Front offers a wide range of features to help teams streamline communication, but it's not the right choice for every team.
If you've been using Front but have outgrown it — or found that it doesn't have the features you need to enable your team to do their best work — this guide will help you put together a shortlist of the best Front alternatives to consider.
As a Front alternative, Freshdesk is packed with features, including an omnichannel help desk that consolidates customer communication across email, live chat, and social media into a single inbox. Users can reduce repetitive tasks with canned responses and bulk actions to assign, respond to, and resolve tickets. Additionally, Freshdesk's helpdesk supports localization for multi-lingual teams.
The platform also offers a sophisticated ticketing system that leverages automation, enabling users to auto-assign and prioritize tickets based on keywords, requesters, or properties. Tickets can be split into smaller tasks, allowing different teams to work on them simultaneously. To improve efficiency, Freshdesk's "thank you detector" prevents tickets from being reopened when customers thank agents for assistance.
Freshdesk's AI-powered chatbots can provide step-by-step instructions to customers and detect frustration, forwarding the conversation to a live agent when necessary. Users can also build out customizable knowledge bases for multiple products, complete with approval workflows to accommodate internal submissions. Furthermore, the platform offers community forums where customers can share questions and answers with each other.
Freshdesk supports over 600 integrations, including BigCommerce, Google Suite, Hootsuite, Infusionsoft, and Jira.
Pricing: Freshdesk’s pricing ranges from $15-$69 per user per month when billed annually. They also offer a “free forever” basic plan.
Related: The 8 Best Freshdesk Alternatives and Competitors in 2023
Test drive Freshdesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Trengo consolidates customer messages across email, social media, voice, and SMS channels. Some key features of Trengo include an inbox chat that can accommodate both group channels and private conversations within a central inbox.
Users can build their own "no-code" chatbots with Trengo's drag-and-drop blocks. In addition to self-hosted live chats, chatbots can be deployed on popular messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and WeChat.
Trengo's customer satisfaction surveys can be distributed via email, as well as channels like WhatsApp and Instagram, providing multi-channel CSAT capabilities. The platform also allows users to send templated push notifications to connect with customers on WhatsApp.
Furthermore, Trengo offers self-service help centers where customers are auto-directed every time they type a question in the search bar, eliminating the need for a wild goose chase for information. The help center also supports multiple languages.
Trengo integrates with various platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Gmail, HubSpot, Instagram, Mailchimp, Outlook, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, WhatsApp, WooCommerce, and Zapier.
Pricing: Trengo’s pricing ranges from $18-$40 per agent per month when billed annually.
Test drive Trengo for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Help Scout is what happens when you take a feature-rich shared inbox, combine it with a knowledge base, and throw in live chat capabilities. Companies across various industries, such as SaaS, e-commerce, education, and finance, use Help Scout. It's also HIPAA-compliant, making it a suitable customer communication platform for healthcare organizations.
Some key features of Help Scout include a shared inbox that makes it easy to toggle between different channels, while a real-time request queue helps agents keep on top of inbound messages. Agents can manage support requests on Help Scout’s desktop or mobile apps, available on iOS and Android.
Users can create a searchable library of answers to common questions and insert them into replies with just a few clicks. Help Scout also offers a tagging feature that enables users to categorize different types of requests, build detailed reports, and automate workflows.
The platform has a conversation-oriented design, referring to tickets as "conversations" and displaying each customer's contact information, previous interactions, and data or activity from other apps conveniently in the sidebar.
Help Scout's knowledge base allows users to create and categorize articles and incorporate support team contact information for customers who may require additional assistance. Articles can also be deployed in a dedicated help widget that can be embedded on any webpage.
Help Scout's live chat can be combined with help articles and other contact options to create a seamless, step-by-step support process. For example, visitors may be prompted to view help articles before initiating a live chat. Users can also choose to direct support requests to an email queue when live chat is unavailable.
The platform integrates with various tools, including Freshbooks, Google Suite, HubSpot, Infusionsoft, Jira, Magento, Mailchimp, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, and Zapier.
Pricing: $20-$60 per user per month (Billed annually).
Related: Help Scout vs. Intercom: 11 Tests To Decide Which One Is Better?
Test drive Help Scout for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Hiver is the first omnichannel help desk software specifically designed for Google Workspace. Instead of trying to do everything, Hiver focuses on optimizing a single tool for fast, efficient customer support, all directly from Gmail.
Some key features of Hiver include a shared inbox where users can manually assign or reassign customer emails or enable rules-based auto-assigning. The platform also offers collision alerts to prevent multiple users from responding to the same email, reducing the risk of conflicting replies. Hiver allows for easy categorization and tracking of every customer email by resolution status.
The platform also facilitates team collaboration, enabling team members to access shared drafts to collaborate on replies in real time and use @mentions to loop in specific agents. Additionally, Hiver provides email organization features, allowing users to create color-coded tags for visual inbox filtering and add internal notes to customer emails.
Hiver integrates seamlessly with various tools such as Gmail, Google Workspace, Slack, and Zapier.
Pricing: Hiver’s pricing ranges from $15-$59 per user per month when billed annually.
Helpwise is a straightforward team inbox and knowledge base solution that offers some impressive features. With Helpwise, support teams can efficiently answer customer queries across multiple channels, including SMS, email, social media, and more, all from a single place.
Key features of Helpwise include a shared inbox that not only consolidates customer messages across email, live chat, SMS, social media, and WhatsApp but also syncs old customer conversations from Gmail and Microsoft Outlook.
