More and more businesses are looking for tools they can easily integrate into their existing systems and provide better value and productivity. The same goes for managing your emails which are the cornerstone of any business communications. Businesses use emails to collaborate on projects, source products from vendors, provide support to clients, and solve marketing tasks. 

All of these different communications in a single inbox are a miscommunication or delay waiting to happen. As such, you need email management tools that include tracking, automation, and more to streamline your email efforts. Keep reading as we look at one of these tools, MixMax, along with some alternatives you might want to consider for your business.

Mixmax Logo What Is the MixMax Extension

MixMax is a handy Gmail extension that includes email management and productivity features. This tool best suits businesses just starting to use these productivity tools. As such, they aim to keep everything simple and straightforward. Many similar tools focus mainly on the sales aspect of your business. MixMax offers a broader solution by focusing on other business sides.

MixMax has a free plan that includes the email tracker, scheduler, templates, polls, and surveys, which can be an excellent option for beginners. However, if you require more automation features such as email sequences and personalization, you’ll need to opt for one of their paid plans which start from $34/user/month.

Mixmax Extension

Email Tracking

MixMax offers simple options for email tracking. Aside from showing when and how many times an email was opened, MixMax also records the location and device from which the recipient opened the email. 

Automation

With MixMax, you can create an automated sequence of emails to ensure that responses go out quickly. This works best when there’s a clear process, such as sending follow-up emails if you haven’t received a response. 

Polls and Surveys

Being able to send polls and surveys straight in the body of your email is a great feature of MixMax. After providing a service, you might want feedback to help identify areas that are excelling and others that need improvement. Using third-party tools might be complex, and the forms might not be filled in as the client doesn’t realize it’s from you. 

Pros and Cons of MixMax

Let’s take a look at MixMax’s pros and cons.

Pros: 

  • Useful email tracking features
  • Offers integrations with popular tools
  • Ability to share calendar and easily book meetings
  • Free plan alongside paid options

Cons: 

  • Customer service is slow to respond
  • Considered expensive by some users

How to Choose the Best Email Tracking Extensions?

If you’re looking for an alternative to MixMax, there are many great tools that you can consider. However, with so many options available, how can you choose the right competitor? First, you need to consider your budget. How much do you have to spend on an email productivity tool? Can you only look at free options, or do you have some space in your budget for a paid version?

The next consideration is what features you need. Most of these tools offer the same basic features, such as email tracking. However, your business might also benefit from automation tools covering repetitive tasks such as following up. Or do you need a mail merge feature to personalize and track your email marketing efforts? Make a list of the crucial elements you require, and look for software that includes most of these features within your budget.

Finally, you want to look at reviews to see if there are any major complaints and to see how customer support handles issues. If there are no responses to reviews, especially negative ones, this is usually a red flag that the customer support team might be slow to respond. Pairing this with numerous negative comments, you might be better off choosing another tool.

To help you navigate the overwhelming amount of options, here are nine of the best email productivity and tracking tools. If you’re looking for a competitor to MixMax, you’re sure to find one on this list that you can consider.

Mailshake Logo Overview of Mailshake

Mailshake is an excellent alternative to MixMax regarding tasks related to managing and sending emails. This is a stand-alone app and not an extension. However, it’s still very lightweight. It offers numerous features, such as an email tracker, automation features, tracking leads, etc.

Mailshake doesn’t offer a free version or a trial on the product. However, their price includes a concierge onboarding, training, and resources to help you use the product. Their plans start from $58/user/month and are billed annually.

Mailshake website

Bulk Email Campaigns

Since Mailshake runs separately from your Gmail or Outlook inbox, it has a number of features that make sending bulk email campaigns a breeze. These features include mail merge, advanced personalization, email tracking, and email scheduling to generate automatic responses to replies.

Automation

Mailshake has several different automation features you can implement to improve the response rates of your emails. You can create email sequences using your own templates to automate responses to common or general emails. You can also automate link tracking and status monitoring by setting up lead sequences.

Integrations

Mailshake integrates with powerful tools such as Zapier, Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Calendy, among others. Even if you don’t use any of these tools, knowing that these integrations are available as your business grows is a significant benefit.

