ALTERNATIVES
Front alternatives for a 3-20 person Google Workspace team
Front publishes a three-tier per-seat price ladder billed annually, with Autopilot, Copilot, Smart QA, and Smart CSAT sold as add-ons on the two lower tiers. Front's own pages describe human review before an AI reply sends. Whether Front or something else fits your team turns on omnichannel needs, seat count, and who you want owning the agent — not on a feature Front lacks, because none is claimed here.
WHAT FRONT PUBLISHES
Front's plans, seat caps, and billing basis
From front.com/pricing, checked 2026-08-11. Front bills annually and shows "Save 24%" against that annual price; no separate monthly price ladder is displayed. Front publishes per-tier seat caps, not a minimum seat count.
| Plan | Price and seat cap | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $25 /seat/mo, up to 10 seats "Starter $25 /seat/mo, up to 10 seats" | front.com/pricing |
| Professional | $65 /seat/mo, up to 50 seats "Professional $65 /seat/mo, up to 50 seats" | front.com/pricing |
| Enterprise | $105 /seat/mo (no seat cap shown) "Enterprise $105 /seat/mo" | front.com/pricing |
Not published: Front's Success Services / onboarding package prices are not shown on the pricing page. Front's page does say: "To ensure you're set up for success, we require an onboarding package be purchased for contracts over $25k." An API rate-limit increase is listed at $200 per 100 API requests/min per month, available on all plans. Front's free trial: "Our free 14-day trial offers all the features available in our Professional plan. You can get started without a credit card and can upgrade at any time during your trial." (front.com/pricing, checked 2026-08-11.)
WHAT FRONT PUBLISHES ABOUT ITS AI
Autopilot, Copilot, Smart QA, and Smart CSAT
Front's plan comparison marks Copilot, Smart QA, and Smart CSAT as add-ons on the Starter and Professional columns, and Autopilot as an add-on on all three columns. All figures from front.com/pricing, checked 2026-08-11.
- Autopilot
- Starting at $0.05 /conversation. Add-on on all three tiers. "Autopilot ... Starting at $0.05 /conversation"
- Copilot
- $20 /seat/month as an add-on on Starter and Professional, or included in Enterprise. "Copilot ... $20 / seat / month as an add-on, or included in Enterprise"
- Smart QA
- $20 /seat/month as an add-on on Starter and Professional, or included in Enterprise. "Smart QA ... $20 / seat / month as an add-on, or included in Enterprise"
- Smart CSAT
- $10 /seat/month as an add-on on Starter and Professional, or included in Enterprise. "Smart CSAT ... $10 / seat / month as an add-on, or included in Enterprise"
- Smart QA + Smart CSAT bundle
- Published as a bundle of the two add-ons above. "Complete performance insights for $25 / seat / mo"
Front's own human-review and handoff statements
Front publishes a review-before-send story for its AI. Reproduced verbatim and attributed, checked 2026-08-11:
- "Test every Playbook before it goes live, with built-in safeguards and human handoffs when it matters." — front.com/product/autopilot-customer-service-automation
- "Creates tickets for handoffs with full context, so your team can step in and keep things moving." — front.com/product/autopilot-customer-service-automation
- "Review every AI tweak in-line before you hit send, so nothing slips past you." — front.com/product/copilot-ai-assistant
- "Agents review and approve every message before sending, maintaining full control over tone, accuracy, and brand voice." — front.com/product/copilot-ai-assistant
WHO SHOULD STAY ON FRONT
Teams past 20 seats, or needing more than email, should stay on Front
Take this seriously before reading further. Front's published plan ladder runs to a 50-seat Professional cap and an Enterprise tier with no seat cap shown, and its plan comparison treats email as one channel type among the types it compares, listing "Email e.g. Office 365, Gmail, Custom" (front.com/pricing, checked 2026-08-11). DuoInbox's initial audience is a 3–20 person Google Workspace team on Gmail, and DuoInbox has published nothing about channels other than Gmail. A team already running work through channels beyond email, or a team whose seat count is heading past that range, is evaluating a different shape of tool than DuoInbox is — and Front's own pricing and product pages, linked throughout this page, are the primary source to evaluate against, not this page.
The same applies to anything Front publishes that DuoInbox does not: DuoInbox publishes no price, no packaging, and no availability date, so a team that needs to budget a per-seat line item this quarter can do that with Front today and cannot do it with DuoInbox.
HOW TO JUDGE THIS FOR YOUR TEAM
Apply the five criteria to your own situation, not as a Front score
These are the same five criteria every comparison on this site inherits from /alternatives/. They are questions to ask about your own team, not a scorecard against Front — Front is not rated against them here. If Front's omnichannel shape or seat structure is not the fit and you are still comparing options, Hiver publishes a different plan and AI structure worth reading against the same criteria. For what "team-size fit" means in practice, see team inbox software.
- Access model
- How the tool reaches your mail. Some options run inside the Gmail interface as an extension, some connect as a server-side application through OAuth, and some move the work into a separate interface of their own. Ask what scope the connection requests, whether that scope can be narrowed to one workflow rather than the whole mailbox, and how quickly access can be withdrawn.
- Where automation runs
- Rules either run in a browser while somebody has the tab open, or run server-side whether or not anyone is signed in. That difference decides what happens to a queue overnight, what happens when the person who wrote the rule is away, and whether a rule behaves as a personal preference or as a team policy.
- What is auditable
- After the fact, what can a reviewer reconstruct? Ask what record exists for the condition that started a piece of work, the actions taken during it, the recipient of anything sent, and the person who approved the send. A tool that shows current state but keeps no history answers a different question from one that records the sequence.
- Who owns the agent
- Where an AI feature is involved, ask whose agent it is. A vendor-bundled agent arrives with the plan and the vendor defines what it does. A customer-owned agent is configured by the team, scoped to a workflow they wrote, and reaches mail under permissions they set. Neither is automatically the right answer; they answer to different people.
- Team-size fit
- Most tools in this category are shaped for a team size. Something built for a 200-person support organization carries roles, routing, and reporting a six-person team pays for and never uses. Something built for six people runs out of structure at sixty. Judge fit by the smallest team the tool still makes sense for, not by the length of its feature list.
WHERE DUOINBOX IS A DIFFERENT SHAPE
What DuoInbox is built around instead
Front's Copilot and Autopilot are Front's own bundled AI, sold as per-seat or per-conversation add-ons inside Front's platform. DuoInbox is built around a different shape of control, for a narrower audience:
- A customer-owned agent — Hermes runs as your team's agent, configured by you, not a bundled agent that ships with the plan.
- Governed MCP access — Hermes reaches mail through MCP for one matched run, not through a standing Gmail credential.
- Three permission levels per workflow — summarize only, prepare a proposed reply, or send after human approval.
- A review queue — a proposed reply or a blocked send waits for a person to approve, request changes, or reject it.
- Recipient restrictions — who a workflow's reply may go to is a policy setting, checked on every send.
- Sending limits — a ceiling on approved outbound actions per workflow.
- An audit log — the mailbox event, the trigger rule, the actions taken, the policy checks, and the human decision, recorded in order.
- An immediate kill switch — stops new runs without waiting on a support request.
See what an operator can set and stop and read the reviewer-facing detail on access boundaries for the specifics behind each item above. For the category question behind this page — what a shared inbox needs to do inside Gmail before AI enters the picture — read shared inbox for Gmail.
DUOINBOX PRICING
DuoInbox's pricing is not yet published
DuoInbox's pricing, packaging, and availability are not yet published. Nothing on this page compares a DuoInbox price to Front's, because there is no DuoInbox price to compare.
DuoInbox early access
See what DuoInbox is building toward — request early access.
Bring triggers, permissions, review states, and audit activity into one shared operating surface.
Request early accessFAQ
Questions about Front's plans and AI
- Does Front require a person to approve AI replies before they send?
- Front's own pages say so: "Agents review and approve every message before sending, maintaining full control over tone, accuracy, and brand voice," and Autopilot Playbooks carry "built-in safeguards and human handoffs when it matters." Front publishes a human-review story for its AI features; this page does not dispute that.
- What does Front charge for its AI features?
- Per front.com/pricing, checked 2026-08-11: Autopilot starts at $0.05 per conversation on all three tiers. Copilot and Smart QA are each $20 per seat per month as an add-on on Starter and Professional, or included in Enterprise. Smart CSAT is $10 per seat per month as an add-on on those two tiers, or included in Enterprise. A Smart QA + Smart CSAT bundle is $25 per seat per month.
- Does Front publish a monthly (non-annual) price?
- Not on the pricing page as checked on 2026-08-11. The page shows "Billed Annually" with "Save 24%" and no separate monthly price ladder.
- Does Front publish a minimum seat count?
- No. Front's pricing page publishes per-tier seat caps — up to 10 seats on Starter, up to 50 on Professional — but no minimum seat count, as checked on 2026-08-11.
- Does Front support MCP?
- MCP is not described on front.com/pricing, the Autopilot product page, or the Copilot product page, as checked on 2026-08-11. That means it is not published on the pages we checked, not that Front lacks it.
- What does DuoInbox charge?
- DuoInbox's pricing, packaging, and availability are not yet published. This page does not compare a price to Front's, because there is no DuoInbox price to compare.
Independence and re-verification
Front is a third-party trademark of its owner and is used here descriptively only. DuoInbox is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Front. Every Front figure on this page was read from Front's own published pages on 2026-08-11 and is attributed at the point it is used. We plan to re-verify these figures by 2026-11-11; a "Reviewed on" date older than that should be treated as unverified.
Evaluating a vendor-bundled AI feature rather than channel volume or seat count? See Hiver alternatives for the same read applied to Hiver's published plans and AI tiering, or AI agents for Gmail for the four access models the whole category divides into.