Free
Comparison
vs Eskra.
An honest comparison of features, pricing, and who each platform is actually built for.
Same inbox. Very different price tags.
Front
Collaborative Shared Inbox Platform
Front is a mid-market shared inbox platform built around team collaboration — shared drafts, internal comments, collision detection, and omnichannel support from one workspace. It looks and feels like email, not a traditional ticketing system. Strong in logistics, financial services, and professional services, Front is designed for 10–50 person operations teams managing high email and messaging volume across channels.
The approach: Give teams a collaborative layer on top of email and messaging channels — with automation, SLAs, and analytics built in. Built for operations teams that live in their inbox all day.
Eskra
AI-Powered Email Reply Assistant
Eskra is a focused web-based email client that uses AI to help small teams write faster, better customer support replies. You read the email, click to generate an AI draft using your choice of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or DeepSeek, review it with context from your Google Sheets data, and send. No per-seat pricing. No AI add-ons. No annual contract lock-in.
The approach: Keep humans in control. AI drafts the reply, you approve and send. Built for speed, accuracy, and affordability — not mid-market complexity.
Key difference — Front is a collaboration platform for operations teams, with pricing and features built around that use case. A 10-person team needs the $65/seat Professional plan to get omnichannel and CRM integrations — that's $650/month before any AI add-ons. Eskra is built for small teams and solo founders who answer customer emails themselves and want AI help doing it faster, for a flat $25/month.
Pricing.
Front
Eskra
No free plan
14-day trial only
Free forever
Starter
$25/seat/mo
Single channel, 10 rules, basic analytics only
$25/mo
Professional
$65/seat/mo
AI features cost extra: +$20–$50/seat/mo
$20/mo
Enterprise
$105/seat/mo
Mandatory onboarding fee for contracts over $25K/yr
No enterprise tier
Flat price. No per-seat fees. No AI add-ons.
Front's Starter plan at $25/seat looks affordable until you realise it's email-only, capped at 10 seats, limited to 10 automation rules, and missing the CRM integrations most teams actually need. Unlocking those requires Professional at $65/seat — and then AI features like Copilot add another $20/seat on top. A 10-person team with AI-assisted replies pays $850/month before taxes. With Eskra, one flat monthly price covers unlimited email replies, your choice of AI model, and Google Sheets integration — no per-seat math, no add-on fees, no annual commitment required.
Front does not allow seat reductions mid-contract. If your team shrinks or someone leaves, you keep paying for their seat until renewal. Multiple customers describe this as the single most frustrating aspect of Front's billing.
What Front actually costs.
The $25/seat Starter plan gets most teams nowhere useful. Here's what a typical 10-person team on Professional actually pays once they add the AI features that make it worth using.
Real-world cost: 10-person team on Professional + AI
This is the plan most growing SMBs land on once they need omnichannel, CRM integrations, and AI-assisted replies.
Professional (base)
$65/seat/mo × 10 seats, billed annually
$650/mo
Copilot (AI reply suggestions)
$20/seat/mo — not included in Professional
+$200/mo
Smart QA (automated quality scoring)
$20/seat/mo — not included in Professional
+$200/mo
Smart CSAT (AI-inferred satisfaction)
$10/seat/mo — not included in Professional
+$100/mo
WhatsApp channel admin fee
Front charges a 20% admin fee on top of Meta's WhatsApp fees (~$70/1,000 conversations)
Variable
Estimated monthly total
~$1,150/mo
* Billed annually means committing to ~$13,800 upfront. Seats cannot be reduced mid-contract. API rate limit increases cost an additional $200/month per 100 requests/minute above plan defaults. Prices correct as of early 2026 — Front restructured from four plans to three in late 2025, raising prices in the process.
