The Gmail Add-Ons You Need (and the Ones You Don’t)

You can get all sorts of Chrome extensions and add-ons for Gmail that make inbox management and utilities easier, but some are less useful than others. Before you waste space (and possibly money), let’s look at a few cheap ones that are actually useful.

Useful Gmail Add-ons You Really Need

• Checker Plus for Gmail works with your Google Calendar, allowing you to schedule and edit events without even opening your Calendar. It also has a feature that will read your emails out loud to you, which in itself is cool enough to be worth downloading. Plus, it’s free.
• Grammarly catches spelling errors, but so does regular old Gmail. What makes Grammarly most useful is its ability to check for errors in grammar, style, and even tone. If you even type a vague, commonly used word, Grammarly will pop up and suggest a more precise synonym. This one is also free.
• Mailtrack will tell you whether your email has been opened by the recipient. Plus, you can filter your messages by whether they’ve been read or not, so you can stay on top of the ones that haven’t been read and find out exactly why they’re not being opened. You get link tracking and pop-ups that show read receipts in real time, but if you use the free version, your emails will indicate that they were “sent using Mailtrack” and you won’t have access to all functions. Pro membership costs $4.99 per month.
• WiseStamp makes it easy to design and use a personalized email signature, which is useful if you don’t have amazing design skills or just don’t have the time to create one. It’s also free.
• RingCentral does something cool that you think you might already be able to do natively: it allows you to easily call or text someone from any Google app where you can see their contacts, such as in an email.
• DocuSign eSignature makes the list because it lets you sign documents without leaving Gmail, but that’s only useful if you have to sign things frequently. It even allows you to sign documents on mobile devices. However, it costs quite a bit: for $10 a month you can send five signatures, but if you want to send an unlimited number of signatures throughout the month, it will cost $25.

Gmail add-ons that are less useful

It can be easy to get carried away with adding every extension you come across to your browser to maximize productivity, but some of them don’t do much more than Gmail already does on its own. For example, Boomerang is an add-on that allows you to schedule your emails, but you can already do that in Gmail.

The apps you use for work almost certainly have Gmail add-ons. For example, Zoom and Slack. The Zoom add-on allows you to start a video chat right from an email, but the same is possible if someone simply sends you a Zoom link. The Slack add-on allows you to move entire emails and attachments into Slack, which is useful in its own way, but probably won’t save much time in the long run. Dropbox, Trello, Asana, and Todoist also have their own add-ons that let you use app features in Gmail, but they’re only useful if you’re already an active user of those apps. Otherwise they will waste space.

Unless you really rely on an app to get your job done, stick to Gmail add-ons that provide unique features that don’t rely on a third-party system to function, rather than simply copying features that Gmail already has.