Hiver Review (2026)
Help desk features layered inside Gmail, for teams whose real objection to a support platform is leaving their inbox.
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What the score measures. Five things we can verify from published material: whether pricing is transparent, whether the product can act on your systems or only answer from documents, whether the vendor still owns its own roadmap, how much independent review evidence exists, and whether the bill stays predictable as volume grows. Weighted, then scored against an ideal platform that scores 5.
BEST FOR: TEAMS THAT REFUSE TO LEAVE GMAIL · LAST UPDATED 2026-08-11
Hiver in depth
Hiver's insight is behavioural rather than technical. Plenty of small teams have bought a help desk, found their agents kept working in Gmail anyway, and ended up with a ticketing system that nobody updated.
So Hiver puts the help desk inside Gmail. Assignment, status, notes, SLAs and analytics all appear in the Gmail interface your team already lives in. There is nothing new to learn, which is precisely the point.
What it does
- Shared inboxes inside Gmail
- Assignment, status and internal notes without leaving email
- SLA tracking and automation rules
- AI summarisation and reply drafting
- Analytics on response and resolution time
- WhatsApp, chat and voice channels
More detail on how it works
The limit is the same as the strength. You are bound by what Gmail can do, and at genuine scale a purpose-built platform will out-perform an inbox with a layer on top.
Shared inboxes in Gmail
The core feature and the reason to buy. Support@ becomes a queue with assignment and status without anyone leaving the interface they use for everything else. Adoption problems disappear because there is no new tool.
SLAs and automation
Competent rules and SLA tracking. Less powerful than Zendesk or Freshdesk automation, and sufficient for the team size Hiver targets.
AI drafting and summarisation
Present, bundled from the $25 tier, and useful. Treat it as a convenience rather than a differentiator, and read the section above before buying on the strength of the agent marketing.
Two products now
Hiver in Gmail is the original Chrome extension. Hiver Omni is a browser-based omnichannel workspace with chat, Slack and voice, priced identically. If the Gmail ceiling is your worry, Omni is the answer Hiver would rather sell you.
Setting Hiver up
Realistic time to a working deployment: Days to weeks. These are the standard steps for this category. We have not published a walkthrough specific to this tool yet.
- 01
Create the workspace and add seats
Seat count is what you are billed on, so confirm who genuinely needs a full agent licence versus a viewer.
- 02
Connect your channels
Email forwarding or domain records, chat widget, social accounts. DNS changes may take hours to propagate.
- 03
Import history and macros
The long part. Expect the importer to bring tickets across cleanly and your automations not at all.
- 04
Rebuild routing and SLAs
Rules rarely port between platforms. Budget time to rewrite them rather than translate them.
- 05
Turn on the AI features
Check whether AI is included in your tier or a separate line item — in this category it is frequently the latter.
- 06
Run both systems in parallel
A week of overlap costs one month of double licence fees and saves you from discovering gaps with live customers.
The step that takes longer than they imply. Migration. Moving ticket history, macros and routing rules from an existing help desk is the bulk of the work and no vendor's importer handles all of it.
What the AI actually does
Every platform here says “AI agent”. It covers a bot that reads your help centre and a system that can refund a customer. This is which one you are buying.
Hiver's AI Agents page and Hiver's pricing page describe different products, and the pricing page is the one you can buy from.
The marketing walks an agent through a refund across Salesforce, NetSuite and Stripe; the plan tables mark AI Operating Procedures, the mechanism that would run it, as coming soon on every tier.
- The AI Agents page walks through a refund: check Salesforce for the contract, chase the customer for missing details, pull invoice data from NetSuite, check the refund policy, route an approval to finance, trigger the refund in Stripe
- The FAQ at the foot of that same page lists AI Actions that resolve queries end to end, and AI Automations that trigger multi-step workflows, as capabilities planned for the future
- Every plan table marks AI Operating Procedures and AI Knowledge Builder COMING SOON, on both the Gmail and the Omni product line
- What that FAQ says works today without a human: categorise conversations, detect urgency and sentiment, assign tags, auto-close thank-you replies, answer FAQs and trigger workflows you already built
- So we classify it as answering rather than acting until the actions ship. AI Agents and AI Copilot are included from Growth, $25 per user per month annually or $35 monthly
Who Should Use It
The second list is the more useful one.
Small teams committed to Gmail
If a help desk migration has failed here before because nobody used it, Hiver is the answer to that specific failure.
Teams with modest volume
Tens of conversations a day rather than hundreds. Within that range the Gmail constraint costs you nothing.
Businesses with several shared addresses
Support@, billing@, orders@ all as managed queues is the most common reason people find Hiver.
Who should look elsewhere. High-volume support and complex routing. Gmail is a ceiling, and above a few hundred conversations a day you will feel it. Also not for teams on Microsoft 365 — the product is built for Gmail, and Outlook-first alternatives exist.
