10 Best Missive Alternatives for 2024

Having the right tools for business communication is crucial. While email is most commonly used, it can’t always meet the varied needs of all teams. 

Enter a tool like Missive. It’s become quite well-known recently owing to its ability to centralize emails, chats, and everyday tasks in one place. 

However, there are several critical drawbacks to Missive. 

It lacks critical features such as analytics and a knowledge base. A bigger problem is that its interface is quite complicated to use. 

So, if you’re looking to switch from Missive to another tool or evaluating it against other tools, here are the 10 best Missive Alternatives.

Table of Contents

• What is Missive? 
• Why Look for a Missive Alternative? 
• 10 Missive Alternatives for 2024 
• Features to Look For In Missive Alternative Tool 
• Select The Right Missive Alternative 

What is Missive?

Missive is a software application designed to enhance collaboration and communication. It helps in combining team inboxes and chat into a unified platform. The tool primarily focuses on streamlining email management, enabling teams to assign emails to specific members and use templates for frequently asked queries. 

Some of its main functionalities include:

• Chat: Missive includes chat rooms where you can have discussions with your colleagues. You can chat one-on-one, with a group of employees, with your team, or with anyone in your organization.
• Workload Balancing: Missive offers four ways to distribute work: Round-robin (assigns conversations to team members in a cycle),Least Busy First (gives tasks to the least occupied team member),All at Once (everyone selected gets assigned the conversations),and Random (tasks are assigned randomly).
• Team Email Drafting: With Missive, teams can work together on writing emails. You can ask a teammate for help and see their suggestions and changes as they make them. This is helpful in cases where you need to get a go-ahead from your manager before sending an email. Or when you want a colleague to double-check the information in your email before sending it. 

Missive offers four different pricing plans. 

• FREE Plan 
• Starter: $14 per user per month 
• Productive: $18 per user per month
• Business: $26 per user per month

Why Look for a Missive Alternative?

Users might consider looking for an alternative to Missive for various reasons: 

• The process of archiving emails in Missive can be confusing, as it requires closing them from an individual’s box instead of the common shared inbox. 
• Users have found the email search and sort features in Missive to be less accurate, leading some to revert to Gmail for specific email tasks​​.
• Missive lacks a native solution for creating and managing a knowledge base, a feature that is important for businesses that want to enable customers to self-serve.
• The Free plan of Missive only retains 15 days of message history, while the Starter plan extends this to six months. Both of these plans lack crucial features like rule-based automations and integrations. 
• Besides, it also lacks a reporting feature to track key metrics. 

“I wish Missive had reporting. I’d also like the ability to default search just my inboxes rather than defaulting to searching all inboxes. Depending on the plan, there’s a limit to message history you can search or view.” – User Review | G2  

10 Missive Alternatives for 2024

​​Explore 10 alternatives to Missive for customer support, suitable for businesses of all sizes. 

1. Hiver

Hiver is a customer service software that works inside Gmail.The platform is known for its multi-channel support capabilities, email management features, automations, and a lot more. It helps to handle communication via email, live chat, voice, and WhatsApp, making it a highly preferred choice for businesses of all sizes. 

As a Missive alternative, what makes Hiver stand out is the fact that it sits on top of Gmail. Teams don’t have to learn a new software. If they know to use Gmail, they know to use Hiver. 

Besides, Hiver offers 24/7 support to all its users, irrespective of the pricing plan.

Key Features

• Advanced Automations: Hiver offers robust automations, such as rule-based automations for routine tasks, AI-based conversation management, and content-based triggers. These automations streamline the workflow and reduce manual effort.
• Email Management: This feature allows for the assignment of emails to specific team members, ensuring that each email is promptly and effectively handled by the appropriate person.
• Analytics and Reporting: Hiver comes with detailed analytics and reporting tools. These include real-time visual reports and dashboards for tracking customer service metrics, SLA management, and customer satisfaction surveys. This feature helps in making data-driven decisions and improving team performance.
• Knowledge Base: A key feature missing in Missive is knowledge base. Hiver offers a Knowledge Base that allows customers to find answers to common queries themselves, reducing the workload on customer service agents.
• Integrations: Hiver integrates with a variety of other tools, such as Aircall, Asana, JIRA, Salesforce, WhatsApp, and more, facilitating a seamless workflow and helping teams reduce back and forth between multiple tools.

