10 Best Front Alternatives: From Shared Inboxes to Helpdesks

Front is a great tool to help teams collaborate around customer communication, but it’s not the right software for every team. 

Whether Front is too expensive and complicated for your team, or you’ve outgrown it and need a more robust customer service software, you’re in the right place. Below, discover 10 alternatives to Front for different business sizes, industries, and more.

Gorgias: Best for ecommerce support teams

Gorgias is a helpdesk built exclusively for ecommerce companies to manage customer support. Whether you’re a team of 2 or 2,000, Gorgias is the best platform to help Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento stores offer efficient, delightful customer experiences. 

Plus, since Gorgias is built for ecommerce, it has unique revenue-generating features that most customer service software — like Front and other helpdesk software, like Zendesk — don’t offer. 

Features: Gorgias is brimming with features for online stores, from upselling to order management features

Easily manage orders in Shopify (and other ecommerce platforms)

If you’re an online store, most of your messages to customers also include some kind of order management. This could be processing a refund, updating a shipping address, canceling a subscription, or a laundry list of other actions. 

With Gorgias, you can process any and all of those changes within the ticket view. This helps keep your support team efficient by cutting out unnecessary tab-switching between the message and Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento (whichever ecommerce platform you use).

Generate revenue with pre-sales support

Online stores also have a unique opportunity to make a huge impact on revenue through customer support with pre-sales support. By answering questions, promoting discounts, and matching shoppers with the right products, your support team can be a big revenue generator for your brand. 

Gorgias is chock-full of features to help your support team increase sales (and upsells), including:

• Proactively reaching out to shoppers on your site, with targeted messages based on previous visits, browsing behavior, and more
• Offering product quizzes in your chat widget and Help Center
• Generating unique discount codes and creating orders without leaving the ticket view

Gorgias also offers revenue reporting (on top of standard customer support reporting, like customer satisfaction and response times) so you can track the sales generated by your support team.

Support teams that use Gorgias generate a collective $1 billion per year. If you use Front, you’re leaving money on the table.

Automation: Gorgias helps online stores resolve issues 30% faster than other helpdesks

Deflect common questions with self-service

You can use the Gorgias Automation Add-on to power up your chat widget and Help Center to become self-service portals. Customers can answer FAQs, track the progress of their orders in real-time, take product recommendation quizzes, and much more.

Instant answers for your customers, and a whole lot of hours saved for your team.

Automatically process order updates and other changes

Gorgias’s integration with Shopify is so deep that many of the order management activities mentioned above (processing refunds, changing shipping addresses, and updating subscription statuses) can happen through automation. 

You can program templates to automatically trigger these changes, so they occur upon send (whether you send the templated message manually or it gets sent through an autoresponder). 

Robust, customizable automations to help your team work faster

Like many customer support tools, Gorgias offers incredibly powerful Rules, or automations you can set up to trigger when certain conditions are met. The difference? Gorgias lets you build Rules for a much wider range of conditions than tools like Front, and the Rules are built with ecommerce stores in mind. 

For instance, you can set up Rules to improve your workflow by:

• Automatically prioritizing tickets from customers who have previously purchased from your store, or 
• Automatically tagging tickets based on the contents of the ticket (like “refund request” or “subscription cancellation request”)
• Automatically responding to common customer inquiries with personalized information, like “Where is my order?”

Integrations and channels: Gorgias is an omnichannel tool that integrates with 100+ ecommerce apps

Integrations

Gorgias integrates with 100+ apps most ecommerce brands use daily. Meanwhile, Front only integrates with Shopify (and that integration is quite shallow). Gorgias’s integrations include: 

• Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento
• Marketing apps like Attentive and Klaviyo
• Subscription apps like Recharge and Skio
• Returns apps like Loop Returns and Returnly
• Shipping and fulfillment apps like ShipBob and LateShipment.com
• Loyalty apps like Yotpo and LoyaltyLion
• Reviews and UGC apps like REVIEWS.io and Okendo

Channels

Gorgias is an omnichannel helpdesk, where you can manage customer conversations from:

• Email
• Chat
• Instagram (DMs, comments, and ad replies)
• Facebook (DMs, comments, and ad replies)
• WhatsApp
• SMS
• Voice
• Help Center
• Contact Form

Pricing: Gorgias starts at half the price of Front and offers many additional plans

Gorgias starts at $10/month for up to 3 agents. On larger Gorgias plans, you can bring on unlimited agents. 

Gorgias also offers Android and iOS mobile apps.

Does Gorgias have a free trial?

Yes, Gorgias offers a 7-day free trial.

Hiver: Best Gmail extension (easy to use)

Hiver is very similar to Front: Both tools help your team collaborate over emails (and other messages) before responding. The main difference is that Front is its own app, while Hiver simply works on top of your Gmail client.

This makes Hiver a great choice for teams that would rather not introduce another app to learn and manage.

Features: Hive enhances your Gmail with easy-to-use features instead of introducing a separate app

With Hiver, your Gmail client gets a new sidebar where you can have internal discussions about emails, delegate emails to teammates, mark the status of messages, assign tags, and more. 

