An insurance agency with six account managers. A design agency with four. A property management firm with eight. In each, clients email their own account manager, not a support address. And in each, the owner eventually asks: should we get Front, or Hiver, or is this what the CRM is for?
The answer depends on one thing: whether your clients write to one shared address or to a person.
The short answer
If clients write to each account manager directly, you probably don’t need a shared inbox. You need each person to keep track of what they owe their own clients. alfred_ is an AI assistant for client-facing teams, and each person gets their own, inside the Gmail or Outlook they already use. It flags the client emails that need their answer, keeps one list of the replies they owe and the replies they’re waiting on, manages their calendar and sends a morning brief by email or text. Nothing is sent until they approve it. Teams are $49.99 a seat a month on one bill.
If clients write to one address that several people answer, a shared inbox like Front or Hiver is built for that.
Side by side
| Front | Hiver | Your CRM | alfred_ (per person) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Several people on one address | Several people on one Gmail address | The record of each relationship | Each person's own client inbox |
| Clients keep writing to their account manager | No, they move to the shared address | No, they move to the shared address | Yes | Yes |
| Gmail and Outlook | Both | Gmail only | Depends on sync | Both, up to six accounts a person |
| Tells each person what they still owe today | By assignment and status | By assignment and status | No | Yes, one list plus a morning brief |
| Tells each person who hasn't replied to them | Partly, by status | Partly, by status | No | Yes |
| Manager view of all mail | Yes, it's one shared inbox | Yes | Logged emails only | No; each person's mail stays theirs |
| Price | From $25 a seat a month | From $25 a user a month | Already paying | $49.99 a seat a month |
Where things actually slip on an account team
When every client writes to a named person, ownership is not the problem. Everyone knows the Harbor account is Maria’s. What slips is:
- The reply Maria meant to send. She read the client’s question between two meetings.
- The answer that never came. Maria sent the revised quote nine days ago; the client went quiet and nobody noticed.
- The handoff. Maria is out for a week and Tom covers, without knowing what she owed.
Assignment rules and collision detection don’t fix any of those, because there is no shared queue to assign from. A list of what each person owes, and who owes them, does.
When a shared inbox is the right call
If your clients email service@ or claims@ and whoever is free answers, use a shared inbox, and don’t talk yourself out of it. Front and Hiver exist for that work. Our shared inbox comparison covers eleven of them.
Plenty of firms run both: a shared inbox for the one address the whole team answers, and an assistant for each account manager’s own client inbox.
What the CRM is for
Keep the CRM. It holds the account, the deal and the history. What it doesn’t do is sit in each account manager’s inbox and tell them, every morning, which client is waiting on them. With alfred_, an account manager can ask about the HubSpot or Salesforce record behind an email, and any change to a record waits for their approval.
Setting it up
- Pick the team plan on the pricing page: two seats minimum, add or remove people any time.
- Each account manager connects their own Gmail or Outlook and calendar.
- After a day, each person has their list: replies they owe, replies they’re waiting on, and a morning brief.
Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial. More on the team plan: alfred_ for teams.
