How is Master Inbox different from a help desk?

Help desks are built around support tickets. Master Inbox is built around outbound replies: campaign attribution, intent labels, speed-to-lead, and booking. Many teams run both side by side.

Compare

The Hiver alternative built for outbound

Hiver is a strong shared inbox and help desk for support teams on Gmail, Outlook and more. Outbound reply handling is a different job: hundreds of sending mailboxes, LinkedIn in the mix, and a team that grows with volume. That is what Master Inbox is built for.

Start your free 7-day POC

Free 7-day POC. Unlimited users on every plan.

The real Master Inbox: replies from every mailbox labeled by intent, with campaign attribution

If your team answers customer requests from a shared company inbox, Hiver does that well and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The comparison below is about a different job: working the replies your cold outbound generates.

Master Inbox vs Hiver, feature by feature

The short version: Hiver is priced per seat and built around a shared team inbox. Master Inbox is priced on dedicated mailbox tiers with unlimited users, as low as $22 per client at scale, and built around outbound replies.

	Master Inbox	Hiver
Built for	Outbound agencies and sales teams	Customer support and service teams on Gmail, Outlook and other providers
Pricing model	Unlimited users. Priced on mailboxes and client workspaces	Per user per month, in Growth, Pro and Elite tiers
Hundreds of sending mailboxes	Designed for it. One operator can run 50+ inboxes	Built around inbound support inboxes
LinkedIn replies	Same thread as email, per prospect	No LinkedIn integration listed (checked 28 Oct 2026)
Sequencer integrations	Smartlead, Instantly, EmailBison, HeyReach, Lemlist and more	Business tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, Asana and Jira
AI on replies	Intent labels on every reply: interested, OOO, referral, pricing ask. Drafts in your voice	AI Agents, Copilot, tagging and sentiment for support conversations
Client workspaces	Isolated workspace per client, white-label client views	Shared inboxes per team
Reply routing	Replies leave through the sending domain the thread started on, headers intact	Replies sent from the connected shared inbox
CRM sync	HubSpot two-way sync, unmetered. Webhooks to any CRM	Salesforce and HubSpot integrations; API from the Pro plan

Swipe to see the full table

Comparison last verified: August 2026. Competitor features and pricing change; tell us if a row is out of date.

Why outbound teams actually switch

These are the four walls teams hit, in the order they usually hit them. All four come from real migration calls.

Master Inbox reporting: SLA tracking, reply coverage and per-channel breakdowns

You can't see which campaign a reply came from

A shared inbox shows you the message. It cannot tell you which sequencer, campaign, or step produced it, so you can't tell which campaigns book meetings and which just make noise. Master Inbox links every reply to its campaign and pushes the data back, so reporting means something.

AI labeling in Master Inbox: every reply classified by intent on your own model and prompt

Forwarding is a house of cards

Shared inboxes ingest outbound replies by forwarding rules, and at volume that breaks: threads split, headers change, deliverability suffers, and some replies simply never arrive. Master Inbox connects the mailboxes directly, so every thread arrives whole.

Reply Agents in Master Inbox: drafts held for review, success rates and pending queues

Half your conversations are on LinkedIn

Outbound runs on email and LinkedIn together, across automation tools and SDR profiles. A team inbox has never heard of any of that. Master Inbox threads both channels per prospect, so the meeting request hiding in a LinkedIn second reply gets seen.

Two responders becomes eight

One team we spoke to ran two people in their shared inbox and needed to scale to eight plus. On per-seat pricing that is a 4x bill before anyone answers a reply. Master Inbox has unlimited users on every plan, so scaling the team costs nothing.

Reps stop alt-tabbing to ChatGPT

The pattern in a shared inbox: read the reply, switch to an AI chat to draft, switch to the calendar to find a slot, paste it all back. Master Inbox drafts in place with your own LLM key and proposes real calendar availability in the reply.

The hot reply waits its turn

In a first-in-first-out shared inbox, a pricing question queues behind forty out-of-office notices. AI labels sort replies by intent the second they land, so your team works interested and meeting-request first, every time.

Questions we get

When is Hiver the better choice?

If your team answers customer requests from a shared company inbox, Hiver does that well and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

We already use Hiver for support. Do we have to switch?

No. Many teams keep Hiver for the customer inbox and run Master Inbox for outbound replies. They do different jobs, and nothing forces you to pick one inbox for both.

What are the best Hiver alternatives?

For a shared support inbox: Gmelius, Front, Help Scout, Zendesk, Missive or Intercom. For working cold outbound replies across many sending mailboxes and LinkedIn accounts, Master Inbox. Our blog compares seven Hiver alternatives side by side.

Is Hiver priced per user?

Yes. As of 28 October 2026 Hiver lists Growth, Pro and Elite plans priced per user per month. Master Inbox is priced on mailboxes and client workspaces with unlimited users on every plan.

Does Hiver work with LinkedIn?

Hiver's pricing, integrations and product pages did not list a LinkedIn integration when we checked on 28 October 2026. Master Inbox connects LinkedIn tools such as HeyReach, Expandi and Aimfox and threads them next to email per prospect.

Is Master Inbox a help desk?

No, and that is the point. Help desks and shared inboxes are built around tickets from customers. Master Inbox is built around replies from prospects: campaign attribution, intent labels, speed-to-lead, and booking. Many teams keep a help desk for support and run Master Inbox for outbound.

What does per-seat pricing actually cost at scale?

Hiver charges per user per month, so a reply team that grows from two to eight people roughly quadruples the bill without answering a single extra reply better. Master Inbox includes unlimited users on every plan and is priced on dedicated mailbox tiers, as low as $22 per client at scale, so the cost of adding people is zero.

Can it tell me which campaign a reply came from?

Yes. Replies are linked to the sequencer, campaign, and lead that produced them, and activity flows back into your sequencer and CRM. That attribution is the single most common reason outbound teams tell us a shared inbox stopped working for them.

We pipe replies in with forwarding rules today. Why change that?

Forwarding at outbound volume splits threads, rewrites headers, hurts deliverability, and silently drops messages. Master Inbox connects your mailboxes directly by OAuth or API key, so threads stay whole and nothing depends on a forwarding rule someone forgot about.

Does Master Inbox replace my sequencer?

No. Your sequencer keeps sending. Master Inbox is post-send: it captures, tags, and routes every reply your campaigns generate, across email and LinkedIn.

How fast is setup?

Onboarding is white-glove and most teams are live the same week. Sequencers connect by API key, mailboxes by OAuth, and one-click imports cover the common inbox providers.

Also comparing? Masterinbox alternative · Front alternative

Compared against Hiver's public documentation, last checked 21 September 2026. Hiver is a trademark of its owner; Master Inbox is an independent product and is not affiliated with Hiver.