Pros and Cons of Mailshake

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of Mailshake:

Pros: 

  • Mail merge features
  • Automation options
  • Multiple integrations
  • Lead management
  • Excellent customer support and training

Cons: 

  • No free plan or trial
  • Quite expensive for small businesses or start-ups

Lemlist logo Overview of Lemlist

Lemlist is very similar to MixMax in that both tools offer email automation and cold outreach features. This alone makes Lemlist a good competitor to include in this list. However, its recent improvements have renewed interest in this tool, especially among small businesses and start-ups. Above the basic email tracking and management features, Lemlist also offers easy email personalization, automated follow-ups, and a number of integrations.

Lemlist doesn’t have a free version available but offers a 14-day free trial to test out the software. Their paid plans start from $59/seat/month, which includes all the features you need to improve and view your email outreach.

Lemlis website

Personalization

Lemlist offers a very high degree of personalization options for email campaigns. Not only can you add your CSV mailing list and get it to import your contacts’ names, but with Lemlist, you can import even more. The tool enables users to incorporate names, email addresses, company names, and even images from the CSV file into their email campaigns for a high degree of personalization.

Email Verification

Lemlist includes an email verification tool that enables you to test the emails in your mailing list. Thus you can see if any of them are a high risk or invalid so that you can remove them without negatively impacting your sender’s reputation.

Email Reputation Boosts

Lemlist also offers a unique tool they call Lemwarm. This tool helps your emails to avoid landing in the recipient’s spam folder by monitoring and boosting your deliverability throughout the process. It checks your outgoing emails before, during, and after you send them.

Pros and Cons of Lemlist

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of Lemlist.

Pros: 

  • The high degree of personalization
  • Boosts sender reputation
  • Email verification tool
  • Lead generation and enrichment
  • Multiple support and training options, including live chat, feedback sessions, courses, and weekly live events

Cons: 

  • More expensive than MixMax
  • It doesn’t support email attachments
  • Customer support response times can vary

Salesloft logo Overview of SalesLoft

SalesLoft is much more than an email productivity tool. It’s also a robust sales engagement platform. SalesLoft is a great alternative to MixMax if you want an all-in-one sales solution. The tool includes email personalization, tracking, prospect engagement, forecast and revenue management, and more.

Apart from the other tools on this list, SalesLoft is very secretive about their pricing. They don’t offer a free version, but there are a number of different packages available along with numerous add-ons so that you can craft the perfect package for your needs.

Salesloft website

Sales Management

SalesLoft offers a lot of sales management features. You can track leads as they progress through the sales funnel, and you can monitor your sales teams’ efforts. You can also track and record sales emails and calls to attach to your communications so that your entire team is up-to-date on the latest communications.

Advanced Personalization

SalesLoft offers email personalization on the same level as Lemlist. This includes being able to attach personalized images. SalesLoft also goes one step further by providing you with an email personalization score and enabling you to monitor what changes have been made for each recipient. These changes can include the number of words used, the alignment of your text, changes in the salutations, and more.

Pros and Cons of SalesLoft

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of SalesLoft.

Pros: 

  • Easy to monitor sales campaigns
  • Email automation and tracking
  • Many personalization features
  • Individual performance tracking

Cons: 

  • Price is hidden
  • Customer support can be lacking
  • Reporting and analytics can be improved

YAMM logo Overview of YAMM

When listing the best alternatives to MixMax, no list would be complete without mentioning YAMM (Yet Another Mail Merge). This simple email management tool provides many of the basic features you require, such as the ability to send and personalize mass email campaigns, track the open and view rates of emails, monitor bounce and unsubscribe rates, and more. While the tool focuses on email management and not sales management, it does so well. 

Pricing-wise, YAMM is one of the most affordable options on this list. It offers a free version that includes all the basic features except scheduling and has a limit of 50 emails daily. Their paid plans start from $25/year for an individual account, although they also have plans for teams and larger organizations.

YAMM website

Email Sending and Tracking

With YAMM, you can use the helpful mail merge feature to create highly personalized email campaigns. With the paid plans, you can also schedule follow-ups if emails aren’t opened. You also have access to real-time tracking of your emails and will be notified whenever an email is opened or a link is clicked on.

Automatic Over-Quota Splitting

YAMM does have certain limitations to the number of emails you can send on their free and more basic plans. However, they’ve counteracted this by automatically splitting email campaigns if you go above your quota. This means that you no longer have to carefully track and monitor your mass email campaigns if the list goes over your daily quota, and it can save you valuable time.