Pricing

Hiver offers three pricing options. 

• Lite: $15/user per month 
• Pro: $49/user per month 
• Elite: $79/user per month 

2. DragApp

DragApp is a productivity tool designed to streamline email and task management within Gmail. It works as a Google Chrome extension, transforming Gmail into a centralized workspace for teams. 

But DragApp has some limitations. It focuses solely on email management without supporting live chat or phone channels and also, lacks a knowledge base feature. 

Key Features

• Shared Inbox: Enables team collaboration directly within Gmail, allowing multiple users to manage and respond to emails.
• Team Chat and Email Templates: Offers pre-set email responses to respond faster to common customer queries.
• Kanban-style Layout: Visualizes emails and tasks in a Trello-like board format, making it easier to track and manage work.
• Custom Boards: Users can create custom kanban boards for various needs, from emails to specific tasks.

Pricing

DragApp offers the following pricing options:

• Free Plan 
• Starter: $8/user per month
• Plus: $12/user per month
• Pro: $16/user per month 

Top 11 DragApp Alternatives for Businesses 

3. Help Scout

Help Scout is a powerful customer support platform that brings email support, live chat support, and a knowledge base under one single hub.

The platform is designed to mimic a traditional email inbox, which makes it familiar to use, but there’s still a learning curve. Moreover, Help Scout’s interface design is such that users can get confused between internal and external conversations. Another disadvantage of the tool is that it lacks an in-built Service Level Agreements (SLA) feature. 

Key Features

• Beacon: Offers live chat functionality for real-time customer interactions on websites or web apps. Beacon also includes a self-service help center for customers.
• Customer Management: Provides detailed customer profiles, including past interactions, allowing for informed and contextual responses to support queries. Teams can sort, filter, and edit these profiles, and log customer details in Help Scout.
• Enhanced Docs Editor: The Docs editor has been updated for easier article creation, featuring a modern UI, shortcut menus, inline formatting, and performance enhancements for drafting and publishing help articles. 
• AI Summarization: An AI feature that summarizes email threads, helping teams quickly catch up on customer conversations and identify trends​. 

Pricing

Help Scout offers the following pricing plans: 

• Standard: $25 per user per month  
• Plus: $50 per user per month  
• Pro: $65 per user per month (annual plan only) 

Top 10 Help Scout Alternatives for Businesses 

4. Trengo

Trengo is an omnichannel support platform designed to streamline customer communication. It includes standard channels like email, chat, and voice, along with messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

It integrates well with various systems like Shopify, Salesforce, HubSpot, Magento, WeChat, Instagram, and ExactOnline, enhancing its functionality. 

However, users have noted challenges in viewing the history of closed tickets that are reopened by a customer. This lack of an intuitive way to view past interactions can result in the loss of context and be frustrating for both customers and service agents​.

Key Features

• Automation and Chatbots: The platform offers automation features to route messages to the appropriate agents. It also provides the ability to build no-code chatbots for answering frequently asked questions (FAQs),reducing support costs and streamlining processes​​.
• Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Recognizing the importance of security, Trengo has introduced mandatory 2FA for Enterprise plans, providing an extra layer of security for team access​​.
• Customizable WhatsApp Templates: Businesses can personalize their WhatsApp message templates with headers and footers, making messages more professional and branded​​. 
• Knowledge Base: Trengo allows businesses to create a knowledge base accessible to both customers and service agents, aiding in quick query resolution and reducing ticket volume.

Pricing

Trengo offers the following pricing plans: 

• Grow: $19 per user per month
• Scale: $31 per user per month
• Enterprise: $44 per user per month

5. Zendesk

Zendesk is a widely used customer support software, particularly suitable for large-scale businesses. It integrates various support channels, including email, live chat, phone, and a knowledge base, into a unified platform.

However, Zendesk has some limitations. Getting Zendesk up and running can be challenging. You might need help from the Zendesk team, but they charge between $1500 to $2800 for personalized training. Additionally, to get live support, you need to upgrade to their more expensive ‘premier plan’.

Key Features

• Skills-Based Ticket Routing: This feature enables the distribution of customer queries to the most qualified agents, ensuring that each ticket is addressed by someone with the right expertise.
• Conditional Ticket Fields: Zendesk allows customization of ticket forms to capture detailed and relevant customer information, enhancing the efficiency of the support process.
• Macros for Quick Responses: Agents can use pre-written responses for common inquiries, saving time and ensuring consistency in communication.
• Zendesk AI: Zendesk’s AI bots use artificial intelligence to improve customer support. They automatically respond to frequent questions and in cases where the query is complex, they can deflect it to a human agent. 

