Aeralis: Gemini-Powered Email Assistant for Gmail

Most people in business spend a disproportionate amount of their day inside Gmail. Drafting replies, chasing approvals, summarising long threads before they can even respond, and trying to keep a clear head about what actually needs their attention. For the average Australian SMB, email is not just communication — it is workflow.

The problem is that Gmail, on its own, still requires a lot of you. Even with Gemini built into Workspace plans, the native AI features are intentionally general. They help you draft an email or summarise a thread, but they do not automate the judgment calls: what to prioritise, how to respond to a specific type of request, or how to keep a consistent voice across a busy inbox.

Aeralis is a Google Workspace Marketplace add-on that takes Gemini's capabilities and layers a structured, workflow-focused email assistant on top of Gmail. It is designed for people who want more than "Help me write" — users who want AI that understands their inbox patterns, helps them manage communication at scale, and reduces the cognitive overhead of getting through a full day's email.

This review covers what Aeralis does, how it uses Gemini under the hood, who it is best suited for, how it compares to Gmail's built-in Gemini features, and whether it is worth the investment for Australian businesses.

What Is Aeralis?

Aeralis is an AI-powered email assistant that installs into Gmail via the Google Workspace Marketplace. Once installed, it adds a sidebar panel to your Gmail interface that gives you access to Gemini-powered tools specifically built around email productivity: smart drafting, thread summarisation, tone adjustment, response suggestions, and action item extraction.

Unlike a general AI chatbot that you paste email content into, Aeralis works directly inside Gmail. It reads the thread context automatically, understands the type of email you are dealing with, and surfaces relevant tools and suggestions without requiring you to copy and paste anything between applications.

The product is aimed at knowledge workers and small business teams who handle a high volume of varied email — consultants, sales teams, operations managers, and anyone who manages client communication through Gmail. It is not a shared inbox tool or a helpdesk replacement. It is an individual productivity layer that helps you move through your email faster and more effectively.

Aeralis is installed from the Google Workspace Marketplace, which means your Google Workspace admin can deploy it organisation-wide via the Admin console. For solo users, installation requires only Marketplace access permissions and a Google account.

How Aeralis Uses Gemini

Aeralis is built on top of Google's Gemini API. The integration is not cosmetic — Gemini is the actual intelligence engine that powers every AI feature inside the product. When you open an email and click into Aeralis, Gemini is reading the thread, analysing the content, and generating outputs in real time.

This matters for a few practical reasons:

Data privacy alignment. Because Aeralis uses Google's Gemini API rather than a third-party large language model, your email content is processed within Google's infrastructure. For Australian businesses operating under the Privacy Act 1988, this means the data handling is governed by the same agreements that cover your Google Workspace account. You are not sending confidential email content to an unrelated third-party AI provider with a separate privacy policy you have not reviewed.

Quality of output. Gemini's reasoning capabilities are well suited to email. It handles ambiguous instructions, understands professional context, and produces output that requires minimal editing. Aeralis surfaces these capabilities in a structured interface that is purpose-built for the task, rather than expecting you to engineer your own prompts every time.

Workspace integration. Because Aeralis is a Workspace Marketplace app authenticated via Google, it can access thread history, contact context, and conversation metadata in ways a generic AI tool cannot. This allows the assistant to produce more contextually appropriate responses.

The result is an email assistant that feels meaningfully different from pasting email content into a standalone AI tool — faster, more contextual, and better integrated into the environment where you are actually working.

Key Features

AI Email Drafting

Aeralis generates full email drafts from a short brief you provide in the sidebar. The interface is straightforward: describe what you want the email to say, select the tone and length, and click generate. Gemini produces a complete draft that you can insert directly into the compose window and edit as needed.

What distinguishes Aeralis's drafting from Gmail's native Help Me Write is the additional control layer. You can specify a tone profile (formal, friendly, direct, empathetic), adjust the length target, and include structured instructions like "mention the timeline discussed in the previous thread" or "decline politely without closing the door." The output respects these parameters reliably.

For Australian businesses, this is particularly useful for the kinds of emails that require careful tone calibration — supplier negotiations, client issue resolution, follow-ups on late invoices, or communication with government agencies. Getting the tone wrong in these situations has real consequences.

