Comparisons
Kanban for Gmail: Browser Extensions, DIY Labels or a Desktop Board
Three ways to get a kanban board in Gmail: extensions like Drag, Sortd and Gmelius, free labels and Multiple Inboxes, or a desktop client. Costs compared.
Search “kanban gmail” and the results are almost all Chrome extensions. That’s a reasonable answer, but it’s one of three, and which one suits you depends less on features than on two unglamorous questions: who else needs to see the board, and whose servers you’re happy for your mailbox to pass through.
The three routes:
- An extension or add-on that draws a board inside Gmail’s web app: Drag, Sortd, Gmelius, Streak, or Trello’s add-on.
- Gmail on its own, with labels as columns and Multiple Inboxes as the board. Free, and clunkier than it looks.
- A desktop client that shows your Gmail labels as columns. That’s what we make, so read that section with the disclosure in mind.
Prices and plan details were checked against each vendor’s own pages in late September 2026. They move, so check again before you buy.
Extensions that draw a board inside Gmail
The tools in this group work the same way underneath. You install an extension, sign in with Google, and grant the vendor access to your mailbox through the Gmail API. The board you see is the vendor’s software running in your browser, talking to the vendor’s servers, painted over Gmail.
Drag
Drag is the name most people arrive with, and it has changed a lot. It made its name as a kanban board for Gmail. Today it’s sold as an AI shared inbox for teams, with WhatsApp and live chat alongside email. Boards, in kanban, list and preview views, are in every plan.
Pricing is $12, $18 or $24 per user per month billed yearly ($16, $22 or $30 monthly). There’s no free plan, only a 7-day trial, and the upper two tiers bundle AI credits. Besides the Chrome extension there are web, desktop and mobile apps. Drag says it doesn’t store the content of your emails, fetching them through the Gmail API instead, and that its customer data is hosted on AWS in Virginia.
If all you want is a personal board over your own inbox, you’re now paying for a team product.
Sortd
Sortd is very much alive: its Chrome extension was updated in September 2026 and lists 40,000 users. Plans run from $10 to $29 per user per month, billed annually. The $10 Starter plan gets a personal board and day planner, five shared boards, up to ten users and six months of history. The cheaper plans are Chrome-only; Edge support arrives on Business.
Its security page is unusually specific. Sortd doesn’t store message bodies, but when you add an email to a board (or snooze it, or set a reminder) it stores the message ID, sender, subject and date, on AWS in the US.
Gmelius
Gmelius is a wider collaboration suite for Gmail, and kanban is one feature among many. Board views start on the Growth plan at $25 per user per month billed annually ($33 monthly); the $19 Meli plan doesn’t include them. Plans carry usage caps, with Growth allowing 10,000 email conversations a month. The extension runs in Chrome, Edge, Opera and Brave, not Firefox, and there’s a standalone web app.
Gmelius says it never stores email content, though it keeps your label list, signatures, aliases and settings on Google Cloud.
Streak
Streak is a CRM, and it answers a different question. Its pipelines are stages that “boxes” (deals, candidates, projects) move through, with emails attached, shown as a spreadsheet-style view inside Gmail and reached from its left navigation. If your “kanban” is really a sales or hiring pipeline, Streak is built for exactly that.
The free plan covers tracking and mail merge but no pipelines. Pro is $49 per user per month billed annually ($59 monthly). Streak runs in Chrome, Safari and Edge. Streak doesn’t store email bodies, only metadata such as thread IDs, addresses and timestamps.
Trello’s Gmail add-on and email-to-board
For people who already live in Trello, the Trello for Google Workspace add-on is free and has over nine million users. Open an email, click the Trello icon, and it becomes a card: subject as the title, body as the description, on whichever board and list you pick. Its Gmail permission is the narrowest in this post: “View your email messages when the add-on is running”.
Every board also has an email-to-board address. Forward a message and it becomes a card, and Trello keeps a copy of the email on its servers for 90 days. Trello’s free plan covers up to ten collaborators per Workspace; Standard is $5 per user per month billed annually.
