Front is a compelling choice for customer-facing teams whose support work depends on collaboration and coordination across shared inboxes. It combines conversation ownership, ticketing and workflow rules with self-service and AI. Its entry plan has a meaningful boundary: Starter supports one channel type. Teams combining email and chat should evaluate Professional from the outset.
Collaboration with operational controls
Each conversation can have one assigned owner, giving a shared request a clear next responder. Rules automate assignment, categorization and other actions. Linear and branching rules let administrators build a simple sequence or choose different paths by condition. Starter includes ten workspace rules, Professional twenty, and Enterprise removes those rule limits. Branching rules and rule sets each count as one rule.
The routing difference matters more than the raw rule count for a busy team. Load balancing on Professional and above assigns to available teammates with the fewest open conversations and respects capacity limits. Queues hold work until someone can take it. This helps teams whose availability changes throughout a shift.
Professional also introduces reply and resolution time goals, formerly called SLA rules. Administrators can use business-hour clocks, warn before a target is missed and trigger actions after a breach. These are useful controls for account service teams with different contractual or internal response expectations.
Self-service and integrations
Front includes a native knowledge base. Multiple help centers require Professional or above and can include customer portals and Front Chat. Enterprise adds multilingual knowledge-base capabilities. This structure suits departments or brands that need separate public destinations while sharing customer operations.
Shopify buyers should distinguish data visibility from order execution. Front’s official integration guide documents customer and order information, multiple stores and links into Shopify. If those actions drive most tickets, compare the documented workflows in Help Scout or Gorgias.
Budget for the intended workflow
Annual prices start at $25 per seat monthly for Starter, rising to $65 for Professional and $105 for Enterprise. Copilot costs another $20 per seat monthly on the first two tiers; Enterprise includes it. Autopilot is a usage-priced add-on starting at $0.05 per conversation.
Customer-submitted CSAT surveys require Professional or above; Enterprise includes separate AI-inferred Smart CSAT. Front fits teams that value shared communication and increasingly sophisticated operations. Professional is the practical comparison point when omnichannel support, capacity-based assignment, customer ratings or service targets are purchase requirements.
Developers can use APIs on every plan to build connections or move data. That flexibility is useful for account-specific workflows, although it does not make every connector a complete transactional integration. Define the actual read and write operations required before designing the workflow.
Front for Microsoft 365 customer support
Front's current Office 365 connection supports individual and shared inboxes, optional history import and continuing inbound/sent-message sync. Agents collaborate in Front. Treat message synchronization separately from read/archive/tag state; the current guide does not describe full ongoing state mirroring. Use the native Office 365 channel rather than SMTP forwarding when this synchronization is required. Compare Microsoft 365 support software for forwarding-based alternatives.
Account conversations and Linear follow-up
Front accounts collect contacts and conversations while preserving inbox access restrictions. All plans include accounts; account analytics requires Professional or higher. Its Linear connector can reopen linked shared-inbox conversations after completion, but private inbox automation is excluded and Front internal notes do not sync back to Linear. See the Linear comparison.