Missive Review
Missive is the cheapest serious option in this directory at $14 a user a month, and it does not feel cheap.
- From:
- $14/agent/mo billed annually
- HQ:
- Quebec City, CA
Our verdict
Missive is the cheapest serious option in this directory at $14 a user a month, and it does not feel cheap. Email, SMS and social are all on the entry plan, SOC 2 Type II covers it from day one, and the collaboration model - conversations and tasks rather than tickets and owners - suits teams who work a customer together. The limits are real but honest: 50 users on the middle tier, and SSO only at the top.
Missive is the cheapest full help desk in this directory and the least obviously compromised by it. Where most entry plans buy you email and a promise, Missive's $14 tier carries email, SMS and social, and is covered by the same SOC 2 Type II audit as the expensive ones. The model is collaborative: conversations and tasks that a team works together, rather than tickets with a single owner.
Is it right for your team?
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Points for
Points against
Tick what describes you. We'll weigh it against this review.
What it does
- Email, SMS and social accounts in one inbox, from the entry plan
- Team spaces and shared inboxes, with conversations and tasks instead of ticket ownership
- Rules and automations, integrations and reporting on the middle tier
- SAML SSO and IP restrictions at the top
- Missing: no voice channel at any tier
Pricing at a glance
| Plan | Billed annually | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $14 | Billed yearly, advertised as 20% off. |
| Productive | $24 | Up to 50 users. |
| Business | $36 | Billed yearly. |
Prices are an agent a month, in US dollars. Source: missiveapp.com/pricing, checked .
- Per user a month in US dollars: Starter $14, Productive $24, Business $36 billed yearly; $18, $30 and $45 billed monthly, per Missive's billing documentation
- User caps decide the plan: Starter stops at 5 users and Productive at 50, and integrations (Shopify included), rules and the AI assistant start on Productive
- Yearly plans are non-refundable and a removed seat stays billed until renewal; the full breakdown, add-ons and a worked team cost are on the Missive pricing page
What each tier actually gates
- Starter $14 — email, SMS, social, team spaces, conversations and tasks, SOC 2 Type II
- Productive $24 — integrations, rules and automations, basic analytics, API and MCP access, capped at 50 users
- Business $36 — SAML single sign-on, IP restrictions, team onboarding
Two things worth noticing
SOC 2 Type II on the entry plan. Several desks here treat compliance as an upsell or an add-on. Missive applies the same audit to the $14 tier as the $36 one.
MCP access on the middle tier. Missive is one of the first help desks to expose a Model Context Protocol interface at all, which matters if you intend to let an AI assistant read or act on your support data. Most of this market has not shipped one.
Before you commit
- The 50-user cap on Productive is the upgrade trigger, not features
- SSO at the top tier only, which procurement often forces regardless of team size
- If phone is a channel you need, this is not the tool
- Get the monthly price in writing if you do not want an annual commitment
Who should buy it, and who should skip it
Who should buy
- Small and mid-sized teams who want real channel coverage at the lowest credible price
- Operations that work a customer collaboratively rather than assigning owners
- Teams planning to connect an AI assistant to their support data
Who should skip it
- Anyone needing voice
- Teams over 50 users who do not want to jump to the top tier
- Buyers who need SSO without paying for the top tier
How we checked this
Plan names, yearly prices, tier contents, the user cap and the trial terms were read from Missive's own pricing page on 2026-09-25. The monthly figures are behind a CSS toggle and do not appear in the served markup, so they are recorded as not captured rather than derived from the 20% badge. No review-site text was used.
Channels
How each channel is delivered, and the plan it starts on. Native, through an integration, or absent.
No contact-form product; closest is the chat widget or a custom channel via API.
Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, IMAP; unlimited history.
Native website widget with email follow-up; not plan-gated in the billing docs, though no page names its tier explicitly.
No native telephony; Aircall and Dialpad integrations, and integrations are Productive+.
Starter includes SMS via bring-your-own provider (Twilio, SignalWire, Dialpad); carrier fees separate.
Instagram Business and Facebook Messenger channels.
WhatsApp Business shared inbox; 5 shared accounts per user, extra $15/month per 5.
Checked on the vendor’s own pages, .
AI and automation
What the AI does, what it costs, and what the desk automates without it.
AI Assistant on Productive and Business; OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini via Missive AI credits or bring-your-own-key.
No autonomous customer-facing agent ('Not another chatbot'); the assistant is agent-side only.
AI rules and automations (analyze email, create task, escalate); rules are Productive+.
The pricing model is published (prepaid AI credits or bring-your-own-key), but no credit prices or amounts are public.
Rules on Productive and Business, capped at 1,000.
AI rules, auto-assignment and four workload-balancing methods; rules gated Productive+.
Canned responses with variables; not among the plan-gated features in the billing docs.
No voice AI; the AI is a text assistant with prompts and rules.
Checked on the vendor’s own pages, .
Strengths
- The lowest entry price of any full help desk here at $14 a user a month, billed yearly.
- Email, SMS and social accounts are all on the entry plan rather than gated upward.
- SOC 2 Type II compliance covers the cheapest tier, which is unusual at this price.
- Conversations and tasks rather than tickets and owners, which fits teams that work a customer together.
- API and MCP access on the middle tier - one of the first help desks to expose MCP at all.
- A 30-day free trial with no card required, which is the longest in this comparison.
Trade-offs
- The billed-monthly prices are behind a toggle and absent from the page source, so only the yearly figures are recorded here.
- A 50-user cap on the middle tier, so larger teams are pushed to Business.
- SAML single sign-on and IP restrictions need the top tier at $36.
- No free plan, only the trial.
- No voice channel.
Compare Missive
What’s new in Missive
The latest from Missive’s own changelog, linked to each post.
- 11.39.0: A brand new mobile experience
missiveapp.com
- 11.38.0: Rule steps: follow up automatically over time
missiveapp.com
- 11.37.1: Security update
missiveapp.com
- 11.37.0: Missive in French and German (beta)
missiveapp.com
- 11.36.1: Past event fading is now optional
missiveapp.com