Front Alternatives for Gmail and Google Workspace Teams

If your team is on Google Workspace and Front's per-seat pricing has finally tipped over, the right question is not which tool copies Front the closest. It is which Front alternative works natively with Gmail and Google Workspace without forcing you to migrate mail into a separate helpdesk. That is a different shortlist, and it is the one this page compares.

Eight tools qualify. Four live inside Gmail as Chrome extensions or add-ons — Hiver, Gmelius, Drag and Keeping. Two are standalone clients that connect to Gmail via OAuth and leave the mail where it is — AI Emaily and Missive. One is a helpdesk that pulls mail from Gmail by forwarding or IMAP — Help Scout. And Google itself ships a free Collaborative Inbox inside Google Groups that most Workspace admins forget they already have.

We build AI Emaily, so it appears first and gets the most space here. That is the disclosure; the argument for it — and the situations where you should ignore us and go pick one of the others — is in the sections below.

The short answer: which Front alternative fits which Gmail team#

Skip to the entry that matches your line. Each is explained further down; no tool below moves your mail out of Gmail.

• Best overall for a Workspace team that wants a real shared inbox with AI drafting and approval before send: AI Emaily.
• Best if you refuse to leave the Gmail interface: Hiver — a Chrome extension that adds shared labels, assignments and SLAs inside gmail.com itself.
• Best for Kanban-style pipelines on top of Gmail: Drag, whose board view turns a shared label into columns.
• Best for shared-inbox workflow plus sequences and automation inside Gmail: Gmelius.
• Best if you want a lightweight, Gmail-native shared inbox with the smallest learning curve: Keeping.
• Best if internal chat has to sit inside every thread: Missive, a standalone client that connects to Gmail and Workspace over OAuth.
• Best if what you actually want is a customer-facing helpdesk with a knowledge base: Help Scout.
• Best if the account is free, the volume is low and the admin does not want to install anything: Google Collaborative Inbox, inside Google Groups.

How we compared these Gmail-first tools#

The temptation with a Front-alternatives roundup is to build a big feature grid. Every tool listed here has assignments, internal notes and rules. What actually decides whether a Workspace team is still using it in month six is a narrower set of axes — the ones Gmail-native architecture makes visible.

• Overlay vs client vs helpdesk. A Chrome extension (Hiver, Gmelius, Drag, Keeping) lives inside gmail.com and inherits Gmail's threading. A standalone client (AI Emaily, Missive) speaks the Gmail API from its own interface. A helpdesk (Help Scout) pulls mail out of Gmail and threads it as tickets. Same job description, three very different day-one experiences.
• Threading fidelity. Gmail conversation view, labels and history are the reason your team is on Workspace. Some overlays preserve them exactly; some tools re-thread by their own rules and it shows the first time a customer replies to an old subject line.
• Delegation vs shared inbox. Gmail's built-in delegation lets one person read and reply on another mailbox — free with Workspace, no third party required. It is a real feature and every shared-inbox tool is really answering the question 'what does delegation not give us.' We answer that question directly rather than pretending Gmail delegation does not exist.
• What the admin has to approve. Chrome extensions push through the Workspace admin console with an OAuth consent screen and, often, a Marketplace app policy. Standalone clients ask for Gmail scopes directly. Helpdesks require an IMAP or forwarding rule. A tool your CTO will not approve is not really an option.
• Packaging shape. Free tier, trial, per-seat or usage-metered — that is what to compare, not a stale price. AI Emaily runs a 7-day free trial on Pro/Autopilot with a card required and $0 charge if you cancel before day 7. Every other tool here has its own shape and its own live page; check both on the day you sign.
• What happens when you do nothing. Some tools require a weekend of shared-label design and rule authoring before they earn their keep. Others produce a working shared inbox on install and let you refine over time. Small teams should weight the second heavily.

Front alternatives for Gmail teams at a glance#

Read this as a shortlist generator. Detail on each tool follows.

The overlay-vs-client-vs-helpdesk fork is the one that decides what the first week feels like. It is also the axis most Front-alternative roundups skip entirely.

1. AI Emaily — best overall for a Workspace team that wants a real shared inbox and AI#

AI Emaily is an AI-native email client that connects to Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and standard IMAP through OAuth. We build it, which is why it leads this list — and why its limits get more room here than any of the others. Mail stays with Google. Threading is Gmail's conversation view, unchanged, so a customer replying to a two-year-old subject line lands on the same thread it always would have.

