Front is a shared inbox built around email. Teams assign, discuss and track customer messages in a familiar email-style workspace, with chat, SMS, social and WhatsApp on higher plans, and it charges per seat. Cue is a customer service platform built around WhatsApp that brings WhatsApp, phone, email, Messenger and web chat into one inbox, and it prices by monthly active contacts with unlimited seats.

If your customer service runs mainly on email and your team works like an email team, Front is built for that. If most of your customers message you on WhatsApp and you want calls on the same customer record, Cue is the closer fit.

Front vs Cue at a glance

Front details are from front.com/pricing, checked October 2026.

What Front does well

Front is good at what it was designed for: making a team's shared inbox work like a team tool.

A familiar workspace. Front looks and feels like email, so teams moving off shared Gmail or Outlook mailboxes get going quickly.

Collaboration in the thread. Agents can assign conversations, leave internal comments, share drafts and tag colleagues without cluttering the customer reply.

Rules and routing. Inbox rules route messages by keyword, sender or channel, and templates speed up repeat answers.

Integrations. Front connects with CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot, project tools such as Asana, and offers webhooks and an API for custom workflows.

Analytics. Reports cover volumes, response times and resolution, filterable by team and channel.

If most of your customer contact is email, and especially if account managers and support share conversations, Front is a strong choice.

What Cue does

Cue is an omnichannel customer service platform built around WhatsApp. Cue's platform lets you handle customer queries across WhatsApp, phone, email, Messenger and web chat, with every conversation on one contact record.

• WhatsApp at the centre. A shared inbox on the WhatsApp Business Platform, with Broadcasts for updates, reminders and offers. Cue is a badged Meta Business Partner.

• Live Chat on your website. The web chat widget can be styled to your brand and feeds the same inbox.

• Chatbots and Flows. Build triage, routing and automated journeys in the Flows builder without code. The chatbot builder comes with the Automate plan.

• AI Agents. The platform's AI Agents and chatbots handle routine queries across WhatsApp, email, Messenger and web chat, answering from content you approve and handing to a person when they can't help. Payflex resolves 82% of customer queries with Cue's AI on its digital channels.

• Integrations. From the Automate plan, connect CRMs, ecommerce and booking systems through Cue integrations, including dealer management systems such as Keyloop for automotive teams.

• Unlimited seats. Everyone who needs the inbox can use it without a per-user charge.

Cue's dashboard brings together data from WhatsApp, email, Messenger and web chat, so you can see volumes and response times by channel and team. For calls, reporting at launch covers minutes used.

How Cue handles calls

With Cue Phone, calls arrive in the same inbox as WhatsApp, email, web chat and Messenger, matched to the contact by phone number, so the agent can see the customer's last messages before answering. A keypad menu with up to 12 options routes callers by team, department or site, and an out-of-hours message can point them to WhatsApp. Calls can be recorded and automatically transcribed onto the contact record, and calls are always answered by your team rather than AI.

Multichannel and ticketing compared

Front turns each incoming message into a conversation in a shared inbox, where it can be tagged, prioritised, assigned, merged or escalated. On the Starter plan you choose one channel type. Omnichannel, including social and WhatsApp, comes with Professional and Enterprise.

Cue brings every channel into one inbox from the first plan. With Cue, you can manage WhatsApp, phone, email, Messenger and web chat, all from a single inbox. Conversations can be auto-assigned (from Automate), routed by Flows, noted internally and followed up proactively with a WhatsApp message or a call from the same conversation.

The deciding question is usually where your customers start. Email-first customers suit Front's model. Customers who would rather message, and sometimes call, suit Cue's.

Phone in Front vs phone in Cue

Front lists voice and telephony on its pricing page but doesn't show plan availability or pricing there, so ask Front how calls would work for your plan.

Cue includes phone on every plan. Connect comes with one number, Automate with three and Scale with five, and every plan has 50 free outbound minutes a month with call recording and transcripts. Calls are distributed by round robin, least calls today or longest idle; agents can hold with your own hold music, transfer warm or cold, and make one-to-one outbound calls from a conversation. You can get a UK or EMEA number through Cue, including South Africa, or port an existing one.

Cue Phone doesn't do call forwarding to external numbers, dialling campaigns or AI answering. If you rely on those, keep a dedicated phone system alongside.

Security and compliance

Front publishes its security and compliance information on its website. Check its trust documentation against your requirements.

Cue supports GDPR in the UK and POPIA in South Africa. As with any vendor, ask for security documentation in writing before you sign.

Front vs Cue pricing

Front charges per seat, per month. Prices on front.com/pricing, checked October 2026 (billed annually):

WhatsApp is an add-on on Professional and Enterprise, charged at Meta's rates plus a 20% admin fee. Copilot is $20 per seat a month on Starter and Professional, and Autopilot starts at $0.05 per conversation.

Cue charges by monthly active contacts, the unique customers you talk to in a month, with unlimited seats. Prices are at 1,500 monthly active contacts, exclude VAT and are on a 12-month contract.

Extra AI resolutions are £0.99 each in bundles, or £1.49 out of bundle. WhatsApp message charges and extra phone minutes are priced separately; extra minutes start at £35 a month for 1,000 outbound. South African teams can see pricing in rand.

At 20 seats, Front's Professional plan is $1,300 a month before add-ons. That's arithmetic from Front's published per-seat price, not a quote. Cue's price doesn't change with the number of seats.

When to choose Front, and when to choose Cue

Choose Front if:

• most customer contact arrives by email

• your team already works in shared mailboxes and wants a familiar upgrade

• account management and support share conversations with lots of internal discussion

Choose Cue if:

• most of your customers contact you on WhatsApp

• you want calls and messages on the same contact record

• many people across branches or departments need inbox access

• you want AI Agents to handle routine enquiries on digital channels

Stellantis brands using Cue saw a 196% increase in customer response rate and a 14-point NPS improvement on WhatsApp.

Comparing more options? See our guide to Front alternatives or Trengo vs Cue.

See how Cue would fit

Connect with customers on WhatsApp, phone, email, Messenger and web chat, and keep your team focused on the conversations that need them. Book a demo or see Cue pricing.