Kerna vs Workforce AI Email Drafter

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.

Workforce AI Email Drafter prepares replies from Gmail or Outlook threads in the user's voice. Its free plan drafts emails but does not send them, and covers one user with a small monthly AI-credit pool and limited integrations. The drafter is part of Workforce AI, an AI employee platform for small professional-services and local-business teams, with support for meetings, follow-up, scheduling, client context, and recurring tasks. The AI employee can join Zoom meetings, answer questions live, and provide summaries, action items, and searchable transcripts. It can also plan and run multi-step or recurring tasks, with configurable approval rules for actions needing review. The company lists 60+ integrations, including Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Zoom, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Notion, Asana, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Zendesk. The free plan costs nothing, billed Forever; paid plans start at $99 a month, billed $99/user/mo. The free email drafter requires no card, while trying Pro requires one. Workforce AI was founded by Mario Costanz in 2024 and is based in New York, New York.