Pros and Cons of YAMM

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of YAMM.

Pros: 

  • Focused on email management
  • Automatic over-quota splitting
  • Real-time email tracking
  • Tracks bounces and unsubscribes
  • Ability to follow up in the same thread
  • Free version available

Cons: 

  • It doesn’t include sales engagement features

Reply.io logo Overview of Reply.io

Reply.io is a great alternative to MixMax if your team has grown to 50 members or more and you’re looking for an all-in-one sales engagement tool. Reply.io offers many of the sale features as SalesLoft but in a much more straightforward and easy-to-use format. 

Reply.io has a free version available. However, it’s very limited. You don’t even have access to email tracking in the free version. The free version is limited to the email finder and outreach (as included with their extension). The paid plans start from $60/user/month.

Reply.io website

Integrated Workflows

You can easily integrate multiple workflows to create effortless processes. With Reply.io, you can integrate task management, email automation, tracking, and CRM integration. This ensures you can communicate and manage leads effectively across their entire buyer lifespan.

Customizations

Reply.io goes out of its way to customize your plan according to your needs. You can integrate the tool with your chosen email client and schedule emails, set notifications, categorize your emails, and set up templates for frequent responses.

Pros and Cons of Reply.io

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of Reply.io.

Pros: 

  • Automatically syncs data across all integrated tools
  • Inbound and outbound marketing automation
  • Automated lead qualifying

Cons: 

  • It takes some time and effort to set up
  • Editing options in emails are limited
  • The free version is minimal

Cirrus Insight logoOverview of Cirrus Insight

Cirrus Insight is a great alternative to MixMax if you have a growing team. They offer more services than just email management and tracking. You can also use it for automation and lead generation. Cirrus integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, and the tool is intelligent enough to monitor your inbox and send relevant emails straight to your Salesforce records.

Their tools are more suited to teams, which is reflected in their pricing structure. Their basic plan is $10/user/month, paid annually, but this only includes syncing emails, calendars, events, and tasks across different platforms. To get the most benefits from the tool, such as email tracking and more, you’ll need to get an Expert plan which is $29/user/month paid annually, which is more affordable than MixMax’s paid options.

Cirrus Insight website

CRM Integration

We’ve already mentioned that Cirrus integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, but that’s not the only CRM platform that the tool integrates with. You can also integrate the tool with Microsoft Dynamics and SugarCRM, among others.

Unique features

This tool offers quite a few features that make it different from MixMax. The tool enables users to create and record Salesforce from their inbox. It also includes a meeting scheduler that syncs across all of your calendars. Finally, Cirrus also offers a mobile app so that users can continue working even when on the go.

Pros and Cons of Cirrus Insight

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of Cirrus Insight.

Pros: 

  • Monitors inbox automatically to send leads to Salesforce
  • Numerous integrations
  • Mobile app available
  • Meeting scheduler 

Cons: 

  • Best used with Salesforce CRM
  • Only a Demo is available – no trial or free plan

Outreach logo Overview of Outreach

Outreach is a competitor to MixMax as it offers many of the same features and more. With Outreach, you can track the interactions with your emails, such as when a reader opens them or clicks on a link. However, the app can also help automate workflows and enrich prospective leads. It has a handy Chrome extension to help you sync and monitor your email engagement straight from your Gmail inbox. 

Outreach doesn’t have its pricing listed on its website, which makes it difficult to compare with other tools on this list. According to RevPilots, Outreach charges $130/month/user for teams of 20. 

Outreach website

Detailed Email Analytics

With Outreach, you can monitor how well your email campaigns are doing based on the analytics provided. The tool records open rates, bounce rates, and your email deliverability rate in real-time.

Contact and Prospect Management

The tool makes it easy to import and manage your contacts and prospects by simply uploading a CSV file. This means you don’t have to manually add each contact, which saves a lot of time.

Pros and Cons of Outreach

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of Outreach.

Pros: 

  • Offers lead management features
  • Create automated sequences
  • Machine learning helps to improve your sales performance

Cons: 

  • It’s expensive
  • The user interface is complicated

Groove.co logo Overview of Groove

Groove is an email productivity and lead management platform that’s best suited for larger teams. Groove has native integration with Salesforce, which is convenient to keep everything related to your sales and customer relations synced. The tool also integrates with other platforms like LinkedIn and has a mobile app for field agents.

