Who this roundup is for
Two to ten people share one address: contact@, info@ or support@. Last week two of you answered the same customer with different quotes. Another message sat for four days because everyone assumed a colleague had it. You want the tool that fixes this without turning email into an IT project.
This roundup covers what small teams actually shortlist in 2026: Missive, Gmelius, Hiver, Help Scout, Front, the Google Groups Collaborative Inbox, the options already built into Gmail and Microsoft 365, and Trupeo.
One thing before we start: Trupeo is our product. Rather than pose as a neutral reviewer, we say it upfront and play it straight. Every section names what the tool genuinely does best and who should buy it. On several rows of this comparison the honest answer is not us, and we write it down.
How we compared
Three rules.
First, we price for the whole team, never per seat. “$25 per user per month” reads small on a pricing page. Five people turn it into $125 a month, which is $1,500 a year. That multiplication is the entire story of shared inbox pricing for small teams, so we do it in the open.
Second, every price below was checked on the vendor’s official pricing page in July 2026, in the currency displayed there: US dollars for all the paid competitors, euros for Trupeo. Figures are annual-billing rates, with one exception we flag where it matters: Help Scout’s page prints monthly-billing prices. Everywhere else, paying month to month costs more.
Third, we judge from a small-team seat: no support department, nobody whose job is configuring software, and limited patience for tools that need an admin manual. A product can be excellent and still be the wrong size for three people.
What a team of five pays per month
| Tool | Entry price (July 2026) | Team of 5, per month | Pick it if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Groups Collaborative Inbox | Free | $0 | Budget is zero and volume is low |
| Gmail delegation / Microsoft 365 shared mailbox | Included with your current accounts | $0 extra | One person effectively owns the box |
| Trupeo | 10 EUR/month flat for the whole team | 10 EUR | You want a simple shared inbox on the mailbox you already have, IMAP included |
| Missive | $14/user/month | $70 | You want email, chat and SMS in one app |
| Gmelius | $19/user/month | $95 | Your team lives in Gmail and wants to stay there |
| Hiver | $25/user/month | $125 | You run a Gmail support desk that will grow |
| Help Scout | $25/user/month (monthly billing) | $125 | A knowledge base would cut your volume |
| Front | $25/user/month | $125 | You are a larger ops team |
Prices from each vendor’s official pricing page, July 2026, annual billing. Monthly billing runs higher: Hiver moves to $35 and Gmelius to $21. The Help Scout row is the exception: its page prints monthly-billing prices, and annual billing takes about 16% off, so a team of five lands near $105. Missive’s entry plan is capped at 5 users, Front’s at 10 seats.
Missive: chat and SMS next to your email
Missive is the cheapest of the paid competitors: the Starter plan costs $14 per user per month billed yearly, and it is capped at 5 users. Higher plans move to $24 and $36. A free plan exists, though the pricing page does not advertise it: the billing documentation describes 3 users, 2 shared accounts and a 15-day conversation history. That history limit makes it a demo rather than a home; we cover it in the free shared mailbox options.
Its genuine strength is putting several channels in one app: email alongside chat and SMS. If customers reach you on more than one channel, that is a serious argument. Missive also works with IMAP mailboxes, not only Gmail. The flip side: if email is your only channel, you pay for a denser app than you need, and the bill still grows with every person: $70 a month for five. Our detailed comparison: Trupeo vs Missive.
Gmelius: for teams that will not leave Gmail
Gmelius builds the shared inbox into Gmail itself: assignment, notes and labels live inside the mail client your team already knows. Nobody switches apps, and that is its real strength. On the official pricing page in July 2026, the entry Meli plan costs $19 per user per month billed annually ($21 monthly), with higher plans at $25 and $40. There is a 7-day trial and no free tier.
The limit is structural: Gmelius only works with Gmail. If even one of your addresses lives elsewhere, on Outlook or on a hosting provider’s IMAP server, the tool is out. Five people: $95 a month. See Trupeo vs Gmelius.
Hiver: a Gmail support desk aiming bigger
Hiver started as a Gmail-based shared inbox. In 2026 the product presents itself as “Hiver Omni”, an omnichannel support platform, and the name alone tells you who it now targets: larger support operations. Unusually for this list, a free plan exists. Beyond it, the Growth plan costs $25 per user per month billed annually ($35 monthly), and every plan starts at a 2-seat minimum.
Five people on Growth: $125 a month. A ten-person support desk that will be twenty next year should take Hiver seriously. Three people on contact@ will mostly find menus they never open. See Trupeo vs Hiver.
Help Scout: when a knowledge base would cut your email
Help Scout is a full helpdesk, not just a shared inbox. Its most useful argument for a small team is Docs, the knowledge base: good public help pages stop a share of emails before they are even written.
