How InboxAgent compares.
InboxAgent is not an alternative to your CRM or helpdesk. Every lead lands on your own Leads board with an owner, and we feed your CRM or helpdesk too if you use them. This compares InboxAgent to the tools that look like they overlap with us. Every cell below is a fact from public information; we don't invent competitor claims.
| InboxAgent | Front | Help Scout | Fin | Zendesk AI | Hiver | Zoho Zia | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it's for | Front door that sorts your mailbox | Shared inbox you migrate into | Support desk + docs | Autonomous support agent | Enterprise support suite | Gmail support add-on | Help-desk AI inside Zoho |
| Works on the mailbox you already have, no migration | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Partial | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Sorts sales leads and support tickets across systems | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Deterministic rules run before AI (cheaper, auditable) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Learns from your team's corrections | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Partial | Partial | ✗ | ✗ |
| Confidence threshold → human review you can see | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | Partial | Partial | ✗ | ✗ |
| Works on day one, no historical ticket corpus needed | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Needs KB | Partial | ✓ | 3,000 tickets |
"Partial" = the tool does something adjacent but not the same job. Comparisons are based on public information; we don't quote competitor prices here.
What about cost? It's genuinely hard to compare like-for-like: every tool above charges per seat (per user), and several add per-resolution AI fees on top, so the bill grows with every user and every ticket. InboxAgent charges per organization: $20/month plus $5 per additional mailbox, typically $20 to 40/month, flat. Users are free. A fraction of the cost, and it doesn't move when your team or your volume grows. Prices are in US dollars. Any tax that applies is added at checkout and shown before you pay.
The gap, plainly.
No tool above is, top to bottom, a cross-system layer that sits on the mailbox you already have and sorts both sales inquiries and everything else that needs a person onto boards with an owner, and into the systems you already pay for if you use them. That's the gap InboxAgent fills, and why it sits in front of your tools rather than competing with them.
If you run on Gmail, you have probably seen these.
A second group of tools adds boards, shared inboxes and assistants to email. They are good products. They are also built on different assumptions to ours, and the differences are easy to check.
| InboxAgent | Sortd | Gmelius | Drag | Mailbutler | Missive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it's for | Front door that sorts your mailbox | Sales and task boards inside Gmail | Shared inboxes and automation inside Gmail | Kanban boards inside Gmail | Assistant inside your mail app | Shared inbox you work in |
| Mailboxes it works on | Microsoft 365, Gmail, Google Workspace, Zoho Mail, any IMAP mailbox | Gmail and Google Workspace | Gmail and Google Workspace | Gmail, with Chrome | Apple Mail, Gmail and Outlook | Gmail, Outlook and IMAP |
| Where the product's own screens are | Its own web app, separate from email | Inside Gmail | Inside Gmail | Inside Gmail | Inside your mail app | Its own app |
| How your team handles email | Unchanged. Outlook or Gmail, exactly as now | In Gmail, with Sortd's boards added | In Gmail, with Gmelius added | In Gmail, with Drag's boards added | In your mail app, with Mailbutler added | In Missive, instead of your mail app |
| Who can see the work | Anyone you invite, with no mailbox access and at no extra cost | People working in that Gmail mailbox, on a paid seat | People working in that Gmail mailbox, on a paid seat | People working in that Gmail mailbox, on a paid seat | People using that mail app, on a paid seat | Anyone you invite, on a paid seat |
| Who it bills for | The organization, unlimited users | Per user | Per user | Per user | Per user | Per user |
| Ten people, per year | $480 five mailboxes | about $2,640 | $3,000 | $2,160 | $1,320 | about $2,880 |
Two places, on purpose. The mail keeps arriving where it always did, and whoever answers it stays in Outlook or Gmail with nothing new to learn. InboxAgent is a separate application, so seeing that a lead was picked up does not need access to the mailbox. You invite someone by email address, give them a read-only Viewer role, and they can see what is happening without ever being able to open info@, and without adding to the bill, because we charge per mailbox and not per person.
Four of the five tools here live inside the mail interface, so anyone who wants to look has to be in that mailbox, on a paid seat. Missive is its own application too, which is a real similarity rather than a difference. It still bills per user, so with Missive every extra pair of eyes costs money.
Sortd
Gmail and Google Workspace only. In their own words: Sortd is a verified Google Workspace app that works on the Gmail accounts and domains you already operate.
Their FAQ. There is no Outlook, Microsoft 365 or IMAP option.
Gmelius
Gmail and Google Workspace only. Their help centre states it plainly: No, Gmelius is not available for Microsoft Outlook. Currently, Gmelius works with Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.
