Front vs Gmelius (2026): Gmail Shared Inbox Compared

At a glance

Prices and features as of capture (2026-07-05); check both vendors' pricing pages for current numbers.

Pricing: entry cost vs what's actually included

Sticker price is where these two tools look closest and behave most differently. Per Front's pricing page, Front runs Starter at $25, Professional at $65, and Enterprise at $105 per seat per month billed annually (as of capture). Starter caps you at 10 automation rules and a single channel type; Professional lifts that to omnichannel plus 20 rules and macros; Enterprise adds unlimited rules, smart rules, and bundles AI Copilot, Smart QA, and Smart CSAT that are add-ons lower down. The practical read: most teams that pick Front for its collaboration and routing end up on Professional, so budget around $65/seat rather than the $25 headline.

Gmelius reads cheaper, with an important asterisk. Per Gmelius's pricing page, the tiers are Meli $19, Growth $25, and Pro $40 per user per month, with a custom-quote Enterprise plan (as of capture). The catch is that Meli is an individual AI-assistant plan with no shared inboxes — the actual team functionality (unlimited shared inboxes and labels, automation rules, auto-assignments) starts at Growth ($25), and kanban board views, AI dispatching, and webhooks are gated to Pro ($40). So the honest floor for a collaborating team is Growth at $25, which lands right on Front's headline Starter price but with shared inboxes included rather than a single-channel cap. G2 pegs Gmelius's real-world spend at roughly $24–$40 depending on plan, matching those pages (G2 Gmelius reviews).

Net: for a small Gmail team that mostly does email, Gmelius Growth is usually the cheaper path to a working shared inbox. For a team that needs omnichannel and heavier automation, Front's Professional tier is the more honest comparison, and it costs meaningfully more. Our Front pricing explained breakdown digs into the add-on gotchas tier by tier.

Shared inbox and collaboration

Both tools nail the fundamentals of a shared inbox — assign a conversation to a teammate, leave an internal note nobody outside the team sees, see who's replying, and track status. The difference is where that happens and how deep it goes.

Gmelius does it inside Gmail. Reviewers consistently praise how its shared inbox features — assignment, statuses, internal notes, @mentions, and SLA tracking — feel thought-through rather than bolted on, and how little the team has to relearn because it's still Gmail (G2 Gmelius reviews). For a Google Workspace shop, that "no new app to open" property is the whole pitch, and it's a real one.

Front takes you into a dedicated workspace. That costs you the familiarity of Gmail but buys you more: shared drafts multiple people can co-write, a proper ticketing layer, richer conversation history, and analytics on response times and team performance that go beyond Gmelius's email-activity reporting. If your shared inbox is really a support or operations queue with SLAs and reporting expectations, Front's dedicated model tends to scale further. Our Front shared inbox explained guide covers how that model works in practice.

Automation and rules

This is where the two tools' philosophies show. Front's automation is a first-class rules engine: When/If/Then triggers with conditions and stacked actions, capped at 10 rules on Starter, 20 on Professional, and unlimited (plus smart, branching rules) on Enterprise, according to Front's pricing page. It's built to route, tag, assign with round-robin, and escalate at volume.

Gmelius holds its own for a Gmail tool. Automation rules and auto-assignment arrive on Growth, and Pro adds AI dispatching assistants and webhooks for custom integrations. It also does something Front doesn't lean into: email sequences for outbound follow-ups, a nod to Gmelius's sales-and-outreach roots. For inbound support routing, Front's engine is deeper and more configurable; for a Gmail team that wants "auto-assign these and follow up on those," Gmelius covers it without a separate tool.

Channels

The channel story is the cleanest dividing line. Front is omnichannel — email, SMS, social, live chat, and WhatsApp all land in the same workspace on Professional and above (Front pricing). Third-party research echoes that breadth, noting Front unifies email, social, SMS, and chat while Gmelius stays close to Gmail (Front vs Gmelius on Secret).

Gmelius is email-first and Gmail-only — there's no Outlook support, and its strength is depth within the Google ecosystem plus integrations to Slack and Trello, not a spread across social and messaging channels. If your customers reach you on Instagram, WhatsApp, and SMS as well as email, that's a hard constraint in Front's favor. If email is 95% of your inbound and you're on Google Workspace, it simply doesn't matter.

