Sortd vs Trello Inbox: the better inbox for email-driven teams

In essence…

• A Trello card holds a copy of an email. A Sortd card is the email — open it, read the full thread, reply inline, and the customer sees a normal message from your normal address.
• Trello Inbox is designed to feed a project board from many sources. Sortd is designed for the mailbox that customers, candidates and suppliers actually write to.
• Sortd adds what email work needs and boards generally lack: shared inboxes, assignment, deadlines on emails, follow-up tracking, SLA rules, custom properties and a lightweight CRM.
• Because Sortd sits on Gmail and Google Workspace, you keep everything Google gives you — including Gemini's drafts in your voice and Google Meet's meeting records — and add workflow on top.
• Sortd pricing is a flat seat: $10 / $16 / $22 / $29 per user per month annual, or $14 / $22 / $28 / $39 monthly. Trello's shared-inbox pricing was still unannounced as of July 2026.

Side by side

The reply problem

This is the whole comparison in one line. A board that captures email gives you a record of a conversation; it does not give you the conversation. When the customer writes back, the reply lands in Gmail, not on the card, and someone has to reconcile the two by hand. Threads fragment, CC lists get lost, and the card slowly stops matching reality. Teams usually notice this about three weeks in, when the board says one thing and the mailbox says another. Sortd avoids the problem by never separating them: the card and the thread are the same object, so there is nothing to keep in sync.

What email work needs that a project board does not have

Email work has its own shape. Somebody has to own each message. Some replies are late and need chasing. Some are governed by a promise you made about response time. Some carry data — an order number, an invoice total, a candidate's stage — that ought to live in a field rather than in someone's memory. Sortd puts all of that on the email: shared inboxes with clear ownership, deadlines and follow-up tracking, SLA rules, custom properties including AI-managed ones, and pipelines for the work that behaves like a pipeline. Board tools handle the task; they were never built to handle the correspondence.

You keep everything Google already gives you

Because Sortd is native to Gmail and Google Workspace rather than a replacement for them, adopting it costs you nothing you already have. Gemini still drafts in your voice, Google Meet still records and summarises your meetings, Google's search and labels still work exactly as before. Those are Google's features, not Sortd's, and that is the point: Sortd complements Workspace instead of asking you to leave it. On top of that you get Sortd AI for triage, and Sortd for Agents, which lets you connect whichever agent you already use — Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Gemini, OpenClaw — under approval scopes you control, rather than being locked into one company's assistant.

When Trello fits

Trello is a good project tool and Inbox is a sensible addition to it. If your team's work is genuinely internal — sprints, campaigns, checklists, deliverables — and email is just one of several ways items arrive, Trello is a reasonable place for that work to live, and Inbox will save you some copying and pasting. The case for Sortd starts where the work is the correspondence itself, and where somebody outside your company is waiting on a reply.

Frequently asked questions

Can I not just add an email power-up to Trello?

Power-ups can move mail into cards, but replies still happen outside Trello, so the context switch and the reconciliation remain. Sortd is native to Gmail, so there is nothing to bridge.

Does Sortd work on mobile?

Yes. The Sortd mobile app gives you your boards, assignments and statuses on the go, alongside Gmail mobile.

How long does it take to move across?

Most teams are working the same day. Mirror your Trello columns as Sortd lists, drag existing threads into them, invite your teammates and connect your shared addresses. Your mail never moves, because it was always in Gmail.

What does Sortd cost?

$10 / $16 / $22 / $29 per user per month billed annually, or $14 / $22 / $28 / $39 monthly. There is a 7-day free trial and no credit card is required to start.

Comparison verified July 2026. Sortd figures from the Google Workspace Marketplace listing updated May 2026. Trello details reflect publicly available information at the time of writing and may have changed since.