A free plan exists, but read the limits: 5 users, 1 inbox, 100 contacts per month and 10 saved replies. One hundred contacts a month is roughly five new people per working day; a normally busy shop passes that quickly. Beyond it, the page prints monthly-billing prices: Standard at $25 per user per month, Plus at $45, and Pro at $75 with a 10-user minimum, which says plenty about the intended customer. Annual billing takes about 16% off those figures. Five people on Standard: $125 a month billed monthly, around $105 on annual. See Trupeo vs Help Scout.
Front: excellent, and built for someone bigger
Front is a genuinely good product, and it is open about who it serves: ops teams that handle email at scale. In July 2026 the Starter plan costs $25 per seat per month billed annually and stops at 10 seats; the features Front is known for mostly live in the Professional plan at $65 and Enterprise at $105. There is a 14-day trial and no free tier.
That price ladder describes the ideal customer: fifteen to a hundred people, SLAs, integrations. For those teams Front is honestly excellent, and it accepts IMAP mailboxes. For a five-person shop, $125 a month buys the entry ticket of a product designed for someone else. See Trupeo vs Front.
Google Groups Collaborative Inbox: free is a feature
Google Groups hides a little-known feature called Collaborative Inbox. A member can take a conversation, have it assigned to them, and mark it complete. It is free, and it covers the minimum need: knowing who handles what.
The limits are the trade for the price. The interface is a forum, not a mailbox. There are no internal notes. A group owner or manager has to switch the feature on and grant the right permissions. And do not confuse it with a plain distribution list, which spreads copies of each message with zero coordination: we explain the difference in shared mailbox vs distribution list. If the budget is zero and the address gets a handful of messages a day, this is a defensible choice. Many teams should in fact start here.
The native options: fine while one person owns the box
Gmail and Microsoft 365 already ship ways to share access, at no extra cost.
Gmail delegation lets colleagues read and reply without knowing the password. It is free and already there, but it has no assignment, no status and no internal notes: we covered the real limits of Gmail delegation for a team.
The Microsoft 365 shared mailbox is included as long as each member already has an Exchange Online license: up to 25 users and 50 GB of storage without paying for an extra seat. Again, no owner per conversation. Our guide: the Microsoft 365 shared mailbox for a small team.
The genuine sweet spot for the native options: one person runs the box and a colleague covers during holidays. Once two or three people answer it daily, the classic problems return: nobody owns a message, “read” stops meaning anything, the Sent folder becomes your audit tool, and the context moves to WhatsApp.
Where Trupeo fits
Trupeo does one thing: it turns the mailbox you already have, Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft 365 or any IMAP provider, into a team shared inbox. Everyone signs in with their own login, no shared password. Every conversation gets one owner, an open or done status, internal notes the customer never sees, tags and search.
The price takes the opposite bet from the table above: 10 EUR a month for the whole team, whatever the head count. The “team of 5” column reads $70 to $125 for the paid competitors; for Trupeo it reads 10 EUR, and it will still read 10 EUR when you are eight.
What Trupeo does not do, said plainly: no analytics dashboards, no SLA automation, no chat, no SMS channels, no knowledge base. If you need those, reread the Missive, Help Scout and Front sections: they do it better. If your need fits in one sentence, “everyone should know who answers what, without sharing a password”, that is exactly Trupeo’s scope. And IMAP support matters more than it looks: a small team’s address often lives at a hosting provider, where Gmail-only tools cannot follow. Trupeo is a French product, built for small structures: small businesses, schools and non-profits.
Choosing in five minutes
Budget is zero and volume is low: take the Google Groups Collaborative Inbox. One person runs the address and another covers: stay on Gmail delegation or the Microsoft 365 shared mailbox. Customers write by SMS and chat as much as by email: Missive. A knowledge base would cut your volume: Help Scout. You run a support desk that hires all year: Hiver or Front. Two to ten people, email as the main channel, and a preference for one simple tool at a flat price: Trupeo, starting with our complete shared inbox guide.
One last point that holds for every tool here: a shared address is first an organization problem. One owner per message and a “done” state change more than any feature in the table.
Sources:
- Pricing · Missive: Starter at $14 per user per month capped at 5 users and the 30-day trial, as observed in July 2026.
- Billing and plans (Missive Docs): the free plan’s limits of 3 users, 2 shared accounts and 15 days of history.
- Gmelius Pricing: the Meli plan at $19 per user per month billed annually ($21 monthly), the higher plans at $25 and $40, the 7-day trial and the absence of a free plan, as observed in July 2026.
- Hiver Omni Pricing: the free plan, Growth at $25 per user per month billed annually ($35 monthly), the 2-seat minimum and the omnichannel positioning, as observed in July 2026.
- Help Scout Pricing: the free plan limits (5 users, 1 inbox, 100 contacts per month, 10 saved replies), the Standard, Plus and Pro monthly-billing prices and the 16% annual-billing discount, as observed in July 2026.
- Front Pricing and Plans: Starter at $25 per seat capped at 10 seats, the Professional and Enterprise plans, and the 14-day trial, as observed in July 2026.
- About shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365: a shared mailbox stores up to 50 GB of data without a license and supports a maximum of 25 users.