Front vs Zoho Desk
Front and Zoho Desk are both customer support tools aimed at small businesses and enterprise. Zoho Desk costs less, from $7/mo versus $35/mo for Front. Only Zoho Desk has a free plan.
Shared inbox for customer-facing teams
Multichannel help desk with the Zia AI assistant from Zoho
| Pricing | Paid · $35 | Freemium · $7 |
| Starting price | $35/mo | $7/mo |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Free trial | 14 days | 15 days |
| Built for | Small businesses, Enterprise | Small businesses, Enterprise |
| Platforms | web, macos, windows, ios, android | web, ios, android |
| Country | FR · 2013 | IN |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose Front if
Email-heavy, collaborative customer teams in B2B and services.
- Natural for teams living in email
- Excellent collaboration features
- Omnichannel without a ticket mindset
Look elsewhere if: High-volume consumer support (Zendesk, Freshdesk) or small teams on a budget (Help Scout).
Choose Zoho Desk if
Small and mid-sized support teams, especially Zoho CRM users, that want a full-featured help desk at a lower per-agent price than Zendesk.
- Much lower per-agent cost than Zendesk at comparable tiers
- Free plan for up to three agents
- Tight integration with Zoho CRM and the wider Zoho suite
Look elsewhere if: Teams that need the largest third-party app ecosystem or a very simple shared inbox (Zendesk, Help Scout).
Front vs Zoho Desk pricing
Front
- Starter$35/seat/mo$25 billed annually; up to 10 seats
- Professional$85/seat/mo$65 billed annually; up to 50 seats, omnichannel
- Enterprise$105/seat/moAnnual billing only; advanced AI tools
Zoho Desk
- Free$0Up to 3 agents, email ticketing basics
- Express$7/agent/moBilled annually; AI agents with BYOK or Zoho LLM
- Standard$14/agent/moBilled annually; live chat, knowledge base, answer bot
- Professional$23/agent/moBilled annually; Zia AI, Blueprints, telephony
- Enterprise$40/agent/moBilled annually; multi-brand, skill routing, sandbox
Front · Key features
- Shared and personal inboxes in one email-like interface
- Internal comments, assignments and collision detection
- Rules, SLAs and workload balancing
- Front AI for drafts, summaries and tagging
- Knowledge base, chat widget and customer profiles
- Analytics and CRM integrations
Cons
- Expensive per seat
- Starter plan limited to 10 seats
- Ticket-style reporting is weaker than Zendesk
Zoho Desk · Key features
- Unified ticket queue for email, chat, phone, social and messaging
- Round-robin and skill-based assignment with SLAs and escalations
- Blueprints to enforce step-by-step support processes
- Multilingual help center with knowledge base and community forum
- AI agents on Express with bring-your-own-key or Zoho LLM
- Zia assistant for sentiment, reply suggestions and anomaly detection
Cons
- Interface feels dense and dated in places
- Blueprints, telephony and full Zia require Professional or higher
- Monthly billing is significantly pricier than annual
Front vs Zoho Desk: FAQ
Which is cheaper, Front or Zoho Desk?
Zoho Desk starts at $7/mo and Front at $35/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Do Front and Zoho Desk have a free plan?
Front has no free plan, a 14-day free trial. Zoho Desk has a free plan.