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Sortd vs Hiver: Discover why Sortd is the smarter shared inbox tool for Gmail, perfect for small businesses, customer support and sales teams. Compare Gmail integration, automation, collaboration and pricing.
When Gmail-based teams look for productivity and collaboration tools, two names often stand out: Sortd and Hiver. Both are popular for managing team emails and shared inboxes, but they take very different approaches. Hiver is well-known for organizing group emails and streamlining customer support queues, whereas Sortd offers a broader feature set – including shared inbox management plus built-in task boards and CRM capabilities – all tightly integrated inside Gmail . In this comparison, tailored for SMBs as well as customer support and sales teams, we’ll explore Sortd vs. Hiver to illustrate why Sortd is the smarter choice in 2025.
To start, let’s get a quick overview of Sortd in action. Sortd’s explainer video below demonstrates how it transforms Gmail into an all-in-one workspace for emails, tasks, and team workflows:
Sortd’s official explainer video highlights how it turns your Gmail inbox into a fully organized workspace for team email, tasks, and sales workflows. (Click to play)
One of the biggest differences between Sortd and Hiver is how they integrate with Gmail. Sortd is intricately woven into the Gmail interface – it essentially transforms your Gmail inbox into a comprehensive workspace with added features . With Sortd, you can manage emails, track tasks, and oversee projects without ever leaving Gmail . The experience is seamless and feels as natural as using Gmail itself, which means virtually no learning curve for your team. In practice, Sortd adds a visual layer to Gmail (think of a Trello-style board next to your emails) where you can drag and drop emails into task lists, assign them to team members, add notes, and more – all in the same Gmail tab.
Hiver, by contrast, operates more like a traditional add-on overlay in Gmail . It certainly lives inside your inbox as well, but its functionality is focused on email assignment and tagging rather than providing a new workspace view. You might still need to click through menus or even use separate windows for some advanced functions. In short, Sortd’s deep Gmail integration means better usability: no toggling between different apps or browser tabs – everything happens in one place . For busy teams, this uninterrupted workflow is a huge advantage. Your agents and sales reps can stay in “inbox mode” to handle emails and update tasks or pipeline stages at the same time, which boosts productivity.
Modern teams – from small businesses to growing startups – need tools that adapt to their workflows. This is another area where Sortd offers greater flexibility than Hiver. With Sortd, you can highly customize your workspace to suit your business needs. Users can tailor the fields on Sortd’s task cards, add custom columns or deadlines, and set properties that match their specific processes . For example, a sales team can create columns in Sortd for different deal stages (Lead, Prospect, Negotiating, Closed) and add fields like “Deal Value” or “Next Step” to each email-turned-task. A support team could set up priority tags, due dates, and categories like “New Ticket, In Progress, Waiting on Client, Closed” on their board. This level of personalization ensures Sortd adapts to a wide range of use cases – from sales and customer support to project management – all within Gmail .
Hiver’s customization is more limited. Hiver does allow use of email tags, categories, and assignments to organize conversations, which is helpful but relatively basic . It lacks the Kanban-style boards and flexible task fields that Sortd provides. In Sortd, you decide how to structure your workflow: you can organize work into visual boards and lists that fit your operational style . Hiver essentially keeps the familiar Gmail list view and uses labels or shared folders for organization. That works for straightforward email queues, but Sortd’s adaptable boards give teams a more powerful way to visualize and track work. For SMBs that often wear multiple hats, this flexibility means Sortd can bend to whatever workflow you need – you’re not stuck with a one-size-fits-all method.
Both Sortd and Hiver were built with team email collaboration in mind, especially for managing shared inboxes (like support@ or sales@company.com addresses). If you’re part of a customer support team or a sales team, you know how important it is to have a clear system for who’s handling which email. Hiver pioneered Gmail-based shared inboxes – it lets you assign emails to team members, add status tags, and avoid messy forwards or CCs. Sortd offers all of that core shared inbox functionality as well, but then it goes a step further.
With Sortd, your shared inbox is integrated into a larger workflow tool. It includes a lightweight CRM and task manager directly inside Gmail . This means a support agent can not only assign an incoming email to a teammate, but also convert that email into a task on a board, set a follow-up reminder, or attach notes about the customer – all in one go. For a sales rep, an inbound lead email can be dragged to a “Leads” list on a Sortd board and treated like a CRM entry without needing a separate CRM system . Sortd’s interface is built for quick hand-offs: you can simply drag and drop an email or task to another team member’s list to reassign it, which preserves all the context and attachments . In Hiver, accomplishing the same might require clicking an assign button, choosing a user from a menu, and updating status labels – a process that, while effective, involves a few more steps .