Pricing

Zendesk has three tiers of pricing for small to large-sized businesses.

• Suite Team: $49 per agent per month
• Suite Growth: $79 per agent per month
• Suite Professional: $99 per agent per month

For enterprise companies, Zendesk has two tiers of pricing:

• Suite Enterprise: $150 per agent per month 
• Additional and more powerful enterprise plans start at $215 per agent per month

6. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software that helps consolidate customer requests from various communication channels—such as email, web, phone, chat, and social media — into a centralized system. 

However, Freshdesk does not seamlessly integrate with Google Workspace products, including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts, which can be a limitation for businesses heavily relying on these tools.

Key Features

• Parent-Child Ticketing: This feature allows complex customer issues to be broken down into smaller, manageable tasks (child tickets) that can be addressed by different teams simultaneously, thereby speeding up the resolution process.
• Customizable Agent Roles: Freshdesk enables customization of agent roles, granting different access levels based on roles and responsibilities. This includes ticket assignment rules based on agents’ expertise, ensuring effective ticket routing and management.
• Ticket Management and Automation: Freshdesk’s ticket management system automatically converts customer inquiries into tickets, making it easy for support agents to prioritize, assign, and track each query. 
• Freshdesk AI: Known as Freddy AI, it offers various features to enhance customer support and agent productivity, and is available for Pro and Enterprise plan customers. 

Pricing

Freshdesk’s Support System offers four price tiers.

• Free: Starter plan for unlimited agents but with limited features
• Growth: $15 per agent per month billed annually
• Pro: $49 per agent per month billed annually
• Enterprise: $69 per agent per month billed annually

Freshdesk’s Omnichannel system offers three price tiers.

• Omnichannel Growth: $29 per agent per month billed annually
• Omnichannel – Pro: $59 per agent per month billed annually
• Omnichannel – Enterprise: $99 per user per month billed annually

7. Helpwise

Helpwise is a customer service platform that makes it easy to manage customer conversations across various channels, such as email, SMS, calls, social media, and live chat.

One of the key benefits of Helpwise is that it removes the need for shared logins, enabling team members to have their own accounts. This makes collaboration on customer conversations more straightforward. 

However, unlike some other shared inbox tools, Helpwise does not offer a unified view of all inboxes on a single screen. This might be a limitation for users who prefer a comprehensive overview of all communications.

Key Features

• Custom Inbox: Users have the flexibility to create inboxes tailored to specific communication channels using Helpwise’s APIs. This customization adds versatility to the platform, accommodating various communication needs.
• Internal FAQs: The platform offers the functionality to create an internal help center. This is particularly useful for training new support team members and providing them with quick access to common queries and solutions.
• Collision Detection: Helpwise includes a collision detection mechanism that alerts team members when more than one person is responding to the same conversation thread, preventing contradictory or duplicate responses.
• Multiple Signatures: Users can create and switch between multiple email signatures, allowing for more personalized and context-specific communication with customers.
• Integrations: Helpwise boasts integration with over 50 different tools like Zapier, Hubspot, Slack, and Shopify, enhancing its utility by syncing with other business tools.

Pricing

Helpwise offers the following pricing plans: 

• Standard: $12/user per month
• Premium: $23/user per month
• Advanced: $35/user per month

8. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a help desk platform designed to simplify and centralize customer support communications across various channels. It’s especially suitable for small businesses, offering a freemium plan that makes it a cost-effective choice. 

However, some users have found its interface somewhat complex, and the setup of automation workflows can be challenging.

Key Features

• Work Modes: This feature provides different ticket views that categorize tickets based on factors like priority, due date, and status. It helps support agents to quickly identify and focus on the most urgent tickets, thus improving the efficiency of handling customer queries.
• Ticket Assignment: Zoho Desk includes an automated Round Robin system for ticket assignment, which distributes tickets evenly among agents according to predefined rules. This eliminates the need for manual ticket allocation and ensures a fair distribution of workload.
• Auto-Tag Tickets: Leveraging its AI-powered assistant, Zia, Zoho Desk automatically detects the sentiment behind each ticket. Zia assigns tags to tickets, making it easier for agents to identify those matching their expertise and to reference past tickets.
• Zia, the AI Assistant: Zia continuously analyzes team performance, alerting managers on anomalies like a surge in incoming tickets or multiple negative responses. Additionally, Zia identifies common issues leading to tickets and helps strengthen your company’s Knowledge Base.

