Customer Support - Setup Guide

How to set up Front

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Per-user pricing scales quickly, a 15-person team on Professional is ~$975/mo before any add-ons
• Starter is a trap for growing teams, single-channel + 10-seat cap forces upgrade
• Front owns your inbox at the SMTP level, migrating off later means either accepting some data loss or manually exporting
• Email deliverability requires proper DKIM/SPF/DMARC on your domain, which Front will guide but is your responsibility
• Custom fields and analytics that most users want are Professional+
• AI features (draft assist, summarization) are gated to Enterprise/AI add-on tiers

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Front account

   Sign up at the link below. Card required for the paid tier - most plans include a trial period; check the pricing section on this page first so you know what you're committing to.

   Open Front signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Front pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Front into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Asana, Jira, GitHub, Shopify, Stripe, Zapier, Make, Segment, MS Teams, Google Drive, Dropbox. Native calendar and video (Zoom, Google Meet) links. API-first with webhooks. Deep integration with Gmail and Outlook at the mailbox level.. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Front deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Front - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend Front when: business_size is 10+ users, industry has heavy shared-email workflow (agency, real-estate transaction ops, logistics, financial services, professional services), and pain_points include "email accountability," "duplicate responses," or "who's handling this client?". Highest fit for agencies, logistics/freight teams, and real-estate transaction coordinators. Do NOT recommend for solo operators, product-led SaaS (Intercom wins), or high-volume ticket-based support (Zendesk wi...