ForwardThis vs Bardeen
Bardeen and ForwardThis run in opposite directions. Bardeen goes out and fetches data nobody has given you: it scrapes a page, searches for a company, enriches a contact, and lands the result in a spreadsheet or a CSV, billed by the row. ForwardThis starts from something that has already arrived and writes it into the systems the business runs on. If the job is building a list of leads nobody sent you, Bardeen is the tool and ForwardThis cannot do it at all. If the job is the email already sitting in front of you, it is the other way round.
ForwardThis and Bardeen, side by side
What it is for
Where the work starts
Where it runs
Browsers
Where results land
Pricing unit
Free
Paid from
Apps
Bardeen pricing and limits checked 5 September 2026.
Which one fits how you work?
Choose Bardeen if
You are building a pipeline from nothing. Bardeen's scraper, web search and enrichment exist to find people who have never emailed you, and that is work ForwardThis has no way to do.
You need data off a page with no API behind it. Scraping LinkedIn, Crunchbase, a property site or a job board is Bardeen's home ground.
You want validated phone numbers and email addresses attached to a list before anyone reaches out. Enrichment is a product in itself, and it is Bardeen's.
You work in a Chrome tab all day and want the automation on the page you are looking at, triggered by you, there and then.
Choose ForwardThis if
The record already exists. What you need is the email about it filed, logged, ticketed or diarised, in the app that holds it.
The work should happen with no browser open. Nothing runs in a tab, so nothing depends on the tab staying open or the laptop staying awake.
You want to see what goes out before it goes, and undo it for 24 hours when it lands wrong.
You'd rather pay per job than per row. One forwarded email is one action however many apps it touches, where a scrape is charged for every line it returns.
What a single forwarded email does
The trigger is the email you forward. There is no editor and nothing to design in advance. This whole job is one email. In Bardeen it would be a playbook you set up first.
Nadia Okonjo
Enquiry: office fit-out, 40 desks
westgate-brief.pdf
Your instructions
Add Westgate as a new deal worth about 60k, file the brief under Enquiries, and put a callback on my list for Tuesday.
Pipedrive
Add the Westgate deal
Enquiries, 60k
Dropbox
File westgate-brief.pdf
Enquiries / Westgate
Todoist
Add the callback
Tuesday
You receive a confirmation email once complete, with an undo button that works for 24 hours.
Setup in 30 seconds.
What is ForwardThis?
ForwardThis is an ops assistant for your inbox. It turns email into action, without the hassle. Compatible with over 145+ of the apps you use every day.
Works with any email
Compatible with any personal or professional email provider. Gmail, Outlook and more.
145+ apps
Works across all the apps you already use every day. With more being added every month.
Setup in seconds
No complex setup, apps to install or workflows to build. Sign up, forward, done.
Secure & private
ForwardThis only acts on the emails you send it, and no data gets retained after actions have been completed.
Try it with a real email.
Forward any work email to the address below and see what ForwardThis can do. No signup required.
Occasional product emails may follow.
FAQs
- Is ForwardThis a Bardeen alternative?
- Only for people who bought Bardeen to move information between apps rather than to find leads. If the job is a page scraped into a sheet, or a contact enriched before outreach, nothing here replaces it. If the job is the enquiry that already landed in the inbox and now needs a deal, a file and a follow-up, that is what ForwardThis is for.
- Can ForwardThis scrape a website?
- No. It reads the email you forward and acts in the apps you have connected. It does not visit pages, crawl a site or pull rows off a directory. That is a hard boundary rather than a feature waiting to ship.
- Does ForwardThis need a browser extension?
- No, and there is no browser involved. Everything happens after the email leaves your outbox, which means it works the same from a laptop, a phone or a desktop mail client, and it keeps working while all of them are closed.
- How do the pricing units compare?
- Bardeen meters rows: a scraped row costs a credit, a web search costs a credit, an enriched contact costs three, and utilities and imports are free, so the bill tracks how much data you pulled. ForwardThis meters requests: one forwarded email is one action, whatever it asks for, and clarifying questions and undo belong to the action that started them. Neither model is better; they are counting different work.
- Which one connects to more apps?
- The question does not quite work, because they connect differently. Bardeen publishes no integration count: its integrations page names CSV, Google Sheets, Airtable and Notion as the places data lands, and reaching a CRM from there means importing that file. ForwardThis writes directly into 145+ apps through connected accounts, with no export step in the middle.
- Can I use both?
- Yes, and a sales team plausibly should. Bardeen builds and enriches the list; ForwardThis handles what comes back once those people start replying. The handover point is the inbox, and neither tool crosses it.