Front AI: Why Autopilot Is an Add-On at Every Tier
Front sells five distinct AI products, and which ones you get depends less on your plan than on what you are willing to buy separately. That is the thing worth knowing before you price it out, because Front’s plan table and its AI table do not line up the way you would expect.
Front is a shared inbox and customer service platform used by 9,300+ companies, so this is a team purchase rather than a personal email upgrade. The AI is aimed at resolution volume and quality, not at making your own morning faster.
The five AI products
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| AI Topics | Classifies and tags incoming conversations automatically |
| Copilot | Assists an agent while they work a conversation |
| Autopilot | Resolves conversations without an agent, past happy-path automation |
| Smart QA | Reviews conversations for quality without sampling blind spots |
| Smart CSAT | Derives satisfaction signals rather than relying on survey responses |
Autopilot is the one that matters commercially. Copilot makes an agent faster; Autopilot means a conversation never reaches an agent. Front markets it as going “beyond happy-path automation,” which is the correct place to set expectations, since the easy cases were already automatable.
What each plan costs
Front publishes annual pricing only, with a note that it saves 24% against monthly. There is no monthly toggle on the pricing page, so the figures below are the annual commitment.
| Plan | Price | Seat ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $25 / seat / mo | Up to 10 seats |
| Professional | $65 / seat / mo | Up to 50 seats |
| Enterprise | $105 / seat / mo | No stated ceiling |
The jump from Starter to Professional is significant, and it mostly buys omnichannel. Starter is single channel type only, so if you handle email plus SMS or social, you are on Professional at minimum regardless of team size.
Where the AI actually sits
This is the part that surprises people:
| AI product | Starter | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Topics | Included | Included | Included |
| Copilot | Add-on | Add-on | Included |
| Smart QA | Add-on | Add-on | Included |
| Smart CSAT | Add-on | Add-on | Included |
| Autopilot | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on |
Two conclusions follow.
Enterprise is the AI plan. Copilot, Smart QA and Smart CSAT are bundled only at $105 per seat per month. Below that they are line items you negotiate on top of a seat price that is already $25 or $65. A ten-seat team on Professional wanting Copilot is not paying $65 a seat, and the real number is not published.
Autopilot is never included. It is an add-on at every tier, including Enterprise. The most autonomous product Front sells is separately priced no matter how much you are already spending, which tells you Front prices it against deflected ticket volume rather than headcount. That is a rational way to sell it and it does mean any budget you build from the public plan table will be short.
If you are evaluating Front on cost, the practical advice is to get Autopilot quoted explicitly and early, because it is the feature most likely to have motivated the evaluation and the one guaranteed not to be in the sticker price.
What Front AI is for, and what it is not
Front is built around a queue of inbound customer conversations and a team that works them. Its AI is measured in resolution rate, handle time and quality scores. If that is your problem, Front is a serious product and the AI is aimed squarely at it.
It is a different tool from a personal assistant. Front will not manage your own calendar, prep you for meetings, chase your own unanswered emails, or run operational work across your finance and project tools. Those are not gaps in Front so much as a different category, and a team evaluating Front for customer support should not expect them.
The boundary Front does share with every assistant product: its AI works the conversations that arrive in Front. Work that spans systems, or that needs to start from something other than an inbound message, sits outside the platform.
The operational layer alongside it
Plenty of teams run Front for customer conversations and still have a pile of recurring internal work nobody owns. That is where Carly fits, next to Front rather than instead of it.
Carly runs in the cloud on triggers: an inbound email, a CRM change, a calendar event, or a schedule starts the run with nothing open. It connects natively to 260+ apps across 45+ categories, and reaches anything else with a public API through your own key pasted at carlyassistant.com/integrations. It also gets its own email address, so colleagues and systems can hand it work directly.
The work that typically falls between a support platform and a project tool:
- When a deal closes, build the onboarding doc, post it to Slack, and schedule the kickoff call.
- When an invoice passes thirty days unpaid, chase it and log the chase against the account.
- Every Monday at 8am, assemble last week’s numbers from your analytics and billing tools and send the summary.
Carly is free for Zapier-style workflows, with AI agents from $35/month, which makes it viable for the long tail of small recurring jobs that never justify a seat on a CX platform.
For the broader comparison, Front alternatives covers the field and Missive vs Front is the head to head people ask about most.
FAQ
Is Front AI included in the price? Partly. AI Topics is included on every plan. Copilot, Smart QA and Smart CSAT are included only on Enterprise at $105 per seat per month and are add-ons below that. Autopilot is an add-on on all three plans.
How much does Front Autopilot cost? Front does not publish a price. It is listed as an add-on across Starter, Professional and Enterprise, so it has to be quoted. Ask for it up front if resolution deflection is why you are evaluating Front.
What is the difference between Front Copilot and Autopilot? Copilot assists a human agent working a conversation. Autopilot resolves conversations without an agent involved. Copilot improves handle time; Autopilot removes volume.
Does Front have monthly billing? The pricing page publishes annual pricing only and notes it saves 24% versus monthly, so monthly exists but is not listed publicly. Budget from the annual figures.
Is Front a good personal AI email assistant? No, and it is not trying to be. Front is a team platform for inbound customer conversations. For personal inbox and calendar work that runs on triggers across your whole stack, Carly is the different shape of tool.
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