Front vs Thena
A side-by-side comparison of Front and Thena on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
2 of the 15 capabilities tracked on both differ. Front starts at $25/seat/mo, Thena at $29/seat/mo.
| Measure | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $25/seat/mo | $29/seat/mo |
| Charged per | Each agent seat | Each agent seat |
| AI billed at | $0.05 per conversation | tickets/month allowance, no rate published |
| Included, where the other says no | 0 capabilities | 0 capabilities |
Capability by capability
2 of the 15 capabilities tracked on both products differ.
Channels
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedAll plans, with OAuth for Office 365 and Gmail. On Starter, only if email is the single channel type you choose. | IncludedStarter. | |
| 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. | IncludedStandard, $79/user/month billed annually. Listed as "AI web chat". |
| Voice | IncludedProfessional and above. Voice and telephony run through Aircall or Dialpad rather than a Front-operated network. | Not published |
| SMS | IncludedThrough Twilio on all plans, subject to the Starter single-channel-type limit. Dialpad also carries SMS. | Not 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. | Not 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 | IncludedStarter, $29/user/month billed annually. |
| Microsoft Teams | Not published | IncludedEnterprise only. Listed under "Everything in Standard +" on the $119/user/month card. |
| Community forum | Not published | IncludedStandard. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | IncludedAll plans. 1 workspace on Starter, up to 5 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. | Not published |
| SLA policies | Not published | IncludedStarter. |
| Business hours | Not published | IncludedMulti-level working hours, used by auto-responders and SLA calculation. |
| Macros / saved replies | IncludedProfessional and above. Starter has no macros at all; Enterprise removes the cap. | IncludedSnippets. A documented product feature with no endpoint anywhere in the API reference, so saved replies cannot be extracted. |
| Custom fields | Not published | IncludedTicket, account, contact and custom object fields, with a custom fields API and custom object events. |
| Custom objects | Not published | Included |
| Ticket forms | IncludedUnknown. A customer portal with ticket forms is named in the product navigation, but no plan gate is published for it. | IncludedCascading forms with conditional field visibility, usable from web, Slack, the API and the customer portal. The form reorder endpoint is standard and enterprise only. |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow builder | IncludedRules are capped: up to 10 on Starter, up to 20 on Professional, unlimited on Enterprise. Smart rules are Enterprise only. | IncludedStandard. The comparison table leaves the Workflows row blank on Starter. |
| Escalation rules | Not published | IncludedEscalation on SLA breach, sentiment or urgency, and rule-based routing of tickets to groups or members. |
AI resolution
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | IncludedStandard, where AI auto-responses and the AI agent studio appear. Unlimited AI agents are Enterprise. |
| Handoff to human | Not published | IncludedHandoff is one of the agent flow actions, and the AI logs tab records fallbacks to a human when the agent defers on policy or confidence. |
AI assist
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| Reply drafting | IncludedAI Compose is included on all plans and capped at 200 actions per teammate per day. | Not published |
| Summarization | IncludedAI Summarize is included on all plans and capped at 200 actions per teammate per day. | IncludedStarter. Listed as "AI ticket summaries". |
| Translation | IncludedAI Translate is included on all plans and capped at 200 requests per teammate per day. | Not published |
| Auto-tagging | Not published | IncludedStarter. Listed as "AI tagging". |
| Sentiment analysis | Not published | IncludedAI prompts on a Slack source predict sentiment and urgency and generate the ticket title and description. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedBasic knowledge base on Starter, customisable on Professional, multi-language on Enterprise. | IncludedStarter, capped at two help centers per the homepage plan card. The pricing page comparison table prints "Unlimited" and "2" on the Help centers row without aligning either to a column. |
| Custom domain | Not published | IncludedPer help center, with a dedicated custom domain endpoint in the Help Center API. |
| Localization | IncludedEnterprise only. The multi-language knowledge base is one of the three named Enterprise unlocks. | Not published |
| AI answers over KB | Not published | IncludedStandard RAG over uploaded PDFs and DOCX files up to 100MB each, plus public URLs that are crawled to their linked sub-pages. Pages behind a login are skipped. |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| 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." | IncludedNo tier condition is stated on the export documentation, so it appears to be on every paid plan. |
| 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. | IncludedStarter. |
Collaboration
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| Internal notes | IncludedAll plans. Comments and discussions sit alongside the message thread, and free guests can comment without a license. | IncludedPrivate notes plus internal threads, which are separate side conversations on a ticket that sync bidirectionally with a Slack channel. |
| @mentions | IncludedAll plans. Guests may @mention participants already in the conversation but cannot invite new ones. | Not published |
Enterprise
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | IncludedProfessional and above, any SAML-based IdP, plus OAuth for Office 365 and Gmail. Not on Starter. | Not publishedNot named on the security page, in the DPA, in the terms or anywhere in the documentation. The only SSO reference is customers signing in to the portal with a provider such as Google, which is consumer login rather than enterprise SAML. |
| SCIM provisioning | IncludedProfessional and above. Not on Starter. | Not publishedNot named on any vendor page. |
| Role-based access control | Not published | IncludedThe comparison table prints "Unlimited" and "Limited" on the RBAC row without saying which tier gets which. |
| Custom roles | IncludedEnterprise only. Starter gets basic user management, Professional adds SSO and SCIM. | Not publishedFive fixed roles are documented. Nothing describes defining a role of your own, and there is no roles endpoint in the API reference. |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNot plan-gated. SOC 2 Type II, report on request. | IncludedNo gate stated. Annual independent third-party SOC 2 Type II audits, monitored with Vanta. |
| ISO 27001 | IncludedNot plan-gated. Certified, certificate on request. | Not publishedNot claimed. SOC 2 Type II is the only certification named on the security page. |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated. A DPA is published. | IncludedNo gate stated. A full DPA is published rather than offered on request, with named EU and UK representatives. |
| 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, hosting location or residency commitment is stated on the security page, in the DPA or in the documentation. The DPA acknowledges restricted international transfers without naming where data sits. |
Developer
| Capability | Front | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedAll plans. The Core API covers conversations, messages, contacts, tags and comments, and a separate analytics export endpoint exists. | IncludedStandard. The comparison table leaves the API row blank on Starter, prints "Limited" for Standard and "Unlimited" for Enterprise. |
| Webhooks | Not published | IncludedStandard. Blank on Starter in the comparison table. |
| App framework | Not published | IncludedCustom apps appear on the Apps row of the comparison table. |
| 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. | Included60 requests per minute per user, org and IP on the standard tier, custom on enterprise, with X-RateLimit headers on every response and a documented 429. |
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 Thena costs
$29/seat/month
3 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
$29 /user/month - Free tier
No - AI pricing
Not published - Vendor calls it
tickets/month - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Partial
4 of 9 not published by Thena, checked