Hiver vs Missive (2026)

Hiver and Missive solve the same fundamental problem — turning a shared address like support@ into something a team can actually run without forwarding emails and stepping on each other. They diverge on one structural choice: Hiver lives inside Gmail, while Missive is its own dedicated app. That one decision shapes everything else.

TL;DR

• Pick Hiver if your company runs on Google Workspace and you want a help desk that is Gmail — no new tool to learn, agents live in hours, generous free plan.
• Pick Missive if you want a purpose-built collaborative inbox where teammates co-author replies in real time, and you're happy working outside Gmail to get it.

Pricing

Both have a free plan and similar entry points. Hiver offers a genuinely useful free tier with unlimited users, then paid plans from around $25/user/month (Growth), with AI agents and Salesforce/HubSpot integrations gated to the Pro tier at roughly $55–65.

Missive's free plan caps at 3 users with limited history, with paid plans from about $18/user/month. Notably, Missive bills AI through your own AI-provider account rather than charging a fixed monthly surcharge — usage-based rather than a flat add-on. Both are affordable; Hiver's free plan scales to more users, while Missive's paid entry price is slightly lower.

Where the inbox lives

This is the whole comparison in one line. Hiver layers shared inboxes, assignments, and SLAs directly inside the Gmail interface your team already opens every morning. There's no context switch, no second tab, no onboarding curve — which is exactly why it's a favorite for teams migrating off heavier tools like Zendesk or Freshdesk.

Missive is a standalone app. Your team leaves Gmail and works in Missive's own interface, which unifies email with SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, and social DMs. You give up the "it's just Gmail" familiarity, but you gain an environment designed from scratch for collaboration rather than retrofitted onto a mail client.

Collaboration model

Missive's signature feature is real-time co-authoring: multiple teammates can write and edit the same draft reply simultaneously, leave internal comments invisible to the customer, and assign threads as tasks with statuses and due dates. It feels like a document editor fused with an inbox — ideal for teams that craft replies together.

Hiver's collaboration is solid but more help-desk shaped: assign emails as tickets, add internal notes, track status. It's built to run support and operations queues cleanly rather than to co-write messages line by line. Missive wins on synchronous collaboration; Hiver wins on familiar ticket-style workflow.

Channels and scope

Hiver leans into help-desk breadth on its higher tiers — live chat, voice, WhatsApp, a customer portal, and autonomous AI agents claiming up to 70% deflection — but the magic depends on being a Google Workspace shop. Missive is omnichannel out of the gate (email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, social) but is fundamentally an inbox, not a CRM; contact history and deal tracking are thin, so it works best as the communication layer in front of a real CRM.

Bottom line

If your team lives in Gmail, Hiver is the lower-friction choice and its free plan is hard to beat. If you want the most fluid collaborative inbox and don't mind leaving Gmail behind, Missive's real-time co-authoring is best in class. Decide by where your team already works — and whether keeping them inside Gmail matters more than the richer collaboration Missive offers.