Front AI add-ons (not included in Professional)
CopilotAI-suggested replies drawn from past conversations and knowledge base
+$20/seat/mo
Smart QAAutomated agent quality scoring — none included on Professional
+$20/seat/mo
Smart CSATAI-inferred customer satisfaction without manual surveys
+$10/seat/mo
Smart QA + CSAT bundleCombined discount if purchasing both
+$25/seat/mo
Autopilot (AI agent)Auto-resolution across channels — usage-based, not included on any plan
~$0.89/resolution
API rate limit increaseAbove plan defaults of 50/100/200 req/min for Starter/Professional/Enterprise
+$200/mo per 100 req/min
Front — 10 seats (Professional + AI)
$1,150/mo
~$13,800/year — and you can't reduce seats mid-contract
- Price increases every time you hire a new agent
- AI features cost extra on every plan except Enterprise
- Cannot reduce seats during annual contract
- Annual lock-in with no pro-rated refunds
- Mandatory onboarding fee for contracts over $25K/yr
- No phone support, even at $40K+/year
Eskra — per account
$25/mo
One account, one person — flat monthly price, no per-seat billing
- Flat price regardless of email volume
- AI replies included — no add-on fees ever
- All features included on every paid plan
- Month-to-month, cancel in 2 clicks
- Set up in under 10 minutes
- Delete account and all data instantly
Feature by feature.
Target User
Front
Designed for 10–50 person operations teams in logistics, financial services, and professional services. Front's sweet spot is mid-market companies with multiple shared inboxes, significant message volume across channels, and a dedicated team managing customer communication full-time.
Front is overbuilt and overpriced for small teams doing email-only support. The collaboration features — shared drafts, collision detection, internal comments — lose value when there are fewer than 5 people in the inbox.
Eskra
Built for small businesses, e-commerce stores, and solo founders who handle customer emails themselves. If you're answering 20–200 emails a day and want AI to help you reply faster and more accurately, Eskra is built for exactly that — without the overhead of a full shared inbox platform.
AI Capabilities
Front
Front's AI is split into three tiers: basic compose/translate/summarise features are included on all plans (capped at 200 actions/teammate/day), while the valuable AI features — Copilot reply suggestions, Smart QA, Smart CSAT — are paywalled add-ons on Professional. Autopilot for auto-resolution is usage-based at ~$0.89/resolution on all plans.
Co-founders and users describe Front's native AI as "pretty limited" and "lightweight" compared to dedicated AI platforms. Multiple reviewers flag the per-resolution Autopilot pricing as particularly unreasonable.
Eskra
AI is the core product — not an add-on. Choose from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or DeepSeek per account. Customise system prompts with your tone, policies, and product details. Connect Google Sheets with live customer data so AI drafts include real order numbers, tracking info, and return policies — not generic replies.
Billing Model
Front
Per seat, per month — and per AI feature on top of that. A 10-person Professional team adding Copilot + QA + CSAT pays 77% more than the base plan. Annual billing is required for all plans, seats cannot be reduced mid-contract, and contracts over $25,000/year carry mandatory onboarding fees. The billing model was the single most-cited complaint in Front's Trustpilot reviews.
Eskra
One flat monthly price. No per-seat fees. No AI add-ons. No usage meters. The invoice is the same every month regardless of how many emails you send, and you can cancel with two clicks at any time — no sales call required.
Customer Data
Front
Contact profiles with custom fields and cross-channel conversation history. Deep CRM integrations pulling Salesforce and HubSpot data into the conversation sidebar — but Salesforce and HubSpot integrations are only available on Professional and above. Starter plan teams get no CRM integration at all.
Eskra
Google Sheets & Excel integration on all plans — including free. Connect your existing spreadsheets as live databases. AI automatically looks up orders, tracking numbers, product details, and return policies before drafting a reply. Works with 17Track API for real-time shipping status. No CRM subscription required.
Collaboration
Front
Collaboration is Front's genuine competitive strength: shared drafts for manager review, real-time collision detection when two agents are replying to the same conversation, internal @mention comments invisible to customers, and the ability to mix personal and shared email in one interface. These features genuinely matter for operations teams managing high message volume.
Eskra
Eskra is built for individuals and small teams where the bottleneck is writing speed and reply quality — not multi-agent coordination. If you need real-time collision detection and shared drafts for a team of 20, Front is the right tool. If you need an AI assistant to help one person answer emails faster, Eskra is built for exactly that.
Setup & Complexity
Front
Front requires meaningful setup time: connecting channels, configuring automation rules, building workspaces, and setting up knowledge base articles for AI features. The platform's power comes with corresponding complexity. Reviewers on Capterra consistently note that small teams end up paying for capabilities they never fully unlock.
