Front · Gmelius · Hiver — for freight

Generic inbox tools share the mail. They don't read the freight.

Last updated August 23, 2026

Brokerages usually find this out mid-trial: Front, Gmelius, and Hiver are genuinely good at assignment and collision detection — and completely blind to loads, lanes, rates, and carriers. The quote is still buried in prose. The MC still goes unchecked. Here's the honest breakdown, including when a generic tool is the right buy.

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The honest framing

This page compares categories, not villains. Front is a mature collaborative-inbox platform; Gmelius and Hiver layer team features onto Gmail with real polish. Their per-seat pricing is published on their own sites and it's fair for what they do. If we were running a SaaS support desk, we'd use one.

But a brokerage inbox isn't a support desk. The unit of work is the load, and a posted load fans out into roughly 40 carrier replies (Keelway operating data, 2026) that need to be read, extracted, vetted, and compared against each other — a triage job, not a coordination job. Generic tools split the pile across people; the pile stays unread until a human reads it. Keelway is an AI platform that automates carrier email triage for freight brokers — turning 40+ carrier replies per posted load into a ranked, vetted shortlist in under a second.

Side by side

Feature	Front / Gmelius / Hiver	Keelway
Category	Generic shared inbox / email collaboration	Freight-native inbox layer on Gmail
Built for	Support and success teams	Freight brokerages covering loads
Load object — replies grouped per posted load	No — messages and tags	Yes — every reply matched to its load
Rate extraction from carrier emails	No	Yes — >95% accuracy on numeric quotes
FMCSA check and trust score per reply	No	Yes — 0–100 with reasons, under 2s
Fraud flags (spoofed domain, chameleon patterns)	No	Yes
Assignment, notes, collision detection	Yes — core strength	Load-centric workflow covers the same need
Works inside Gmail	Gmelius/Hiver yes; Front is its own app	Yes — no migration
Pricing model	Per seat per month (see vendor pricing pages)	$799/mo flat, unlimited users
Best for	Coordination on generic email	Triage of high-volume carrier email

Competitor column reflects publicly stated product scope as of August 2026 — verify current features and pricing on each vendor's site.

The freight gap, itemized

No load context. Forty replies to the Atlanta–Dallas post are forty rows in a queue, not one load with a ranked shortlist.
No rate extraction. "We can do it for $2,150 all in if pickup slides to Friday" stays a sentence. A coordinator still transcribes every number.
No carrier vetting. Nothing checks authority, insurance on file, or safety data; nothing notices the sender domain doesn't match the FMCSA registration. The fraud patterns covered on the identity verification page pass straight through.
No FMCSA awareness at all. The regulatory data layer a broker depends on simply isn't part of a generic tool's world.

The per-seat math

We won't quote competitors' prices here — they change, and you should read them from the vendors' own pricing pages. The structural point stands regardless of the current numbers: per-seat pricing scales with your headcount, and brokerage headcount sits exactly where the email volume is. Keelway's $799/mo flat with unlimited users is the same bill at 3 seats or 15. Below a handful of seats, a generic tool can be cheaper; run your own numbers.

When a generic tool is the right buy

Low inbound carrier volume — capacity sourced by phone or from a stable book, few open-market posts.
Your pain is coordination — duplicate replies, dropped threads — not triage of quote volume.
You're equipping the shipper-facing customer-service side, where email really is generic correspondence.

When freight-native is the right buy

Posting loads drives serious inbound — dozens of replies per load that someone currently reads by hand.
You want the rate, the equipment, and the carrier's trust status extracted and ranked before a human touches the thread.
Carrier fraud is on your risk list and you want the check to run on every email, automatically — see carrier email automation for the full workflow.

Frequently asked questions

What do Front, Gmelius, and Hiver do well?+

Credit where due: they're mature shared-inbox products. Front is a full collaborative inbox platform with assignment, routing rules, and analytics. Gmelius and Hiver layer shared-inbox features onto Gmail — shared labels, assignment, collision detection, notes. For a support or success team answering independent customer questions, all three are reasonable picks. Their pricing is per seat per month across tiers — check each vendor's published pricing page for current rates.

Where do generic inbox tools fall short for freight brokers?+

They process mail; they don't process freight. No load object — 40 quotes on one posted load are just 40 messages. No rate extraction — the number the carrier quoted stays buried in prose. No carrier awareness — nothing checks the MC/DOT against FMCSA, nothing flags a spoofed domain or a lapsed authority. No rate con, detention, or POD concepts. Every freight-specific judgment still happens in a human's head, one email at a time; what the tool shares is the reading burden, not the reading.

Why does per-seat pricing hurt brokerages specifically?+

Because brokerage headcount concentrates exactly where email volume does — ops and carrier sales — so the seats you pay for are the heaviest users. A per-seat tool means every dispatcher you add raises the software bill, and mid-tier plans across these vendors add up at team scale. Keelway is $799/mo flat with unlimited users: predictable at 3 seats, unchanged at 15. Whether flat beats per-seat depends on your team size — run your own math against the vendors' published prices.

When is a generic shared-inbox tool actually fine for a brokerage?+

Honestly: if your carrier email volume is low — a stable book of familiar carriers, few open-market posts, most capacity sourced by phone — and your pain is coordination (who's answering this?) rather than triage (what do these 40 replies say?), a generic tool solves your actual problem for less. It's also fine for the customer-service side of a brokerage that mostly emails shippers. The freight-native case starts when load posting drives real inbound volume.

Is Keelway a Front replacement?+

For a brokerage's carrier-facing inbox, yes — that's the design target. Keelway runs on top of Gmail like Gmelius and Hiver do, but reads the freight: every carrier reply parsed for rate, equipment, and MC/DOT, matched to its posted load, checked against FMCSA, and ranked. Above 95% rate-extraction accuracy on numeric quotes (Keelway product data, 2026). For a general-purpose support queue outside freight, Front-style tools remain the better fit — that's not the job Keelway does.

Can I try the freight-native approach without committing?+

Yes. Keelway's trial is 30 days, full product, no card required to start. Connect Gmail and your real inbound carrier email gets parsed, scored, and ranked from day one — the comparison against your current tool runs itself on your own loads. And the free CarrierVet Chrome extension shows the carrier-vetting layer with no account at all.

Coordination is table stakes. Triage is the job.