Front Alternatives: 7 Shared Inboxes, Priced for 5 Seats

The best Front alternative for a small team is InboxPilot (we make it). Instead of paying per seat for people to type the same answers, it drafts each reply from your own documents and Shopify orders inside the Gmail or Outlook inbox you already use, for a quarter of Front Professional's price.

If you need Front-style assignment inside Gmail, Hiver is the closest match. Mixed or Outlook teams get a Front-style shared inbox for less per seat in Missive or Help Scout.

Prices from each vendor's pricing page, checked October 6, 2026, for five seats billed yearly. We did not run paid trials. The wider category, help desks included, is compared in best shared inbox software.

Our pick: InboxPilot

InboxPilot works in the mailbox your team already reads. It sorts each email into your Gmail labels or Outlook categories and drafts the reply from your own documents, Google Sheets and Shopify orders, and a person approves each draft before it sends.

It can also split the inbox into teams, each with its own label and drafts, and keep what each reply promised or asked for on a follow-up list.

For five people, Growth is $99 a month, or $990 a year, with auto-replies and unlimited team members, after a 7-day free trial (pricing). Five Front Professional seats with Copilot cost $5,100 a year, so that is $4,110 less.

Who takes a single email and whether it's done is tracked in a Slack channel, not in the mailbox, and in a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox it drafts rather than sends.

What Front does that a replacement has to cover

Front gives every conversation one owner. Its help center says to "assign conversations to give every message a clear owner," and Front shows real-time indicators when a teammate is already replying (Front Help Center).

Comments in Front are internal, so only your team sees them. In a shared inbox, every draft is shared automatically with everyone who has access to that inbox, so a teammate can edit a reply before it goes (Front, shared drafts).

Those basics come with every Front plan. The rest sits on higher tiers. Front Starter costs $25 per seat a month billed yearly ($35 billed monthly), caps at 10 seats and allows 10 automation rules.

Response-time SLA rules, load balancing, macros, Salesforce and HubSpot sync, and advanced reports start on Front Professional, at $65 per seat a month billed yearly ($85 monthly). Enterprise is $105, billed yearly only.

AI reply drafts need Copilot, a $20-a-seat add-on below Enterprise, so Starter with drafts is $45 a seat. Compose, on every plan, only polishes your own draft.

Starter also limits channels, as Front's pricing FAQ puts it:

"No, the Starter plan only supports a single channel type of Email, Front Chat, or SMS."

Front vs Hiver: Gmail integration, collaboration and team pricing

Gmail integration: Hiver in Gmail is a Chrome extension, so the team keeps working inside Gmail (Hiver pricing FAQ). Front is a separate app that connects your Gmail or Office 365 inboxes as channels (Front Help Center).

Collaboration: Hiver and Front both give each email an owner, keep internal notes with @mentions, share drafts and warn when someone else is replying (Hiver shared inbox). Front Professional runs email, SMS, social and chat in one inbox. Hiver puts those channels, and Outlook, in a separate standalone app called Hiver Omni.

Team pricing: Hiver Growth is $25 per user a month on a yearly plan ($35 monthly), with AI Copilot drafts included. Hiver's SLAs start on Pro at $55 ($65 monthly). Hiver sells seats from a 2-seat minimum up to 5, then in blocks of 5, so a 7-person team pays for 10.

For five people who need SLAs, Hiver Pro costs $3,300 a year and Front Professional $3,900. Neither trial needs a card: Front's runs 14 days with Professional features, Hiver's 7 days on its Elite plan. Hiver suits a support team that lives in Gmail; Front suits a team spread across Gmail, Outlook and chat.

Lower seat prices on Gmail or Outlook

Missive: for teams that want Front's shared inbox for less

Missive is a separate app that connects Gmail, Outlook and IMAP accounts, plus WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and SMS. It has team inboxes, assignment, internal threads and collaborative drafting, where two people write one reply together.

