollup, making the experience seem like the application is in a beta version.

Onboarding experience

  • AgainstData offers a free, time unlimited trial where you can explore all of the app’s functionalities. The login is done trough a Gmail API integration, so it takes just a few clicks to get onboarded on the tool.
  • The same login method is also used by Unroll Me, with the notable exception that they use this integration to systematically capture user data and monetise it, which is the main reason why the application is offered for free.

Features

  • Some of the defining features of AgainstData that make it stand out when compared to Unroll Me are the list of companies that hold your data coupled with the ability to send data deletion requests to them. On top of that there is the added benefit of the built in CO2 calculator that assesses the environmental effect of the user actions by calculating the CO2 footprint of emails.
  • Unroll Me just offers the unsubscribe and rollup functionalities and nothing else on top.

Security and privacy

  • AgainstData is charging fees for subscriptions and is not monetising user data
  • Unroll me monetises user personal data, so it is best to avoid sharing sensitive personal data with them.
  • AgainstData is using secure login trough OAuth 2.0
  • UnrollMe, like CleanFox, requires the user to manually create a password application within the user Gmail Account itself. The process itself is quite technical and long and poses a long term privacy concern due to the constant access to the user’s email.

Sustainability

AgainstData is the best-in-class option for monitoring your email carbon footprint since you can see exactly how much you carbon you save as you go through your emails and delete the ones you no longer need.

Customer support

  • You can get in touch with AgainstData either by email or in the app via a ticketing system. The response time is quite good, often much faster than the communicated maximum time of 24h.

  • Unroll me just offers support by means of in-app ticketing form.

AgainstData pricing compared to Unroll Me

  • The simple and straightforward pricing of AgainstData makes it very easy to spot that the best cost value option is the yearly subscription.
  • Unroll me advertises that they are a free application, but the real hidden cost is the fact that the users pay with their own personal data.
PlanAgainst DataUnroll Me
Monthly Plan16$Free
Yearly Plan39$Free

AgainstData vs Unroll Me summary

  • The major differentiators between Unroll Me and AgainstData are related to the pricing model, coupled with the extra features of AgainstData related to privacy and deletion requests, as well as the beautifully crafted design and UI.

  • There is no question that the paid service from AgainstData is greatly superior to the free service from Unroll Me, but if you factor in the related potential damages that the misuse of personal data might bring you are much safer going for a paid application like AgainstData.


2. SaneBox

Sanebox packs a feature list that includes unsubscribe, bulk delete and folder options to distribute incoming emails. Most of the features are on top of what Unroll Me has to offer, that is centred around unsubscribe and roll-up functionalities.

SaneBox as Unroll Me alternative

  • Sanebox has a focus on folder structure, with quite a lot of different folders that the user has to choose from to direct email messages. This can be confusing at times, requiring many decisions on how these need to be distributed.
  • On the other hand, Unroll Me is relatively straightforward to use due to the limited number of features. It does however pose serious security concerns that should deter most users from opting for it.
  • Unfortunately, neither applications have the data deletion request option as well as the company list option.
StatsSaneBoxUnroll Me
Look & Feel
Onboarding experience
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer support
Trial VersionFree

🔖Learn more about the SaneBox alternatives.

Look & Feel

  • Both Unroll Me and SaneBox has been developed quite some time ago, the interface is lagging behind on the latest UI trends and you can really tell that. They lack the look and feel of modern websites and seem to some extent more like utilities than actual modern applications.

Onboarding experience

  • SaneBox takes some time to set up because users need to discover and understand what each folder does. Depending on this selection future emails will be directed to them, so it is important not to end up losing some of the incoming correspondence.

  • Unroll Me has a streamlined onboarding, mainly because their main motive is to connect to the user’s email address and access the personal information that they use in their monetisation model.

Features

  • Sanebox has a focus on folders and sorting emails into buckets called “SaneLater” and “SaneNews”. Even so, the emails need to be moved manually and especially for large Inboxes, this may take some time.

  • Unroll Me offers a basic unsubscribe option, coupled with a feature called RollUp where various newsletters are grouped into one.