Thread Summarisation

When you open a long email thread, Aeralis generates a plain-language summary in the sidebar. This summary highlights the key decisions made, any outstanding action items, and the current status of the conversation. You can read the summary in 20 seconds and know exactly what you are walking into before you compose a reply.

For anyone managing client relationships, support queues, or project communication through Gmail, this feature alone saves a meaningful amount of time each day. Re-reading six-email threads to extract one piece of information is one of the most common email time-wasters, and Aeralis eliminates it.

Action Item Extraction

Alongside summarisation, Aeralis can extract action items from a thread and present them as a checklist. If a client email contains three separate requests buried across two paragraphs, Aeralis surfaces them clearly: "1. Send updated quote by Friday. 2. Confirm attendance at site visit on Tuesday. 3. Provide ABN for invoice records." You can then work through that list rather than re-reading the email each time.

This feature is particularly useful for operations-heavy roles — project coordinators, account managers, and anyone who receives emails that contain multiple tasks mixed into conversational text.

Smart Reply Suggestions

Aeralis generates contextually appropriate reply options for incoming emails. Rather than a generic "yes", "no", or "thanks" (as you might see in basic smart reply tools), Aeralis produces paragraph-length draft responses that address the actual content of the email. You can choose one, use it as a starting point, or discard all suggestions and compose from scratch.

For routine email types — meeting confirmations, status update requests, information queries — smart reply suggestions mean you can respond to a high volume of emails in far less time than typing from scratch.

Tone and Length Adjustment

After generating a draft, Aeralis lets you adjust tone and length without rewriting. Select "Formalise" and Gemini elevates the language for professional or legal contexts. Select "Shorten" and it trims the draft to its essential points. "Elaborate" expands on the key arguments with additional context. This refinement capability is similar to what Gmail's Help Me Write offers, but it is available for any draft you are working on, not just AI-generated ones. You can paste in your own draft and ask Aeralis to adjust the tone, which is useful for reviewing emails written by team members before they go out.

Email Prioritisation Signals

Aeralis analyses your inbox and provides simple signals about which emails likely require your urgent attention based on content, sender history, and thread activity. This is not a full inbox management system — it will not automatically archive or sort your email — but it provides a quick visual layer that helps you decide where to focus when you open Gmail after a busy morning.

Setting Up Aeralis in Gmail

Installation from the Google Workspace Marketplace takes under five minutes. The steps are:

1. Go to the Google Workspace Marketplace at workspace.google.com/marketplace.
2. Search for Aeralis and open the listing.
3. Click Install and follow the OAuth permission flow. Aeralis requests access to read and compose email in Gmail, which is required for its core functionality.
4. Once installed, refresh Gmail. The Aeralis sidebar will appear on the right-hand side of your Gmail interface.
5. Complete the brief onboarding flow, which asks for your preferred tone profile and communication style. This helps Aeralis calibrate its output to your preferences from the start.

For Google Workspace admins: You can deploy Aeralis to your entire organisation or specific organisational units through the Admin console under Apps > Google Workspace Marketplace apps > Manage. This ensures consistent deployment without asking every user to install it individually, and allows you to pre-approve Aeralis in your Marketplace allow-list if third-party app installation is restricted in your organisation.

If your organisation has restricted Marketplace access (common in enterprise and education environments), your admin will need to approve Aeralis before individual users can install it. Check your Admin console under Apps > Google Workspace Marketplace apps > Settings to verify whether allow-listing is required.

Real-World Use Cases for Australian SMBs

Consulting and Professional Services

A Melbourne-based management consultant handles 60 to 80 emails per day across multiple client engagements. Each thread has its own history, its own tone requirements, and its own set of outstanding actions. Without a tool like Aeralis, keeping track of where each conversation stands requires either an exceptional memory or constant re-reading.

With Aeralis, the consultant opens a client email, reads the thread summary in the sidebar, checks the extracted action items, and drafts a reply using a generated suggestion adjusted to formal tone. What previously took eight minutes per complex thread now takes three. Across 20 client-facing emails per day, that is nearly two hours reclaimed.

Trade and Service Businesses

A Sydney electrical contracting business receives quote enquiries, scheduling requests, and follow-ups through a shared Gmail account. The owner — who is often on-site — needs to respond quickly and professionally to enquiries before competitors do, but writing polished emails from a mobile device is slow and error-prone.

