The short answer
- Choose Front if your team lives in email across many shared and personal inboxes, wants a Gmail-like workspace with comments on every thread, and needs many channels today. It is a mature product.
- Choose Colliedesk if you want a shared inbox whose price does not grow with every seat, and data you can export or self-host without asking anyone. Colliedesk is pre-alpha; read the status table first.
Price, side by side
Front prices below are from the Front pricing page, per seat per month billed annually, read on 15 October 2026. The page does not list monthly-billing prices.
| Front | Colliedesk | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans | Starter $25 (up to 10 seats), Professional $65 (up to 50 seats), Enterprise $105 | Cloud Team: $49 per workspace per month, or $490 per year, up to 10 agents. No per-agent fees. Founding customers: $100 per year, locked for life. |
| AI drafting | Copilot $20 per seat per month on Starter and Professional; included on Enterprise | Included (coming v0.3). LLM cost +30% on our key, or bring your own key. |
| AI agent | Autopilot from $0.05 per conversation | Auto-answer with a human in the loop, same AI pricing (coming v0.3) |
| Free option | No free plan; 14-day trial | Self-host free, every feature. Cloud: 14-day free trial, no card. |
| Source code | Proprietary | Open source, AGPL-3.0. Self-host or use Cloud. |
What five agents pay
| Team | Front Professional + Copilot (annual) | Colliedesk Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| 5 agents | 5 × ($65 + $20) = $425 per month | $49 per month + AI usage |
Leaving: what Front gives you
- There is no self-serve export of conversations. A company admin asks Front Support for an account data export.
- The export covers shared inboxes: conversations, messages, discussions, comments, and attachments as EML.
- It leaves out individual inboxes, contact data, message templates and tags.
- Front acknowledges the request within 72 hours, then sends the files when they are ready.
Your data lives in PostgreSQL. Self-hosted, you can take a database dump at any time.
What Colliedesk does today
| Capability | Colliedesk |
|---|---|
| Shared inbox: replies, private notes, status, priority, assignee, tags, search | Shipped v0.1 |
| Passwordless sign-in, revocable sessions, isolated workspaces | Shipped v0.1 |
| Email channel (inbound and outbound, threading) | Coming v0.2 (built, in testing) |
| Freshdesk importer with reconcile report | Coming v0.2 (built, in testing) |
| One-command install and published container image | Shipped |
| Colliedesk Cloud for founding customers | Coming v0.2 |
| Attachments on agent replies, new-ticket notifications | Not built yet |
| AI draft replies, triage, auto-answer with a human in the loop | Coming v0.3 |
| Knowledge base and public help center | Coming v0.3 |
| Automations, macros, SLA, business hours, time tracking | Coming v0.4 |
| CSAT and reports | Coming v0.5 |
| Zendesk and Help Scout importers, live chat widget, MCP server | Coming later |
Sources
Read on 15 October 2026. Prices change; check the vendor page before you decide.
- Front pricing: front.com/pricing
- Account data export: help.front.com
Questions people ask
What is a good Front alternative that is not priced per seat?
Colliedesk Cloud is $49 per workspace per month for up to 10 agents, and self-hosting is free. Colliedesk is an open-source (AGPL-3.0) shared inbox and helpdesk. It is pre-alpha; the email channel arrives in v0.2.
How does Front charge for AI?
On the Front pricing page read on 15 October 2026: Copilot is $20 per seat per month as an add-on on Starter and Professional, and included on Enterprise. Autopilot starts at $0.05 per conversation.
Can I export my conversations from Front?
Not by yourself. A company admin asks Front Support for an account data export. It covers shared inboxes only, and leaves out contacts, message templates, tags and individual inboxes. Front acknowledges the request within 72 hours.
Does Colliedesk import from Front?
Not yet. The first importer is Freshdesk (coming v0.2). Tell us on GitHub if you need a Front importer; requests decide the order.