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Canary Mail vs Outlook – Choose the Right Email App for Your Requirement

  Tej Pratap Shukla
Written By Tej Pratap Shukla
Anuraag Singh
Approved By Anuraag Singh
Modified On December 10th, 2025
Reading Time 7 Min Read

If you’re wondering about Canary Mail vs Outlook, then your search ends here. Today, I’ll guide you through both tools, according to the:

  • Privacy
  • Simplicity
  • Enterprise-level productivity
  • Integration

Since I actively use both applications, I’ve compared them based on my personal and real-world experience to help you quickly understand which email client actually fits your workflow. So, let me explain what they actually are!

A Quick Overview of Both Canary Mail & Outlook

Before learning the features, pros, and cons, let’s first have a look at:

What Is Canary Mail?

Canary Mail is a privacy-focused, AI-powered email client known for features like:

  • End-to-end encryption
  • AI-driven Smart Replies
  • Read receipts
  • Focused inbox
  • Cross-platform support, i.e. macOS, iOS, Windows, Android

I personally use Canary Mail instead of Outlook when I want a clean UI and advanced security.

Related guide: Remove IMAP Account

What Is Outlook?

Outlook is part of Microsoft 365, and it comes in several variants, like Outlook desktop-based, Outlook.com (free), and Outlook 365 (paid). Each version offers a different experience, but the idea remains the same: offering a robust email client with built-in calendar, contacts, and task management.  

The desktop-based version of this will save your data in PST (Personal Storage Table) and OST (Offline Storage Table) file format, which serves as a backup. 

As Outlook is offered by Office 365 for business email management, it is deeply integrated with:

  • Teams
  • OneDrive
  • SharePoint
  • Calendar, Tasks, People
  • Exchange Online
  • Microsoft security & compliance ecosystem

You can prefer Outlook when you are working inside Microsoft environments because nothing beats its integration.

Canary Mail vs Outlook: Detailed Comparison

Below is the cut-to-cut comparison of both services, according to their UI, security, performance, and more, i.e. 

#1. User Interface & Experience

Canary Mail

Canary’s UI is extremely modern and clean, even non non-technical user will easily understand and use it. It looks cleaner than Outlook, with smart filtering and simple navigation.

Everything moves smoothly, and it even has a dark mode that is extremely useful at night. But I personally experienced that some buttons are hard to find. Moreover, you can’t change a lot of things the way you want, unlike in Outlook.

Outlook

Outlook has a traditional layout. It’s not as pretty, but it’s professional. This app lets you change many things the way you like, with several features. It helps to do multiple tasks at the same time and keeps your folders manageable. 

But sometimes it feels slow and heavy, and has an old UI, which is not understandable by many users. Most of the users switch to Canary Mail because of its advanced features and new UI.

So, according to the UI comparison of Canary Mail vs Outlook, Canary Mail is the clear winner.

#2. Performance & Speed

Canary Mail

When I tried Canary on Mac and Windows, I feel it is quite faster than Outlook. My emails open quickly, and searching is also instant. The best thing I like, it doesn’t use much memory. However, sometimes it slows down on Windows. Plus, large inboxes can take some time to sync, that’s what I feel.

Outlook

Outlook is robust and works well with large mailboxes. On Windows, it runs fine and keeps emails ready to open fast. But it uses a lot of memory, and it starts slowly, especially on older computers.

Again, Canary won this point also because of its speed.

#3. Security & Privacy

Canary Mail Security

This is why I really like Canary:

  • End-to-end encryption
  • Zero-tracking mode
  • Biometric unlock
  • App-level encryption

I especially like Canary’s E2E encryption, which Outlook doesn’t offer natively.

Outlook Security

Outlook comes with Microsoft’s enterprise-grade security:

  • Advanced Threat Protection
  • Spam filtering
  • Phishing detection
  • Compliance tools
  • MFA & conditional access
  • Encrypted email (IRM/S/MIME)

But it doesn’t offer the same privacy-first philosophy as Canary.

In the difference between Canary Mail vs Outlook​, this time, Outlook won because of its enterprise-level security.