Gmelius has also moved into sending on your behalf. Their assistant drafts your responses
, dispatches your emails
and follows up for you
. That is a real capability and some teams want it. It is the opposite of our choice: InboxAgent is read-only and never sends mail.
Drag
Gmail only, and it needs Chrome. Their own blog is candid about the limit: if your organization is Outlook-only, Drag is Gmail-native, choose Hiver, Missive, or Front.
Drag's agent sends customer email autonomously once its confidence passes a threshold you set, which they summarise as Email in. Resolution out.
If you want replies going out without a person reading them first, Drag does that and we do not. InboxAgent works out what an email is and who owns it; a person still writes every reply.
Mailbutler
The exception to the Gmail pattern: Mailbutler works with Apple Mail, Gmail and Outlook. Worth being precise about IMAP, because it is easy to overstate: Mailbutler reaches IMAP accounts indirectly, through Apple Mail on a Mac, rather than connecting to an IMAP server itself.
Missive
The closest of these to us on mailbox support: Missive covers Gmail, Outlook and IMAP, much as we do. We make no claim to reach more mailboxes than Missive, because we do not.
The difference is where the work happens. Missive is a place your team moves into and sends from, and if you want one shared application for reading, writing and discussing mail, Missive does that well and we do not. InboxAgent is read-only and your team stays in Outlook or Gmail; we put an owner and a stage on each email rather than replacing the app you read it in.
The arithmetic, not the opinion. Every tool in this table charges per user. For ten people that is $3,000 a year for Gmelius, $2,880 for Missive, $2,640 for Sortd, $2,160 for Drag and $1,320 for Mailbutler. InboxAgent is $480 a year for five mailboxes with unlimited users. The point is not that we are cheaper, because for a two-person team several of them are not expensive at all. The point is that our bill does not move when you hire and theirs does. Prices are in US dollars, taken from each vendor's public pricing. Any tax that applies is added at checkout and shown before you pay.
Sorting the mail is where we start, not where we stop.
Boards and shared inboxes give your team a tidier place to put email. They still need a person to read each message, decide what it is, and remember to do something about it. That decision, and everything that follows it, is the part InboxAgent does.
It decides
AI that explains itself
- Obvious noise, newsletters, bulk mail, known marketing senders and auto-replies, is caught by deterministic detectors and set aside before the AI is called at all.
- The rest is classified as a sales lead, a service request, marketing or noise, each with a confidence score and a short, plain reason for the call.
- Your rules override the AI, matched on sender, on subject or body text, or on the AI's own category and confidence. They are priority-ordered and auditable.
- You set the confidence bar. Anything below it goes to a person to decide rather than being guessed.
It learns
Your corrections become rules
- When your team keeps correcting the AI the same way, InboxAgent spots the pattern and proposes a rule.
- An admin approves it before it applies, so the system learns from your team's judgment with a person in control.
- The rules and the learning live in the system, not in one person's head. They do not walk out of the door when somebody leaves.
- Every message keeps a decision history: what it was classified as, the confidence, the reason, the action taken and the record it created.
Then it manages the work
A lead is more than an email
- Every sales inquiry becomes a lead on a board, with the original email attached and a name against it.
- Your own stages, renamed and reordered to match how you actually sell. New, Won and Lost stay fixed at the ends.
- Up to ten fields of your own on a lead, for whatever you need to record.
- Things to do, with a due date. Overdue items are flagged in the app.
- Export your leads to CSV at any time, and feed Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk or HubSpot as well if you use them.
We have not marked the five products above against this list. Where we could not verify something from a vendor's own published material we have left it out rather than guessed, and that cuts both ways: we will not put a cross in a box we cannot evidence. Their own sites are the place to check what each of them does after the sorting.
The one you are probably using right now.
For most businesses the real alternative is not a product at all. It is a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox, a distribution list, a Google Collaborative Inbox, or Gmail delegation. They are free, they are already set up, and they are what InboxAgent genuinely displaces.
They all deliver the email, and each has a gap that only shows up when the team is busy. A shared mailbox marks a message read for everybody the moment one person opens it, and read is not the same as handled. A distribution list puts a copy in five inboxes and keeps no record of who replied, so either two people answer or nobody does. A Google Collaborative Inbox or Gmail delegation gives everyone access to the same mail without putting a name against any of it.
None of them is an ownership system, and none of them can tell you at five on a Friday whether a real inquiry is still sitting there unanswered. That is the job InboxAgent does, on top of whichever of these you already run. We wrote the whole thing up: shared mailbox, distribution list, or Microsoft 365 group.