The shape that matters against Front is that shared handling runs through the same agent that drafts your replies. AI Emaily operates at three authority levels, set per account. Manual is a plain fast client. Copilot is the default — the agent triages the shared inbox, files what it can and prepares draft replies, and nothing sends until a teammate approves it. Autopilot is gated per rule, with an undo window and an audit log recording every action and the reason for it. That approval-before-send behaviour is the point of buying it for a shared address, because a wrong autonomous reply from a shared support alias costs more than a wrong reply from one person.

Drafting voice comes from a user-set Personal Context brain and per-client profiles that your team writes and edits. We do not train on your mail and we do not read the archive to guess a tone. Model providers run under zero-retention terms.

Packaging is a 7-day free trial on Pro and Autopilot — card required, $0 if cancelled before day 7 — not a permanent free tier. That is worth saying because most tools on this list have a free plan you can sit on indefinitely, and we do not. If that is a dealbreaker, Google Collaborative Inbox or Keeping's free tier are the honest answers.

The limits, plainly. We are a client rather than an overlay, so if your team refuses to leave the gmail.com interface, Hiver or Gmelius fit that constraint and we do not. We ship real downloadable desktop apps for macOS (Apple Silicon only) and Windows built as an Electron shell around the web app, so a native-toolkit client like Apple Mail will beat us on memory footprint. There is no native Linux build, Android runs as a PWA, and offline support is partial by design.

2. Hiver — best if you refuse to leave the Gmail interface#

Hiver is the most established Gmail-native shared-inbox tool, and for a Workspace team whose non-negotiable is that every reply happens inside gmail.com, it is the safest choice on this page. The Gmail-native product is a Chrome extension; a separate standalone app exists for non-Gmail providers and for non-email channels, which is worth knowing if your team is mixed.

Threading is Gmail's conversation view, because Hiver runs inside it. Shared labels double as assignments, internal notes attach to the thread, and SLA timers and CSAT signals sit in the same view. That is real; it is also the reason nothing on this page is genuinely cheaper than Hiver on a per-seat basis if you factor in migration time.

AI is bundled into paid tiers rather than billed as an add-on on top of seats, which is a change worth noting if you last looked a year ago. Voice minutes for the phone channel are metered separately. Verify tier contents on hiverhq.com — Hiver's plan structure has moved recently and this is the sort of fact any comparison page ages out of date on within a quarter.

3. Gmelius — best if you want shared inbox plus sequences inside Gmail#

Gmelius is another Chrome-extension-shaped overlay, positioned harder on workflow automation than Hiver. Shared inbox, shared labels, assignments and internal notes all live inside gmail.com, and alongside them Gmelius adds Kanban boards, email sequences and rule-based automations that make it a decent partial replacement for a light CRM plus a shared inbox.

For a small team that runs a sales-adjacent shared address — inbound plus outbound sequences to the same list — that combined shape is the pitch. You do not need a separate cadence tool sitting on top of Gmail if the shared-inbox tool already runs sequences.

The trade-off is complexity. A tool that does both requires more setup than one that does one, and the automation surface takes real time to design. If your team has an ops person who wants to spend a weekend building a system, that is the target buyer. If you want a shared inbox that works on install, Hiver or Keeping are a better fit.

4. Drag — best if a Kanban pipeline fits your workflow better than a queue#

Drag is a Chrome extension that turns a Gmail label into a Kanban board — columns for stages, cards for threads, drag between them. For teams whose real workflow is a pipeline rather than a first-in-first-out queue (sales pipeline, hiring pipeline, project intake), that view maps onto the work better than a list.

Underneath, it is a Gmail-native shared inbox with assignments, internal notes and shared drafts. Threading stays as Gmail's conversation view — Drag adds a visual layer, it does not replace the thread. If a customer prefers list view, they still get list view; the board is an alternative.

The limit is that a Kanban view is only useful for work that has stages. A support queue with three people answering everything within an hour does not benefit from columns. If that is your shape, Hiver or Keeping produce less visual overhead.

5. Keeping — best for the smallest possible learning curve#

Keeping is a Gmail-native shared inbox designed to look and feel like ordinary Gmail. Shared threads appear inside your inbox with a marker; assignments, statuses and internal notes sit in a right rail. A team member who already knows how to use Gmail knows how to use Keeping on day one.

