Last updated February 20, 2026
Clara Labs was a pioneer in AI scheduling. You'd CC clara@claralabs.com on an email thread, and it would handle the back-and-forth of finding a meeting time. For scheduling-only use cases, it was elegant. But Clara shut down, and the reasons are instructive: narrow focus on a single use case, high operational costs from the human-in-the-loop model, and difficulty expanding beyond scheduling. notodo takes the lessons from Clara's approach and builds something broader and more sustainable. Instead of email-based scheduling only, notodo is a full AI chief of staff: email triage, calendar management, task tracking, web research, voice notes, and daily briefings. The chat-first interface is more flexible than CC-ing an email address, and the scope justifies the subscription in a way that scheduling-only never could.
| Feature | notodo | Clara Labs | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | Calendar management through chat with smart scheduling rules, travel buffers, and location preferences. Approval before creating events | Email-based scheduling via CC. Clara would handle the back-and-forth with meeting participants to find a time. Elegant for its specific use case | |
| Email management | Full Gmail integration with AI triage, auto-archive, draft composition, and approval-gated sending | Only participated in email threads for scheduling. No inbox management, no triage, no drafting | |
| Task management | Chat-based task creation with recurrence, priorities, and conversation linking | No task management features | |
| Interface | Chat-first web app with inline action cards, voice input, and mobile support | No dedicated interface. Operated entirely through email CC. Simple but limiting | |
| Research | Built-in web research agent with real-time streaming results | No research capabilities | |
| Daily briefing | AI-generated daily standup with calendar overview, task summary, email highlights, and proactive suggestions | No briefing features | |
| Product status | Active and in development. Regular updates with new features and improvements | Shut down. No longer available. Existing customers had to migrate to alternatives |
Free tier available. Pro at €79/month with full features.
Was $99/month for the professional plan when it was still operating. The high price for a single-function tool contributed to sustainability challenges.
Solo founders and freelancers who need a broad AI assistant covering email, calendar, tasks, and research. Anyone who was a Clara user and needs a replacement with more capabilities.
Clara was best for executives who lived in email and needed hands-free scheduling. Since it's no longer available, former Clara users should evaluate current alternatives like notodo, Reclaim.ai, or Calendly.
Clara relied on a human-in-the-loop model where AI handled most interactions but humans stepped in for edge cases. This was expensive to operate and hard to scale. Combined with narrow focus on scheduling-only (limiting revenue per customer) and increasing competition from simpler scheduling tools, the business model wasn't sustainable.
notodo covers scheduling plus much more (email, tasks, research, voice, briefings), so it's a broader replacement. However, notodo's scheduling works through a chat interface rather than Clara's email CC approach. If you specifically need email-based scheduling negotiation, that specific workflow isn't replicated 1:1.
Not in the same way. Clara would join an email thread and negotiate times with all participants. notodo creates calendar events through chat based on your scheduling rules and preferences. For multi-party scheduling with external participants, you'd still coordinate times yourself or use the calendar event invitation flow.
notodo has a fundamentally different model. It's fully AI-powered (no expensive human-in-the-loop), covers multiple use cases (justifying the subscription), and uses flat-rate pricing with built-in rate limiting. The broader scope and lower operational costs address the core issues that made Clara unsustainable.
Clara provided a data export period before shutdown. This is a general risk with any SaaS tool. notodo mitigates this by connecting to your existing Gmail and Google Calendar rather than storing your primary data - your emails and events remain in Google's infrastructure.
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