Front Alternative (Frontapp): 10 Tools From €0 Compared

A customer wants to cancel. Your agent sees the order in Front, then cancels it in the Shopify admin. Two tools for one routine request.

We mean Front, the shared team inbox software that many people still know as Frontapp. Front is strong when several people work through email together. It is not a shop back office.

Below you will find ten Front alternatives with price, billing model and which of them let you handle Shopify orders directly in the ticket. Written for e-commerce teams selling in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The table sits right under the short answer.

Is there an alternative to Front?

Yes. For order actions inside the ticket, look at Gorgias, Help Scout or armincx by Chatarmin; for a cheaper team inbox, at Help Scout, Missive or Hiver. Front remains the better choice if your team mainly collaborates on email.

Front alternatives compared: pricing and shop features

As of 12 Oct 2026. Entry prices per month, billed annually for seat-based plans. Where a vendor publishes euro list prices, we show the euro price. Front, Help Scout, Missive, Hiver, Gorgias and Fin only show US dollars, and converting would be guesswork. Source and date for each tool are in the profiles further down.

"No data" means: no reliable evidence found.

To be clear: armincx is our product. What we say about it is our own claim, and we deliberately do not quote a price here.

Which Front alternative fits your case?

• The seat bill is too high, but the way of working fits: Help Scout or Missive
• Your team lives in Gmail: Hiver
• Shopify orders should be handled inside the ticket: Gorgias or Help Scout
• WhatsApp is your main channel, Shopware or JTL is in your stack: armincx
• Large teams with SLAs and routing: Zendesk
• The AI should close tickets without a human: Fin
• Hosting in Germany is mandatory: Zammad via German hosting partners or self-hosted, armincx with hosting in Frankfurt

What Front (Frontapp) does well and where it stops

Front's team has built a genuinely impressive platform for turning a mailbox into a working communication and collaboration tool. It is aimed at companies that want to organise internal and external email better.

What Front does well:

• Collaboration: assignments, internal comments, rules and analytics in a shared mailbox
• Reach: over 9,300 companies according to its pricing page (accessed 22 Sept 2026)
• Native WhatsApp: multiple business numbers directly in Front (Help Centre, as of May 2026), from the Professional plan according to the pricing page
• AI direction: Copilot, Autopilot and an open platform for external agents such as Sierra or Decagon (agents.front.com, Aug 2026)

Where Front stops: at the order itself. Front describes its Shopify integration as displaying customer, order, refund and address data (integration page).

According to the Help Centre, a click opens the matching page in Shopify (Help Centre, as of 1 Oct 2026). Neither the integration page nor the Help Centre describes cancelling or refunding directly from Front.

Costs and scalability: what really matters in an alternative

Three models compete: per seat, per ticket and per outcome. Which one is cheaper for you comes down to two numbers: team size and ticket volume.

How Front bills

Source: front.com/pricing, billed annually, accessed 12 Oct 2026.

The catch is the upgrade. Front assigns plans to the whole organisation. Seats cannot be mixed across plans. Moving from Starter to Professional costs 160% more for every seat.

On top come line items that only show up on the invoice:

• Copilot: $20 per seat as an add-on on Starter and Professional
• Autopilot: from $0.05 per conversation
• WhatsApp: Meta fees plus a 20% admin fee, Professional and above only
• API: $200 a month for every extra 100 requests per minute
• Onboarding: a mandatory package for contracts over $25,000

Worked example: 12 agents on Professional plus Copilot cost 12 × $85 = $1,020 a month, before WhatsApp and Autopilot. Full plan details are in our separate Front pricing article.

How the alternatives bill

• Per ticket (Gorgias): team size does not matter, only volume does.
• Per outcome (Fin): $0.99 per outcome with a minimum of 50 outcomes a month (pricing page).
• Packages (Trengo): 10 or 20 users at a time.
• Seat blocks (Hiver): from five seats in blocks of five (dragapp.com).

Rule of thumb: a large team with few tickets pays less on ticket pricing, a small team with high volume pays less on seats. If a lot runs through WhatsApp, first ask whether the vendor adds a margin on top of Meta's fees. And check the currency: five of the ten alternatives only show dollar prices. If you are billed in dollars, your euro cost moves with the exchange rate.

Front reviews: praise and criticism from G2, Capterra and OMR

For the DACH region, the evidence is thin: OMR Reviews, the leading software review platform in German-speaking markets, lists just 20 reviews, none from the past twelve months.

Praised:

• collaboration through internal comments and mentions
• sharing emails instead of forwarding them
• snooze and templates
• a quick start for new team members (OMR)

Criticised:

• Price: most Capterra reviewers call the pricing expensive, citing high seat costs and unexpected increases (Capterra). Capterra's weakest sub-score is also value for money (4.1).
• Outlook: a director on Capterra criticises the lack of a true two-way Outlook sync (paraphrased, Capterra, review date not evidenced).
• Setup and day-to-day use: effortful onboarding, weak search, a mobile app that needs work, slow loading times (OMR).
• Feature scope: among G2's negative topics, "Missing Features" (67 mentions) and "Email Issues" (58) lead.
• Switching over price tiers: one Trustpilot user spent nine months looking for a replacement because seat prices rose with every feature tier, up to $105 per agent (paraphrased, Trustpilot, review date not evidenced).

