Shortwave Alternatives: Features, Pricing and Comparison
AI Personal Assistants
Looking for an alternative to Shortwave? Compare features, pricing, and fit to choose the right platform.
Shortwave vs Sistava
Shortwave is an AI-native email client for Gmail, built by former Firebase engineers, with strong AI search across your full mail history, thread summarisation, scheduling and an assistant that drafts and organises. It is small and focused, roughly 17 people on $9M raised. Sistava is a workforce platform where email is a channel an employee uses, not the product itself.
Profile
- Pricing
- Tiered plans on its pricing page, spanning a free entry point and paid personal and business tiers billed per user per month.
- Founded
- 2020, San Francisco, by Andrew Lee and Jacob Wenger, previously of Firebase
- Funding
- $9M raised (Lightspeed Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures). Around $1.9M revenue in 2025 with a team of roughly 17
- Focus
- AI-native email client for Gmail with search, summarisation and an assistant
Why choose Sistava as an alternative to Shortwave
- Sistava employees send, reply and follow up on their own and report what they did. Shortwave helps you do it faster.
- Sistava covers sales, marketing, support, operations and finance. Shortwave covers the Gmail inbox.
- Sistava employees run scheduled proactive work with no trigger. Shortwave responds when you are in your mail.
- Sistava carries layered memory across every channel and task. Shortwave indexes and searches your mail history.
- Sistava connects to thousands of apps plus custom MCP servers and can drive a browser or desktop. Shortwave integrates around Gmail and calendar.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Shortwave | Sistava |
|---|---|---|
| AI Workforce | ✗ | ✓ |
| AI search over full mail history | Core strength | Workspace search |
| Thread summarisation and drafting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sends and handles threads without you | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi-Function Coverage | Sales, Marketing, Support, Ops | |
| Runs on a schedule without a prompt | ✗ | Schedules, duties, heartbeat |
| Team Hierarchy and Leader Delegation | ✗ | ✓ |
| MCP Protocol Support | ✗ | ✓ |
| Browser and Desktop Automation | ✗ | ✓ |
| Voice and phone channel | ✗ | ✓ |
| Durable Execution (Temporal) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-Serve Pricing | Free tier plus paid per-user tiers | Free (5,000 lifetime credits) + $25/mo |
What is Sistava?
Sistava is an AI workforce platform where you hire AI employees and work with them through conversation. Tell an employee what you need in plain language, and Sistava handles the setup behind the scenes, including the tools, context, and team coordination needed for the work. You do not need to learn AI configuration or build workflows first. You can start with the work you want done, stay involved in the decisions that matter, and see how your team is moving forward.