Plus, you can use canned emails to accelerate your response times, generate reports to understand how quickly your team responds, and use collision detection to avoid having two teammates answer the same question twice. 

Hiver’s set of features isn’t much deeper than that: You’ll have access to some other bells and whistles, but the core of Hiver is the ability to comment and tag emails on top of your Gmail inbox.

Automation: Hiver features very basic automations to skip some busywork

Just like Front, Hiver features some simple automations for repetitive tasks, like assigning emails, tagging messages, or auto-closing spam messages. These automations, called Rules, have some light customizability so automation can organize your team inbox however works best for you.

Hiver also includes an AI chatbot, Harvey, that suggests AI-generated responses to your team. Harvey is only available on Pro plans ($39/month per user.)

Compared to full-blown helpdesks, however, Hiver’s automations (just like Front’s) are surface-level. If you want to use automations to resolve questions via self-service and trigger actions (like order refunds or shipping address changes), then you’ll need a customer support helpdesk. 

Integrations and channels: Hiver has a few additional channels and integrates with project management apps

Integrations

Hiver has a short list of integrations, mostly project management apps like Slack, Asana, and Jira, so you can create follow-up tasks for your teammates without leaving your email client. 

Hiver also integrates with Aircall and WhatsApp to let you communicate on more channels than email and live chat alone. 

Channels

On top of its email functionality, Hiver lets you build a knowledge base, deploy live chat on your website, and connect to WhatsApp. You can also connect Voice to Hiver if you have an Aircall account, which is an additional cost.

Notably, you can’t manage social media or SMS from Hiver.

Pricing: Hiver is slightly cheaper than Front, with plans for all kinds of teams

Hiver starts at $15/month per user, with 2 shared email inboxes. You can upgrade to the Pro plan for $39/month per user, for Harvey (the AI Bot) and additional reporting features, or Elite for $59/month per user, for the full set of features. 

Hiver also has slightly different packages for Customer Service, Finance Operations, People Operations, and IT Service Management. 

Does Hiver have a free trial?

Yes, Hiver offers a 7-day free trial. 

Missive: Best app design for a shared inbox

Missive is another tool that’s very similar to Front — perhaps the most similar on this list. Just like Front, Missive is a standalone customer communication app that helps teams collaborate before sending a response to a customer (and keep track of follow-up tasks). 

The main difference between Missive and Front is the app design: Missive’s app is designed to look and feel like an email client, so it has very little learning curve. Beyond that, the difference between Front and Missive comes down to a few design touches and feature differences. 

Features: Missive offers more advanced features for team collaboration

Front and Missive both offer the same set of core features. Some of the main differences between Front and Missive include:

• Collaborate live on drafts: Front lets you comment on a draft to recommend changes, while Missive lets you directly work on a draft with your team
• Assign conversations to multiple people: Front forces you to assign a conversation to a single owner, while missive lets you assign multiple people
• Create multiple tasks per conversation: Front only lets you assign the whole conversation, while Missive lets you create multiple tasks per assignment, each with an assignee
• Differentiate message type based on design: In Missive, email, Messenger, and SMS messages all have different colors to help you recognize the channel at a glance
• Host multiple organizations or brands: In Missive, you can connect multiple brands under one account

These features are pretty minor all things considered, and many of the nuances come down to personal preference. But for some, the little details make Missive a superior choice over Front. 

Automation: Missive has limited automations, especially on smaller plans

Just like Front, Missive’s automations are limited. Missive offers basic Rules that you can set up to automate repetitive tasks like: 

• Adding or removing a label based on the sender
• Changing the status of a conversion after responding
• Routing emails to specific teammates based on tags

Note: Rules are not available on Missive’s Free or Starter ($14/month per user) plans. Rules only become available at the Productive level ($18/month per user.)

Integrations and channels: Missive has a small number of channels and integrations

Integrations

Missive integrates with around 25 other applications, including:

• Project management apps like Trello, Asana, and ClickUp
• Customer relation management apps (CRMs) like HubSpot and Salesforce
• Phone and SMS apps like Aircall and Dialpad

Missive also has an open API to configure additional integrations, which Front doesn’t offer.

Channels

Missive can pull in customer conversations from email, live chat, and Facebook and Instagram DMs. You can also integrate with Aircall or Dialpad to manage phone calls and text messages in Missive, but these will incur separate costs. 

Pricing: Missive offers a free plan, plus many upgrade options

Missive offers a free plan for up to 3 users, with a 15-day history (meaning all comments and messages are hidden from the interface after 15 days). You can upgrade to a $14/month per user plan, called Starter, up to a $26/month per user Enterprise plan. 

Does Missive have a free trial?

Since Missive has a free plan available, it doesn’t offer a free trial. 

7 more Front app alternatives to consider

Still haven’t found the right Front competitor for your team? Here are 7 more options to consider: 

Zendesk: Best non-ecommerce enterprise helpdesk

Zendesk is the oldest cloud-based software around and is the tool most people associate with customer support. While Zendesk’s wide reach has its advantages, it also has its downfalls. In short: It’s only worth it if you’re one of their largest customers.