Team collaboration also benefits from some unique Sortd features. For instance, Sortd includes contextual team chat within email threads, so team members can discuss an email privately right beside that email before replying to the customer . This avoids long back-and-forth Slack or email chains to clarify how to respond – everything stays linked to the original message. Hiver offers an “Email Notes” feature that lets you add an internal note to an email (and recently has introduced more collaborative widgets), but Sortd’s in-line chat and comment system feels more natural for real-time collaboration.
In summary, both tools will help your team manage a shared inbox, but Sortd provides a more complete collaborative workspace. You’re not only distributing emails to team members; you’re tracking the progress of those emails (and related tasks) in a transparent way. Sales teams can manage deals, and support teams can manage tickets with equal ease on Sortd. This convergence of shared inbox and project-tracking capability is a clear advantage for teams that want to streamline communication and workflow in one place.
To truly boost team efficiency, a shared inbox tool needs automation – and both Hiver and Sortd include useful automation capabilities. Hiver has a strong focus on customer support, so it offers features like rule-based automations to assign incoming emails to specific team members or queues, set up SLA reminders, and even use AI to suggest replies or classify emails . These can save your team time by handling repetitive tasks (for example, automatically tagging emails that come into billing@ vs. support@, or auto-closing emails that get an out-of-office reply). Hiver’s approach to automation is quite robust for helpdesk scenarios, letting you create if-this-then-that rules based on subject, sender, keywords, etc.
Sortd also supports automation, especially in its team and premium plans, ensuring that even as an all-in-one tool it doesn’t skimp on efficiency features. With Sortd’s workflow automation, you can set up rules for your shared mailboxes that perform actions like auto-assigning emails to the right person, moving emails to a specific board or list based on keywords, or sending template responses for common queries. For example, a sales inquiry with the word “pricing” could automatically move into a “Hot Leads” list and assign to a sales manager. While Sortd’s rules engine operates behind the scenes similarly to Hiver’s, the difference is in how those automated actions feed into your workflow. In Sortd, an automated rule can directly update your task board or CRM fields within Gmail, keeping everything in sync. The platform is designed so that once an email triggers an automation, it’s immediately reflected in your team’s Sortd workspace (with color-coded labels or moving the card on the board).
Another point to consider is how the two companies are approaching new technology to improve efficiency. Sortd has been actively innovating with AI and smart features. It was even selected for Google’s Launchpad accelerator program, which speaks to its focus on cutting-edge improvements . The team has hinted at AI-driven email analytics and smart reminders in development . While Hiver has introduced some AI elements (like an AI-powered chatbot and email classification in its latest offerings ), Sortd’s innovation pipeline appears geared toward a wider array of Gmail-centric productivity enhancements. This forward-looking mindset means Sortd is likely to continue adding intelligent automation features that further streamline your workflow in the future.
In terms of day-to-day use in 2025, both Sortd and Hiver can automate grunt work and help your team focus on what’s important. The key takeaway is that Sortd ties its automations directly into a versatile task management system. That can translate to fewer missed follow-ups and less manual updating of multiple tools. Your workflows can be as automated – or as hands-on – as you need, with Sortd flexibly adjusting to your team’s habits.
For any small or medium business, budget is a crucial factor. Here’s where Sortd often comes out on top as a more cost-effective solution than Hiver. Sortd offers a free-forever plan (the Sortd Starter plan) which is quite generous for individual users or very small teams getting started . This free tier includes core features like the Gmail integration, a personal board, task management, reminders, and more – enough to give Sortd a thorough try in real-world scenarios without paying a cent . When your team grows or needs more collaborative power, Sortd’s paid plans are very reasonably priced. For instance, the Essentials plan (as of 2025) is around $12 per user/month , and it unlocks team-based features such as multiple shared boards, shared mailboxes with automation, and expanded CRM functionality . Sortd’s pricing tiers are designed to scale with you – you pay more only when you need more boards or advanced capabilities, and the tiers remain affordable for SMB budgets .
Hiver’s pricing, on the other hand, is notably higher and it does not offer a true free plan. Hiver is typically sold per user per month at premium helpdesk software rates (its entry-level “Lite” plan is advertised around $24/user/month) . They do let you try Hiver free for 7 days as a trial, but after that you’ll have to commit to a paid plan . For small teams, this cost can add up quickly, especially since Hiver’s lower-tier plans may limit certain features or channels. In fact, Hiver’s pricing page shows multiple tiers (Lite, Growth, Pro, Elite), and to get the full benefit of features like automation or analytics, you often need to be on a higher tier. Sortd, by comparison, includes a lot of its functionality (shared inbox, Kanban boards, basic automations, etc.) in lower-tier plans, giving better value for money.
