Gmelius Vs Hiver: Which One is Better?

Gmail is a fantastic tool. As it is free and user-friendly, most customer service teams in businesses use Gmail for smooth communication and collaboration.

Unfortunately, Gmail is built for individual use. In other words, sharing your login credentials with others can keep crucial data at stake. Plus, you could miss out on critical customer emails marked as “read” by a support agent but left unaddressed. Not to mention the risk of multiple users ending up responding to the same customer email.

Hiver and Gmelius help you get rid of these challenges. Both customer service software work within Gmail and focus on improving email management, teamwork, and agent productivity.

While Hiver and Gmelius have a lot in common, they edge out each other in various aspects. This Gmelius vs Hiver comparison will walk you through the pros and cons of each platform to help you make a better decision.

What is Hiver?

Hiver is a customer service software for frontline teams that blends in with the email management platform most are aware of – Gmail. In fact, it is the first multi channel (live chat, email, and voice) solution particularly built for Google Workspace.

The customer service platform helps you and your support agents assign and monitor customer emails through Hiver shared inboxes. Moreover, you can write notes for added context to agents and track crucial metrics to analyze their performance.

Rather than spoiling the broth with too many cooks, the Hiver app focuses on optimizing a single solution for quick, efficient customer service – all directly from Gmail.

Key Features

Email Tags

Tags for shared inboxes help you sort customer conversations by categories. For instance, you can organize inbound emails based on the criticality of the issue or the type of questions people ask.

Email Scheduling

Hiver email scheduling lets you schedule emails to be sent at a future date and time. Also, you can use this feature while creating new emails as well as responding to existing ones. The scheduled emails reside under your Drafts in Gmail.

Analytics

Hiver’s analytics reveal how well your customer service agents handle inbound conversations using metrics like individual turnaround time, customer satisfaction survey (CSAT), and average resolution times.

Auto-responder

Through auto-responders, Hiver automatically responds to either a new inbound conversation or a particular section of it within or beyond working hours. That way, you can set customer expectations right or offer them alternate information sources/ways to contact you.

Rule-based Automation

Rule-based automation lets you define conditions based on which customer emails will be assigned to a particular support agent. For instance, you can add a “Priority” tag to emails from your VIP customers, and accordingly assign your rockstar agents to serve them.

Best For

While Hiver for Gmail serves businesses of all shapes and sizes, the customer service platform has gained huge traction among start-ups and medium-scale firms. If you are a business in the travel, healthcare, or logistics industries and your team already has a Gmail account, Hiver is your go-to solution.

What is Gmelius?

Gmelius is a comprehensive customer service tool that helps support agents manage their emails, enhance communication, and effectively distribute their workload – all while living in the Gmail ecosystem.

Gmelius steps up team collaboration by swapping cluttered Google Groups with a Gmail shared mailbox. As such, you can assign customer emails, share Gmail drafts and labels, and monitor agent performance.

Key Features

Sequences

Gmelius’s sequencing feature lets you send hyper-personalized email follow-ups based on previous customer conversations. With conditional filters, including if not replied and if opened, your emails reach the right customer at the right time. As such, the risk of missing conversations due to insufficient time reduces.

Kanban Boards

This is where Gmelius shines among its competitors. Gmail Kanban boards enable your support agents to convert email conversations into task cards. These visually appealing boards are customizable and let your agents handle conversations without confusion on status.  

Shared Labels

Gmelius shared labels let you share an entire inbox (support@ or info@) or just a section of it (Gmail label) with your support agents in real-time – right from your Gmail mailbox. Whether it is your colleague or your junior, you can effortlessly assign customer conversations and prevent separate interactions that eat up both time and energy.

Meeting Scheduler

As the name says, this tool automatically schedules meetings between your support agents and customers. Your customer service agents can mark their availability right inside of an email and send pre-appointment reminders and integrate them with their communications tools.

Custom Views

Gmelius’ custom views feature lets you build and save unique combos of filters and easily access them from the left-side panel of your Gmail inbox. You can sort conversations based on particular support agents, specific tags/statuses, and SLA breaches.

Best For

Similar to Hiver, Gmelius is ideal for organizations of all headcounts working in the technology, real estate, and marketing industries. Even better if your customer service agents are already using Gmail.

Case in point, Merserwis effectively processes and assigns customer emails to its sales and support agents for better accountability, credit to Gmelius’s integration with Gmail.

Direct Comparison: Gmelius Vs Hiver

Let’s deep-dive into both platforms on multiple departments.

User-friendliness

Hiver

Hiver’s powerful feature-rich platform makes it easier for customer service agents to collaborate on a single shared mailbox – especially for those already using Google Workspace. Fewer customer emails slip through the cracks, and no two agents handle the same request simultaneously.

