Home / Mektup vs Front
ComparisonFront is a shared-inbox collaboration app that sits on top of email hosting you already pay for. Mektup is the email: real mailboxes on your own domain that your team works over webmail and IMAP - and that an autonomous AI agent can operate over a REST API and native MCP server at the same time. Different layers; here's an honest look at when each makes sense.
Front doesn't host your email. It connects to mailboxes that already exist - Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or another IMAP provider - and layers a team workspace on top: assignments, internal comments, collision detection, rules, and analytics, priced per seat. That's genuinely valuable for larger human support teams, and Front is very good at it.
Mektup sits one layer down. It runs the actual mail infrastructure - real MX, IMAP, SMTP, DKIM - for domains you own, so the mailbox itself comes from Mektup, with webmail and IMAP/SMTP for people and a REST API plus a native MCP server for software and AI agents. There's no second email service underneath to pay for, and the agent isn't a plugin inside an app - it's a first-class operator of the mailbox, notified by webhook the instant new mail arrives.
| Mektup | Front | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosts your email (real mailboxes, MX/IMAP/SMTP) | Yes - it IS the mail infrastructure | No - connects to hosting you already have |
| Send transactional email via API | Yes | No |
| Autonomous AI agent operates the inbox (API + MCP) | Yes, native | Assistant features inside Front's app |
| Webhook on new mail | Yes, HMAC-signed | Yes (API/rules) |
| Assignments, internal comments, collision detection | No - deliberate: it's an inbox, not a helpdesk | Yes - Front's core strength |
| SLA rules and support analytics | No | Yes |
| Use any IMAP client (Outlook, Apple Mail) | Yes | Work happens in Front's own app |
| Provision inboxes programmatically (per agent / customer) | Yes, unlimited | No |
| Pricing model | Free tier; flat plans from $20/mo | Per seat, per month |
Front capabilities and pricing per its public materials as of this page's last update - verify at front.com/pricing.
Be honest about this: if you run a sizeable human support team on Gmail or Microsoft 365 and the pain is coordination - who owns this thread, what did we say internally, are we hitting SLAs - Front's workflow layer is exactly that product, and Mektup doesn't try to be a helpdesk. Keep your hosting, buy Front, and you're well served.
Choose Mektup when the mailbox itself - and who (or what) can operate it - is the point:
For some teams, yes - but they solve different layers. Front is a collaboration app on top of email hosting you already have, priced per seat. Mektup IS the hosting: real mailboxes on your own domain with webmail and IMAP for the team, plus a REST API and native MCP server so an autonomous AI agent can operate the same inbox. If the goal is "an AI agent runs the inbox alongside people," Mektup replaces the two-product stack with one platform.
Front's AI is assistant-level - drafting, summarizing, routing inside Front's app for human agents. Mektup is built for autonomous operation: full API/MCP control of the mailbox plus a webhook the instant new mail arrives, so an agent reads, triages, and replies on its own, with humans in the same mailbox.
When you have a larger human support team that needs coordination workflow on top of existing mailboxes - assignments, internal comments, collision detection, SLAs, analytics - and per-seat pricing is worth it. Mektup deliberately isn't a helpdesk.
With Front, yes - it connects to mailboxes that must already exist (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, IMAP), so you pay for both. Mektup runs the actual mail infrastructure for your domain, so there's no second email service underneath.