Security and privacy

  • SaneBox is charging fees for user subscription and is not monetising user data
  • Unroll Me offers the application for free but monetises user data trough their business model.
  • UnrollMe requires the user to manually create a password application within the user Gmail Account itself. Apart from the complexity, this process takes a long time and it is unclear how the application will use this access as time goes by.
  • SaneBox is using OAuth 2.0 for secure login

Sustainability

Neither Unroll Me or SaneBox offers any features related to sustainability

Customer support

  • SaneBox offers decent response times and a user can get in touch with them via email or using the in-app ticketing system.
  • Unroll Me offers a simple web form to contact support. No response time estimates are given.

SaneBox pricing compared to Unroll Me

SaneBox charges subscriptions around 30$, while Unroll Me is offering the application for free since it relies on monetising user personal data.

PlanSaneBoxMailstrom
Monthly Plan7$-36$9$-29$
Yearly Plan59$-299$59$-199$

SaneBox vs Unroll Me summary

  1. Sanebox focuses more on directing user emails into folders and putting rules in place for the future.
  2. Neither of them provide the option to send deletion requests to companies that hold user personal data.
  3. Unroll Me is offering to few features and has a lot of bad history in guarding user’s personal data that it should not be considered.

3. LeaveMeAlone

LeaveMeAlone lets users apply filters to incoming email as well as allowing them to unsubscribe or bulk delete from email addresses that have written to them in the past. This is a good Unroll Me alternative at first glance, but after careful inspection there are several concerns with LeaveMeAlone also.

LeaveMeAlone as Mailstrom alternative

  • Both LeaveMeAlone and Unroll Me share the core functionalities of unsubscribe and bulk delete, but the similarities end there.

  • LeaveMeAlone has a different filtering system than Mailstrom that applies successive criteria to narrow down the email selection. On the other hand, Unroll Me has a very simplistic user interface without a lot of option to choose from.

StatsLeaveMeAloneUnroll Me
Look & Feel
Onboarding experience
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer support
Trial VersionFree

🔖Learn more about the LeaveMeAlone alternatives.

Look & Feel

  • LeaveMeAlone has playful graphics and boasts a pink and yellow colour palette. Overall it seems that the application is better crafted than Unroll Me.
  • Unroll Me has a very simplistic look and you can tell that no improvements have been made on the application in a while.

Onboarding experience

  • Unroll Me uses the Gmail OAuth 2.0 protocol
  • LeaveMeAlone has a very complicated onboarding journey and requires the user to create manually an application password withing Gmail itself so that it has permanent access to the user data. This may be intimidating to non-technical users and the process could be abandoned along the way.
  • In this example both application suffer from some privacy concerns over the way the connect to the user’s email and how they handle subsequent personal data.

Features

  • Similarities revolve around the unsubscribe from emails feature, bulk delete. Apart from that LeaveMeAlone has a more complex email selection method, while Unroll Me offers the Rollup functionality of grouping all newsletters into a single digest.
  • Neither tool has the ability to send deletion requests to companies that hold user data or to share with the user the environmental impact of their email cleaning efforts.

Security and privacy

  • Both Unroll Me and LeaveMeAlone requires the user to create an application password directly in the Google Gmail Account.
  • The user data is not monetised by LeaveMeAlone that charges a subscription for the service.
  • User data is monetised by Unroll Me according to their business model, and they have been an object of a class action lawsuit centred around the misuse and monetisation of user personal data.

Sustainability

Neither LeaveMeAlone or Unroll Me are not offering such sustainability functionalities presently and have not communicated any future release to include this.

Customer support

For both applications, there are some reviews stating that the user experience may not be so good in some cases, but overall, the response time of either email or in-app ticketing is acceptable. Unroll Me offers just a simple webform in their application for customer support.

LeaveMeAlone pricing compared to Unroll Me

  • Trimbox monthly plan is even more expensive than LeaveMeAlone, even if it offers fewer options. The yearly plan however is more reflective of the lack of features, and is lower compared to LeaveMeAlone.
PlanLeaveMeAloneUnroll Me
Monthly Plan8$-14$Free
Yearly Plan80$-140$Free

LeaveMeAlone vs Unroll Me summary

  1. Both Unroll Me and LeaveMeAlone still miss some of the major privacy levers like deletion requests and the ability to correctly identify what companies hold your data or even a email CO2 calculator

  2. In terms of security, both applications post serious privacy and data protection concerns related to the way the connect to a user’s email address and how they handle subsequent personal data.


