ChatInbox vs Ocean
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ChatInbox
This app reimagines your email by organizing it around people, not dates. View all conversations with a contact in a chat-style format, making it easy to find past messages and attachments. It supports multiple email accounts and devices, offering a streamlined inbox experience.
- Contact-centered inbox
- All accounts in one inbox
- Smart contact grouping
- Attachments by person
- Calendar view
- Email reminders
Read full descriptionHide full description
ChatInbox organizes your inbox by people. Each person you email gets one conversation that holds everything you've exchanged: every subject, every reply, every attachment. When a new email arrives, its person moves to the top, with your whole history right there. Newsletters, receipts and alerts file themselves into Feeds, so mail from people is never buried. ORGANIZED BY PEOPLE Your list shows people, not a pile of messages. Tap a person to see every email between you, across every subject, in one place. Read it as cards by thread or as a chat with your replies on the right. Put a company or a team together in one row. Many people use ChatInbox as a simple CRM: every client's emails, files and follow-ups in one place. PEOPLE FIRST, FEEDS SEPARATE Newsletters, receipts and notifications go to Feeds automatically. Clear a sender in one go: Mark All as Read, Archive All, or Unsubscribe & Delete All. TODAY'S INBOX, DONE FAST Triage sorts today's mail into a plan: what needs a reply, what can be archived, codes you no longer need. Apply it at once, with Undo. AI THAT STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE With Apple Intelligence, ChatInbox shows what people are waiting on you for, lists the questions in an email and drafts your answer, catches you up on what's new from people, and answers questions about your mail with the email it came from. Translate an email in place, on your device. FIND ANYTHING Search reads the words inside your emails and even inside PDFs and other attachments. Or open a person, and everything with them is already there. YOUR ACCOUNTS, YOUR DEVICES Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo and any IMAP account. Type your address and ChatInbox finds the settings. Works on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and one purchase covers all three. CALENDAR, TO-DOS AND TAGS See your week beside your mail, turn an email into an event or a to-do, and tag conversations to track them on a board. PRIVACY FIRST Your email never passes through our servers: ChatInbox connects directly to your mail provider. No data mining, no tracking. Turn on image blocking and tracking pixels load only for senders you approve. FREE AND PREMIUM ChatInbox is free with one email account. Premium adds unlimited accounts with Profiles, advanced filters, your full mail history and custom notifications. Try it free for 7 days with the yearly plan, or buy Lifetime once. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Ocean
This app intelligently sorts your Gmail inbox into actionable categories like 'Action', 'Review', and 'Cleanup'. It offers features to quickly reply, schedule, archive, and bulk delete emails, helping you manage your inbox more efficiently.
- Inbox classification (Action, Review, Cleanup)
- Quick email actions (reply, schedule, dock)
- Bulk email cleanup
- Google Calendar integration for invites
- Global search across emails and invites
- VIP contact highlighting
Read full descriptionHide full description
Your Gmail inbox wasn't built for the way you work. Ocean was. Ocean brings Beacon Intelligence to your Gmail. On-demand intelligence that classifies your inbox into what actually matters, so you spend less time sorting and more time doing. Designed exclusively for Gmail and Google Workspace. ⎯ BEACON INTELLIGENCE Beacon analyses your inbox and classifies what matters into 3 swim lanes: Action, Review, and Cleanup. Each lane contains a list of emails that you need to act on. - For the Action lane, you can quickly reply, dock an email on a specific date or send a meeting invitation. - For the Review lane, you can swipe to archive or discard the email. - For the Cleanup lane, you can leverage our powerful bulk Cleanup functionality to clear hundreds of emails in seconds. ⎯ DROPS: INTELLIGENCE WITHOUT THE COMMITMENT Every new account gets 30 free Drops. Enough for about 12 to 14 days of active use. Drops never expire and are only consumed when you use them. Skip a day, skip a week. You don't pay for days you're not working. Once your free Drops are used, Ocean's core features remain free forever. Need more? Drop packs are available for quick top-ups. Or go Ocean Blue for 50 Drops every day, refreshing at midnight. No subscription required. No rush hitting cancel. ⎯ CORE FEATURES: ALWAYS FREE Email: Compose, reply, forward, and manage your Gmail. Full email client, always free. Clean Up: Filter and clear your inbox in seconds. - First Timers, Persistent Pingers, Subscriptions, and more. - Archive entire categories with one tap. Dock: Dock emails you want to action later. - Swipe into time-based buckets: Today, This Weekend, This Week, This Month, Whenever. - Never lose what needs your attention. Invites: Direct Google Calendar integration. - Share your availability, block last-minute bookings, and automatically add confirmed meetings to your calendar. Global Search: Search across emails and invites from one place. VIP Contacts: Mark important senders as VIP. Never miss their emails. ⎯ PRIVACY-FIRST Your emails are never stored on our servers. When you invoke Beacon Intelligence, we ask your consent to use our intelligence provider to analyze your email conversations. Only when you ask, never in the background. Not sneaky. ⎯ BEAUTIFULLY NATIVE Dark mode, clean design, built for iPhone. Not a web wrapper. ⎯ Built in Canada by a small team who actually use this thing every day. Privacy Policy: https://ocean.app/privacy-policy Terms and Conditions: https://ocean.app/terms-of-use
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Ocean at 5.0 against ChatInbox's 4.5. ChatInbox's advantage is ratings volume (31 vs 1) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. ChatInbox sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Ocean sells 8 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Ocean holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: ChatInbox has 31 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
ChatInbox ships an update every 5 days, Ocean every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 27, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | ChatInbox | Ocean |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (31 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 61.1% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 31 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days — better | Every 8 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 91 MB | 33 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Innovatism LLC | BigWave Labs Inc |
Customer experience
ChatInbox
Ocean
In-app purchases
ChatInbox
- Monthly Premium$4.991 Month
- Yearly Premium7 Days trial$29.991 Year
- Lifetime Premium$59.99
Ocean
- Ocean Blue 14-day TrialFree
- Ocean Drops Small$2.00
- Ocean Drops Medium$3.00
Show 5 moreShow fewer
- Ocean Drops Large$5.00
- Ocean Drops XLarge$9.00
- Ocean Blue (Early Adopter)$67.00
- Ocean Blue Access$79.00
- Ocean Blue$99.00