Hiver’s non-clunky UI is another highlighting point. For instance, the placement of internal notes minimizes accidentally sending internal messages to customers.

Moreover, you get granular-level insights into how your support team performs on the software dashboard. These include conversation reports, user reports, and tag reports.

However, Hiver lets you share the entire mailbox with your support agents instead of breaking up the inbox and sharing individual customer emails.

Some users also dislike the software’s auto-assignment feature, with one complaining that “I have a ticket assigned to me, but someone on my team may close it without my permission, this should not happen except (Team Lead and manager).”

Other negative reviews state Hiver’s mobile app is pretty limited, and there are chances of missing customer requests when delivering support from your mobile device.

Gmelius

Just like Hiver, Gmelius is also a haven for Gmail users. But what adds to the platform’s simplicity is its ability to convert customer emails into task cards and sort them into Kanban boards.

Your support agents can move each task card from one column to the next. Everybody can follow the progress, even those who are not directly associated. As such, you save hours of copying and pasting information into a separate project management platform.

However, deploying and using the same UI has been a headache for some users, with one wishing that “I wish the dashboard was easier to navigate…”

Gmelius’ sluggish UI leads to slow loading time – be it email synchronization, assigning customer emails to support agents, defining rule-based automation, or simply moving task cards across Kanban boards.

Compatibility with Third-party Tools

Hiver

The Hiver helpdesk platform works well with many third-party tools such as Okta, Zapier, Jira, and Salesforce. As such, your customer service staff can handle multiple tasks right from their Gmail accounts without switching between apps or tabs.

Case in point, Hiver’s Asana integration lets you collaborate with your agents on customer requests and have total visibility into the resolution status.

However, these useful integrations do not come with the basic plan – most are locked in higher-priced tiers.

Gmelius

You can easily integrate most of your favorite tools – Slack, Trello, and Zapier – with Gmelius’ customer service platform. For instance, its unique two-way sync with Slack enables you to assign customer emails, collaborate on them, and even respond to them without leaving the platform.

Plus, many of these integrations are available with the basic plan itself. However, Gmelius lacks other equally critical third-party integrations such as Salesforce, Jira, and Aircall (voice channel).

Customer Support

Hiver

Hiver provides customer support in the form of:

• 24/7 email and chat assistance
• Dedicated success manager
• Onboarding assistance
• Help center
• Videos
• Webinars
• eBooks
• Guides
• Infographics

While you can access support from Hiver’s support staff, the same might not be possible with its mobile app.

Gmelius

• University learning
• Help center
• Onboarding assistance
• Self-service options
• Chat and email assistance
• Dedicated account manager
• Webinars
• Videos
• Zoom live support
• In-app live support

While Gmelius offers various ways to help you during software setup and usage, their support staff is available 5 days a week.

Pricing

Hiver

Here is what you can expect from Hiver’s software plans for customer support:

• Lite: For solopreneurs or teams with max 10 agents, Hiver’s Lite plan costs US$15/seat/month and comes with email notes, 24/7 chat and email support, shared drafts, and unlimited response templates
• Pro: For Hiver’s Pro plan, you have to invest ~US$34/seat/month and enjoy features like unlimited automations, Harvey (AI bot), multiple integrations, and analytics
• Elite: The Elite plan costs ~US$49/user/month, packed with features (besides those in the above two plans) like SLAs reminders, custom reports, and skilled-based auto-assignment

All these Hiver’s plans cost 20% less if you renew them once a year. Plus, you get a 7-day free trial after signing up to use the features and decide accordingly.

Gmelius

Gmelius offers the following plans for customer service teams:

• Flex: For smaller support teams, Gmelius’ Flex plan comes at US$15/agent/month on a pay-per-usage basis, offering features like auto-responder, rule-based assignment, collision detection, and load balancer
• Growth: For support staff looking to add more members, Gmelius’ Growth plan, which costs US$29/agents/month, provides features such as email sequencing, productivity reports, custom views, and meeting reminder
• Pro: The Pro plan, coming at US$45/agent/month, offers the most advanced features, including custom roles and permissions, business hours, round-robin assignment, and integrations with almost all third-party apps

You can unlock a 20% reduction in the upper-tier plans if you are willing to renew the plans annually.

Both Gmelius and Hiver heavily compete with each other in terms of pricing. That said, Gmelius outperforms Hiver, considering the number of features per plan. For instance, Gmelius’ basic plan includes multiple analytics features and integrations with popular tools, unlike that of Hiver.

Gmelius Vs Hiver: Which One is Right for You?

Both Gmelius and Hiver have their own share of ups and downs. So, deciding which customer support platform is better for you depends on your specific requirements.