First, the advantages: If you can afford Zendesk’s premium offerings, it’s some of the most feature-rich customer support software out there. It has features to choose seats on an airplane and manage B2B buying cycles. Plus, since Zendesk’s engineering team is so large, they can configure customizations and provide enterprise-ready security. 

If you aren’t one of Zendesk’s largest customers, you’ll get deprioritized. Reviews of Zendesk often mention that Zendesk is hard to set up, and it’s near-impossible to get ahold of anyone for help. Plus, since the tool is built for such a wide variety of use cases and industries, many users complain it’s cluttered and difficult to use.

Unless you’re an enterprise-level company with thousands of support agents, you’re better off sticking to a tool that’s built with you in mind. 

🆚 Trying to find the best helpdesk for your online store? Compare Gorgias vs Zendesk.

Zendesk pricing

Zendesk starts at $49 per user per month for the Suite Team plan and scales up to the Suite Professional at $150 per user per month. 

Zendesk has a 14-day free trial.

Freshdesk: Best helpdesk with a free plan

Freshdesk is another customer service helpdesk with a standard set of features including:

• Multichannel ticket management
• Built-in knowledge base
• AI chatbot for simple customer inquiries

The best part of Freshdesk, however, is that it offers a stripped-back free plan. If you’re a solopreneur who needs a helpdesk but doesn’t have a budget, Freshdesk could be a great option.

Keep in mind, however, that some of Freshdesk’s more attractive features (like the AI chatbot) are hidden behind expensive pricing plans and add-on fees.

🆚 Looking for support software for your ecommerce brand? Compare Freshdesk vs. Gorgias.

Freshdesk pricing

Freshdesk starts with a free plan. From there, you have several options, including:

• Service Desk: A ticketing solution that starts at $15 per user per month with the Growth plan and scales up to the Enterprise plan at $79 per user per month.
• Contact Center: A call center software that starts at $15 per user per month with the Growth plan and scales up to the Enterprise plan at $69 per user per month.
• Omnichannel Suite: An AI-powered helpdesk solution that starts at $29 per user per month and scales up to $99 per month for the enterprise plan.
• Customer Success: A customer analytics software that starts at $79 per user per month with the Estate plan and scales up to the enterprise plan at $129 per user per month.

Help Scout: Best helpdesk for SaaS and startups

If you’re looking for a simple helpdesk for a small customer service team, Help Scout could be a great option. Help Scout is similar to Zendesk or Freshdesk, in that it’s a ticketing system built for support. 

The main difference is that Help Scout comes with a smaller set of features. But, it’s notably easier to use than Zendesk or Help Scout, according to user reviews on sites like G2. 

If you’re a customer support manager with two or three team members, in search of a basic ticket management system, Help Scout could be a great, user-friendly solution. We specifically recommend it for SaaS and startups because Help Scout lacks many of the ecommerce-specific features of Gorgias. 

🆚 Choosing a helpdesk for your online store? Compare Help Scout vs. Gorgias.

Help Scout pricing

Help Scout starts at $20 per month per agent. There are two other plans (Plus: $40/user and Pro: $60/user), each of which comes with more mailboxes, knowledge bases, hands-on support, and other advanced features.

Help Scout has a 15-day free trial.

Google Collaborative Inbox: Best for light email collaboration

If you’re simply looking to collaborate with your teammates on incoming emails, the right solution might be closer than you think. Google’s Collaborative Inbox isn’t a standalone product, but it’s a feature that lets your team create group emails (like help@ or info@) and delegate responsibilities. 

With Google’s Collaborative Inbox, which is already built into your Google workspace, you can assign emails, approve messages, mark completion state, and see one another’s interactions.

It’s a much simpler solution than any of the products on this list. But if you’re simply looking to send and receive emails from a shared inbox, this is the quickest, easiest, and cheapest solution. 

Google Collaborative Inbox pricing

Google Collaborative Inbox comes at no extra cost.

Zoho Desk, Salesforce Service Cloud, HubSpot Support Hub: Best for teams already using products from one of these companies

Last, three of the biggest software companies create customer support software that might interest you. 

Customer support software isn’t the main (or best) tool from any of these companies, so if you’re just looking for a standalone helpdesk, then look elsewhere. But if you already use a product from one of these companies — likely their customer relationship management software (CRMs) — then consider adding their support software to your tech stack. 

The benefit of using tools from the same company is that you’ll have an easier time onboarding and your data will easily flow from one tool to the other. 

Zoho Desk pricing

Zoho Desk starts at $14 per user per month with the Starter plan and goes up to the Enterprise plan at $40 per user per month.

Zoho Desk has a 15-day free trial. 

Salesforce Service Cloud pricing

Salesforce Service Cloud starts at $25 per user per month for up to 10 users and scales up to enterprise plans starting at $150 per user per month. You can also get the full Salesforce CRM, not just the helpdesk, for $300 per user per month. 

Salesforce Service Cloud has a 30-day free trial. 

HubSpot Service Hub pricing

HubSpot Service Hub starts at $50 per month for 2 users with the Starter CRM Suite and scales up to enterprise-level plans starting at $500 for 5 users. 

HubSpot Service Hub has a 14-day free trial.