For academics
An AI email assistant for academics
A project call with sixteen days left, a deanery notice about grade entry and a journal asking you to pay for your next paper all land in the same inbox. CatchTheMail reads each one you forward, tells them apart and puts the one with a deadline first.
What it does with your mail
Four messages a faculty member might receive in the same week, and what the analysis makes of each.
- Tender and callHigh
Research agency: project call closes in 16 days
An open call with under three weeks left. Marked high and flagged as an opportunity, because a proposal takes longer to write than a reply.
- Notice and warningNormal
Deanery: faculty board meeting and grade entry calendar
From your own institution, so it is never marked low. It informs rather than threatens, and the reasoning says so in its first sentence.
- PromotionLow
Invitation to publish, processing charge applies
A journal whose message is mainly about fees is promotion, not a call for papers. Low, and not an opportunity.
- QuestionNormal
Student asking about a make-up exam
A student's question stays a question, not an institutional notice, and the drafted reply is written in the student's language.
Why a generic assistant gets academic mail wrong
Most email tools were built around sales inboxes. To them a rectorate circular looks like a newsletter and a call for papers looks like marketing, so both sink. Academic mail runs on institutions and deadlines instead, and the message that matters is often the least personal one.
When you choose Academia as your sector, the analysis adds a lens written for that world: which calls are worth your time, which obligations carry a penalty, and which offers only want your money.
Institutional mail gets through
Group mail from institutions usually looks like bulk mail, and a bulk filter would set it aside unread. With a sector selected, messages from institutional domains such as .edu and .gov are analysed instead. If that uses more of your monthly analyses than you would like, one switch in settings turns it off.
How it fits into your day
You pick your sector once, when you sign up. After that there is nothing new to learn: you forward email to your private CatchTheMail address, by hand or with a one-line Gmail filter, and each message comes back with a category, a priority, a short reason and a drafted reply.
CatchTheMail never connects to your mailbox. It asks for no Gmail or Outlook permission and only ever sees the messages you forward. Nothing is sent on your behalf, and your email is not used to train AI models.
When it is the wrong tool
- You want your inbox sorted without forwarding anything. CatchTheMail only sees what you send it.
- Your university forbids forwarding institutional mail to outside services. Check your institution's policy first.
- You need a reference manager or a grant writing tool. This reads and prioritises email, nothing more.
Other sectors
Try it on one real email
Forward a single message from your own inbox and judge what comes back. No card, no mailbox connection.
Start free for 7 days