Ease and onboarding

Gmelius wins the cold-start test for Google teams: it's a Chrome extension and Gmail add-on, so agents keep working in an interface they already know, and G2 reviewers repeatedly call out ease of use. The honest caveats are that setting up shared inboxes, aliases, and rules "takes time, not five minutes," and — the most common complaint — some users report load times of 10+ seconds for a single email inside Gmail, plus a mobile app that feels constrained next to desktop (G2 Gmelius reviews).

Front asks the team to adopt a new app, which is a bigger behavior change, but the payoff is a snappier purpose-built interface and a stronger mobile experience once people are in it. Front also rates very well on public review sites, sitting around 4.7 on G2 versus Gmelius's 4.4. Neither is a "flip a switch" deployment for a real team; both reward a proper rollout.

Pros and cons

Front — pros: omnichannel out of the box; deep, configurable rules engine; strong analytics and ticketing; polished dedicated app and mobile experience. Cons: meaningfully more expensive once you're on Professional; several AI features are add-ons on lower tiers; leaving Gmail is a real change-management cost for Google-native teams.

Gmelius — pros: lives inside Gmail so there's little to relearn; genuinely good shared-inbox depth (assignment, notes, SLAs); kanban boards and email sequences; cheaper entry for small teams. Cons: Gmail-only with no Outlook; reported in-Gmail performance lag and a weaker mobile app; kanban and AI dispatching gated to the $40 Pro tier; per-user pricing scales up fast at size.

Which should you choose?

• Pick Gmelius if your team lives in Google Workspace, email is the overwhelming majority of your inbound, and you want shared inboxes, kanban, and automation without asking anyone to open a new app. It's the natural fit for small, Gmail-native support, ops, and sales teams that value the low learning curve — and it's usually cheaper to get started.
• Pick Front if you need true omnichannel (SMS, social, WhatsApp, chat alongside email), a deeper rules engine, and reporting built for an SLA-driven support or operations queue — and you're willing to adopt a standalone app and pay Professional-tier prices for it. If you're weighing it against other standalone tools too, our best Front alternatives roundup and Front app review go wider.

Neither tool is objectively "better" — they're built for different rooms. The right question isn't which is more powerful, it's whether your team wants to stay in Gmail or move into a dedicated workspace.

Whichever inbox you pick, Macha adds the AI layer on top

One thing worth flagging: the choice above is about where your team works, not about how much of the work an AI can take off their plate. Whichever shared inbox or help desk you land on, Macha sits on top as an AI agent layer — reading incoming conversations, drafting grounded replies from your own docs and data, and resolving the repetitive tickets before a human ever has to touch them. It's not a compared tool here; it's the automation you can add to either choice.

To see how that plays out, read how AI agents work in customer service or how custom tools let an agent take real actions in your stack.

FAQ

Is Gmelius cheaper than Front? For a small team, usually yes. Gmelius's Growth plan ($25/user/mo, as of capture) includes shared inboxes, while Front's comparable functionality typically lands on Professional at $65/seat/mo. But Gmelius's cheapest Meli tier ($19) has no shared inboxes, so compare Growth-to-Professional, not headline-to-headline. Check both vendors' pricing pages for current numbers.

Does Gmelius work with Outlook? No. Gmelius is Gmail-only and runs as a Chrome extension and Gmail add-on. If your team uses Outlook or Microsoft 365, Front (which is standalone and email-agnostic) is the workable option.

When does Gmelius add kanban boards? Kanban board views are gated to Gmelius's Pro plan ($40/user/mo, as of capture), along with AI dispatching assistants and webhooks. The Growth plan has shared inboxes and automation but not kanban.

Is Front good for multichannel support? Yes — that's its strength. On Professional and above, Front unifies email, SMS, social, live chat, and WhatsApp in one workspace, where Gmelius stays email-first inside Gmail.

Can I add AI resolution to either tool? Yes. Macha layers an AI agent on top of your shared inbox or help desk regardless of whether you choose Front or Gmelius, drafting and resolving routine conversations from your own knowledge.

Ready to add the AI layer on top of whichever inbox you choose? Start a free trial of Macha.