Library or feed?
Competitor email tools look alike on a pricing page, but they split into two different products.
Curated index tools capture the email programs of a hand-picked set of brands, so years of history are already there on day one. They’re excellent for browsing examples and benchmarking a category. The limit is coverage: the index is weighted towards ecommerce and retail, and if the company you care about isn’t in it, there’s no way to add it.
Tracking address tools give you a dedicated email address to subscribe to whichever companies you choose, and everything they send lands in a searchable workspace. Coverage is unlimited — any company, any vertical — but your archive starts on the day you subscribe.
So if you mostly browse examples, you want an index. If you watch a specific short list of rivals, especially B2B, niche or regional ones an index won’t cover, you want a tracking address. CompetitorTrack is a tracking address tool.
The comparisons
MailCharts alternatives after the Litmus move
Self-serve MailCharts plans are retired. An honest look at Milled, Panoramata, Owletter, SendView, Newsletrix, Reyo and CompetitorTrack, and which one fits how you used MailCharts.
Compare MailCharts alternativesCompetitor email tracking tools compared
The wider field: the five kinds of tool, what each one is good at, and which suits one competitor, a handful, or ten or more.
See all tools comparedWhat happened to MailCharts?
The timeline from the Validity acquisition to MailCharts moving inside Litmus Enterprise, and what it means if you were on a self-serve plan.
Read the explainerThe free route: burner and alias inboxes
Gmail aliases, temp-mail and burner inboxes all break in different ways when you subscribe to competitor newsletters. Why, and what holds up over months.
Read the DIY guideWhen CompetitorTrack fits, and when it doesn’t
It fits when you watch a specific set of competitors, from one to a few dozen, and want their campaigns kept out of personal inboxes in a shared, searchable archive with instant alerts. It also fits when those competitors are B2B, niche or regional. Pricing is per competitor: the first one is free forever, and each additional one is $10 a month.
It doesn’t fit if you mainly want to browse thousands of brands you don’t compete with, or you need years of a competitor’s history on day one. A curated index is the better tool for that. And if you casually watch a single competitor, a second Gmail account and a filter is honestly enough to start.
Whichever you choose, set it up soon. Every tracking-address tool starts its archive on the day you subscribe, so the real cost of waiting is the campaigns that go out before you do. See how competitor email monitoring works in CompetitorTrack, or check pricing.