Aeralis's smart reply suggestions and mobile-compatible sidebar let the owner review a suggestion, make a minor edit, and send a professional quote response in under two minutes. The quality of outbound communication improves, and response time to enquiries drops significantly, both of which affect whether a prospect becomes a client.

Small Accounting and Bookkeeping Firms

A three-person bookkeeping firm in Brisbane manages communication with 40 small business clients. Emails regularly contain mixed content — a question about BAS lodgement, a request for updated bank details, and a note about an upcoming payroll run, all in the same message.

Aeralis's action item extraction means no client request gets overlooked. The extracted checklist becomes the firm's to-do list for that client, and the thread summary lets any team member pick up a client conversation without starting from scratch. For a small team where everyone covers for each other, this continuity is significant.

Pricing

Aeralis offers a tiered pricing model. Pricing is listed in USD on the Marketplace, with approximate AUD conversions at the current exchange rate (~1.57 USD to AUD):

The Team plan requires a minimum number of seats (typically five or more). For Australian businesses with one to four users, the Pro plan at approximately AUD $12.50 per user per month is the relevant option.

For context, this is less than a daily flat white per user. If Aeralis saves each team member 30 minutes per day on email — a conservative estimate for heavy email users — the return on investment is clear without needing a formal analysis. Teams that are sceptical should use the free tier for two weeks and measure their own time savings before committing.

Aeralis vs Gmail's Built-In Gemini Features

This is the most important question for any business already on a Workspace plan that includes Gemini. Why pay for Aeralis when Gemini is already in Gmail?

The honest answer is that for light email users, native Gemini in Gmail is sufficient. Help Me Write handles basic drafting, Gemini can summarise threads, and suggested replies cover simple responses. If your team sends 20 to 30 emails per day with moderate complexity, the built-in features may be all you need.

Aeralis earns its value when:

That last point is worth highlighting for Australian businesses on Business Starter (the most common entry-level Workspace plan): Business Starter does not include Gemini for Workspace natively. If you are on Business Starter and want AI email assistance, Aeralis can deliver it without requiring you to upgrade your entire Workspace plan or pay for the Gemini Business add-on at approximately AUD $30 per user per month.

For a Business Starter team of five, Aeralis Pro costs approximately AUD $62.50 per month total. The Gemini Business add-on for the same team costs approximately AUD $150 per month — more than double — and covers more than just email, but if email productivity is the primary pain point, Aeralis is the more targeted and cost-effective choice.

Affiliate and Partner Resources

If you are considering Aeralis alongside a broader Google Workspace setup, the following links may be useful:

• Google Workspace Referral Program: https://referworkspace.app.goo.gl/ — Start or optimise your Google Workspace subscription. If you are on Business Starter and evaluating whether to upgrade for Gemini access, this is the place to begin.

Wrapping Up — Is Aeralis Worth It?

Aeralis is a well-executed Marketplace add-on that brings structured, workflow-aware AI email assistance to Gmail. It is not trying to replace Gmail or Gemini — it is building on top of both to deliver capabilities that neither provides out of the box: action item extraction, full paragraph-length smart replies, tone control on manually written drafts, and a clean sidebar that keeps everything in context.

The case for Aeralis is strongest for:

• Heavy email users — anyone sending and receiving more than 40 meaningful emails per day
• Businesses on Business Starter — where native Gemini is not included and Aeralis is the more affordable AI email option
• Small teams — where consistent email quality and shared communication standards matter
• Roles with high complexity email — consulting, account management, professional services, and trade businesses fielding varied enquiries

The case is weaker for:

• Businesses already on Business Standard or above — where native Gemini covers the basics and the incremental value of Aeralis may not justify the additional per-seat cost
• Light email users — where the free tier is sufficient or native Gemini meets the need

Start with the free tier. Use it for a genuine week of work and pay attention to where it saves time and where it falls short. If you find yourself hitting the daily AI assist limits and wanting more, the Pro plan at approximately AUD $12.50 per month per user is a straightforward upgrade.

Email is not going anywhere. Getting better at it — faster, more consistent, less draining — is a practical business improvement that compounds over time. Aeralis is a tool that moves you meaningfully in that direction.

Want help evaluating AI tools for your Google Workspace environment? Contact the CloudGeeks team for a free consultation.