Missive Starter is $14 per user a month billed yearly ($18 monthly) for up to 5 users. Rules, integrations and analytics start on Productive, at $24 billed yearly ($30 monthly) for up to 50 users.

AI drafts need Productive or Business, plus usage billed as Missive credits or on your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini key (Missive docs).

Productive's analytics are basic; advanced reports need Business, at $36 per user billed yearly. Missive's 30-day trial of Productive needs no card.

Help Scout: for support teams that need an SLA on a budget

Help Scout is a help desk with a shared inbox at its centre. You forward your support address from Gmail or Microsoft 365 into it (Help Scout docs), and the team answers inside Help Scout.

Help Scout Standard costs $25 a user each month billed yearly ($30 monthly) and seats up to 25 users. It includes one basic SLA policy, basic workflows, unlimited saved replies and two inboxes, with more at $10 a month each.

Round robin routing and AI Drafts start on Plus, at $45 billed yearly. The Free plan covers 5 users and one inbox, capped at 100 contacts a month. If you're unsure a help desk is the right purchase, shared inbox vs help desk sets out the difference, and help desk software for small business prices the other options.

Gmelius: for Gmail teams that also want an AI assistant each

Gmelius runs in Gmail and Google Workspace. Shared inboxes, shared labels, auto-assignment, automation rules and SLA analytics start on Gmelius Growth, at $25 per user a month, billed yearly ($33 monthly).

The cheaper $19 Meli plan is one person's AI assistant for drafting and sorting their own email, without shared inboxes. Growth includes everything Meli does, so each person keeps an assistant on top of the team inbox. Gmelius offers a 7-day trial, and personal assistants like Meli are compared in Fyxer alternatives.

Free options for two or three people

Google Workspace shared inbox: for small Gmail teams

Google Workspace admins on Business Starter, Standard or Plus can create a shared inbox such as sales@ and add delegates (Google Workspace Admin Help). Delegates can read, send and delete its mail, and each sent email shows which delegate sent it.

It costs nothing beyond your Workspace licences. Google's documentation covers access and sending, not assignment, collision alerts or reporting, and the feature is still rolling out in phases.

Labels can stand in for statuses, as our Gmail ticketing system guide shows. The setup steps are in our Gmail shared inbox guide.

Microsoft 365 shared mailbox: for small Outlook teams

A Microsoft 365 shared mailbox needs no licence of its own up to 50 GB, and each user adds it in Outlook from their own licensed mailbox. Microsoft says a shared mailbox "supports a maximum of 25 users" and that too many users at once "might experience connection failures or duplicated messages" (Microsoft Learn).

People outside your organization can't be given access, and you can't stop users deleting messages. The Outlook-side options are compared in best shared inbox for Outlook.

What's a more affordable alternative to Front for small businesses?

For five people on Front Professional, the bill is 5 seats × $65 × 12 months = $3,900 a year, or $5,100 with Copilot. Our pick costs $990 a year for any number of team members, drafting included, the lowest paid price on this page.

Among classic shared inboxes, Help Scout Standard and Gmelius Growth both include SLA features at $25 a seat: 5 × $25 × 12 = $1,500 a year, or $2,400 less than Front.

If you don't need SLAs, Missive Productive keeps rules and integrations for 5 × $24 × 12 = $1,440 a year, against $1,500 for Front Starter. At three seats, Front Professional is $2,340 a year and Help Scout Standard $900.

Every figure here uses yearly billing, and paying monthly costs more with each vendor. Seat prices also tend to leave AI drafting out; InboxPilot's plan includes it.

Before you cancel Front

Front's Office 365 sync is partial. New messages, sent mail and spam status sync both ways, but read status, archiving, folder changes and snoozes don't (Front Help Center). A team that is half in Outlook and half in Front sees different states for the same email.

Help with the move exists on both sides. Missive's pricing FAQ links a guide for migrating from Front, and Hiver says it migrates data from another help desk at no extra cost.