Choose Hiver if:

• You are a start-up or a small company looking for a customer service platform with essential features
• You want to get started with your operations in minutes
• You want 24/7 customer support
• You want to improve cost efficiencies

Choose Gmelius if:

• You are a small-to-large size business looking for a customer support tool with advanced features
• You want multiple integrations without upgrading to higher-end plans
• You want a better price-to-feature ratio

Looking for robust customer service software that is user-friendly without costing an arm and leg? Look no further than Helpwise.

Why Helpwise is a Better Alternative?

Our customer service software, Helpwise, combines simplicity with advanced customer service features . It has important features to organize, delegate, and monitor customer-facing conversations like advanced analytics, custom integrations, unlimited automations, and audit logs.

The best part, Helpwise works well for most support teams as the platform is customizable, cost-effective, and super-easy to use.

Let’s see how we stack up against Hiver and Gmelius.

Ease of Use

If a support agent is unavailable, Hiver does not automatically reassign customer requests to other agents available at the moment. You have to do the hard work of assigning conversations and literally informing them accordingly. Helpwise, on the contrary, automatically reassigns queries from unavailable support agents to available ones to avoid customers’ frustration due to long wait times.

While Gmelius lets you build SLA policies, you cannot automate actions to unattended customer queries based on conditional logic. With Helpwise, you can establish SLA rules that will take actions, such as tagging, escalation to an available support agent, and responses, if a conversation remains unaddressed for quite a while.

Pricing

For Helpwise’s basic plan, you need to pay a mere US$12/user/month. That is almost in line with what Hiver and Gmelius offer. That said, considering the total cost of ownership, our plans are friendlier to your bank balances.

For instance, switching to Helpwise’s mid-tier plan from that of Gmelius will save you US$480 each year (10 agents). The number surges to US$2,280 if you switch from Hiver.

Customer Support

Our customer support agents are always “there for you” whether you want to onboard your staff or suffer a technical glitch. You can share your query with us via email, chat, social media, and online chat widget at any hour of the clock. We will go to lengths to clear your queries.

To cement our statement, we score 3.37 in support quality on G2 versus Hiver (3.32) and Gmelius (3.14).

Helpwise is a go-to customer support software for over 5k users, including ContentStudio, TaxiCloud, and WellPay. These testimonials strengthen our brand credibility:

• “Great ticket management & Help desk” – Anca P., Customer Success Specialist.
• “One of the best Shared Inbox/Support Platform “ – A verified G2 reviewer.

Here is a brief comparison between Hiver and Gmelius

FAQs

Q. What are Hiver and Gmelius?

Hiver and Gmelius are customer service software that help businesses optimize their support operations across multiple channels. These platforms come with multiple valuable features, including advanced analytics and automation tools, integrations with critical business apps, and.

Q. How do Hiver and Gmelius differ from each other?

Hiver and Gmelius differ from each other in certain aspects.

Gmelius lets you sort customer emails on Kanban boards, where your agents can create task cards for real-time monitoring and management. Hiver lacks such a feature.

Hiver offers 24/7 customer support, while Gmelius does the same 5 days a week.

The Hiver app has its AI-based chatbot (Harvey), while Gmelius is yet to have one.

Gmelius lets you share a particular thread or label of customer emails, while you have to share the entire conversation in Hiver.

Q. Which one is better for email management: Hiver or Gmelius?

Both Hiver and Gmelius score similar when it comes to offering customer service features. While Gmelius includes Kanban boards for better email management and monitoring, Hiver provides more in-depth analytics.

Both platforms have gained mixed reviews regarding their ease of use and compatibility with third-party tools.  

Plus, the pricing of both solutions is pretty competitive. Therefore, it is up to organizations to make their final decision.

Q. What features does Hiver offer that Gmelius doesn’t, and vice versa?

The features of the Hiver app, which Gmelius does not have, are customer satisfaction reports, round-the-clock customer support, an AI bot, and a voice channel (Aircall).

Features Gmelius offers and that Hiver does not include Kanban boards, shared labels, and in-app live support.

Q. Which one is more suitable for team collaboration?

Both Gmelius and Hiver for Gmail offer an alluring stack of team collaboration features. While Gmelius has collision detection, custom views, notes & mentions, and assignments, Hiver has email notes, collision alerts, unlimited email templates, and  collaborators.

So, which of them is suitable boils down to your customer service needs.

Q. Can Gmelius and Hiver integrate with other tools and apps?

Yes, both software are easily compatible with multiple corporate tools. While Hiver supports integrations with Asana, Aircall, and Jira, Gmelius blends in with Zapier, Slack, and Trello.

Q. Which one is more affordable for small businesses?

Both Gmelius and Hiver do not cost you a fortune. While Gmelius’ lowest plan starts at US$15/user/month, that of Hiver comes at nearly US$10/user/month. However, if you want more features without investing a lot, Gmelius holds the upper hand.