So, you’re looking at Front for your customer communication. It makes sense. It’s a slick platform, especially known for its shared inbox that helps teams stop tripping over each other and actually work together. But as you dig into the details, one big question probably keeps popping up: while Front is powerful, is its per-seat front pricing model the right financial move for your team, particularly as you grow or want to bring in AI?
Here’s the thing: the price you see on the website often isn’t the final number. To really unlock Front’s potential, you typically have to add on expensive AI features, which can make your monthly bill balloon. This post will give you an honest breakdown of Front’s pricing tiers, expose the hidden costs of their AI add-ons, and show you a more flexible, budget-friendly way to add powerful AI to your workflow, without having to switch help desks.
A quick look at Front pricing plans
Let’s start with a clear, side-by-side look at what you get with each of Front’s main plans. We’ll break down the features, who each plan is really for, and the important limitations that might give you pause.
The starter plan and Front pricing
The Starter plan is Front’s entry-level deal, starts at $25/seat/month*, aimed at small teams of up to 10 people who just need the essentials. Think of it as a good starting point if your only goal is to get a shared inbox for a single channel, like your main support email.
It’s best for tiny teams that don’t need to juggle multiple communication streams. You get a shared inbox, basic ticketing, and up to 10 automation rules for routing messages. The biggest catch is being stuck with just one channel type. If you need to manage both email and social media, for instance, you’re already out of luck and will have to upgrade. It also lacks more advanced integrations with tools like Salesforce, and all the really interesting AI stuff is sold separately as add-ons.
The professional plan and Front pricing
The Professional plan at $65/seat/month targets growing teams of up to 50 people who are handling customer conversations from all over the place. This is the tier where Front starts to feel like a true omnichannel platform.
This plan is a better fit for teams needing to manage email, SMS, and social media from one spot. It bumps your automation rules up to 20 and adds more advanced analytics and security features like single sign-on (SSO). But even at this price, Front’s most powerful AI features, like AI Answers and Smart QA, are still pricey extras. And for teams with complex support needs, that 20-rule limit on automation can feel tight surprisingly fast.
The enterprise plan and Front pricing
The Enterprise plan at $105/seat/month is Front’s all-inclusive package, built for large organizations that need every feature available. It gets rid of most of the limits from the other plans but, as you can see, comes with a serious price tag.
This plan gives you unlimited automation rules, a multi-language knowledge base, and more granular security controls. Critically, this is the only plan where AI Copilot, QA, and CSAT are included in the base price. The main drawback is the cost. That high per-seat price is a non-starter for many businesses. We’ve also seen user reviews mention that minimum seat requirements and a long sales process can be big hurdles to even getting started.
Front pricing plans comparison table
| Feature | Starter | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $25/seat/month | $65/seat/month | $105/seat/month |
| Max Seats | 10 | 50 | Unlimited |
| Channels | Single Channel Type | Omnichannel | Omnichannel |
| Automation Rules | Up to 10 | Up to 20 | Unlimited |
| Advanced Analytics | Basic | Yes | Yes (Custom Reports) |
| SSO & SCIM | No | Yes | Yes |
| AI Copilot | Add-on ($20/seat) | Add-on ($20/seat) | Included |
| AI Answers | Not Available | Add-on ($0.70/resolution) | Add-on ($0.70/resolution) |
| Smart QA & CSAT | Add-on | Add-on | Included |
The hidden costs of Front pricing: AI add-ons and other fees
The per-seat price Front advertises is really just the starting line. Your total cost can climb much higher once you start adding the tools that most modern support teams need to keep up.
How costly AI add-ons affect Front pricing
This is where the front pricing model can get painful. Front unbundles its AI features, making you pay extra for capabilities that are quickly becoming standard in the industry.
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AI Answers: Costs $0.70 for every resolution it handles. This is for deflecting chat inquiries automatically.
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AI Copilot: An extra $20 per agent, every month. This helps agents write replies more quickly.
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Smart QA: Another $20 per agent, per month. This automates the quality-checking process for agent conversations.
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Smart CSAT: Costs $10 per agent, per month. This uses AI to guess customer satisfaction without sending surveys.
Let’s put that in real terms. Imagine you have a 10-person team on the Professional plan, which runs you $650 a month. If you want to add the AI Copilot for faster replies and Smart QA for quality control, that’s an extra $40 per agent. For the whole team, that’s another $400 a month. Your bill just jumped from $650 to $1,050, a 61% price hike for just two AI features.
Other potential Front pricing costs to consider
Beyond the AI extras, a few other costs might catch you off guard:
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Onboarding services: If your contract is over $25,000, Front makes you buy an onboarding package. This adds a hefty one-time fee just to get everything set up.
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More add-ons: Other handy tools like Workforce Management ($20/seat/mo) and a native WhatsApp channel (where you pay Meta’s costs plus a 20% admin fee from Front) also increase your bill.
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API limits: If your workflows depend on a lot of integrations, you might hit your API rate limit. Getting more capacity costs an extra $200 per month for every 100 requests per minute you add.
Is Front pricing worth it? A balanced look
With all these costs on the table, is Front actually worth the money? Well, it really depends on what you need most.
The pros of Front pricing: Where Front shines
Let’s be fair, Front does a few things exceptionally well.
