Front vs Helply (formerly Groove)
A side-by-side comparison of Front and Helply (formerly Groove) on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
4 of the 18 capabilities tracked on both differ, mostly in Channels.
| Measure | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $25/seat/mo | Usage only |
| Charged per | Each agent seat | Not published |
| AI billed at | $0.05 per conversation | $1 per ticket |
| Included, where the other says no | 1 capability | 0 capabilities |
Capability by capability
4 of the 18 capabilities tracked on both products differ.
Channels
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedAll plans, with OAuth for Office 365 and Gmail. On Starter, only if email is the single channel type you choose. | IncludedIncluded. One of the eight channels feeding Helply's single queue, and on every Classic Groove plan. | |
| Live chat | IncludedAll plans in principle, but Starter supports one channel type only, so chat there means no email or SMS alongside it. Omnichannel starts at Professional. | IncludedIncluded. In-app widget on Helply; branded chat widget for web and mobile on every Classic Groove plan. |
| In-app messenger | Not published | IncludedIncluded. |
| Voice | IncludedProfessional and above. Voice and telephony run through Aircall or Dialpad rather than a Front-operated network. | NoHelply enumerates eight channels and voice is not one of them. Classic Groove offers call logging, which records a call against a conversation rather than carrying one. |
| SMS | IncludedThrough Twilio on all plans, subject to the Starter single-channel-type limit. Dialpad also carries SMS. | IncludedIncluded. |
| Paid add-onNative WhatsApp is a paid add-on on Professional and Enterprise, priced as Meta's WhatsApp costs plus a 20% admin fee. Third-party WhatsApp through Twilio or Number AI is available otherwise. | IncludedIncluded. | |
| Instagram / Facebook | IncludedProfessional and above. Social channels are not on Starter. | IncludedClassic Groove only, on every plan, and counted against the plan's channel allowance at $10 per extra channel. Helply's published channel list is Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, Discord, email, WhatsApp, SMS, in-app widget and a webhook API, and does not include Instagram or Facebook. |
| X / Twitter | IncludedProfessional and above, listed with the other social channels. | Not published |
| Slack Connect | Not published | IncludedIncluded, and threaded into the same queue as email rather than mirrored. Named as a first-class B2B channel: "Slack Connect threading". |
| Microsoft Teams | Not published | IncludedIncluded, alongside Discord. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | IncludedAll plans. 1 workspace on Starter, up to 5 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. | IncludedIncluded, with unlimited seats. "Bring your whole team. Engineers triaging bugs, AEs reading churn signals, PMs scanning feature requests." |
| SLA policies | Not published | IncludedIncluded on Helply, with per-account SLAs called out for enterprise. Classic Groove gates SLA management to Plus and Pro. |
| Macros / saved replies | IncludedProfessional and above. Starter has no macros at all; Enterprise removes the cap. | IncludedIncluded. Saved replies on Helply; instant replies on every Classic Groove plan, though instant replies that carry actions are Plus and above. |
| Custom fields | Not published | IncludedClassic Groove: customer overview with custom fields on every plan, plus company fields and field categories. |
| Ticket forms | IncludedUnknown. A customer portal with ticket forms is named in the product navigation, but no plan gate is published for it. | Not published |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Round-robin assignment | Not published | IncludedIncluded on both products. Classic Groove offers round robin with load balancing on every plan for assignment, but gates chat routing with load balancing to Plus and Pro. |
| Workflow builder | IncludedRules are capped: up to 10 on Starter, up to 20 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. Smart rules are Enterprise only. | IncludedIncluded. "Workflow rules with conditions" on Helply. Classic Groove ships a custom rule builder on every plan but gates time-based rules and advanced rule automations to Plus and Pro. |
AI resolution
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous resolution agent | Paid add-onAutopilot, the omnichannel AI agent, is an add-on on all three plans starting at $0.05 per conversation. No included allowance on any plan, and Front bills the conversation rather than the resolution. | IncludedIncluded at no extra charge. "The AI agent loads full account context, your KB, past tickets, CRM, Stripe, product usage, and only resolves a ticket when it has high confidence in a complete, correct answer." |
| Resolution over knowledge base | Not published | IncludedIncluded, and trained on resolved tickets and macros as well as articles. |
| Action-taking (API calls) | Not published | IncludedIncluded. Refunds, plan changes, seat provisioning, password resets and rate-limit increases executed across Stripe, the CRM and the auth provider, chained across multiple steps with failure handling. |
| Handoff to human | Not published | IncludedIncluded, on customer-set thresholds. "You set the thresholds, Helply respects them, and the agent log shows every decision it made and why." Handoffs carry the issue, customer history, resolution attempts and full thread. |
| Guardrails & citations | Not published | IncludedIncluded. Guardrails, brand tone and answer format are configurable, with a preview mode for reviewing answers before they go live, and drafts cite account context inline. |
AI assist
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Reply drafting | IncludedAI Compose is included on all plans and capped at 200 actions per teammate per day. | IncludedIncluded on Helply. On Classic Groove this is Copilot at $49 per account per month, or the AI assist row, which is blank in the Standard column. |
| Summarization | IncludedAI Summarize is included on all plans and capped at 200 actions per teammate per day. | IncludedIncluded on Helply. Classic Groove gates AI summarize to Plus and Pro. |
| Translation | IncludedAI Translate is included on all plans and capped at 200 requests per teammate per day. | Not published |
| Auto-tagging | Not published | IncludedClassic Groove AI tag suggest, Plus and Pro only. Included on Helply. |
