Astro email app is shutting down after being acquired by Slack

By Joe Maring
last updated

Slack, one of the most popular apps for workplace communication, announced on Monday, September 24 that it's acquiring Astro.

Astro is an email client that launched back in 2015 as a solution for people that wanted to make sense of their inbox with genuinely useful features. One of the highlights of Astro, the Astrobot, added AI to the mix so that it was dead simple to archive unwanted emails, add events to your calendar, and more.

Under its new ownership of Slack, the team at Astro will be working to create "the future of interoperability between Slack messaging, email and calendaring." It's unclear what exactly that means (Slack Email, maybe?), but we should be hearing more soon.

As for the Astro app, it'll be shutting down on Wednesday, October 10 across Android, iOS, Mac, its Amazon Alexa skill, and Slack app. New signups are disabled and the app has already been pulled from the Google Play Store.

Best alternative to Inbox by Gmail

Joe Maring
Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.

9 Comments
  • another one bites the dust. I was just checking this one out again after Newton announced they were shutting down. In addition Trove also shut down their email service. It is frustrating trying to find a service that emails can be read by Alexa. The best ones are now gone.
  • Sad news. I really enjoyed Astro Email. and Newton before that. Guess I'll try Blue Mail for now, until that goes away, or I find one better.
  • Blue mail works well
  • blue mail is great. I used it for a couple of years then replaced it with Newton I got used to alexa reading my emails :-) I will end up going back to it if I cannot find something that reads emails.
  • Another great alternative is Spark by our team at Readdle. We'll release the Android version soon, and now it's available for Mac and iOS.
  • You're advertising for an app that we cannot download? Gotcha.
  • +1 for blue mail, been using it for quite a while and it works great.
  • Polymail seems to be the best alternative left after Newton and Astro. Only shame is its web, Mac and iOS. No android yet. Do others have alternatives that have read receipts and send later?
  • Astro could have warned me I used the app religiously then out of nowhere "unable to resolve host". Finally stumbled upon this news. Lovely.