Front vs Hiver
A side-by-side comparison of Front and Hiver on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
7 of the 27 capabilities tracked on both differ, mostly in Channels. Front starts at $25/seat/mo, Hiver at $25/seat/mo.
| Measure | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $25/seat/mo | $25/seat/mo |
| Charged per | Each agent seat | Each agent seat |
| AI billed at | $0.05 per conversation | $0.03 per minute |
| Included, where the other says no | 1 capability | 0 capabilities |
Capability by capability
7 of the 27 capabilities tracked on both products differ.
Channels
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedAll plans, with OAuth for Office 365 and Gmail. On Starter, only if email is the single channel type you choose. | IncludedAll plans. "Connect inboxes from Google, Microsoft, Zoho, and more to manage customer emails efficiently." Hiver in Gmail requires a Gmail or Google Workspace account; Hiver Omni is provider-agnostic. | |
| 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. | IncludedGrowth and above. Listed under Channels on the Hiver Omni comparison and named on the Growth card as part of Omnichannel. Includes a customisable widget, pre-chat form, chat templates, transcripts, message routing, offline settings, chat alerts and chat CSAT. |
| In-app messenger | Not published | NoLive chat is a website and app widget with a pre-chat form and offline contact form. Nothing in either comparison describes a persistent in-product messenger with outbound campaigns or product tours. |
| Voice | IncludedProfessional and above. Voice and telephony run through Aircall or Dialpad rather than a Front-operated network. | Paid add-onHiver Omni only, add-on on all three plans at $30 per voice seat per month with 1,000 pooled minutes and $0.03 a minute after. Not offered on Hiver in Gmail. |
| SMS | IncludedThrough Twilio on all plans, subject to the Starter single-channel-type limit. Dialpad also carries SMS. | Paid add-onPart of the Voice add-on. The product navigation describes Voice as "Native voice and SMS support"; SMS has no row of its own in either plan comparison, so no separate gate is published. |
| 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. | IncludedUnknown. WhatsApp is named as a Hiver Omni channel in the pricing FAQ and on the security page, and appears as a component on the status page, but there is no WhatsApp row in the Channels section of either plan comparison, so no plan gate is published. | |
| Instagram / Facebook | IncludedProfessional and above. Social channels are not on Starter. | Not published |
| X / Twitter | IncludedProfessional and above, listed with the other social channels. | Not published |
| Slack Connect | Not published | IncludedPro and above. Hiver calls it Slack channel: "Manage customer conversations from private and public Slack channels right from Hiver." That is Slack as an inbound support channel rather than Slack Connect specifically. A separate all-plans Slack integration handles internal alerts and discussion. |
| Community forum | Not published | NoHiver ships a Help Center and a Customer Portal for submitting and tracking requests. Neither pricing page lists a community forum. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | IncludedAll plans. 1 workspace on Starter, up to 5 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. | IncludedAll plans, but quota'd: 2 Shared Inboxes on Growth, 5 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Send-from aliases are 1 per Shared Inbox on Growth and unlimited above it. |
| Ticket queues | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "Tickets Log any customer request as a ticket in one click." Routing, assignment, tags, custom views and a personalised agent view sit alongside it. |
| SLA policies | Not published | IncludedPro and above. SLAs are named on the Pro card, along with SLA reports and SLA-based automations. |
| Business hours | Not published | IncludedUnknown. Listed in the Analytics section as "Define your team's working hours so SLA and performance reports are more accurate" with no plan stated. |
| Macros / saved replies | IncludedProfessional and above. Starter has no macros at all; Enterprise removes the cap. | IncludedAll plans, unlimited per account. Hiver calls them Email templates, and they are one of the objects the account export covers. |
| Custom fields | Not published | IncludedAll plans, quota'd hard: 2 Custom Fields on Growth, 10 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Two fields is a real ceiling for anyone categorising beyond tags. |
| Custom objects | Not published | IncludedElite only. "Use your own data sets to power dynamic workflows instead of creating separate rules for every condition." Exports as CSV from the object's edit screen. |
| Ticket forms | IncludedUnknown. A customer portal with ticket forms is named in the product navigation, but no plan gate is published for it. | IncludedUnknown. Web Forms appear as a Channels row on the Hiver Omni comparison with no plan stated, and the June 2026 changelog lists Web Forms for Hiver in Gmail as still in testing. |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Skills-based routing | Not published | IncludedElite only. Named on the Elite card: route reimbursement emails to payroll specialists and so on. |