For context: several prominent Capterra reviews of Front are marked as incentivised (Capterra). That is common on review platforms, but it tilts the picture towards the positive.

DACH check: language, data protection and shop systems

• Interface: Front's overview of all personal settings contains no interface language option (Help Centre, as of July 2026). Front support had already named English as the only official language in 2023 (Community).
• Customer side: according to the Help Centre, the CSAT survey and scheduling pages are only available in English (Help Centre, as of June 2026). Your German-speaking customers receive the satisfaction survey in English.
• Data protection: Front's DPA (data processing agreement) uses standard contractual clauses, refers to a subprocessor list with advance notice and addresses the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (front.com/legal, as of July 2026).
• Data residency: we found no EU data centre in either the DPA or the pricing page. If your data protection officer needs the hosting location for GDPR (DSGVO) documentation, ask Front in writing.
• Shop systems: Shopify has the display integration. For Shopware, JTL or WooCommerce, we found no evidence of a Front integration.
• Currency: Front only publishes its prices in US dollars (pricing page). For euro budgets, that means factoring in the exchange rate.

The Front alternatives in detail

Help Scout: the most direct switch

Shared inbox, docs and simple workflows feel familiar to Front teams.

• Costs: $0 on the free plan (5 users, 1 inbox, 100 contacts a month), Standard $25 per user (pricing page, accessed 12 Oct 2026)
• Can: refund, cancel, edit and duplicate your customers' most recent Shopify orders in the sidebar (docs, as of Sept 2026)
• Falls short on: AI answers cost an extra $0.75 per resolution

Missive: inbox and chat for small teams

A collaborative inbox for email, SMS, WhatsApp and social, without formal support processes (get-alfred.ai, secondary).

• Costs: Starter $14 per user for up to 5 users, Productive $24, Business $36, all billed annually; no free plan, but a 30-day trial (pricing page, accessed 12 Oct 2026)
• Can: all channels in one shared inbox, real-time co-drafting; WhatsApp is listed as an integration on the pricing page
• Falls short on: a shared inbox rather than a helpdesk, no documented Shopify actions

Hiver: support in the inbox your team already uses

Hiver started out in Gmail. Its current version, Hiver Omni, works with Gmail, Outlook and other email providers according to the pricing page.

• Costs: Growth $25, Pro $55, Elite $85 per user billed annually (pricing page, accessed 12 Oct 2026), minimum 2 seats (dragapp.com)
• Can: email, live chat, Slack, voice, WhatsApp and social in one interface
• Falls short on: Shopify is one of the "premium integrations" and only included from Pro at $55; the pricing page does not say which tier covers WhatsApp

Gorgias: the Shopify helpdesk with ticket pricing

Gorgias bills by ticket rather than by seat.

• Costs: Starter $10 for 50 tickets, Basic $60 for 300 tickets (gorgias.com, May 2026)
• Can: cancel, refund, edit or create orders from the ticket (docs, accessed 12 Oct 2026)
• Falls short on: editing only up to 60 days after the order, no refunds for orders paid with several payment methods; voice and SMS are volume-based add-ons according to the pricing page

Zendesk: ticketing depth for large teams

The benchmark for SLAs, skills-based routing and reporting.

• Costs: Support Team €19, Suite Team €55, Suite Professional €115 per agent (German list prices, pricing page, accessed 12 Oct 2026)
• Can: governance and routing across many departments and countries
• Falls short on: according to the comparison table, WhatsApp is missing from the Support Team plan and comes with extra fees; in our assessment, setup and maintenance take more time than with Front

Freshdesk: low-cost email ticketing

A low entry point for teams that mainly work through email tickets.

• Costs: €17 per agent on the Growth plan billed annually (German list price, pricing page, accessed 12 Oct 2026)
• Can: email ticketing with automation
• Falls short on: WhatsApp and chat only via the separate Freshdesk Omni product, Copilot from Pro at an extra €29 per agent

Fin (formerly Intercom): AI agent with outcome pricing

Intercom has been called Fin since May 2026. Salesforce has agreed to acquire it for around $3.6bn; the deal has not closed yet (Trending Topics).

• Costs: $0.99 per outcome with a minimum of 50 outcomes a month, at most one outcome per conversation; with Fin's own helpdesk, add $29 per seat (pricing page, accessed 12 Oct 2026)
• Can: close tickets with an AI agent and no human, including on WhatsApp and, according to the pricing page, with other helpdesks
• Falls short on: "assumed resolutions" are billed too, meaning conversations customers leave without a further question (Help Centre)

Trengo: multichannel inbox from the Netherlands

An omnichannel inbox; the official WhatsApp integration is included in both Boost and Pro according to the pricing page (pricing page).

