How to migrate from Front and export your history

You move from Front by exporting your conversation history from their admin settings to a CSV or JSON file before you close your account. After saving your data, you connect your email channels to a new provider. You will likely lose internal comments and specific threading logic during the move, so keep your raw export files for permanent record.

How do I export my data from Front?

I have learned the hard way that you never close a service until you have the data in your own hands. In the restaurant group I managed, we once lost three years of catering leads because I trusted a cloud provider to keep the lights on after I hit cancel. Do not make that mistake with your customer history.

You should go to the admin settings in your Front dashboard to find the export options. You are looking for an export of your conversations. Usually, this comes in a JSON or CSV format. This file is not pretty to look at, but it contains the text of your emails and the contact details of your customers.

Do this export while your credit card is still active on the account. Many companies restrict your access to data tools the moment you stop paying. I recommend doing a full export, saving it to a secure company drive, and then verifying that the files actually open before you proceed with the migration.

What will I lose when I switch to a new tool?

I must be honest with you about migrations. No move is perfect. When you move from one tool to another, you are going to lose the way your messages are threaded. The new system might see one long conversation as five separate emails. That is just how the technology works.

Internal notes are another casualty. In Front, you can write a comment next to an email that only your team sees. This is one of their best features. However, those comments are not part of the standard email protocol. When you move to a new inbox, those comments will likely stay behind in your export file rather than appearing in the new interface.

Custom fields and tags also struggle to survive the trip. If you have tagged a customer as a "VIP" or "Late Payer" in Front, you will likely have to recreate those tags in your new system. It is a manual process. It takes time. I have spent many nights until 2 am re-tagging contacts because I thought the migration would be automatic. It never is.

Why should I care about seat based pricing?

I ran a regional dental practice with eleven front desks. Each desk had a person who needed to see the incoming mail. In many software models, that means paying for eleven seats. Front charges 25 dollars per seat per month for their Starter plan. For that dental office, we would have paid 275 dollars every month just to let the staff read the mail.

You should check their pricing at https://front.com/pricing to see the current rates, as they do change. But the core issue remains: when you pay per seat, you are taxed for growing your team. I always hated that. It makes you hesitate to hire a new receptionist or a part-time helper because you have to factor in the software cost.

In the market today, 4 out of the 12 major support tools do not offer a free tier at all. Front is one of those four, alongside Zendesk, LiveChat, and Intercom. If you are a small business trying to keep your overhead low, paying 25 dollars for every single person who touches a keyboard is a heavy lift.

How do I set up a new shared inbox?

Setting up a new system like LastWorker is different because the cost structure is gone. Live chat and email support are free forever here. You get unlimited conversations and unlimited teammates without ever putting in a credit card.

You start by connecting your support email address. This is usually done through a simple forwarding rule in your email provider. Once the mail starts flowing into the shared inbox, you can invite your entire team. Since there are no per-seat fees, you can add everyone from the owner to the intern.

You also get a knowledge base and a public help center for free. I found in my service businesses that a good help center stops the same question from being asked fifty times a day. If I can put the restaurant's holiday hours or the dental office's insurance list online, my team spends less time on the phone and more time helping the people standing in front of them.

Is the AI feature worth the extra cost?

Front offers AI tools like Autopilot starting at 5 cents per conversation. They also have Copilot and Smart QA for 20 dollars per seat per month. That is a lot of money to commit to before you even know if the AI can handle your specific customers.

At LastWorker, we take a different path. AI is off by default. Everything is manual until you decide otherwise. If you want the AI to reply to a chat, an email, or an SMS, it costs 0.04 dollars. You only pay when it actually generates a reply. There is no monthly subscription fee for the AI.

If you want the AI to answer a phone call, it costs 0.01 dollar per minute. This includes the carrier cost. I have watched good leads die in a voicemail box at 3 am because no one was there to answer. Having an AI answer for a penny a minute is a lot cheaper than losing a 500 dollar dental cleaning or a 2,000 dollar catering gig.

Should I keep my phone and SMS separate?

In my experience, customers do not care how you want to be contacted. They will text the landline, they will email the personal address of the manager, and they will call during the lunch rush. Front handles chat and email, but it does not focus on the phone side of the house in the same way.

With LastWorker, you can get a phone number for 1 dollar a month. Inbound SMS messages are free. Outbound SMS costs 0.03 dollars per segment. Having everything in one place matters. When a customer calls and then sends an email ten minutes later, you should see both of those things in one history.

When I was writing phone scripts at 2 am for my receptionists, I wanted them to have the full context. If they could see that the person calling had already sent an email about a broken tooth, the conversation went much better. It makes your small business look like a professional operation.

How do I handle the transition period?

Do not turn off Front the moment you sign up for a new tool. I suggest a 7-day overlap. Set up your new shared inbox, connect your email, and start handling new messages there. Keep Front open in a separate tab so you can look up old conversations that did not migrate perfectly.

During this week, you can train your team on the new interface. Since tools like LastWorker include the shared inbox, contacts, tickets, and saved replies for free, there is no financial penalty for taking your time. You are not being charged for the seats while you learn.

Once you are confident that all new mail is coming into the new system and your team knows how to use the saved replies, you can finally cancel the old subscription. Just make sure you have that final export file saved. You never know when you might need to look up an email from three years ago for a tax audit or a customer dispute.

What should I expect for my monthly bill?

If you move to LastWorker, your bill will likely look very different. If you only use email and live chat with no AI, your bill is 0.00 dollars. There is no credit card required to start, and those core features are free forever.

If you choose to use the phone and AI features, you pay for what you use. A phone number is 1 dollar. If the AI answers 100 emails in a month, that is 4 dollars. If the AI spends 100 minutes on the phone with customers, that is 1 dollar.

Compare that to the 25 dollars per seat you might be paying now. For a team of five, you are moving from 125 dollars a month to something closer to 6 or 7 dollars, depending on your volume. That is money that stays in your business. It can go toward better equipment for the kitchen or better chairs for the waiting room. That is how you run a service business that actually lasts.