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Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

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Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#61

Post by a13n »

plehoux wrote: post #52
unabst wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are expensive, and we'd be paying already had they been closer to 10 mo/user. But it seems they're going the customer service tool route, and this is a pain point businesses are willing to pay for. In this area I'd say their #1 rival is zendesk, which does a better job of justifying their pricing on their site (which had me return to Front for what they do better). But Front won't be replacing anyone's free web…

I'm the co-founder at Missive[1], an email client for teams. Our vision is to become the communication hub for any business, by both replacing email client and chat app. A lot of people compares us to Front, but we are more focused on the email/chat experience than customer support experience. Thus our pricing reflects this vision, where we charge ~$8-$12/seat/month. [1] https://missiveapp.com/

We use Missive over at Canny for team email collaboration. It's super useful and pleasant to use.

Read receipts, shared inboxes, team communication on emails, and much more. Definitely worth the money.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#62

Post by ckluis »

_bmoj wrote: post #55
unabst wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are expensive, and we'd be paying already had they been closer to 10 mo/user. But it seems they're going the customer service tool route, and this is a pain point businesses are willing to pay for. In this area I'd say their #1 rival is zendesk, which does a better job of justifying their pricing on their site (which had me return to Front for what they do better). But Front won't be replacing anyone's free web…

While they have a few similarities, I'm not sure I'd put Zendesk as Front's main rival. They're doing similar things, but approaching them in totally different ways. Front is fully backing the shared inbox, while Zendesk's main messaging is to get away from that concept and move more towards Ticketing for a larger support team. Good to see more competition in the space though. Disclaimer: I work at Zendesk

I agree and disagree. I need ticketing, but I'd prefer Front add it as an option to specific email accounts.

sales@company.com - shared with sales team normal shared inbox

support@company.com - "add ticket option"

first.last@company.com - private email

@company - twitter account

A shared communication hub is a big win. If they could take over some of the internal chat as well - I'd gladly cut them a big fat check. Our helpdesk bill is not cheap. (not zendesk sadly).

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#65

Post by plehoux »

ckluis wrote: post #62
_bmoj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they have a few similarities, I'm not sure I'd put Zendesk as Front's main rival. They're doing similar things, but approaching them in totally different ways. Front is fully backing the shared inbox, while Zendesk's main messaging is to get away from that concept and move more towards Ticketing for a larger support team. Good to see more competition in the space though. Disclaimer: I work at Zendesk

I agree and disagree. I need ticketing, but I'd prefer Front add it as an option to specific email accounts. sales@company.com - shared with sales team normal shared inbox support@company.com - "add ticket option" first.last@company.com - private email @company - twitter account A shared communication hub is a big win. If they could take over some of the internal chat as well - I'd gladly cut them a big fat check. Ou…

Curious to know the "@company - twitter account" importance compare to the other one you have listed?

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#67

Post by codezero »

I’ve used front at Heap for about three years.

I’ve been extremely happy with their direction over the years. It started as a seemingly simple shared inbox. What attracted me also was the hot key setup was the same as gmail. This made switching from a rather hardcore gmail config to Front really easy.

At the time I predicted we’d outgrow it when we hit 10 people but we haven’t yet and the thing that will likely cause us to outgrow it are our customers.

The main thing that Front is missing for me, and it’s ok if they don’t service my specific needs, is a lack of ability to easily automate things based on information in either: our webapp, or our salesforce accounts/opportunities.

Being able to route conversations automatically based on external stuff we don’t have in front yet is becoming essential.

In fairness, if we had the resources we could implement a lot of this ourselves with their API, so it’s not even a very strong complaint against front.

The app is electron I believe, but it’s bloody fast. I care about my teams productivity and happiness a lot more than bells and whistles and Front is a pleasure to use day in and day out. I’ve sent something like 30000 emails in the past three years with Front (I know because Front also provides decent analytics!) and have never been frustrated because of Front. The same was not true for Zendesk, Desk, Helpscout, etc...

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#68

Post by ckluis »

plehoux wrote: post #65
ckluis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and disagree. I need ticketing, but I'd prefer Front add it as an option to specific email accounts. sales@company.com - shared with sales team normal shared inbox support@company.com - "add ticket option" first.last@company.com - private email @company - twitter account A shared communication hub is a big win. If they could take over some of the internal chat as well - I'd gladly cut them a big fat check. Ou…

Curious to know the "@company - twitter account" importance compare to the other one you have listed?

Less important for us as b2b/enterprisey, but omni-channel support could potentially allow a tweet to be turned into a ticket associated with a customer... that could be beneficial. Not so much for the day job, but for some of the companies I've been on the board of.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#69

Post by plehoux »

plehoux wrote: post #65
ckluis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and disagree. I need ticketing, but I'd prefer Front add it as an option to specific email accounts. sales@company.com - shared with sales team normal shared inbox support@company.com - "add ticket option" first.last@company.com - private email @company - twitter account A shared communication hub is a big win. If they could take over some of the internal chat as well - I'd gladly cut them a big fat check. Ou…

Curious to know the "@company - twitter account" importance compare to the other one you have listed?

Thanks, make sense. At Missive, we have yet to integrate with Twitter/Facebook... but as you mentioned even if it's less important, it's still a big sale argument for a platform like ours.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#70

Post by ericcholis »

codezero wrote: post #67

I’ve used front at Heap for about three years. I’ve been extremely happy with their direction over the years. It started as a seemingly simple shared inbox. What attracted me also was the hot key setup was the same as gmail. This made switching from a rather hardcore gmail config to Front really easy. At the time I predicted we’d outgrow it when we hit 10 people but we haven’t yet and the thing that will likely cause…

Thanks for this high-level overview. I'm evaluating Front vs similar apps in the space. I think the big value add for Front is that it augments service related email, whereas the others like Zendesk replaces it.
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