lobstermail vs clawemail: agent-first vs google workspace

ClawEmail and LobsterMail both give AI agents email. That's where the similarity ends. ClawEmail plugs your agent into Google Workspace. LobsterMail gives your agent its own isolated inbox. They're built for different problems, and the right choice depends on what your agent actually needs to do.

What each product does#

ClawEmail is a Google Workspace wrapper. For $16/month, your agent gets access to a full Google account: Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and Calendar. You're not just getting email. You're getting a productivity suite that the agent can read from and write to. Setup is manual. You configure OAuth credentials, connect a Google Workspace account, and scope the permissions yourself.

LobsterMail is agent-first email infrastructure. Your agent hatches its own inbox in seconds. No Google account, no OAuth configuration, no human stepping through a setup wizard. The agent calls one function and has a working email address. Free for receiving, $9/month for sending with unlimited inboxes.

These products solve fundamentally different problems. ClawEmail answers "how do I give my agent access to Google?" LobsterMail answers "how do I give my agent email?"

Feature comparison#

Pricing#

The numbers are straightforward.

LobsterMail:

• Free: Unlimited receive-only inboxes, no credit card
• Builder ($9/month): Unlimited inboxes, sending (1,000/day, 10,000/month), custom domains

ClawEmail:

• $16/month: Full Google Workspace access (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Calendar)

LobsterMail is $7/month cheaper if you only need email. ClawEmail includes four Google products for that $16. Whether the extra $7 is worth it depends entirely on whether your agent needs Docs, Sheets, and Calendar or not.

If it does, ClawEmail is the better deal. Buying a Google Workspace seat ($6-18/month) plus configuring Gog or a custom integration costs more time and often more money than ClawEmail's single subscription.

If your agent only needs to send and receive email, you're paying $16 for capabilities you won't use.

Where ClawEmail is stronger#

ClawEmail wins when your agent needs the Google ecosystem.

Full Google suite access. This is ClawEmail's core advantage. Your agent can read a spreadsheet, draft a document, check a calendar, and send an email in a single workflow. If you're building an agent that manages a small business's operations through Google Workspace, ClawEmail is purpose-built for that.

Familiar infrastructure. Google Workspace is battle-tested. Billions of users, decades of uptime, extensive documentation. Your agent is working with tools that have been refined for years, not a new platform.

Single integration for multiple services. Instead of connecting your agent to Gmail, then Google Docs, then Sheets, then Calendar through separate integrations, ClawEmail bundles it. Less configuration, fewer points of failure across the Google stack.

Where LobsterMail is stronger#

LobsterMail wins when your agent just needs email and you want it fast, cheap, and isolated.

No setup required. Your agent provisions its own inbox without a human in the loop. No OAuth credentials to configure. No Google account to create. The agent handles everything. If you're building autonomous agents that need to spin up their own communication channels, this is the only way to do it without manual intervention.

Inbox isolation. A LobsterMail inbox contains only what the agent has received since creation. No personal emails, no historical data, no documents from your Google Drive sitting in reach. If the agent is compromised, the blast radius is limited to the agent's own messages. ClawEmail gives the agent access to an entire Google Workspace account, which means a compromised agent could touch documents, calendar events, and email history that have nothing to do with its task.

Price for email-only use cases. $9/month with unlimited inboxes versus $16/month with one Google account. If you're running five agents that each need their own address, LobsterMail costs $9 total. On ClawEmail, that's five Google Workspace accounts at $16 each.

Prompt injection defense. LobsterMail scans incoming emails across 6 categories of injection attacks before your agent processes them. ClawEmail passes Google Workspace data through to the agent without scanning. Email is one of the primary vectors for indirect prompt injection, and an agent with access to a full Google account has a much larger attack surface than one with an isolated inbox.

Custom domains. LobsterMail supports custom domains on the $9/month tier. Your agent sends from support@yourdomain.com instead of a platform address. ClawEmail uses whatever Google Workspace domain the account is configured with.

The philosophical difference#

These products reflect different beliefs about what agents need.

ClawEmail thinks agents should work inside existing human tools. Your agent gets a Google account, just like a human employee would, and uses the same apps everyone else uses. This works well when the agent's job mirrors what a human assistant would do: managing a calendar, updating a spreadsheet, sending follow-up emails from a shared inbox.

LobsterMail thinks agents should have their own infrastructure. Instead of borrowing a human's tools, the agent gets purpose-built resources that are scoped to exactly what it needs. No access to data it shouldn't see. No dependency on a platform designed for human users. This works well when you're building agents that need to operate independently, scale to many instances, or handle sensitive communication without exposing personal data.

Neither approach is wrong. But they lead to very different architectures.

When to choose ClawEmail#

• Your agent needs Google Docs, Sheets, or Calendar access alongside email
• You're building a virtual assistant that manages a single user's Google Workspace
• You want one integration that covers multiple Google products
• You already have a Google Workspace subscription and want to extend it to your agent
• Your agent works within a single Google account and doesn't need to scale to multiple inboxes

When to choose LobsterMail#

• Your agent only needs email, not the full Google suite
• You want your agent to provision its own inbox without manual setup
• You're running multiple agents that each need separate addresses
• You want inbox isolation so a compromised agent can't reach personal data
• You care about prompt injection scanning on incoming emails
• You want custom domains at a lower price point

The bottom line#

ClawEmail is the right pick when your agent needs the Google Workspace ecosystem. If your workflow involves spreadsheets, documents, calendar management, and email all working together through a single Google account, ClawEmail bundles that for $16/month and saves you from wiring up each service individually.

LobsterMail is the right pick when your agent needs email and nothing else. Isolated inboxes, no manual setup, prompt injection scanning, unlimited addresses for $9/month. It does one thing, and it does it without tethering your agent to Google.

Pick the tool that matches the job. If you need the whole reef, ClawEmail covers it. If you need a clean shell, that's what we built.

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