Once again, Groove’s pricing isn’t available on their website. However, we suspect this has more to do with the fact that they offer numerous add-ons, which means a user can spend more if they require more features. Instead of plans listed on the website, Groove requires a minimum annual spend of at least $10,000.00/year from companies. According to RevPilots, basic user licenses start from $50/user/month, but this can easily go up to $160/user/month, depending on the add-ons required.

Groove.co website

Salesforce Integration

Groove integrates natively with Salesforce. Therefore, the tool takes the information from Salesforce and automatically sends it through to your sales reps. This improves your CRM workflow while reducing the admin time spent manually doing this.

Mobile App

The tool also has a mobile app, which is handy for checking things while you’re out of the office. You can monitor the analytics and see how email campaigns are doing and check in on leads and who on your team is managing that prospect.

Pros and Cons of Groove

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of Groove.

Pros: 

  • Salesforce integration
  • Mobile app
  • Great customer support

Cons: 

  • Pricing is complicated
  • Quite expensive if you need add-ons

SalesHandy logo Overview of Saleshandy

Saleshandy is a cold email automation platform that recently released a free email tracking extension for Chrome. The Free Email Tracker By Saleshandy is an extension that works directly in Gmail and tracks your email open rates, times, and link clicks. The tool also offers email scheduling, sequences, and mail merge.

As we mentioned, this email tracking tool is a 100% free extension. You could start using Saleshandy’s cold email software alongside the track for more features, but that’s not required for the email tracker to work. 

SalesHandy website

Mail Merge

Having a mail merge feature available means you can easily send out mass email marketing campaigns personalized to each individual on your list. You can even use this feature to set up automatic follow-ups for these campaigns.

Email Sequencing

With Saleshandy, you can set up email sequences with automatic responses to certain types of emails. This ensures that emails are responded to in a timely and automated manner. This frees up your teams to focus on other tasks or more complex email requests and inquiries.

Pros and Cons of Saleshandy

Let’s take a look at Salehandy’s pros and cons.

Pros: 

  • Email sequencing
  • Email scheduling
  • Automation
  • Mail merge
  • Free

Cons: 

  • It doesn’t include lead or contact management features

Which Is the Best Email Tracking Extension?

Choosing the best email tracking and management tool from this list depends on your needs. All of the tools include basic email tracking, so it’ll come down to the additional features and price tag. Here are a couple of our favorite email tracking and productivity tools:

  • Best Overall: Mailshake
  • Best Value: Cirrus Insight
  • Best for Small Businesses: YAMM
  • Best Free Tool: Free Email Tracker by Saleshandy

Email Tracker Logo Another Useful Email Tracking Option to Consider

If you’re looking for a simple email tracker without all the additional features and price tags, then the Free Email Tracker for Gmail from PandaDoc might be perfect for you. This extension focuses solely on accurately tracking the open rates of your sent emails. With this tool, you can easily see if someone has read your email, what time it was opened, and how many times it was read. This is very useful if you need to manage email communications in your personal life or even for your business.

Final Thoughts

There are many good alternatives to MixMax that you can consider for your business. While MixMax has many incredible benefits, it can seem quite expensive for the features you get. Customer support with MixMax is also sometimes lacking, which can be frustrating when paying for a tool. 
Choose one of the alternatives we’ve listed above and see if they work better for you. Alternatively, you can also try the Free Email Tracker for Gmail by PandaDoc if you want something simpler.

FAQs

  • Gmail doesn’t offer a native email tracker. However, numerous Chrome extensions are made specifically to track emails in Gmail. An example of one of these extensions is the Free Email Tracker for Gmail by PandaDoc, which allows you to monitor when an email was opened, and how many times. Alternatively, there are also stand-alone apps that integrate with Gmail to provide tracking features.

  • Yes, there are tools available that allow you to track emails for free. However, when considering free tools, always make sure that they’re reliable and trustworthy. Look at the reviews and, most importantly, read the privacy policy before using any free tools in your email account. Even better would be using free tools that state they’re GDPR complaint.

  • Email trackers mostly work by placing an image the size of a single pixel within the email. This means the image isn’t visible, but as soon as the email is opened, the image records the time and other details and logs that into the server. Some more advanced tools can also report how often the email was viewed, from which location, and even which device.