• Costs: Boost €299 for 10 users, Pro €499 for 20 users (pricing page, European list prices, accessed 22 Sept 2026)
• Can: display a customer's most recent Shopify orders in the inbox; the AI agent looks up order status, refund information and tracking (Help Centre, as of May 2026)
• Falls short on: the smallest unit is 10 users; the Help Centre does not describe cancelling or refunding from the ticket (Help Centre)

Zammad: open source, hosted in Germany if you want

The answer when your data protection officer requires a German server location.

• Costs: cloud from €7 per agent (pricing page, German list price, accessed 22 Sept 2026), self-hosting without licence fees
• Can: hosting through partners in German or European data centres, including a DPA (we-manage.de)
• Falls short on: no WhatsApp on Starter, no documented Shopify actions; with self-hosting, updates and backups are on you

armincx instead of Front: when it fits and when it does not

armincx is AI customer service for e-commerce in the DACH region. We are not the right fit for every team, so here are both sides.

Good reasons for armincx:

• WhatsApp is your main channel, for service and for campaigns you add with Chatarmin.
• Routine requests should trigger something in the shop: cancellation, address change, return in Shopify, Shopware and JTL (our own claim).
• Your data protection team wants facts: hosting in Frankfurt, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification by TÜV Austria.
• You want a German- and English-speaking team for onboarding, AI training and migration.

On automation: the top quarter of 140 active merchants (35 shops) automates an average of 61.2% of resolved tickets (our own data).

Good reasons against armincx:

• Your team mostly collaborates internally by email, with no shop behind it. Front or Missive fit better.
• Your support lives in Gmail. Hiver is closer to your day-to-day.
• You need an IT service desk or work for a public authority. Zammad is built for that.
• You want to start by credit card without a call. Help Scout is quicker for that; with us, pricing comes in a personal meeting.
• You want to read independent reviews of this exact product. There are no G2 or OMR reviews for armincx yet.

If you are actually looking for an alternative to Chatarmin, we have a separate comparison on our blog.

Staying on Front: four cases that speak for it

Switching costs time and training. In these cases it does not pay off:

1. Your team mainly works on email together, and shop actions are rare. That is exactly what Front is built for.
2. Your team stays under 10 seats and manages with 10 rules and one workspace. Then you pay $25 per seat.
3. English is fine for your team and your customers, including the CSAT survey.
4. You want to bring external AI agents into one shared inbox. Front is opening up to vendors such as Sierra or Decagon.

Switching from Front: five points before you cancel

1. Time your cancellation and export. According to the Help Centre, you can cancel at any time in your billing settings, but payments already made are not refunded. After termination, Front deletes your data after 30 days by default, so export first (Help Centre, as of June 2026).
2. Get your rule set onto one page. Starter allows up to 10 rules, Professional up to 20. Note the trigger, condition and outcome for each, and rebuilding them takes hours rather than days.
3. Plan your WhatsApp templates. According to the Help Centre, templates are created in the WhatsApp Business settings at Meta, and Front only adjusts variables. Before cancelling, clarify how your number and templates move over.
4. Rethink the Shopify connection rather than just moving it. Front reads order data; the new tool should act in the shop. Clarify which permissions it needs and where its limits lie, such as Gorgias's 60-day limit on editing.
5. Budget for an overlap. New requests go to the new tool from a set date, and Front stays open for old cases only. According to the pricing page, seats can be removed within a plan, so reduce them during this phase.

Conclusion: inbox problem or order problem

Before choosing, be clear which problem you want to solve. If it is the seat bill, a leaner inbox such as Help Scout, Missive or Hiver is often enough.

If it is order requests, you need a tool that acts in the shop: Gorgias, Help Scout or armincx. If WhatsApp is your main channel and you work with Shopware or JTL, the shortlist gets short.

Bring your five most common ticket types to a demo, and we will run them through armincx with your own shop data, with German- and English-speaking support.

Front alternatives: FAQ

Is there an alternative to Front?

Yes. For order actions in the ticket, Gorgias, Help Scout or armincx by Chatarmin fit, and for a cheaper team inbox, Missive or Hiver.

Which Front alternative suits Shopify shops?

It depends. For pure Shopify shops, Gorgias and Help Scout offer order actions in the ticket; with WhatsApp as the main channel or Shopware and JTL in the stack, armincx fits.

Is Front available in German?

No. According to the Help Centre, Front's settings offer no interface language option, and the CSAT survey and scheduling pages are only available in English (as of summer 2026).

Is Gorgias cheaper than Front?

It depends. With a large team and few tickets, Gorgias's ticket model is usually cheaper; with a small team and high volume, Front's seat model is.

Which Front alternative is affordable for small teams?

Help Scout offers a free plan for up to 5 users with one inbox and 100 contacts a month. Zammad's cloud starts at €7 per agent, and Missive at $14 per user.

What can Front's Shopify integration do?

According to the Help Centre, it displays customer and order data in the inbox and opens the matching page in Shopify with a click. Front does not describe cancelling or refunding directly from Front there.

Is it Front or Frontapp?

The software is called Front. "Frontapp" comes from the former domain frontapp.com and is still a common search term.