| Round-robin assignment | Not published | IncludedUnknown. Round robin assignment and load balancing are Automations rows with no plan stated, though the per-plan automation quota applies to both. |
| Triggers | Not published | IncludedAll plans, quota'd: 10 rule-based Automations per Shared Inbox on Growth, 20 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Scheduled, custom-field-based and app-based automations sit in the same section, as does making outbound API calls from an automation. |
| Workflow builder | IncludedRules are capped: up to 10 on Starter, up to 20 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. Smart rules are Enterprise only. | Not published |
AI resolution
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | IncludedAll plans, and the comparison marks the AI Agents block "ALL PLANS" explicitly. "AI Agents Resolve requests end to end, analyze conversations, and automate customer operations." No allowance, cap, overage or per-resolution price is published for it anywhere. |
| Action-taking (API calls) | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "Looks up orders, issues refunds, and updates records across your systems." Hiver claims coverage of tools without APIs too: "If your humans can see it in a browser, our agent can too." |
| Handoff to human | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Part of Guardrails: "Decide when AI steps in, when it should hand off and set the bar for what needs human review." |
| Guardrails & citations | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Guardrails decide when AI steps in and when it hands off, observability shows every action taken across connected systems, and "Human in the loop Pauses for approval on actions you mark sensitive." |
AI assist
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Reply drafting | IncludedAI Compose is included on all plans and capped at 200 actions per teammate per day. | IncludedAll plans. AI Copilot drafts replies, and AI Suggested Response returns "ready-to-send, contextual responses based on your connected knowledge sources". |
| Tone rewrite | Not published | IncludedAll plans. AI Compose "Polish and refine the tone, grammar, and structure of your replies." |
| Summarization | IncludedAI Summarize is included on all plans and capped at 200 actions per teammate per day. | IncludedAll plans. AI Summarizer condenses long email threads; the Voice add-on adds AI call summaries. |
| Translation | IncludedAI Translate is included on all plans and capped at 200 requests per teammate per day. | Not published |
| Auto-tagging | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "AI Tagging Automatically categorize all incoming emails by topic or type to improve routing and analytics." |
| Sentiment analysis | Not published | IncludedAll plans for AI Sentiment Analysis and sentiment reports. Customer Intelligence, which turns sentiment into account health and churn signals, is Elite only and marked Coming soon on the Hiver Omni comparison. |
AI voice
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Call summarization | Not published | Paid add-onVoice add-on only, $30 per voice seat per month. Call recordings and transcripts are saved automatically and each call gets an AI-generated summary. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedBasic knowledge base on Starter, customisable on Professional, multi-language on Enterprise. | IncludedGrowth and above. The Hiver in Gmail Growth card names Help Center directly; the Hiver Omni Growth card folds it into "self-service support". Nested categories, custom branding, a custom domain, a contact form, third-party code snippets and an internal help centre are all in the Help Center section. |
| Custom domain | Not published | IncludedUnknown. "Host your Help Center on your own domain for a consistent brand experience" is a Help Center row with no plan stated. |
| Multi-brand | Not published | IncludedUnknown. "Multiple Help Centers Create separate Help Centers for different products, teams, languages, or audiences" is a Help Center row with no plan stated. |
| Localization | IncludedEnterprise only. The multi-language knowledge base is one of the three named Enterprise unlocks. | Not published |
| AI answers over KB | Not published | IncludedUnknown plan, all-plans knowledge sources. AI-powered search lets customers "ask questions in natural language and get AI-generated answers from your articles", and the Knowledge Hub feeds AI Copilot and AI Agents from Notion, Confluence, Google Drive or a website. |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Automated QA coverage | Paid add-onSmart QA is $20 per seat per month on Starter and Professional, included on Enterprise. | IncludedElite only. "AI QA Automatically evaluate your team's responses to score quality, flag gaps, and surface coaching opportunities." AI QA Coach, the real-time version, is marked Coming soon. |
Reporting
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Prebuilt dashboards | IncludedBasic analytics on Starter, advanced analytics on Professional. | IncludedAll plans. Basic reporting on Growth, advanced pre-built reports for tags and users above it. |
| Custom reports | IncludedEnterprise only. | IncludedPro and above. Custom reports and custom dashboards are named on the Pro card as Advanced Analytics. |
| 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." | IncludedNo plan gate published for the account export, which runs self-serve from Admin Panel > Settings > Export data and returns XML. Reporting exports are separate CSV downloads, and scheduled data exports are a plan-gated comparison row. |
| 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. | IncludedPro and above. CSAT surveys are named on the Pro card, with CSAT survey reports, CSAT-based automations and chat CSAT alongside. Results export as CSV and filter by user. NPS is not offered. |
Collaboration
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Internal notes | IncludedAll plans. Comments and discussions sit alongside the message thread, and free guests can comment without a license. | IncludedAll plans. Notes carry @mentions, Collaborators pull in people outside the Shared Inbox, and Shared Drafts allow co-writing a reply before it sends. Notes export as part of the account export. |
| @mentions | IncludedAll plans. Guests may @mention participants already in the conversation but cannot invite new ones. | Not published |
| Assignment | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Routing and assignments, with out-of-office and agent availability so conversations are not assigned to people who are away. |
| Collision detection | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "Prevents multiple teammates from working on or replying to the same conversation simultaneously." |
| Approvals | Not published | IncludedUnknown. "Set up step-by-step approval workflows so stakeholders can review and sign off on sensitive replies" appears in the Hiver in Gmail Collaboration section with no plan stated. |
Enterprise
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | IncludedProfessional and above, any SAML-based IdP, plus OAuth for Office 365 and Gmail. Not on Starter. | IncludedElite only. "Let users log in securely through your identity provider with SSO. Supports OIDC and SAML." Named on the Elite card alongside HIPAA and custom roles. |
| SCIM provisioning | IncludedProfessional and above. Not on Starter. | IncludedUnknown. SCIM provisioning appears in the Hiver Omni Security and team management section with no plan stated. The Hiver in Gmail comparison has no SCIM row and lists an Okta integration instead. |
| Custom roles | IncludedEnterprise only. Starter gets basic user management, Professional adds SSO and SCIM. | IncludedElite only, and capped at 6 custom roles on Hiver in Gmail. "Create tailored permission roles to control what each team member can access and do." |
| HIPAA / BAA | Not publishedHIPAA is not mentioned on the security page, so neither a BAA nor its absence is published. | IncludedElite only. "HIPAA compliance Handle protected health information with a HIPAA-compliant setup." No Business Associate Agreement is referenced on the pricing pages, the security page or the terms, so the compliance claim is published and the contract that normally backs it is not. |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNot plan-gated. SOC 2 Type II, report on request. | IncludedAll plans. SOC 2 Type II, with the full report released on request to security@hiverhq.com under a non-disclosure commitment. |
| ISO 27001 | IncludedNot plan-gated. Certified, certificate on request. | IncludedAll plans. Hiver publishes the ISO/IEC 27001 certificate for viewing rather than gating it behind a request. |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated. A DPA is published. | IncludedAll plans, alongside CCPA. The privacy policy sets out access, deletion, restriction and portability rights, though portability is qualified as available "if it is possible, given our then-current automated systems and data architecture". |
| Data residency | IncludedUnited States or European Union, on Amazon Web Services. No plan gate and no price are stated for the choice. | NoUnited States only. "All our services and data is hosted in the USA." The status page names the infrastructure as AWS us-west-2, and the last database backup is also held encrypted in Google Compute storage. No EU or other region is offered on any plan. |
| Data retention policy | Not published | IncludedTiered rather than configurable: analytics history is 12 months on Growth, 18 on Pro and 24 on Elite. This is a depth limit on reporting, not a customer-set retention policy for conversation data, and no configurable retention setting is published. |
Developer
| Capability | Front | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedAll plans. The Core API covers conversations, messages, contacts, tags and comments, and a separate analytics export endpoint exists. | IncludedPro and above. Bearer-token keys created by an admin in Developer settings, carrying admin privileges. The Hiver Omni API is early access and enabled per account by emailing support, so on Omni the API is gated twice. |
| 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. | IncludedAll plans with API access. 1 request per second per account and 5,000 requests per day, with 429 Too Many Requests, exponential backoff guidance and a documented blacklisting risk for repeated retries. |
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 Hiver costs
$25/seat/month
3 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Per user per month - Free tier
No, 7-day trial - AI pricing
Not published - Vendor calls it
minute - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Not offered
4 of 9 not published by Hiver, checked