Strengths and Weaknesses
What Works
- The help desk lives inside Gmail, which removes the adoption problem outright
- AI Agents and AI Copilot are bundled into the $25 tier rather than sold as an add-on
- Genuine free plan, and a free trial that needs no sales call
- Multiple shared inboxes handled cleanly: support@, billing@, orders@
- Hiver Omni gives the same team a browser-based option if Gmail stops fitting
What Does Not
- The agentic capability the marketing leads on is marked coming soon on the pricing page
- Monthly billing costs 40% more than annual at the entry tier: $35 against $25
- Every plan button is Book a demo, including the free one
- Gmail is a ceiling above a few hundred conversations a day
- No use to teams outside Google Workspace unless they take Omni instead
Hiver pricing
Read from hiverhq.com/pricing/hiver-in-gmail and /hiver-omni, read in-browser on both billing toggles. Identical tiers on both product lines on 2026-08-11.
$0
Shared inbox and ticketing, email and help centre
$25
/user/moAnnual. $35 billed monthly. AI Agents and AI Copilot included; AI Operating Procedures and AI Knowledge Builder marked COMING SOON
$55
/user/moAnnual. $65 billed monthly. Customer portal, SLAs, CSAT, API access
$85
/user/moAnnual. $95 billed monthly. AI QA, skill-based routing, SSO and custom roles
$30
/voice seat/mo1,000 pooled minutes per voice seat, then $0.03 a minute
Verified 2026-08-11 · hiverhq.com/pricing/hiver-in-gmail and /hiver-omni, read in-browser on both billing toggles. Identical tiers on both product lines
Hiver publishes per-seat pricing on both product lines, and the tiers are the same for each: Growth $25, Pro $55 and Elite $85 per user per month on annual billing, with a free plan below them.
Monthly billing is $35, $65 and $95, which is 40% more at the entry tier against a median annual discount of about 20% across the platforms we track. Voice on Omni is a $30 per seat add-on with 1,000 pooled minutes and $0.03 a minute after.
The full arithmetic
The honest comparison is against Google Workspace plus nothing. If your team currently shares an inbox by shouting across the room, Hiver's per-seat cost buys real structure for less than a full platform. Against Freshdesk at $18 or Zoho at $7 the calculus changes: those are complete platforms with stronger automation. Hiver's premium is for not making your team learn anything.
INTEGRATIONS
Our Recommendation
Who we would tell to buy this, and who we would not.
Hiver is the right buy when your problem is adoption rather than capability. A team that has already abandoned one help desk because agents kept replying from Gmail will use Hiver, and using a weaker tool beats not using a stronger one. Below a few hundred conversations a day the Gmail ceiling is invisible. Above that, or if you need serious routing and automation, Freshdesk and Zoho Desk are both cheaper per seat and considerably more capable — you would just have to persuade your team to open them.
Where we write about Hiver
One piece on this site names it.
- It used to bill by contact with unlimited agents — the only platform here whose cost did not move with headcount. That property is gone, and it was the reason most people chose it.Standard $25, Plus $45, Pro $75 with a ten-seat minimum. Four meters now run at once. What the change costs a team that picked Help Scout for the old model, and where to go instead.
Similar Tools
Others in help desk & ticketing.
HappyFox
Teams with many agents and moderate ticket volume, where per-seat pricing has become punitive
3.9 / 5 · $49/seatZendesk AI Agents
Teams already standardised on Zendesk
4.2 / 5 · $55/seatFreshdesk with Freddy AI
Mid-market teams who find Zendesk overpriced
4.2 / 5 · $19/seatHelp Scout
Small teams who want email support done well and nothing more
3.9 / 5 · $25/seatCompared Head to Head
Same category, so the comparison is a real decision rather than a keyword.
Frequently Asked
The questions people actually search for about Hiver.
What is Hiver used for?
Turning Gmail into a help desk — shared inboxes with assignment, status, SLAs and analytics, without leaving the Gmail interface.
How much does Hiver cost?
Growth $25, Pro $55 and Elite $85 per user per month on annual billing, or $35, $65 and $95 monthly, with a free plan below. Same tiers for Hiver in Gmail and Hiver Omni.
Does Hiver work with Outlook?
It is built for Gmail and Google Workspace. Microsoft 365 teams should look at Outlook-first alternatives instead.
Is Hiver better than Freshdesk?
Not on capability — Freshdesk has stronger automation and AI for a similar price. Hiver is better if your team will actually use it and would ignore Freshdesk.
Does Hiver have AI?
Yes, bundled from the $25 Growth tier: tagging, urgency and sentiment detection, summarisation, reply drafting and FAQ answers. The agentic parts Hiver markets — running procedures across Salesforce, NetSuite and Stripe — depend on AI Operating Procedures, which its own pricing page marks coming soon.
Can Hiver handle high ticket volume?
Up to a few hundred conversations a day comfortably. Beyond that the Gmail constraint becomes a real limit and a purpose-built platform wins.
What are the main Hiver alternatives?
Front for a shared inbox that is not Gmail-bound, Help Scout for contact-based pricing, Freshdesk or Zoho Desk for a full platform at lower per-seat cost.