LastWorker vs Front: Pricing and Features for Small Teams

LastWorker is a free help desk for teams that need live chat and email without per-seat fees or subscriptions. Front is a premium shared inbox designed for high-level email collaboration starting at 25 dollars per seat monthly. LastWorker suits businesses watching costs: Front is for teams prioritizing internal discussion on complex email threads before replying to customers.

Why do small businesses choose Front over other tools?

I have spent years managing front desks for dental practices and restaurants. I know how messy a shared Gmail login gets. Three people are trying to answer the same customer. One person starts a draft, another person sends a different reply, and the customer gets two conflicting answers. It makes the business look disorganized.

Front solves this problem better than almost any tool I have used. They built their entire system around the idea that email is the primary way you talk to customers. Their biggest strength is internal collaboration. You can mention a teammate in a comment right next to the customer email. It looks like a chat bubble.

In most other tools, you have to leave a note in a separate tab or forward the email to a colleague to ask a question. Front keeps that conversation right there. If you are a law firm or a logistics company where every email requires a long internal discussion before you can hit send, Front is a great choice. I have watched teams try to do this in standard inboxes and fail. Front makes it easy to work together on a single thread.

How much does Front actually cost a growing team?

When I ran a regional dental practice with eleven front desks, the software bill was always on my mind. Every time I hired a new receptionist, I had to do the math on what their seat would cost me. This is where the choice between these two tools becomes very clear.

Front has no free tier. This puts them in a minority in the market. Out of the twelve major support tools we track, only four skip the free version entirely: Front, LiveChat, Zendesk, and Intercom. The other eight tools all offer some way to start for zero dollars.

Front starts with their Starter plan at 25 dollars per seat per month. This plan is capped at ten seats. If you have a team of five people, you are spending 125 dollars every month just to open the software. If your team grows to twelve people, you are forced to move up to the Professional plan. That plan costs 65 dollars per seat per month.

For a team of twelve, that is 780 dollars a month. That is a significant expense for a small service business. I have sat in those 2am sessions looking at the budget. When you are trying to manage thin margins in a restaurant group or a local clinic, paying nearly 800 dollars a month for an inbox feels like a heavy lift. These prices are approximate, and I recommend you check https://front.com/pricing to see their latest numbers.

What makes the LastWorker model different for service businesses?

LastWorker does not charge per seat. I find this to be the most honest way to support a growing business. If I hire a new person to handle the phones or the chat box on a Saturday, I should not be punished with a higher software bill.

The live chat and email support in LastWorker are free forever. You get unlimited conversations and you can add as many teammates as you want. There is no credit card required to start. We also give you the shared inbox, contacts, tickets, and a public help center for free.

In my experience, service businesses have high turnover or seasonal shifts in staffing. Using a tool that charges 25 or 65 dollars for every person who needs a login is a headache for the person running operations. With LastWorker, you just add the user. The cost of the software does not change when your head count changes.

How do these tools handle AI and automation costs?

The way a company bills for AI tells you a lot about who they think their customer is. Front offers several AI features. Their Autopilot starts at 0.05 dollars per conversation. They also have Copilot and Smart QA features that cost an additional 20 dollars per seat per month each.

If you have ten people and you want them all to have the Copilot AI, you are adding 200 dollars to your monthly bill. That is on top of the base subscription cost.

LastWorker takes a different path. AI is turned off by default. Everything starts as a manual channel where a human answers the messages. Nothing is generated automatically and nothing is charged unless you choose to turn it on.

When you do use AI in LastWorker, we charge based on actual usage. An AI reply on chat, email, or SMS costs 0.04 dollars. It only costs money when the AI actually generates a response. If your staff answers the message themselves, there is no charge. This puts the control back in the hands of the business owner. You only pay for the work the AI actually does.

What about phone calls and SMS?

Front is primarily an email and chat tool. For many of the shops I worked with, the phone was still the most important channel. If a patient calls the dental office, they expect an answer. If they text a question about an appointment, they want a quick reply.

LastWorker includes phone and SMS in the same system as the email and chat. An AI answering a phone call costs 0.10 dollars per minute, and that includes the carrier cost. A phone number is 1 dollar per month. Inbound SMS messages are free, and outbound segments are 0.03 dollars.

In my time running operations, I saw too many good leads die in a voicemail box because the front desk was busy. Having the phone system integrated with the chat and email inbox means nothing gets lost. You can see the whole history of a customer in one place without jumping between three different apps. Front does not offer this kind of integrated phone answering as a core feature.

Which tool fits a multi-location business better?

I managed a two-location restaurant group where communication was a constant struggle. Each location had its own needs but we needed a central way to see how we were treating our customers.

If you use Front for multiple locations, the cost scales quickly. If each location has four people who need access to the inbox, you are looking at eight seats. On the Starter plan, that is 200 dollars a month. If you grow to a third or fourth location, you will likely hit that ten-seat cap and have to pay 65 dollars per person.

LastWorker handles multiple locations without the price spike. Since the seats are free, you can give every manager and every receptionist their own login. You can keep your data organized without worrying about the bill.

I have seen businesses try to save money by sharing a single login. It is a security risk and it makes it impossible to know who actually sent a reply. Because LastWorker doesn't charge for seats, you never have to make that compromise. Everyone gets their own account and you can track their performance individually.

Who should choose Front and who should choose LastWorker?

I will be honest about the choice. If your business is built on long, complex email chains that require three different people to weigh in before you can reply, Front is worth the money. They have spent years perfecting the internal comment and the shared draft. It is a premium product for high-touch email communication.

If you are a service business, a clinic, a contractor, or a retail group, the math usually favors LastWorker. You need to answer the phone, reply to texts, and handle live chat on your website. You need to do this while keeping your overhead low.

Paying 25 dollars or more for every person on your team is a barrier to growth. I have hired many receptionists over eighteen years. I never liked the feeling of knowing that a new hire meant a new monthly bill from my software provider.

LastWorker lets you scale your team as much as you want. You get a professional help desk, a shared inbox, and a help center for free. You only pay for the specific AI and phone usage you decide to use. It is a model built for the way local businesses actually operate.