Also read: Archive IMAP Emails

#4. AI Features (2025)

Canary Mail

Canary Mail has a built-in AI which helps to:

  • Write emails
  • Give quick reply ideas
  • Make long messages shorter
  • Show the most important emails first
  • Helps clean up your inbox

All of this saves me time, especially when I need to reply fast.

Outlook

Outlook leverages Microsoft Copilot, which is extremely powerful and integrates across:

  • Emails
  • Calendar
  • Teams
  • Word
  • Excel
  • PowerPoint

However, it requires a separate subscription for full features.

With Microsoft Copilot, Outlook is the winner in the comparison of Canary Mail vs Outlook​.

#5. Integrations & Ecosystem

Canary Mail

Supports basic integrations:

  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • Unified inbox
  • Cloud storage for attachments (limited)

Outlook

This is where Outlook dominates.

  • Teams
  • OneDrive
  • SharePoint
  • Planner
  • To Do
  • Power Automate
  • Dynamics 365

I personally rely on these integrations for work, and most of the users also.

Clear winner: Outlook, as it can integrate with several services with minimal effort.

Additional resource: imap.comcast.net Not Responding

#6. Multi-Platform Support

Platform Canary Outlook
Windows Yes Yes
macOS Yes Yes
iOS Yes Yes
Android Yes Yes
Web Access No Yes

Outlook has a web version, i.e. Outlook on the Web. But Canary lacks a browser-based interface.

The winner is, according to the requirements, as many of the users used a desktop for email management.

#7. Email Organization & Productivity

Canary Mail

  • Smart Filters
  • Focused Inbox
  • Snooze
  • Notes
  • Categorization
  • Clean mode

Outlook

  • Rules
  • Categories
  • Flags
  • Focused Inbox
  • Shared mailboxes
  • Delegation features

Again, who won in the difference between Canary Mail vs Outlook is up to your workflow. ​So, choose any of them according to your choice or need.

#8. Pricing (2025)

Canary Mail Pricing

  • Growth plan: US $36 per year
  • Lifetime license: US $100 (one-time)
  • Pro+” annual: US $100 / year or lifetime US $300
  • Free version: yes, basic features / limited features available

Trusted Source: Canarymail.io

Outlook Pricing

Outlook’s cost depends on Microsoft 365 plans. For India:

  • Microsoft 365 Personal: US $9.99/month or US $99.99/year
  • Microsoft 365 Family (up to 6 users): US $12.99/month or US $129.99/year M
  • Microsoft 365 Premium (includes full apps + extras): US $19.99/month or US $199.99/year 

After reading out these plans, one thing is clear: there’s no standalone Outlook with full features unless you buy a Microsoft 365 subscription.

So, according to me, and affordability, Canary Mail is better, as we are looking for a decent and modern email management solution.

How to Migrate from Canary Mail to Outlook and Vice-Versa?

After the above Canary Mail vs Outlook​ comparison, most of you might think that if you can move your entire data from Canary Mail to Outlook, or vice versa. The short answer is yes, you can do so, but you can’t directly.

Since migrating directly between Canary Mail and Outlook isn’t possible because neither app provides a built-in export/import option for the other. Canary Mail doesn’t export PST files, and Outlook cannot read Canary’s internal data. So you can’t move emails directly from one app to the other manually.

Don’t worry, as I have a solution for this, i.e. SysTools IMAP Backup Software. Instead of trying to transfer data between the apps, the tool lets you take a backup from the source email account (the account used in Canary or Outlook) and then restore or import that backup into the target app.

Basically, this utility helps to export data from the source account and then import that into the target account. Still, if you have any doubts related to this, just try this for free before any commitment. Download it, and back up your data with this.

It can export IMAP to PST, MBOX, EML, MSG, and PDF. Additionally, you can install it on any Windows or Mac OS simply. With its clean UI, you can migrate from Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and any other IMAP-supported client effortlessly.

Final Verdict: Which One Should You Use?

Here is my honest answer in the comparison of Canary Mail vs Outlook, i.e.

  • Canary Mail for personal communication because it’s fast and private.
  • Outlook for professional work because it integrates smoothly with Microsoft services.

I hope you got the answer to the difference between these two apps. Now, you choose any of them according to your requirements and budget. Moreover, if you want to move data from Canary Mail to Outlook, or vice versa, then it is highly recommended to try the specified SysTools solution for free.