The catch is that the card is a copy. The email stays in Gmail, the task lives in Trello, and nothing keeps them in step. That’s fine when an email becomes a piece of project work, and poor for triaging the inbox itself. Kanbanchi’s add-on does the same for its own boards.
What you’re actually granting
Gmail’s API classes almost every mailbox scope as restricted, including full access, read-only, modify, and even metadata-only. An app that requests them must pass Google’s verification. If it “has the ability to access data from or through a third-party server”, it must also pass an independent security assessment under the CASA framework, renewed at least every 12 months. Drag advertises CASA Tier 2; Sortd describes an annual independent audit.
That’s a real floor, and it’s reassuring. It is also a security audit, not a promise about what happens to your metadata after an acquisition or a policy change. The four extension vendors all say they don’t keep your email bodies, and all four keep something: senders, subjects, message IDs, board positions, notes. (Trello, by design, keeps the card, and the card is the email.) For most people at most companies, that’s fine. If you work under a strict data-handling policy, it’s a conversation with IT first.
Two checks worth doing. The Chrome Web Store lists what each extension says it handles; Sortd’s entry declares “personal communications”, “location” and “user activity”. And your Google Account’s linked apps page shows every third-party app with access, with a button to remove it.
The free route: labels, Multiple Inboxes, stars and Tasks
Gmail can fake a board without any extension. Create labels for your states (Action, Waiting, Later), switch Inbox type to Multiple Inboxes, and give each section a search like label:waiting. You get up to five sections beside the main inbox, which is a passable board. Because it’s a single inbox-type setting, you lose the category tabs, and it can only be set up from a computer.
The trouble is moving work. Google’s own instructions for moving an email to another label: tick the box, open Labels, untick the current label, select the new one. That’s per state change, and it’s where most DIY boards quietly die.
Two smaller tools help. Gmail can show extra star types (red bang, yellow bang, green check and more), each searchable with operators like has:red-bang, so stars can double as a lightweight status. And Add to Tasks, or dragging an email into the Tasks side panel, turns a message into a Google Task. That’s handy for dated to-dos, but it gives you a list beside your mail rather than a board of it.
It costs nothing, no third party touches your mail, and Gmail offline even lets you read and reply without a connection, in Chrome only. Our guide to organising Gmail with labels and filters covers the setup, and these Gmail filters keep the columns fed automatically.
A desktop board over your Gmail labels
Full disclosure: this is our client.
Kanmail is a desktop email client for macOS, Windows and Linux. You sign in with Google, pick which labels appear as columns, and drag cards between them to re-label the email on Google’s servers. With copy mode, dragging a card out of the Inbox adds a label instead of taking the email out of your inbox, as Gmail labels intend. Because the board is your labels, Gmail on your phone shows the same state, which matters because Kanmail has no mobile app.
On data: sign-in is OAuth, the token sits in your operating system’s credential store, and Kanmail talks directly to Google with no Kanmail server in the path. To be straight about it, Kanmail requests Google’s full mail scope, because that’s the scope IMAP requires. The difference is where it goes: onto your machine, and nowhere else. (The protocol side is explained in IMAP vs the Gmail API.)
What an extension can’t do: Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail and any IMAP account appear on the same board as your Gmail, each with its own colour accent. It’s $49 once, with the same licence across all three operating systems, and free to evaluate with no time limit.
The honest limits. There’s no team layer: no assignments, comments or collision warnings. It’s a desktop app, so you leave the browser. And it isn’t an offline-first client; moving cards and fetching mail happen against Google’s servers, so you need a connection.
Side by side
Three-year costs are for one person on the cheapest plan that includes a board, billed annually. “Not documented” means we couldn’t find offline board support in the vendor’s own docs.
