Hiver vs Front (2026)

TL;DR

• Pick Hiver if your company runs on Google Workspace and you want agents working inside Gmail with zero learning curve and a genuinely useful free plan.
• Pick Front if you need a dedicated omnichannel workspace with deeper workflow automation for complex operations where conversations cross department lines.

Pricing

Hiver offers a free plan (unlimited users on shared inboxes, live chat, and knowledge base) with paid tiers from $25/user/mo (Growth); AI agents and Salesforce/HubSpot integrations sit on the Pro tier around $55-65/user/mo. Front has no free plan — it starts at $25/user/mo (Starter, capped at 10 seats and one channel), then $65 (Professional) and $105 (Enterprise). For a Google Workspace team testing the waters, Hiver's free tier is the obvious starting point.

The deployment model

The defining difference is where your team actually works. Hiver lives inside Gmail — agents never leave the interface they already use. Tickets, assignments, SLAs, and AI agents appear as a layer on top of Google Workspace, which means onboarding is measured in hours and adoption resistance is near zero. Front is a separate application. Agents log into Front, not Gmail, and get a purpose-built inbox that consolidates every channel. That's more powerful but also a real tool migration.

Channels

Front leads on channel breadth: email, chat, SMS, and voice in one shared workspace, designed for omnichannel operations from day one. Hiver covers email, live chat, voice, WhatsApp, and a customer portal — but the richer omnichannel features unlock on Pro and above. If you primarily handle email today and want to grow into chat and WhatsApp, Hiver scales fine. If voice and SMS are central now, Front is more natural.

Workflows and collaboration

Both let agents collaborate without forwarding or CC chains. Front's cross-team workflows are the deeper offering — routing and escalation across departments while preserving full conversation context, which is why it's popular in logistics and financial services. Hiver's collaboration is excellent for a single support, finance, or IT team sharing an inbox, but it's not engineered for requests that bounce between many departments.

AI and onboarding

Both claim up to ~70% deflection from AI agents. Hiver's edge is onboarding speed — the familiar Gmail interface means teams are productive almost immediately. Front's AI Autopilot is more configurable but is a paid add-on on lower tiers, so budget for it separately.

Bottom line

If your company already runs on Google Workspace and you want help-desk structure without disrupting how people work, Hiver is the smarter, cheaper choice — and the free plan lets you prove it out first. If you need a standalone omnichannel platform for complex, cross-departmental customer operations, Front justifies its higher price. Match the tool to your stack: Gmail-bound teams pick Hiver; operations-heavy teams pick Front.