Pricing

Zoho Desk offers five types of pricing plans. 

• Free Plan 
• Express: $7 per month per user 
• Standard: $14 per month per user 
• Professional: $23 per month per user
• Enterprise: $40 per month per user

9. Front

Front is a customer communication software for businesses. It stands out for allowing agents to interact with customers using their work email IDs, instead of having to respond from shared inbox IDs such as support@ or info@. This makes customer interactions more personalized. 

The platform consolidates customer support requests from various channels, including email, SMS, and live chat, into a single, inbox-like interface.

Key Features

• Personalization: With Front, teams can access customer history and relevant data alongside each conversation. This setup, combined with built-in collaboration tools, enables quicker and more personalized responses to customer queries​​.
• Workflow Management: Front offers if-then workflows to automate team workload management. Users can create rules to move customer emails to specific inboxes, assign them to teammates, or distribute them evenly within the team using round-robin​​. 
• Integration Capabilities: Front boasts over 110 integrations and an open API, allowing users to sync their tools into one platform. This capability helps in managing multiple channels like WhatsApp, Dialpad, or Twilio in a shared space, and in tailoring message templates by syncing CRM data​​.
• Analytics: Front provides analytics features to optimize individual and team performance, as well as measure and improve customer experience. It includes tracking SLAs, assessing CSAT scores, and understanding team workload​. 

Pricing

Front offers four pricing options. 

• Starter: $19 per person per month
• Growth: $59 per person per month
• Scale: $99 per person per month
• Premier: $229 per person per month

10. Spark Mail

​​Spark Mail is an email client designed to streamline and organize email communication for both personal and professional use. It is available on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android operating systems. 

However, to access more advanced team collaboration features, users might need to subscribe to premium plans. Also, its email management and analytics features aren’t as extensive as other tools, like Hiver. 

Key Features

• Prioritization Tools: Spark allows users to highlight important contacts with Priority and Pin functions and streamline inboxes by grouping emails by sender. This helps in quickly identifying priority emails at a glance​​.
• Organizational Features: The application offers tools like Done Marker and Set Aside to organize emails effectively. It also includes options to manage time with features like Send Later and Reminders, optimizing inbox management​​.
• Focus and Filtering: Designed to nurture focus, Spark features a Home Screen and Smart Inbox that help manage and filter out unnecessary emails with automated Newsletter and Notification inboxes. 
• Spark + AI: The AI feature of Spark Mail can perform a variety of functions. This feature assists in creating email drafts quickly, tailored to the specific needs. It offers quick AI-powered reply options, generating responses in seconds. The AI tool can also proofread, adjust tone, rephrase, expand, or shorten text, enhancing the quality and effectiveness of email communication. 

Pricing

Spark Mail offers the following pricing options:

• Free
• Premium Individual: $4.99/month per user
• Premium Teams: $6.99/month per user

Features to Look For In Missive Alternative Tool

When considering alternatives to Missive, here are some general features to look for in a tool:

• Multi-platform Support: Compatibility with various platforms like Android, iOS, Mac OS, and Windows.
• Email Management: Features like unified inbox, and efficient sorting and ticket filtering options. 
• Privacy and Security: Consideration of privacy policies and security measures, including how the tool handles user data.
• Integration with Other Services: Compatibility with CRM platforms, social media apps, and productivity tools.
• User Interface: An intuitive and customizable user interface for ease of use.
• Collaboration Features: Options for team collaboration such as shared drafts, internal notes, and email routing rules.
• Storage Capacity: Adequate storage space for emails and attachments.
• Search Functionality: Advanced and fast search options for efficient email management.

Select The Right Missive Alternative

It’s clear that there are a variety of tools that can be considered an effective Missive Alternative, each with its strengths and unique capabilities. From advanced email management features to seamless integrations and user-focused interfaces, these alternatives cater to a wide range of needs. 

Among them, Hiver emerges as a noteworthy option, particularly for its collaborative functionalities and ease of use, making it a powerful Missive alternative. 

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