| Option | Who handles your mail data | 3 years, one person | Non-Gmail accounts | Shared team boards | Offline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drag (Starter) | Google, plus Drag’s servers | $432 | No | Yes | Not documented |
| Sortd (Starter) | Google, plus Sortd’s servers | $360 | No | Yes, five on Starter | Not documented |
| Gmelius (Growth) | Google, plus Gmelius’s servers | $900 | No | Yes | Not documented |
| Streak (Pro) | Google, plus Streak’s servers | $1,764 | No | Yes, as pipelines | Not documented |
| Trello add-on | Google, plus Trello for the card | $0 on the free plan | Email-to-board works from any address | Yes | Not documented |
| Gmail on its own | Google only | $0 | No | No | Chrome only, via Gmail offline |
| Kanmail | Google and your machine | $49 | Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail, any IMAP | No | Needs a connection |
Speed is harder to tabulate, and we haven’t benchmarked it. The structural difference: an extension runs inside Gmail’s web app, loads with it, and has to keep pace with every change Google makes to that page. A desktop client runs outside it. Kanmail, for example, shows matches from its local cache the moment you search, while Gmail’s own search runs.
Where extensions win
Teams sharing boards inside Google Workspace. Assignment, internal comments and collision detection are what Drag, Gmelius and Sortd are really selling, and they do them properly. Kanmail doesn’t do them at all. Our shared team inbox guide covers what a folder convention can and can’t replace.
Living entirely in the browser. On a Chromebook, or a locked-down work laptop where you can’t install software, an extension is the only option. Drag and Gmelius also have mobile apps, which Kanmail doesn’t.
CRM pipelines. If the columns are deal stages, Streak is a better fit than any inbox board, ours included.
Where a desktop board wins
Individuals. Per-seat software is priced for teams. Over three years, one person pays $360 to $1,764 for the paid extensions above, against $49 once.
More than one provider. Drag, Sortd, Gmelius and Streak are all Gmail-only. If your work email is Outlook and your personal email is Gmail, a board that sees only half of it isn’t much of a board.
Privacy. No vendor server between you and Google, so there’s no third party holding your senders, subjects or board state, and nothing to audit but your own machine.
Paying once. The annual assessment is a recurring cost for any vendor whose servers touch your mail. A local IMAP client doesn’t carry it, which is part of why a one-time licence is viable at all.
The bottom line
If you’re a team inside Google Workspace and want shared boards with assignment, pick an extension: Sortd if price matters most, Drag if you want the AI and extra channels, Gmelius if you need the wider suite. If the board is really a sales pipeline, use Streak. If you only need the occasional email turned into a Trello card, the free add-on is enough.
If it’s your own inbox, particularly across more than one provider, start with free labels and Multiple Inboxes to see whether the kanban approach suits you. When moving cards through menus gets old, try Kanmail: your Gmail labels as columns, your mail on your machine, $49 once.
Frequently asked questions
Does Gmail have a kanban board view?
Not a real one. The closest built-in option is Multiple Inboxes, which shows up to five sections beside your inbox, each defined by a search such as label:waiting. It looks like a board, but moving an email between sections means changing its labels through a menu. For drag-and-drop columns you need an extension such as Drag or Sortd, or a desktop client like Kanmail.
Can I use Trello with Gmail?
Yes, in two ways. Trello's free Google Workspace add-on turns the email you have open into a card, with the subject as the title and the body as the description. Or you can forward mail to a board's email-to-board address. Either way the card is a copy: the email stays in Gmail and the two don't stay in step, so it suits turning emails into project tasks better than triaging the inbox itself.
What is a good Drag app alternative for Gmail?
It depends why you're leaving. For a cheaper team board inside Gmail, Sortd starts at $10 per user a month, billed annually. For boards plus heavier shared-inbox features, Gmelius includes kanban views from its $25 Growth plan. For a personal board, several providers or a one-time price, a desktop client like Kanmail ($49 once) shows your Gmail labels as columns with no vendor server in the middle.
Are Gmail kanban extensions safe?
The established ones pass Google's checks. Apps that use Gmail's restricted scopes and can reach your data through their own servers must complete an independent security assessment at least every 12 months. Most say they don't store email bodies, but they do keep metadata such as senders, subjects and board positions. That's fine for most people. If your job has strict data-handling rules, ask IT first.
Do Gmail kanban extensions work with Outlook or other accounts?
Generally not. Drag, Sortd, Gmelius and Streak are all built on Gmail and Google Workspace. If you have a work Outlook account alongside Gmail, you either run two systems or use a client that speaks IMAP, which covers Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail and most other providers on one board.