To put it simply: Sortd is the more budget-friendly choice, allowing teams to start free and upgrade as needed, whereas Hiver requires a paid subscription from the get-go. For SMBs and startups watching every dollar, Sortd’s cost advantage can be significant – you can potentially save hundreds of dollars a year by using Sortd over Hiver, all while getting a more expansive feature set for Gmail. Value for money isn’t just about price, of course; it’s about what you get for that price. And in this case, Sortd delivers more bang for your buck by combining multiple tools (email, task management, CRM) into one. That means you might also save on subscriptions to other software (like a separate Trello or lightweight CRM) because Sortd covers those needs within Gmail.
Beyond features and pricing, it’s important to consider which tool has proven itself with users and how well each company supports its customers. Sortd shines in popularity and user satisfaction among Gmail teams. If you look at the Chrome Web Store or Google Workspace Marketplace stats, Sortd consistently has a larger user base and higher ratings than Hiver . For example, on the Google Workspace Marketplace, Sortd for Gmail boasts over 819,000 users and has accumulated 1,300+ user reviews. Hiver’s listing, in contrast, shows around 269,000 users and only a less reviews . This discrepancy suggests that many more Gmail-centric teams have adopted Sortd, and they’re engaged enough to leave feedback. In fact, Sortd has been rated the #1 app for Gmail on Product Hunt by the tech community , and it enjoys excellent reviews that praise its impact on workflow and productivity.
The large user community behind Sortd also translates into trust – it’s a well-vetted solution used by teams worldwide, so you can feel confident it will meet real-world demands. Sortd has gained recognition in the industry by being featured on major platforms like TechCrunch, Wired, and Forbes, highlighting its innovative approach to email and workflow management . Such accolades underscore Sortd’s credibility and continuous improvement.
On the support front, both companies understand the importance of helping their customers succeed (after all, these tools are used for customer support themselves!). Sortd, being a lean and customer-focused company, provides responsive support through multiple channels. They even use their own Sortd system to track user inquiries, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks . Users often report positive experiences with Sortd’s support team, which is crucial when you’re setting up a new workflow tool for your business. Hiver also offers 24/7 support on its higher-tier plans and has a support portal, but as a larger organization focusing on bigger clients, small teams on entry plans might not get the same level of hands-on attention.
It’s worth noting that Hiver markets heavily to enterprises (their customer list includes names like Harvard University and large companies). That means Hiver is certainly a capable product, but if you are a smaller team, you might find Sortd’s community and support more tuned to your needs. Sortd’s popularity with SMBs and Gmail power-users speaks to its approachability.
For a quick summary, here’s a side-by-side comparison of key features and differentiators between Sortd and Hiver:
After weighing all the aspects of Sortd vs. Hiver, it’s clear that Sortd emerges as the smarter choice for teams that live in Gmail. For SMBs, customer support departments, and sales teams alike, Sortd provides an integrated package that goes beyond what Hiver offers. With Sortd, you get email management, task tracking, project organization, and CRM-like capabilities all within the familiar Gmail environment . This all-in-one approach means your team can streamline their workflow without bouncing between different tools, leading to greater operational efficiency.
Sortd’s user-friendly interface and customizable boards make it easy to tailor the system to your workflow, rather than forcing you to adapt to the tool. In 2025’s fast-paced business climate, that kind of flexibility is gold. You might start using Sortd to manage a shared inbox for support, and soon find your sales team using it for pipeline management, or your project team using it to track deliverables – it can all co-exist in Sortd’s Gmail workspace. Hiver, while a solid shared inbox tool, remains more specialized in email ticketing; it simply can’t match the holistic productivity solution that Sortd provides .
Importantly, Sortd delivers this expanded functionality at a lower cost and with a proven track record of user satisfaction. It’s not just about having more features, but about empowering your team to get more done with less friction. Sortd redefines what Gmail can do, turning it into a platform for running your business – whether that’s handling customer inquiries, closing deals, or managing projects – all in one place. By choosing Sortd, teams position themselves to be more organized, responsive, and adaptable in the face of changing business needs.
Ready to supercharge your Gmail workflow? Give Sortd a try for free and experience the difference firsthand. With its seamless Gmail integration and powerful collaborative features, you’ll quickly see why so many teams have chosen Sortd as their go-to solution. Don’t settle for an add-on when you can have an all-in-one workspace.
Try Sortd for free today and take the first step toward a smarter, more productive way of managing your emails and teamwork!