Eskra
Connect your Gmail or Outlook in minutes. Add your Google Sheet with customer data. Write a short system prompt describing your business and tone. Start generating AI replies immediately — no knowledge base to build, no rules to configure, no workspace setup required.
Privacy & Security.
Both platforms handle customer data, but their architecture and data practices differ for smaller businesses that don't need enterprise-grade compliance overhead.
Front
SOC 2 Type II certified and GDPR compliant. Front stores all conversation data on its servers, and annual contract customers have reported difficulty extracting data when cancelling. EU data residency details are not prominently disclosed for lower-tier plans. SSO/SCIM is available on Professional and above — Starter plan teams have no SSO option. Enterprise customers get custom roles and permissions; Professional customers get a limited subset.
Eskra
All email data is encrypted and processed on-demand only — nothing is stored permanently on Eskra servers. Your emails stay in your Gmail or Outlook inbox. The AI processes your draft request and that's it. SOC 2 compliant, GDPR-ready, and you can delete your account and all associated data with two clicks. No lock-in, no data held hostage.
What users report about Front.
From Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, and Reddit.
"The pricing model is no longer competitive — there are better alternatives on the market"
A six-year Front customer paying €12,000/year wrote that the pricing had become "no longer competitive" and that the level of support "falls short of expectations." They noted that plenty of alternative solutions now offer better pricing structures for the same core functionality. Front's Trustpilot score sits at 1.9/5 — billing and pricing complaints dominate the reviews there.
"$43.50 per user to manage emails — and you get access to absolutely none of their features"
A small team paying $87/month for just 2 seats described their situation: paying $43.50 per user on what is effectively the entry-level plan, yet locked out of the automation, AI, and analytics features that justify the price. One reviewer gave 1 star despite genuinely liking the product: "My 1 star is based on the fact that upper management are greedy… they seem to be doing everything they can to get more money, limit functionality to force you to upgrade."
"Good product in theory — made massively worse by the new inbox and constant price hikes"
Recurring complaints across G2 and Trustpilot describe Front raising prices repeatedly while simultaneously restricting features that were previously included — the unified inbox functionality was reportedly limited for multi-channel users, and a UI redesign received widespread negative feedback. One reviewer called the redesign "unworkable in its current form" and described the company as "mercenary when it comes to jacking up pricing."
"AI stuff costs $0.70 per resolution — complete nonsense when competitors charge $20/month flat"
A reviewer who tested Front's Autopilot AI described being charged per resolution as "complete nonsense" given that most competing platforms include AI replies in a fixed monthly fee. At ~$0.89/resolution, a team handling 500 AI-resolved conversations a month pays $445 in Autopilot fees alone — on top of their base plan. Front's Copilot (suggested replies for agents) is a separate $20/seat/month add-on on top of that.
"Paying $40,000/year and there's no phone support at all"
Multiple high-paying Front customers describe the lack of phone support as a significant frustration — Front confirmed to users that offering phone support is a deliberate strategic choice with no plans to change. Support is email and live chat only, even for enterprise accounts. Reviewers also report automation rules that "don't reliably work," Outlook sync no longer working bidirectionally, and crashes on long conversation threads.
Which one is right for you?
Choose Front if you
- Run a 10–50 person operations team in logistics, fintech, or professional services managing high message volume
- Need real-time collaboration features: shared drafts, collision detection, internal comments across a large team
- Require true omnichannel: email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Slack in one shared workspace
- Want deep Salesforce or HubSpot CRM integration surfacing customer context alongside conversations
- Have the budget and team to justify $65+/seat and a meaningful setup investment
- Can forecast and absorb annual billing commitments with no mid-contract flexibility
Choose Eskra if you
- Run a small business or e-commerce store where you or a small team handle customer emails directly
- Want AI to help write replies faster — without surrendering control to automated sending
- Use Google Sheets or Excel to track orders, customers, and products
- Can't justify $65+/seat when flat pricing for one account makes more sense
- Value setup simplicity — connect and start in minutes, not days
- Want transparent, easy-to-cancel pricing with no annual contract lock-in
Try Eskra free.
Start handling customer emails faster with AI-generated replies and live data from your Google Sheets. Free forever for 3 emails/day, or unlimited from $25/month.
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