Front

Front feels like email. Your reporting needs it to behave like a queue.

Smart Instinct is a helpdesk implementation and AI agent setup agency. We configure Front end to end: shared inboxes, rules, tags, workflows, and the integrations that keep an email-first team measurable.

Book a free 15-minute call Or start with the $750 audit

Builds are $3,750, $10,500 or $17,500, fixed.

What we configure

Front wins because it does not feel like a ticketing system. The cost of that is a tag taxonomy nobody agreed on and reporting that cannot group anything reliably.

Shared inbox structure and ownership, so conversations do not sit unclaimed.
Rules engine consolidated rather than patched again, with the dead rules retired.
Tag taxonomy your reporting can group by, agreed once and enforced.
Workflows for handoffs, approvals and escalation paths.
Integrations into the systems agents otherwise open in another tab.
Analytics configured to answer the questions leadership actually asks.
Knowledge and canned response hygiene, rewritten where they contradict each other.

Best for

Your team lives in email and you want structure without a ticket paradigm.
You need reporting that groups by topic reliably.
You want rules consolidated rather than patched again.
You want a fixed price and a documented handoff.
Someone internal will own the configuration afterward.

Not a fit if

You need a full ticketing model with SLAs at the object level.
You want a guaranteed deflection percentage.
You need agent staffing or BPO.
Your budget is under $750, which is the audit floor.

What it costs

The same numbers as every other page on this site. Pricing does not vary by platform.

Audit, $750 flat. One helpdesk, one to two weeks, credited toward any project booked within 30 days.
Essential build, $3,750. 33 hours of build time, one platform, every channel, one brand. Two to four weeks.
Professional build, $10,500. 90 hours of build time, one platform, every channel, 2 brands, AI that takes actions. Three to five weeks.
Premium build, $17,500. 150 hours of build time, up to 2 platforms, 3 brands, every channel. Four to six weeks.
Retainers are $1,000, $2,400 or $4,600 a month. Migrations start at $3,500, fixed before we start. Enterprise starts at $25,000, fixed before we start.

Each tier is a fixed price for the scope limits listed, not for a company of a given size. Essential, Professional and Premium include up to 33, 90 and 150 hours, good for 90 days from kickoff, and nothing past that is billed without your OK. Your key tools connected, within your included hours. Need more? Extra hours are $110, agreed before we start. Past a limit: $3,000 per brand, $4,500 per platform. Agent counts are guidance, not a rule. Historical migration is never part of a build tier. It starts at $3,500, fixed before we start.

Book a free 15-minute call See all pricing

Questions we get on the call

Can we get real SLA behaviour out of Front?

Partly. Front time goal rules (formerly SLA rules) set reply and resolution targets, warn before a breach and tag overdue conversations. In our reading, they run on open conversations through rules and tags, not as SLA policies attached to tickets with targets per priority the way Zendesk does. If contractual SLAs per account are the reason you are buying, we will tell you Front is the wrong tool rather than build you something fragile.

Why does our reporting never group properly?

Almost always the tag taxonomy. Tags accumulate organically, three people invent variations of the same one, and analytics has nothing consistent to group by. Fixing that is usually the highest-value hour of the whole build.