Ellie vs Kerna

Ellie is an AI email assistant that drafts replies in a user’s writing style using email-thread context. Connected to Gmail or Outlook, it can read incoming messages, categorize them, and save draft replies for review; it does not send messages without the user reviewing and sending them. Ellie learns tone, sign-offs, and writing patterns from sent mail. Users can add website URLs and upload PDF, TXT, DOCX, PPTX, or MD files to provide factual context, while roles set different personas, knowledge bases, and tones for different email types. Ellie supports connected Gmail and Outlook accounts and on-demand drafting in Gmail Web and Outlook Web. It is available on the web, Windows, and through Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge extensions, as well as a native Outlook desktop add-in. The free plan allows 10 draft replies per day but has no auto-drafts. Paid plans start at $19 a month. A 7-day trial is listed. Ellie says email content is processed by OpenAI and/or Azure OpenAI and is not used to train general models.

Kerna is an AI email assistant for Gmail and Outlook on macOS, Windows, and the web. At a user’s request, it sorts open messages into categories such as Urgent, Respond, Invoice, Waiting, and Notification; users can also set custom categories and industry taxonomies. It drafts replies based on the full thread, with controls for intent and tone, and makes structured thread summaries for conversations of up to 50 messages. It can summarize attachments, extract selected fields into exportable tables, and translate inbound messages and outbound replies in 45 languages. Integrations include Calendar, Contacts, and Sheets as well as Gmail and Outlook. Kerna says it acts only when a user initiates a request, processes content in memory, discards it afterward, and redacts personal data before it reaches the inference provider. Its trust information reports TLS 1.2 or higher in transit and AES-256 encryption at rest. Kerna has a free plan; paid plans start at €12/mo. Outlook requires a Microsoft-hosted mailbox; POP or IMAP and on-premises Exchange are unsupported.