The shared inbox comes with helpful features like tagging, assigning, and team chats. To enhance security, Helpwise provides separate logins for users with access to the same email address, ensuring that each user has their own unique password.
The platform also enables users to create templates for customer satisfaction surveys and automate review collection, streamlining the process of gathering customer feedback to create a great customer experience.
In addition, Helpwise allows users to build out a customized knowledge base complete with their company branding, making it easy to share articles with customers via email, SMS, or WhatsApp.
Helpwise integrates with various tools, including HubSpot, Shopify, Slack, Pipedrive, Zapier, Zoho CRM, and WhatsApp.
Pricing: Helpwise’s pricing ranges from $12-40 per user per month when billed annually. They also offer a free plan for teams up to 3. For enterprise pricing, you’ll have to reach out and talk to their team directly.
Kustomer is an omnichannel customer support platform envisioned as a "CRM for customer service." Kustomer is equipped with a wide range of e-commerce integrations, such as Amazon Connect, BigCommerce, and Shopify.
Some key features of Kustomer include self-learning AI models that can automatically tag and route conversations as well as reply to frequently asked questions. The platform's automation capabilities extend to manual support tasks, such as updating customer profiles and creating entire workflows with custom logic. Users can also deploy automated responses to customer messages on social media and WhatsApp.
Kustomer allows users to design multi-brand knowledge bases with customizable themes and localized content in 76 languages. The platform also offers a visual interface for users to build their own code-free chatbot workflows.
Kustomer's appeal to e-commerce brands is further evident in its custom push notifications feature, which can be used to communicate delivery updates or delays.
Kustomer integrates with various tools, including Amazon Connect, BigCommerce, Chargify, Gmail, Jira, Klaviyo, Magento, Salesforce, Shopify, Trust Pilot, and WhatsApp.
Pricing: Kustomer’s pricing ranges from $89-$139 per user per month when billed annually. They have a 4-seat minimum.
Gmelius is a customer support tool specifically designed for Gmail. It's a shared inbox that transforms standard customer emails into actionable tickets, which can then be assigned, tagged, and updated by status.
The shared inbox also comes equipped with email tracking and auto-scheduling. Users can visually organize their shared inbox with Kanban boards, converting emails into task cards complete with subtasks, priorities, and deadlines.
The platform allows users to create and insert their own email templates directly from the compose window. Gmelius also facilitates team collaboration by enabling users to work on shared drafts, delegate conversations with @mentions, and leave notes for other team members on customer emails. The platform can also sync with Slack for easy notifications.
Gmelius offers automation features, such as if-then workflows, which enable users to automatically assign emails based on agent bandwidth, send out autoresponders, apply SLA policies, and label conversations.
Key integrations for Gmelius include Google Workspace, Loom, Slack, Trello, and Zapier.
Pricing: Gmelius pricing ranges from $7-49 per user per month when billed annually.
Zendesk's customer support platform offers an extensive list of features tailored to both SMB and enterprise teams. Key features include an agent workspace that consolidates every communication channel into a single dashboard, allowing agents to track, prioritize, and respond to customer queries while updating forms and fields.
The platform also offers advanced live chat functionality, featuring behavior triggers, live visitor tracking, file sending, and chat ratings. Agents can view when customers are typing a response and reply to queries natively across Facebook Messenger, WeChat, or WhatsApp.
Users can create code-free, multilingual chatbots and deploy them across various support channels, including their website, social media, and Slack. Chatbots can even collect customer information and pre-populate ticket fields.
Zendesk also enables users to build expansive knowledge bases tailored to different brands, regions, and audiences, supporting localized content in over 40 languages. Content can be distributed inside products, embedded on any webpage via widgets, and incorporated into support tickets through AI-enabled recommendations.
Additionally, Zendesk allows users to create community forums for customers to connect, ask questions, and share information. The platform comes equipped with over 1,000 pre-built integrations, including Hootsuite, Jira, Magento, Microsoft Teams, Shopify, Slack, Trello, and Zoom.
Pricing: Zendesk pricing ranges from $49-$215 per agent per month (when billed annually).
Related Reading: Front vs Zendesk
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HubSpot Service Hub is a natural extension of HubSpot’s popular CRM platform, designed to consolidate customer data and communication channels for service and support teams.
Service Hub features include omnichannel messaging, which allows agents to switch between multiple channels and respond to customer queries via email, social media, and live chat from a single dashboard. The platform also offers chatbots that can answer common support questions and direct customers to both live agents and relevant help documentation.
Users can build a searchable library of help articles and videos in the knowledge base, plus access content performance insights from the reporting dashboard. The platform also provides a customer portal where customers can access status updates, ticket conversations, and the knowledge base.
Service Hub seamlessly integrates with other HubSpot products, including their VoIP software, which can be used to call customers directly. Other key integrations include Asana, Databox, Hootsuite, Jira, Pandadoc, Zapier, and Zoom.
Pricing: Beyond their free plan, HubSpot Service Hub pricing ranges from $45-$1,200 per month.
Related: The 7 Best HubSpot Alternatives and Competitors in 2023
Test drive HubSpot Service Hub for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
There are dozens of Front competitors out there to consider, and the process of buying software is rarely fun. Endless demos, gated products, and non-stop phone calls. And after all that, there’s no guarantee that you’ll feel confident in your decision. It’s not a great use of your time.
However, testing and comparing different tools side-by-side will help you evaluate customer service software faster, and in the end, you’ll be more confident with your choice. TestBox allows you to test and compare the top customer support software solution side-by-side—for free. Start testing software now!
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