4. Clean Email

Clean Email offers filtering and search capabilities, enabling users to set custom rules for organising incoming emails into specific folders. Already this is an offering that exceeds the simple functionalities offered by Unroll Me.

Clean Email as Unrioll Me alternative

  • Clean Email has a slightly different approach to the cluttered Inbox problem as it generates a large set of folders that the users can select from to direct emails. The issue is that this list is so large with many possibilities, that it is challenging deciding in what bucket to place emails.

  • On the other hand Unroll Me just has the basic unsubscribe and roll-up functionalities that they offer to users for free since they rely on monetising their personal data.

StatsClean EmailUnroll Me
Look & Feel
Onboarding experience
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer support
Trial VersionFree

🔖Learn more about the Clean Email alternatives.

Look & Feel

  • Clean Email interface seems a bit loaded, with loads of buttons, and it is kind of difficult to understand what all of them do at the beginning. Unroll Me has a lot fewer options and is mostly interested in getting access to your email rather than offering a continued value.

Onboarding experience

  • Clean Email has a long onboarding journey, with users needing to familiarise themselves with how the application works and the various buttons and the large number of predefined folders. This folder structure seems overwhelming, and it seems difficult to make decisions.

  • Unroll Me is directing the user to make bulk actions on the messages that are in the Inbox or to group multiple newsletters into a feed.

Features

  • Clean Email offers elaborate folder options and different means to organise your existing and incoming emails, but they take a significantly longer time to set-up and use.

  • Unroll Me has a simplistic approach offering just two major options of unsubscribe or roll-up.

  • Both applications are lacking more advanced features like the ability to send deletion requests to companies that hold your personal data or to see the environmental impact of your Inbox and clean-up activities.

Security and privacy

  • Clean.Email is charging fees for user subscription and is not monetising user data.
  • Unroll Me is monetising user personal data and offers the application for free.
  • Clean Email uses OAuth 2.0 for secure login while Unroll Me requires the user to manually create a password application within the user Gmail Account itself. The process is quite laborious and could pose some challenges to non-technical users.

Sustainability

Neither Unroll Me or Clean Email does not include sustainability as one of their focus points in terms of features.

Customer support

Although there are several accounts of bad customer experience of non-responsive support with Clean Email, customers can get in touch with the company via email or using the in-app functionality. Unroll Me offers a basic in-app form to contact support.

Clean Email pricing compared to Unroll Me

There is no actual point in comparing a free application with a paid one. Basically any paid application that you put side by side with Unroll Me performs better. Add the fact that Unroll Me is also monetising your data, so there is little in the way of why you should ever go with a choice like Unroll Me

PlanClean EmailUnroll Me
Monthly Plan12-35$Free
Yearly Plan36$-119$Free

Pro Tip: Clean Email will try to give you a discount if you are already signed up to a competitor.

Clean Email vs Unroll Me summary

  1. Clean Email focuses more on folders and what happens to emails in the future and Unroll Me just seems to fall behind only offering the unsubscribe and roll-up features.

  2. Notably neither of them provide the option to send deletion requests to companies that hold user personal data or show you what are the companies that hold your data.


5. Trimbox

Trimbox is essentially a paid and slightly safer version of Unroll Me. The two offer identical functionalities and behave and look very similar to each other.

Trimbox as Unroll Me alternative

  • It is very hard to differentiate between the two applications since they are both very simplistic and offer a very small number of features. The key differentiator is that Unroll Me is offered for free to monetise user personal data, while Trimbox is offered trough a subscription.
StatsTrimboxUnroll Me
Look & Feel
Onboarding experience
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer support
Trial VersionFree

🔖Learn more about the Trimbox alternatives.

Look & Feel

  • Both Unroll Me and Trimbox feel that they have very few options to choose from and kind of look like a work in progress or an unfinished application. You can really tell that no programming effort has gone into improving them.

