Mail Housekeeper
Alternatives

Inbox cleaners, by the facts.

What the best known inbox cleaners say about themselves and what has been reported about them, each fact with its source, and a plain table of how Mail Housekeeper differs. Pick whichever fits you.

Unroll.me alternative

A free unsubscribe service, now part of NielsenIQ. The FTC settled with it in 2019 over how it described its use of e-receipts.

Clean Email alternative

A subscription inbox cleaner from $9.99 a month or $29.99 a year, with a free tier for up to 1,000 messages.

Leave Me Alone alternative

A subscription unsubscribe service from $15 a month, with 10 free unsubscribes and a one-time 7-day pass.

Side by side

How Mail Housekeeper differs

Each cell about another product comes from that product's own pages or a cited report. Details change, so each page says when it was checked.

WhatMail HousekeeperUnroll.meClean EmailLeave Me Alone
Price
Free scan. $8 once per mailbox for the full cleanup. Optional upkeep $19 a year or $2.49 a month. Free during the launch trial.
Free to sign up.[5]
Subscription: $9.99 a month or $29.99 a year for one account, as displayed November 8, 2026. Free tier up to 1,000 messages.[11][12]
Subscription from $15 a month for one inbox, or a $19 Seven Day Pass, as displayed November 8, 2026. 10 free unsubscribes.[16]
How it connects
An app password you make and can revoke any time. Never your real password.
Through your email provider's consent, per its privacy notice. The exact sign-in method is not stated in the pages we could reach.[3]
Provider sign-in for Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and AOL; app-specific password for iCloud and Fastmail; login and password for other IMAP.[13]
Gmail and Yahoo through the provider's permissions; app password for iCloud, AOL and other IMAP.[17]
What it keeps
Headers only: sender, subject up to 160 characters, date, opened or not, unsubscribe header. Message bodies are never stored.
Copies of the commercial emails received in each connected account.[3]
Headers and metadata; message content where needed, and the body for a full preview, per its privacy policy.[15]
Metadata of subscription emails; encrypted content for its Rollups feature.[17]
Your data
Never sold or shared, raw or anonymized. Paid by the people who use it.
May "sell" or "share" some types of personal information as U.S. law defines those terms, including data about commercial emails for panelists.[3]
Never sold or rented, including aggregated information, per its privacy policy.[15]
Not sold; shared only with the companies its policy lists or when the law requires. Email content trains its spam classifiers when Spam Blocker is on.[18]
Deleting
Nothing is deleted by the software. Cleared mail waits in a folder in your own mailbox; emptying it is a button you confirm.
Not stated in the sources we checked.
Remove is one of its bulk actions, alongside archive, move and label.[14]
Says it cannot delete your mail on Gmail.[17]
Unsubscribes
Only to senders a checker verifies as a real business, only through the mail header, never twice. Spam and phishing are moved only.
Not stated in the sources we checked.
Sends unsubscribe requests on your behalf and blocks senders who do not respect them.[14]
Its core feature. How it treats suspected spam senders is not stated in the sources we checked.
Big Yahoo and AOL inboxes
Works through the 10,000-message view in waves and parks kept mail to reach the oldest layer, then brings it back.
Not stated in the sources we checked.
Not stated in the sources we checked.
Not stated in the sources we checked.

Checked November 2026. If a maker tells us a line is out of date, we fix it. The general comparison with subscription cleaners and desktop apps is on Compare.

Also worth knowing

Two more inbox tools

Mailstrom

Subscription from $9 a month or $59.95 a year for one account of up to 10,000 emails, as displayed November 8, 2026.[19] Its FAQ says it uses OAuth where available, stores IMAP passwords encrypted, and stores only subject lines and metadata, while it has access to message contents to display them.[20]

SaneBox

Subscription from $9.49 a month for one account, less when paid yearly, with a 7-day free trial, as displayed November 8, 2026.[21] Its security page says it analyzes headers to decide what is important, never stores message bodies, and connects most services without a password.[22]

Sources

  1. TechCrunch, Nov 24, 2014: Rakuten's Slice buys Unroll.me
  2. Retail Dive, Aug 13, 2014: Rakuten buys e-commerce app Slice
  3. Unroll.me Privacy Notice (effective April 14, 2025)
  4. Unroll.me home page
  5. Unroll.me on the App Store
  6. The New York Times, Apr 23, 2017: Uber's C.E.O. Plays With Fire
  7. The Intercept, Apr 24, 2017: quotes the Times report and Slice's confirmation
  8. FTC press release, Aug 8, 2019: Operator of email management service settles FTC allegations
  9. FTC press release, Dec 17, 2019: FTC finalizes settlement
  10. FTC case page: Unrollme Inc., In the Matter of (File No. 172 3139)
  11. Clean Email plans
  12. Clean Email help: free trial and subscriptions
  13. Clean Email help: connecting your email account
  14. Clean Email home page
  15. Clean Email Privacy Policy (last updated Oct 30, 2026)
  16. Leave Me Alone pricing
  17. Leave Me Alone security
  18. Leave Me Alone privacy policy (last updated Aug 8, 2026)
  19. Mailstrom pricing
  20. Mailstrom FAQ
  21. SaneBox pricing
  22. SaneBox security

Checked November 2026.

Start with a free scan

Connect a mailbox and see every sender grouped by company. Nothing moves until you say so.

Start freeHow it works