That deliberate minimalism is the differentiator. Gmelius and Hiver both add more surface — automation, SLAs, boards, analytics — and both take longer to set up. If your team wants a shared inbox and nothing else, Keeping is the smallest, quietest option, and the one with the shortest onboarding.

There is no AI drafting layer built into it in the way there is in AI Emaily, and no omnichannel roadmap in the way there is in Front. The limit is the point. If the job is just 'let three of us answer one address without stepping on each other,' Keeping does that and nothing else.

6. Missive — best if internal discussion has to sit on the thread#

Missive is a standalone client rather than a Gmail overlay. It connects to Gmail and Workspace over OAuth, brings the mail into its own interface, and attaches an internal chat channel to every thread. Two teammates can discuss a customer reply in the same place the customer will read the response, without a Slack tab in between.

That woven-in chat is Missive's signature and the reason a slice of Front-leavers land here instead of on a Gmail overlay. If your team's actual pain is that the internal discussion about a thread lives in a different tool from the thread itself, Missive fixes that in a way nothing else on this page does.

Because it is a client rather than an extension, threading is Missive's rules rather than Gmail's conversation view. That is deliberate — Missive re-threads to group discussions the way a support team thinks about them — but it means people who love Gmail's threading feel the difference on day one. Packaging is a free tier for very small teams plus paid tiers; verify current caps on missiveapp.com.

7. Help Scout — best if what you really want is a customer-facing helpdesk#

Help Scout is a proper helpdesk, not a shared inbox. Mail arrives by IMAP or by forwarding from your Gmail alias, and Help Scout re-threads it as tickets with statuses, assignments, saved replies, workflow rules and a customer-facing knowledge base. Replies go out from a verified sending domain, not from gmail.com.

For a team whose email volume has crossed the line from 'shared inbox' into 'we need a help desk,' Help Scout is a clean step up. The knowledge base is the tell — if you would benefit from customers self-serving answers before writing to you, no shared-inbox overlay ships that. Front-leavers who wanted the helpdesk half of Front more than the omnichannel half often land here and stay.

The trade-off is that mail leaves the Gmail interface. Your team stops opening gmail.com for the shared address and starts opening Help Scout. That is a real change to muscle memory, and it is the reason we listed helpdesks separately from shared-inbox tools instead of pretending they are the same thing.

8. Google Collaborative Inbox — best if you already pay for Workspace#

Google Groups includes a Collaborative Inbox mode that a Workspace admin can turn on for any group address. It gives you shared read of the group's mail, per-message assignment to one member, resolved and unresolved statuses, and no seat fee — because it is part of Workspace, which you are paying for anyway.

For a small team on low volume, that is the honest cheapest answer that exists, and any Front-alternatives page that leaves it out is doing readers a disservice. The admin approves nothing external; there is no Chrome extension, no OAuth consent screen for a third party, no vendor to renew. It is a checkbox in the admin console.

The reason this list has seven other options is that Collaborative Inbox stops scaling early. There are no SLAs, no rules engine, no analytics beyond raw group stats, no AI drafting, no internal notes on the thread, and the mail-view interface (groups.google.com) is dated in a way that shows within a week. If you are hitting any of those limits, everything above is a step up. If you are not, you already have a shared inbox and can close this tab.

How to choose for your situation#

The temptation is to trial four tools in parallel. Do not. A shared inbox involves the whole team; a two-tool bake-off is the most anyone should run at once. Pick a first choice from the table below, a second look, and give the first choice two weeks before adding the second.

The verdict#

For a Workspace team that wants a shared inbox with AI drafting, approval before send, undo and an audit log, AI Emaily is our pick — and we build it, so weigh that. It is the only tool on this page that combines Gmail-fidelity threading, three authority levels per account, and multi-provider support in one client.

If your team's constraint is that nothing may replace the gmail.com interface, Hiver is the honest answer and we will not pretend otherwise. If your constraint is that the tool must cost nothing and volume is low, Google Collaborative Inbox already ships with what you pay for. If internal chat has to sit on the thread, Missive is built for that in a way we are not. If you need a knowledge base for customers, Help Scout is the shape you actually want.

Whatever you pick, verify current tier contents and packaging on each vendor's own live page — this category repriced itself several times in the last year and any comparison, ours included, ages fast.