Onboarding experience

  • Since both applications have a lot less features, it takes more time to set up permissions than figure out what each of the few buttons do.

Features

  • Trimbox focused on bulk email management, unsubscribe and email deletion and not much else.
  • Unroll Me focuses on the unsubscribe feature and the roll-up feature where it groups selected newsletters into a single feed.

Security and privacy

  • Trimbox use Login with Gmail through Oauth 2.0 and the user data is not monetised by Trimbox.
  • The user’s personal information are monetised by Unroll Me as part of their business model. – Unroll Me, has a lengthy process to onboard users where it requires the user to manually create a password application within the user Gmail Account itself.

Sustainability

Neither Unroll Me or Trimbox have any offering related to sustainability.

Customer support

There is a minimalistic customer support infrastructure offered by both Unroll Me and Trimbox as well as some online documentation on how the applications work.

Trimbox pricing compared to Unroll Me

  • Similar to what we had before we have now the choice between paying with money and paying with personal data. In either way, there is a cost associated with selecting either of the two choices.
PlanTrimboxUnroll Me
Monthly Plan17$Free
Yearly Plan36$Free

Trimbox vs Unroll Me summary

  1. The minimalist Trimbox can be an option for users who seek to very quickly delete some of their old emails and prevent incoming emails from certain mailing lists.

  2. If you really want to perform these options without paying any money it is advisable that you perform the actions manually yourself. There is simply too much at risk exposing your data to a company with this track record.


6. CleanFox

Cleanfox.com is a tool that promises cleaning emails from unwanted correspondence. CleanFox, similar to Unroll Me are owned by the same company group Nielsen, and they focus on monetizing user data that they obtains from their email account, like past purchases, prices and subscriptions. This is why the Clean Fox (like Unroll Me) is offered for free.

CleanFox as Unroll Me alternative

  • Compared to Unroll Me, CleanFox offers almost the exact functionalities, focusing on unsubscribe and the deletion of emails. Both applications are free and both of them are monetising user personal data.
StatsCleanFoxUnroll Me
Look & Feel
Onboarding experience
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer support
Trial VersionFreeFree

🔖Learn more about the CleanFox alternatives.

Look & Feel

  • Both Unroll Me and CleanFox feels quite simplistic and lacking any more advanced features focusing on simple unsubscribe and bulk delete email options. You can really tell they had similar design teams working on the products.

Onboarding experience

  • CleanFox requires the user to manually create a password application within the user Gmail Account itself. Besides the extra effort involved, this method also does not properly explain to the user the security and privacy risks involved in providing this type of password-based access to a third-party application like this.

Features

  • Both Unroll Me and Clean Fox focus on the core functionalities of unsubscribe and email deletion
  • Neither tool has the option to send data deletion requests or to show the user the list of companies that hold personal information or the associated email CO2 footprint.

Security and privacy

  • A serious security concern is raised for both Unroll Me and CleanFox due to their intrusive login method, of creating a Gmail application password for itself and the fact that it is also offered for free, since the monetization comes from the user data.
  • There is no sure way to understand what happens to your data once you register with either CleanFox or Unroll Me and to whom it is sold afterwards.

Sustainability

There is no such functionality in the tool or mention that it will be included in the short term future neither for Clean Fox or for Unroll Me.

Customer support

The application has a support system that can be accessed via the in-application form.

CleanFox pricing compared to Unroll Me

  • Both applications are free and monetise user personal data
PlanCleanFoxUnroll Me
Monthly PlanFreeFree
Yearly PlanFreeFree

CleanFox vs Unroll Me summary

  1. We strongly suggest that you choose a paid subscription with one of the applications that do not sell user data like AgainstData, rather than having your data sold by applications like CleanFox or Unroll Me.

7. Mailstrom

Mailstrom is an email management utility application that has been around for a while and that is offering a system to select and delete emails to clean your Inbox. Compared to Unroll Me it has a much more stable appearance and is charging a subscription for the service, unlike Unroll Me that is offered for free, since it monetises user personal data.