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Top-notch team collaboration: The way agents can use internal comments, share drafts, and assign conversations is genuinely fantastic. It’s built from the ground up for teams that need to work together on customer issues.
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A true unified inbox: On the pricier plans, having all your channels in one place really does simplify an agent’s life and cuts down on app-switching.
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It feels familiar: Front’s interface looks and feels like a modern email app, which makes it much easier for teams to adopt if they’re used to Gmail or Outlook.
The cons of Front pricing: Where the model hurts
While the collaboration is great, the pricing structure introduces some real problems.
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The per-seat model gets expensive fast: Your cost goes up with every new hire, which can make it tough for growing teams to budget. You end up paying more as your team scales, not necessarily as you get more value.
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Key features are locked away: A lot of the functionality that teams consider essential, like good AI and important integrations, is either stuck in the most expensive tier or sold as an add-on. This can make the cheaper plans feel incomplete.
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Not very self-serve friendly: User reviews often complain about having to go through a sales process for the higher tiers and a general lack of support for smaller companies. It’s hard to try out the full platform and adopt it without making a big, long-term commitment.
A better way to get AI without high Front pricing
If you’re stuck between wanting powerful AI and not wanting to pay Front’s steep, per-seat prices, there’s another way. Instead of getting locked into one platform’s expensive ecosystem, you can use a flexible AI layer that works with the tools you already have.
This is exactly what we built at eesel AI. It’s an AI platform made to integrate directly with the most popular help desks, including Front, Zendesk, and Intercom. It gives you a complete set of AI tools without making you move your entire support operation.
How eesel AI solves challenges with Front pricing and flexibility
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You pay for what you use, not per person: eesel AI’s pricing is based on how many AI interactions you use (like replies or automated actions), not how many agents you have. This means you can give AI to your entire team without your bill exploding as you hire. For instance, our Business plan gives you 3,000 monthly interactions and trains on your past tickets for just $639/mo, often less than the cost of a couple of Front’s AI add-ons for a mid-sized team.
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A complete AI toolkit in one package: With a single eesel AI plan, you get an AI Agent, AI Copilot, and AI Triage all included. No need to buy and manage separate, expensive add-ons to get the tools you need.
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Smarter AI that learns from everything: eesel AI trains on all your company knowledge, not just a public help center. It learns from past tickets, internal docs in Confluence or Google Docs, and more. This leads to way more accurate and helpful responses than an AI that only has part of the picture.
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Try it risk-free: You can sign up for eesel, connect your help desk, and run a simulation on your past tickets to see exactly how much time and money you’ll save before you ever pay a dime. This takes away the risk and sales pressure that users often dislike about the traditional enterprise software experience.
AI capability comparison: eesel vs. Front pricing
| Capability | Front’s Approach | eesel AI’s Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing Model | Per-seat, plus add-ons | Interaction-based (all-in-one suite) |
| AI Copilot | $20/seat/mo add-on or Enterprise plan | Included in all plans |
| AI Triage | Automation rules (limited on lower plans) | Included AI Triage with custom actions |
| Training Data | Help center, some plans include AI topics | Past tickets, help centers, Confluence, GDocs & more |
| Setup & Trial | Requires sales for higher tiers | Fully self-serve with free trial & simulation |
Top alternatives to Front for a full replacement
If you’ve decided the core Front platform just isn’t the one for you, there are a few other excellent help desks out there. And the best part? eesel AI can plug into all of them to give you that powerful AI layer.
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Zendesk: A beast of a help desk with incredibly powerful ticketing, reporting, and customization options.
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Freshdesk: Known for its friendly interface and a great set of features that are perfect for small to medium-sized businesses.
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Intercom: A leader in conversational support, focused on driving engagement through live chat and proactive messages.
Make a smarter investment in your support AI
Front offers some genuinely great collaboration tools that many teams swear by, but its rigid, per-seat front pricing and expensive, piecemeal AI add-ons can be a real roadblock, especially for growing teams. You can easily end up overpaying for features you don’t use or find yourself unable to afford the AI tools you actually need.
eesel AI offers a more modern, flexible path. By adding a layer of intelligence on top of your existing help desk, it delivers a more powerful, all-in-one AI suite at a fair, usage-based price. You get to keep the tools your team already knows, get better AI, and invest in a solution that grows with you, not against you.
Ready to see how it works? Start your free trial of eesel AI or book a demo and simulate your savings today.
Frequently asked questions
The per-seat model means your costs increase directly with your headcount. This can make budgeting for growth challenging, as every new agent adds a significant fixed cost to your monthly bill.
The main hidden costs are the AI features like Copilot and Smart QA, which are sold as expensive per-agent add-ons. You might also encounter mandatory onboarding fees for larger contracts and extra charges for increased API usage.
The pricing can be justified for teams that prioritize Front’s best-in-class internal collaboration tools above all else. If seamless teamwork on shared drafts and internal comments is your main pain point, the cost may be a worthwhile investment.
Generally, you are locked into the per-seat cost for your entire contract term, and Front’s policies state that subscriptions are non-refundable. This means you typically can’t reduce your seat count mid-term to lower your costs.
The AI add-ons can dramatically inflate your total bill, sometimes increasing it by over 60% for just a few features. This makes the initial plan price misleading if you need modern AI tools to be efficient, as they are not included in the base value.
