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Front
- Offers free trial
- 100+ integrations
- Easy to use interface
- Powered by AI
- No free forever plan
- Delays with emails
Navigating the sea of team collaboration tools? Front.com might be your beacon. This software stands out and is designed to streamline your team’s communication and increase productivity.
But does it truly deliver on its promises? This comprehensive Front.com review aims to answer your burning questions and help you decide if it’s the right fit for your team.
Let’s dive deeper.
SMB Guide’s Verdict for Front
We rate Front 8.3 out of 10. Front is the modern customer service platform that helps companies delight their customers, engage their teams, and build stronger businesses.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of key features.
SMB Guide utilizes a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria for reviewing software to keep our reviews unbiased for our readers. For more information, see our evaluation criteria.
Pricing & Plans
Front offers four pricing plans – broken into two categories. There’s one plan for small teams, and three plans for larger businesses.
Starter
This plan is the basic plan Front offers, for two to 10 users.
Price
- $19/seat/month billed annually
Features
- Omnichannel shared inboxes
- Team collaboration on customer messages
- Included knowledge base and website live chat
- Access to most third-party integrations
Who it’s for: This plan is for smaller teams looking to bring customer support workflows into one place.
Growth
This is the next-level planned, designed for a minimum of two seats.
Price
- $59/seat/month when billed annually
Features
- Omnichannel shared inboxes
- Real-time collaboration features
- Up to 20 rules to automate workflows
- Analytics on team performance, customer satisfaction, SLAs and more
- Built-in knowledge base, live chat with chatbots, and 50+ integrations
Who it’s for: Teams looking to streamline support workflows and improve performance.
Scale
This plan requires a minimum of 20 seats.
Price
- $99/seat/month billed annually
Features
- Everything in the Growth plan plus:
- Multiple workspaces for distinct teams
- User management with SSO, SCIM provisioning, and custom permissions
- No-code dynamic objects to connect backend systems and up to 200 rules
- Analytics by customer from your CRM
- Onboarding and solution design
Who it’s for: Teams that need total workflow flexibility and advanced user management.
Premier
This plan requires a minimum of 50 seats.
Price
- $229/seat/month when billed annually
Features
- Everything in Scale plus:
- Highest usage caps across all features
- Additional success services including Premier Onboarding
- Custom Build Hours including API advisory and integration development
- Video conferencing support
Who it’s for: Teams looking for professional services and partnership to meet enterprise needs.
Add-ons are available to help you personalize your plan, such as:
- Dialpad SMS: $100/month
- Google Business Messages: $100/month
- Telegram: $100/month
- WhatsApp: Starting at $70/month
Real-Time Messaging & Canned Responses
Front’s real-time messaging feature is a powerful tool that enables immediate conversations with customers on any website or mobile app.
It also allows businesses to provide prompt customer support, improving the overall customer experience and potentially increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Front Chat also supports using chatbots, which can save you time by automatically triaging messages and collecting customer information.
Beyond real-time messaging, Front also offers canned responses. You can customize these prewritten messages to reply to common situations or your most frequently asked questions to provide fast, accurate, and consistent service, no matter who on the team is handling the query.
Live Chat AI & NLP
Chatbots make it possible to collect information from your customers and answer many of the most common questions. Setting them up was a bit difficult to understand intuitively, but I was able to find help documentation to show me how to do it.
From the Settings, go to Channels > Chatbots. From there, you must first connect a channel and route it to your selected inbox.
Once that’s done, you click the Chatbots tab, and then “Create a chatbot.” You’ll name it, choose the channel you want it associated with, add a description so that teammates know what it is, and then you’ll choose a chatbot display name and avatar.
From there, you’ll use the flow builder to create the chatbot as desired.
Customizable Chat Widgets
Front offers customizable chat widgets. The front Chat Widget is a chat box that opens up to your site’s visitors so they can get real-time help.
You can customize the name and avatar that your customers see in the widget. This makes it easier for you to maintain brand consistency across all customer touchpoints.
You can respond to visitors and customers in real time straight from the team inbox. You can customize the widget to match brand guidelines, including custom colors, messages, and positions on the website.
Visitor Tracking and Analytics
Analytics is not available in all plans. During my free trial, I could not access the analytics data, so the information presented here comes from Front’s help documentation.
On applicable plans, there’s an Analytics tab in the dashboard. In that panel, you’ll be able to see analytics for your Workspace, company, and individual analytics.
Reports include:
- Overview
- Team Performance
- Conversations
- Tags
- Message Templates
- SLAs
- Customer Satisfaction
User Interface and User Experience
Upon starting my free trial, I was shown a video about how Front works and given a short demo of the various ways you can use the platform.