Mailstrom as Unroll Me alternative

  • As mentioned, we would not recommend going forward with a free application like UnrollMe since it relies on the sale of user data for monetisation. A paid option like AgainstData or Mailstrom are preferred.
StatsMailstromUnrollMe
Look & Feel
Onboarding experience
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer support
Trial VersionFree

🔖Learn more about the Mailstrom alternatives.

Look & Feel

  • Mailstrom focuses on its core functionalities of unsubscribe and the bulk actions the user can make on the messages that exist in the Inbox. The tool can handle larger batches of emails but has a very dated design that resembles old Windows applications.

  • UnrollMe has a very simple user interfaces, with a few buttons and not much in the way of complex features or beautifully crafted experiences.

Onboarding experience

  • Mailstrom uses the Gmail OAuth 2.0 protocol that makes the onboarding straightforward and easy.
  • UnrollMe, like CleanFox, requires the user to manually create a password application within the user Gmail Account itself. This is a serious security concern, coupled with the fact that the business model of Unroll Me is to sell user data.

Features

  • UnrollMe offers basic functionalities like unsubscribing from emails and bulk email deletion or archiving.
  • On the other hand Mailstrom has most of the basic functionalities required to clean an Inbox from a large number of messages that have accumulated over time. It does however have some additional features when compared with Unroll Me like certain folder structures or more advanced email filtration and selection methods.

Security and privacy

  • UnrollMe is offered for free and it creates a password for itself in the user’s Gmail account while monetising user data to third parties such as purchase data, prices and webstores used by the user.
  • UnrollMe is not available in the European Union since it contravenes with the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
  • Mailstrom on the other hand uses the standard Google O Auth 2.0 protocol for login.

Sustainability

Mailstrom and UnrollMe do not offer sustainability functionalities or features in their applications.

Customer support

Unroll Me has a support system that can be accessed via the in-application links. Mailstrom can be contacted in-app or via email.

UnrollMe pricing compared to Mailstrom

  • UnrollMe, although apparently free is actually monetised trough the sale of user data.
PlanMailstromUnrollme
Monthly Plan9$-29$Free
Yearly Plan59$-199$Free

Mailstrom vs UnrollMe summary

  • We caution you not to go with UnrollMe because of the associated privacy and security concerns that go along with a choice like this.
  • This would make any paid options such as AgainstData or Mailstrom, a safer choice for your email management needs.

Takeaway:

StatsUnrollMeAgainstDataSaneBoxLeaveMeAloneClean EmailTrimboxCleanFoxMailstrom
Look & FeelBadBESTGoodBadGoodBadGoodGood
Onboarding experienceBadBESTGoodBadGoodGoodBadGood
Identify mailing lists
Identify companies
Bulk delete emails
Email folders
Unsubscribe
Data Delete requests
Encryption
Does not sell user data
Sustainability
Customer supportBadBadBad
Trial Versionn/an/a

After an exhaustive comparison you can see that AgainstData is the most suitable tool and the best Unroll Me alternative due to their differentiated approach to personal data privacy. The ability to see what companies hold your data and to able to send them deletion requests is certainly a game-changer and a good step in the direction of a more private Internet experience.


FAQs

Which tools is best Unroll Me alternative?

The best Unroll Me alternative is AgainstData due to their differentiators like the ability to show the user instantly his digital footprint and the ability to send data deletion request to the respective companies that make up the footprint.

Which is easier to set up: Unroll Me, AgainstData, CleanFox or SaneBox?

From the applications considered the easiest to set up is AgainstData. You can check out all of the features in a free trial, without the need to put in a credit card. Also the onboarding journey is quite straightforward with great documentation.

Unroll Me and others like Sane Box or CleanFox require more effort on behalf of the user to get to know all of the different manual actions that can be performed on the email messages to correctly set up the way they should be directed from your Inbox.

Which email cleaning service offers the best value for money?

If users are serious about cleaning their digital footprint and keeping it that way, purchasing yearly plans make sense, and the best deal so far in terms of value for money is the yearly plan from AgainstData. Compared to the others it also bundles data deletion requests and all of the other standard functionalities in a beautifully crafted and well-engineered user interface.