How to Integrate Aircall (or Dialpad) Phone with Front (2026)

What the Front–Aircall integration actually does

Front is a shared-inbox and collaboration platform, not a phone system, so a voice integration's job is to feed calls into Front as first-class conversations. When Aircall is connected, every inbound and outbound call is logged at the contact level as a Front conversation, dropped into a dedicated Aircall Phone Inbox, per Front's Aircall integration guide. Subsequent calls with the same person thread as new activities inside that same conversation, so a customer's call history reads like a timeline rather than a pile of disconnected records.

Three capabilities are worth naming up front, because they're what teams actually feel day to day:

• Call logging → conversation. Calls, recordings, transcripts, and Aircall's AI summaries (when your Aircall plan generates them) surface right inside the Front conversation.
• Click-to-dial from the sidebar. From an open conversation you can place a call through the Aircall plugin without leaving Front — useful when a sales rep is reading an email and wants to just call the person back.
• SMS in the same thread. If you connect an Aircall SMS number, texts thread into the same conversation as calls from that contact, with MMS photos up to 5MB and PDFs up to 600KB, per Aircall's Front integration docs.

One prerequisite makes or breaks the experience: contact matching. An inbound caller only maps to the right Front conversation if their number matches a contact in Front's Contact Manager or one synced from a CRM plugin like Salesforce or HubSpot — and the match is format-sensitive, down to spacing and country code.

Step 1 — Enable the Aircall app, then connect the channel

The setup is a two-part motion in Front: first you enable the app at the company level, then you connect an actual phone channel at the workspace level. You'll need admin rights, and every agent who uses it must log into Front with the same email address they use in Aircall.

1. Click the gear icon in Front and open Company settings.
2. Go to the App store, find Aircall, and open it. If it's already connected, you'll see an Enabled badge and an extra Settings tab.
3. Open Workspace settings → Inboxes → Channels → Connect channel, and choose Voice by Aircall (or SMS by Aircall).
4. Click Connect to Aircall. A pop-up prompts you to sign in to Aircall — make sure the email matches your Front login — then click Login to authorize.
5. Pick the Aircall number to connect and the Front inbox that calls and messages should route to by default.

The screenshot above is the App Store overview / connect page — where you enable the app and see its status — not a populated call feed. The live call-and-SMS routing you configure afterward, under that Settings tab and the channel wizard, is where the two-way behavior actually lights up. In this account Aircall is already Enabled, exactly the state you want before connecting a channel. The integration requires Front's latest Professional plan or above, and Aircall SMS requires Aircall's own Professional plan.

Step 2 — Turn on status sync and click-to-dial

Once the channel is live, two settings turn the connection from "calls appear" into "calls fit the way your team works."

Status sync keeps Front and Aircall honest about who's reachable. Setting your Front presence to Available or Out of office pushes the equivalent state to Aircall, and you can optionally have Front flip to Busy automatically while you're on a call so a rule doesn't route a new conversation to someone mid-call. Be aware the sync is largely one-directional — Front → Aircall — so changing status inside Aircall won't reliably reflect back in Front.

Click-to-dial works from any conversation via the Aircall plugin in the sidebar: open the thread, hit dial, and the call is placed and logged back into that same conversation. For a support agent triaging a team inbox or a salesperson following up on a lead, it removes the copy-paste-into-dialer tax entirely.

Aircall vs Dialpad: which phone path for Front?

Both Aircall and Dialpad are natively supported by Front, and both put voice + SMS into your inboxes. The differences are in plan mechanics, channel structure, and a migration deadline you can't ignore.

The practical read: if you're already on Aircall, the Front-built connector is the cleanest path and this guide is your setup. If you're on Dialpad, note that Front rebuilt the integration — per Front's guide to switching from the legacy Dialpad integration, each phone number now has to exist as its own channel, messages from the new channel won't thread into legacy conversations, and the legacy integration stops working on April 9, 2026, so migrate before then. Dialpad call logging also requires a Company Admin to generate an API key on a Pro or Enterprise Dialpad plan. Either way the shape in Front is the same: calls become conversations. For how Front models phone alongside email and chat, see Front channels explained.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

The native Aircall connector is genuinely good at the mechanical part: it reliably turns calls into logged, searchable, assignable conversations, and that alone is worth doing. But it's worth being clear-eyed about the edges.

It's a channel, not a brain. The integration logs the call; it doesn't understand it. A recording and even an AI summary land in the thread, but nothing reads the customer's actual account, checks their last order, and drafts the follow-up. That reasoning is still human work.

SMS becomes Front-exclusive. Front is explicit: once an Aircall number is connected to Front, you can only send and receive SMS through Front. That's usually what you want — but it's a one-way door for that number, so decide deliberately.

Contact matching is brittle. Because mapping is by exact phone-number format, a caller whose number is stored differently (spacing, country code, a missing +1) can land as an unmatched contact and float outside the thread you expected.

Feature gates and plan floors. The integration needs Front's latest Professional tier or above; call transcripts and AI summaries need an Aircall AI Assist license; there's no support for user extensions or group messaging; and browsers must allow third-party cookies. Front's own pricing tiers show what unlocks where.

This is the seam where an AI agent layer fits — not to replace the phone integration, but to do the reasoning it structurally can't. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists for exactly the work a call log can't do. Macha is one such layer: it runs on top of the Front you already use through the live Macha–Front connector — it doesn't replace Front, your Aircall channel, or your inboxes. Aircall logs the call as a conversation; Macha's agent then reads that thread — the call summary, prior emails, the SMS history — understands intent, and pulls the customer's real order or account status through a custom tool that turns your REST API into something the agent can call. A logged call becomes a drafted or sent reply that closes the loop. Connecting Front to Macha to route conversations to AI walks through the mechanics, and Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, never per resolution — logging a call and reasoning over it have different costs, and it's honest to price them that way. For the full landscape, see the best Front integrations.

FAQ

How do I connect Aircall to Front? Enable the Aircall app under gear → Company settings → App store → Aircall, then go to Workspace settings → Inboxes → Channels → Connect channel, choose Voice by Aircall (or SMS by Aircall), click Connect to Aircall, and sign in with the Aircall account that matches your Front login. Then pick the number and the inbox calls should route to.

Where do Aircall calls show up in Front? Each call is logged at the contact level as a conversation in a dedicated Aircall Phone Inbox. Later calls with the same contact thread as new activities inside that same conversation, provided the caller's number matches a Front or CRM-synced contact exactly.

Can I make calls from inside Front? Yes — click-to-dial works from any open conversation through the Aircall plugin in the sidebar, and the outbound call is logged back into that conversation.

Should I use Aircall or Dialpad with Front? Both are natively supported. Use whichever phone system you already run. If you're on Dialpad, note Front rebuilt the integration so each number is its own channel, and the legacy Dialpad integration stops working on April 9, 2026 — migrate before then. Dialpad call logging also needs a Company Admin API key on a Pro/Enterprise plan.

Can I add AI to Front's phone conversations without replacing Front? Yes. An AI agent layer like Macha connects to Front as a live connector and runs on top of your existing inboxes and Aircall channel — it doesn't replace them. Aircall keeps logging calls as conversations; the agent reads the thread, understands intent, and drafts or sends a grounded reply.

Ready to turn logged calls into resolved conversations? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Front in minutes.