It’s a fairly simple user interface, but it’s not all that intuitive. I had to search through the help documentation multiple times to understand how to truly set up various aspects of the platform.
Integrations and Compatibility
Front offers a variety of integration options, with a range of apps, including:
- CRM systems
- Project management tools
- Communication tools
- Helpdesk software
- Analytics tools
- Calendar apps
- File sharing platforms
The API also allows for custom integrations for further customization and flexibility.
Front is a web based platform that can be accessed from any device with an internet connection. It also has mobile apps available for Android and iOS devices.
Customer Support
Customer support is limited to email. That’s a little strange, considering the platform offers live chat functions. I would expect to be able to leverage the live chat feature to speak to someone who could help me troubleshoot.
That said, there is plenty of extensive help documentation available to help you figure out the solution to your issues.
Front — Unique Features
I don’t see any features that I would consider unique compared to other customer service management platforms. Many of them include the same basic features such as shared inboxes, internal comments, and workflow automation.
Nothing during my test stood out as particularly unique.
What the Experts Say about Front
At the time of this writing, Front had the following reviews:
- G2 rating: 4.7/5+ (2,000+ ratings)
- Capterra rating: 4.5/5 (250+ ratings)
- TrustRadius rating: 8.9/10 (100+ ratings)
Couldn’t imagine living without it. Treating email collaboratively has probably reduced the number of internal emails by a factor of 10. The integrations with every platform via API let us manage tons of internal workflows in a completely automated way. Overall, we’re happy to pay for it – every dollar in Front probably saves us an hour in FTE time.
Arjun, Co-founder – Verified Capterra review
Overall my experience with Front has been very great. In terms of many vendors we deal with our company, Front is at the top. They are their because they are truly relationship minded and that is hard to find in companies. Especially companies in the field of technology. Our company is truly thankful for Front and value their company and employees. You truly get a great experience from their product to their people, and that says a lot about a company.
Derek, Business Director – Verified Capterra review
Front Alternatives
Unsure if Front is the best solution for your needs? Check out these other options:
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4.0
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4.3
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4.3
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Free - $95/mo
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$10/mo - $900/mo
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$25/user/mo - $149/user/mo
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Freshdesk
Freshdesk is known for its comprehensive feature set. It includes a robust ticketing system, omnichannel support (email, phone, social media, live chat), automation capabilities, collaboration tools, and more.
Freshdesk offers a free plan for up to 10 agents, with paid plans starting at $15/agent/month when billed annually. It’s an ideal choice for teams looking to streamline their customer service approach across multiple channels.
Start your free trial of Freshdesk
Gorgias
Gorgias is a comprehensive customer care helpdesk software designed for online retailers. It focuses exclusively on small ecommerce businesses rather than positioning itself as a solution for all customer service teams.
The Starter plan of Gorgias can only be bought monthly and costs $10 per month while the Basic plan starts at $50 per month.
Zendesk
Zendesk is considered Help Desk software and is often used for more service and success activities, while Drift is considered customer support chat and is primarily designed for sales and marketing conversations.
Zendesk pricing starts at $19/month, making it far more affordable for small businesses compared to Drift.
Zendesk Support Suite is better suited for businesses that need a robust help desk solution with strong messaging capabilities and a proven track record of user satisfaction.
Other options: Best Front Alternatives
Getting Started with Front
Front is a robust and versatile communication platform that caters to businesses of various sizes. With its ability to consolidate multiple communication channels into a single, shared inbox, it significantly streamlines team collaboration and customer interaction.
Although it may face stiff competition from platforms like Intercom, Trengo, and Help Scout, each with their unique strengths, Front holds its own with powerful features like rules-based automation and third-party integrations.
However, its value for a specific business will greatly depend on the company’s individual needs, communication channels, and customer service approach.
That’s why it’s important for each business to consider its unique requirements when choosing a communication platform.
FAQs
What is Front.com?
Front is a customer operations platform that provides a communication hub for businesses to build strong customer relationships on digital channels.
It’s designed to streamline communication and deliver exceptional customer service at scale. Front enables support, sales, and account management teams to deliver top-notch service.
How many customers does Front have?
According to the company’s pricing page, more than 8,000 businesses use this platform. The actual number may be higher, however.
What is the benefit of Front app?
The app offers several benefits, including enhanced collaboration, workflow automation, mobile accessibility, omnichannel communication, centralized view, and integration capabilities.
Freshdesk helps you get everything you need to quickly resolve small issues, or effectively manage complex resolutions that span different teams and time.
Front
Front is the modern customer service platform that helps companies delight their customers, engage their teams, and build stronger businesses.
Product Brand: Front
4.1
