Slack acquires email app ASTRO, promptly shuts it down

Slack announced today that it has acquired the popular email app ASTRO. The company wasted no time after the announcement, as the ASTRO app has already been removed from the Google Play Store.

According to ASTRO, the service will be permanently shuttered on October 10. Until then, if you use the ASTRO app it will still work, but after then you will have to find a replacement app.

This news comes only two months after another email app — Newton — also announced its end.

Unlike Newton, however, ASTRO is probably shuttering for bigger and better things. According to ASTRO’s statement on the acquisition, the team is looking forward to connecting “email and calendaring to all the work teams do in Slack.”

It’s not too difficult to read between the lines there and assume that we will soon see an email app from Slack that will likely look and work a lot like ASTRO.

Astro’s main selling point was heavy AI integration, which allowed you to archive, prioritize, and manage your email and calendar events with ease.

If you are an ASTRO user, check out our roundup of the best email clients Android has to offer. Even if Slack does eventually announce its own email client, you’re going to need something else in the meantime. As for this author’s recommendation, Blue Mail works terrifically for me: