ALTERNATIVES
Hiver alternatives: a vendor-bundled agent or an agent you own
Hiver publishes a single price ladder shared by both its product lines, tiers its AI features by plan, and publishes an explicit guardrails-and-human-review story for its AI Agents. The real decision isn't whether approval exists — Hiver has that. It's whether you want an agent that arrives with a plan tier, or one your team configures and scopes itself.
Reviewed on August 11, 2026, against hiverhq.com's own pricing and product pages.
Hiver's AI tiering changes frequently. Re-check every figure and every tier assignment on this page against hiverhq.com before relying on it — do not treat this page as current past 2026-11-11.
HIVER'S OWN WORDS
Two product lines, one price ladder
"Hiver Omni is a standalone platform that works with Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers. It brings email, live chat, Slack, voice, WhatsApp, and social into one workspace. Hiver in Gmail lives inside your existing Gmail."
Hiver, hiverhq.com/pricing and hiverhq.com/pricing/hiver-in-gmail, checked 2026-08-11
Both pages publish the identical Free / Growth / Pro / Elite price ladder below — Hiver Omni and Hiver in Gmail are two ways of reaching the same plans, not two different price lists.
PUBLISHED PRICE LADDER
What Hiver publishes, plan by plan
Source: hiverhq.com/pricing (canonical for hiverhq.com/pricing/hiver-omni) and hiverhq.com/pricing/hiver-in-gmail, both checked 2026-08-11.
| Plan | Price | As published |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $ 0 | Free forever. Unlimited users on the Free plan. |
| Growth | $ 25 / $ 35 per user/month | Annual $25, monthly $35, on the Annual/Monthly toggle. |
| Pro | $ 55 / $ 65 per user/month | Annual $55, monthly $65. |
| Elite | $ 85 / $ 95 per user/month | Annual $85, monthly $95. |
- Seat increments. "All Hiver plans start at 2 seats. You can increase from 2 to 5, and then in increments of 5 seats (10, 15, 20, and so on)."
- Free trial. "7-day free trial."
- Voice add-on. "$ 30 per voice seat/month" with "1,000 minutes per voice seat/month included ... Additional usage is charged at $0.03 per minute."
- Above Elite. Hiver publishes no Enterprise or custom price above Elite on its pricing pages; higher arrangements are "Book a demo." Nonprofit pricing is "Schedule a demo to learn more about our pricing."
WHICH TIER, QUOTED
Where each AI feature sits
| Feature | Tier | Quoted from hiverhq.com/pricing |
|---|---|---|
| AI Agents | Growth and above | "Everything in Free, plus: AI Agents — Resolve requests end to end, analyze conversations, and automate customer operations." |
| AI Copilot | Growth and above | "AI Copilot — Help your team resolve issues faster with an AI coworker that drafts replies, surfaces answers." |
| AI QA | Elite | "Everything in Pro, plus: AI QA — Automatically evaluate your team's responses to score quality, flag gaps, and surface coaching opportunities." |
| AI Insights | Elite | "AI Insights — Automatically organizes conversations into topics and subtopics." |
Labelled "Coming soon" by Hiver: the feature matrix on hiverhq.com/pricing lists Customer intelligence (Coming soon), AI Insights (Coming soon), AI QA Coach (Coming soon) — Hiver's own label, reproduced as published rather than as an available feature. Note that AI Insights appears in both places on Hiver's own page: listed under Elite in the plan summary and labelled "Coming soon" in the feature matrix. Both are reproduced here because both are what Hiver publishes; ask Hiver which is current before buying a plan for that feature.
MANDATORY READING BEFORE ANY COMPARISON
What Hiver publishes about AI governance
Before any framing of ownership or scope, here is Hiver's own governance story, quoted verbatim from hiverhq.com/features/ai-agents, checked 2026-08-11.
"Your customer operations, run by AI Agents. Governed by you."
Hiver, hiverhq.com/features/ai-agents
"They follow your procedures step by step, pull info from your institutional knowledge, and run multi-step workflows across every system and channel to resolve complex requests end-to-end."
Hiver, hiverhq.com/features/ai-agents
"AI Guardrails — You shouldn't have to trust AI blindly. Now you don't. Guardrails — Decide when AI steps in, when it should hand off and set the bar for what needs human review."
Hiver, hiverhq.com/features/ai-agents
"Admins can review, edit, or disable any AI-triggered workflows. You're always in control of what gets automated."
Hiver, hiverhq.com/features/ai-agents
Read plainly: Hiver does not ship its AI Agents without a review story. Any comparison that implies otherwise misstates what Hiver publishes.
THE REAL, CHECKABLE DISTINCTION
Ownership and scope, not the presence of approval
A vendor-bundled agent
Arrives with a plan tier — Hiver's AI Agents ship from Growth upward — and is configured inside the vendor's own platform, using the controls the vendor built for it. Hiver publishes admin review, edit, and disable controls over AI-triggered workflows; those controls operate within Hiver's product.
A customer-owned agent
Is configured by the team that runs it, scoped to a workflow they wrote — a trigger, a permission level, a review queue — and reaches mail under permissions they set, mediated through governed access rather than a standing credential.
Neither model is automatically the right one. A team that wants AI Agents live inside a platform it already pays for, configured through a vendor console, gets that from Hiver today with a published price. A team that wants to write and scope the workflow itself is asking a different question, and that's the question DuoInbox is built to answer.
WHO SHOULD STAY ON HIVER
When Hiver is the better fit
- You want one workspace across email, live chat, Slack, voice, WhatsApp, and social — Hiver Omni publishes all of those channels in one platform.
- You want an AI feature that ships inside a plan tier you already pay for, configured in the vendor's own admin console, rather than a workflow your team writes and scopes itself.
- You want a published price ladder today, with a 7-day free trial to test it against your own volume.
- You need voice support: Hiver publishes a per-seat voice add-on with included minutes and a published overage rate.
DUOINBOX'S STATUS
What we haven't published yet
DuoInbox's pricing, packaging, and availability are not yet published. There is no price ladder here to set beside Hiver's, and none of the figures above are a claim about what DuoInbox costs. What is settled is the shape of the agent: configured by your team, scoped to a workflow you write, reaching mail under permissions you set.
Request early accessBefore requesting access, see the permission levels, recipient restrictions, and audit activity a reviewer will ask about next: Controls.
FAQ
Questions about Hiver's published plans and AI features
- Does Hiver publish human review or guardrails for its AI Agents?
- Yes. Hiver's own AI Agents page states: "AI Guardrails — You shouldn't have to trust AI blindly. Now you don't. Guardrails — Decide when AI steps in, when it should hand off and set the bar for what needs human review." It also states: "Admins can review, edit, or disable any AI-triggered workflows. You're always in control of what gets automated." Both are Hiver's own statements, checked on hiverhq.com/features/ai-agents on 2026-08-11.
- Which Hiver plan includes AI Agents?
- Hiver's pricing page lists AI Agents and AI Copilot under Growth, and AI QA and AI Insights under Elite, on both Hiver Omni and Hiver in Gmail. Hiver labels Customer intelligence, AI Insights, and AI QA Coach "Coming soon" in its feature matrix — reproduced here as Hiver states it, not as shipped features.
- Does Hiver support MCP?
- MCP is not described on hiverhq.com/pricing, hiverhq.com/pricing/hiver-in-gmail, or hiverhq.com/features/ai-agents as checked on 2026-08-11. That is an absence in what we could find published, not a statement that Hiver lacks the capability.
- What is the real difference between Hiver's AI Agents and DuoInbox's agent?
- Not the presence of approval — Hiver publishes its own guardrails and human-review story. The checkable difference is ownership and scope: Hiver's AI Agents arrive with a plan tier and are configured inside Hiver's platform. DuoInbox's agent, Hermes, is configured by your team, scoped to a workflow you write, and reaches mail under permissions you set. Neither is automatically the right answer for a given team.
- Is DuoInbox priced the same way as Hiver?
- DuoInbox's pricing, packaging, and availability are not yet published, so there is no ladder to compare against Hiver's. Request early access to hear about pricing when it exists.
Independence disclaimer
Hiver is a trademark of its respective owner. DuoInbox is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with Hiver. Every Hiver fact on this page is quoted or paraphrased from hiverhq.com's own published pages, checked on 2026-08-11, and cited with its source. Pricing and AI tiering in this category change often; re-verify against hiverhq.com before relying on this page, and treat it as due for re-verification by 2026-11-11.
See the same five criteria applied across vendors on the alternatives hub, including Front alternatives, or read team inbox software, AI agents for Gmail for the four access models this vendor set divides into, and AI email agents: a practical governance guide for the category framing without naming a vendor. For what Hermes may and may not reach, see Security or return to DuoInbox.
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