| Sentiment analysis | Not published | IncludedClassic Groove Plus and Pro. Helply replaces it with signal detection: churn language, upsell asks, competitor mentions and plan-limit hits tagged in real time and attributed to the account and its ARR. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedBasic knowledge base on Starter, customisable on Professional, multi-language on Enterprise. | IncludedIncluded on Helply. Classic Groove includes a knowledge base per plan allowance, with additional ones priced but not published. |
| Custom domain | Not published | IncludedClassic Groove supports a custom domain on the knowledge base, with either Groove's SSL or your own. Custom HTML and CSS are not supported. |
| Localization | IncludedEnterprise only. The multi-language knowledge base is one of the three named Enterprise unlocks. | Not published |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Automated QA coverage | Paid add-onSmart QA is $20 per seat per month on Starter and Professional, included on Enterprise. | Not published |
Reporting
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Prebuilt dashboards | IncludedBasic analytics on Starter, advanced analytics on Professional. | Not published |
| Custom reports | IncludedEnterprise only. | Not published |
| Raw data export | IncludedNo plan gate, but not self-serve on any plan: "You will need to contact Front's Support team in order to export your team's Front account data. You cannot do this on your own in the app at this time." | Not publishedHelply publishes no export UI, format or API reference on the pricing, security, enterprise or migration pages, and docs.helply.com, developers.helply.com and api.helply.com do not resolve. Groove Classic, no longer sold, ticks "Data export" in all three columns of its feature matrix and offers a self-serve JSON export with no plan gate. |
| CSAT / NPS | Paid add-onSmart CSAT infers satisfaction rather than surveying for it. $10 per seat per month on Starter and Professional, included on Enterprise. | IncludedIncluded. Customer satisfaction surveys on Helply; CSAT ratings, customisable rating wording and CSAT reporting on every Classic Groove plan. |
Collaboration
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| Internal notes | IncludedAll plans. Comments and discussions sit alongside the message thread, and free guests can comment without a license. | IncludedEvery plan on both products, with @mentions. Lite users on Classic Groove can add notes but cannot reply. |
| @mentions | IncludedAll plans. Guests may @mention participants already in the conversation but cannot invite new ones. | Not published |
| Collision detection | Not published | IncludedClassic Groove, every plan. |
Enterprise
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | IncludedProfessional and above, any SAML-based IdP, plus OAuth for Office 365 and Gmail. Not on Starter. | Not publishedNot published for Helply, which has no plan matrix. Classic Groove's Security & Permissions matrix lists exactly four rows, two-factor authentication, mailbox access permissions, teammate roles and public downtime reporting, and SAML SSO is not one of them. |
| SCIM provisioning | IncludedProfessional and above. Not on Starter. | Not publishedNot mentioned on either product's published material. |
| Custom roles | IncludedEnterprise only. Starter gets basic user management, Professional adds SSO and SCIM. | Not publishedClassic Groove publishes "teammate roles" and mailbox access permissions with no detail on what roles exist or whether they can be defined. Helply publishes nothing on roles at all, which is a notable gap for a product whose selling point is putting the whole company in the inbox. |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNot plan-gated. SOC 2 Type II, report on request. | IncludedNot plan-gated. SOC 2 Type II, with the report and pen-test summaries "available on request" through the Vanta-hosted trust centre. |
| ISO 27001 | IncludedNot plan-gated. Certified, certificate on request. | Not publishedNot claimed for either product. Groove's GDPR article mentions ISO 27001 only as a property of its hosting providers, which is a statement about AWS rather than about the product. |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated. A DPA is published. | IncludedNot plan-gated. GDPR is named on the security page, a DPA is offered on request, and Groove publishes a named DPO contact at dpo@groovehq.com. |
| Data residency | IncludedUnited States or European Union, on Amazon Web Services. No plan gate and no price are stated for the choice. | Not publishedNo region choice is published. Groove's GDPR article says only that it is "hosted at AWS", and Helply's security page names no region, no hosting provider and no residency option. |
| Right-to-erasure tooling | Not published | IncludedNot plan-gated. "Request deletion anytime. We maintain formal retention and disposal procedures to ensure your data is securely purged when you leave." Groove puts a figure on it: removal takes up to 30 days after cancellation. |
Developer
| Capability | Front | Helply (formerly Groove) |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedAll plans. The Core API covers conversations, messages, contacts, tags and comments, and a separate analytics export endpoint exists. | IncludedGroove Classic, no longer sold, ships a documented v1 REST API on every plan. Helply lists "API access" as included in the $1 ticket price and exposes a webhook API as one of its channels, but publishes no endpoint reference. |
| Webhooks | Not published | IncludedEvery Classic Groove plan. Helply exposes a webhook API as one of its eight channels. |
| Published rate limits | IncludedPublished per plan: Starter 50 req/min, Professional 100, Enterprise 200, enforced per company. Burst limits are 5 req/s per resource type and 1 req/s for exports. | Not publishedHelply publishes no rate limit, and no API reference to carry one. Groove Classic, no longer sold, publishes 200 calls per minute on Standard, 400 on Plus and 800 on Pro. |
Both entries last checked Sep 9, 2026.
What Front costs
$25/seat/month
3 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Per seat per month at the annual-prepay rate - Free tier
No, 14-day trial - AI pricing
$0.05 per conversation - Vendor calls it
conversation - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
Support ticket required - Automation export
Not offered
3 of 9 not published by Front, checked
What Helply (formerly Groove) costs
- Billing unit
The only plan Helply sells - Free tier
No - AI pricing
$1 per ticket - Vendor calls it
Ticket - Human handoff
Still billed - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
None published - Automation export
Not published
3 of 9 not published by Helply (formerly Groove), checked