Hiver vs Thena
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentThena compared with Hiver
Hiver turns Gmail into a shared help desk, which is the right answer for teams whose entire support life happens in Google Workspace, and it is cheap and familiar. Thena does the same trick for Slack instead of Gmail. The choice is simply where your customers actually contact you: if they email a shared address, Hiver adds ticketing without changing anyone's habits; if they message a shared channel, Hiver cannot see those conversations at all and Thena is the equivalent move for the channel you actually use.
Choose Hiver if
Small and mid-sized teams already standardised on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 whose support is email-led and whose biggest problem is coordination rather than volume. It suits support, finance, IT, and operations teams of roughly three to thirty people who need assignment, SLAs, and real reporting without asking anyone to abandon their inbox.
Choose Thena if
Small and mid-sized B2B software companies whose customers already talk to them in shared Slack channels, particularly early-stage teams who want the shared-channel support model without the $250 to $375 monthly floor that competitors impose. It also suits internal support teams whose requests arrive as Slack messages.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Hiver | Thena |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Support | Support |
| Starting price | $25 per user per month (Growth, billed annually; $35 monthly) (free plan available) | $29 per user per month, billed annually (free trial) |
| Pricing model | Per-user subscription across three paid tiers, billed monthly or annually, with AI bundled into the seat price from Growth upward rather than metered per resolution. Seats are sold in fixed increments rather than one at a time. | Per-user subscription billed annually across three tiers, with a seat cap and ticket cap on the entry plan, AI included in every tier, and no per-resolution charge. |
| Free plan | None currently advertised on Hiver's pricing page. Several third-party pricing trackers still list a free tier, which appears to be stale; treat the 7-day trial as the evaluation path and confirm at signup. | No |
| Free trial | 7 days on the Elite tier, no credit card required | Trial available; the entry Starter plan is the practical evaluation path |
| Best for | Small and mid-sized teams already standardised on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 whose support is email-led and whose biggest problem is coordination rather than volume. It suits support, finance, IT, and operations teams of roughly three to thirty people who need assignment, SLAs, and real reporting without asking anyone to abandon their inbox. | Small and mid-sized B2B software companies whose customers already talk to them in shared Slack channels, particularly early-stage teams who want the shared-channel support model without the $250 to $375 monthly floor that competitors impose. It also suits internal support teams whose requests arrive as Slack messages. |
| Setup time | Under an hour for a working setup. Install the extension across the team, connect the shared mailboxes, and the sidebar appears in everyone's Gmail. This is the fastest meaningful deployment in the category precisely because there is no new interface to roll out. | A working Slack deployment in under a day: install the app, connect shared channels, set up boards and routing, and define SLA policies. Tuning AI ticket detection so it neither misses requests nor converts small talk takes another week of observation. |
| Learning curve | Close to zero for agents, which is the entire point. The only new concepts are assignment, status, and internal notes, all of which sit visibly in an interface people already know. The administrator has automation rules, SLA policies, and mailbox configuration to learn, which is an afternoon rather than a project. | Very low for agents, since the primary surface is Slack. Moderate for administrators configuring boards, custom fields, routing rules, SLA policies, and role-based access. The genuine change management cost is cultural: teaching a team that a Slack message is now a tracked ticket with a clock on it. |
| Platforms | Gmail and Google Workspace browser extension, Outlook and Microsoft 365, Hiver Omni standalone web app, iOS and Android apps | Slack app, Microsoft Teams app (Enterprise tier), Discord, Web console, Web chat widget, Web forms, Email intake |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, ISO 27001, HIPAA compliance support on the Elite tier | GDPR, Enterprise security controls on the top tier |
| Founded | 2011 | 2022 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, United States, with significant operations in Bangalore, India | United States, operating as Pivoting Owl Inc with a distributed team |
| Ownership | Venture-backed, privately held. Operates as GrexIt, Inc. doing business as Hiver. | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Hiver
Strengths
- Adoption is close to free. Agents keep working in Gmail or Outlook, which sidesteps the single biggest failure mode of help desk rollouts.
- AI is bundled into the seat price from Growth upward with no per-resolution meter, so the monthly bill is genuinely fixed while competitors scale with volume.
- Because Hiver operates on your existing mailboxes, evaluating it carries almost no switching risk: if you stop paying, your mail is exactly where it always was.
- Analytics are strong for an inbox product: response time, resolution time, workload distribution, SLA compliance, and CSAT all reported properly.
Limitations
- The seat increment structure is user-hostile. Two, then five, then multiples of five means teams routinely pay for one to four seats they do not use.
- No light agent or read-only seat, so every engineer, contractor, or stakeholder who needs visibility costs a full licence.
- It is an inbox, not a ticketing engine. There are no custom ticket fields, conditional forms, skills-based routing, or multi-brand help centers, and a growing support operation will hit that ceiling.
- The knowledge base is functional but noticeably weaker than Zendesk's or Freshdesk's on theming, multi-brand support, and SEO control.
Thena
Strengths
- The cheapest genuine entry into shared-channel B2B support at $29 per user, against a $250 to $375 monthly floor at the nearest competitor.
- AI is included at every tier with no per-resolution charge, including ticket detection, summaries, tagging, and an assistant on the $29 plan.
- Account-based tracking rolls support activity up per customer, which is the reporting shape B2B companies with named accounts need and most general help desks handle poorly.
- Channel coverage is unusually broad for a company this size: Slack, email, web chat, web forms, Discord, and Microsoft Teams.
Limitations
- Microsoft Teams support is confined to the $119 Enterprise tier, which is a severe gate given how many B2B customers standardise on Teams and a clear disadvantage against Unthread.
- The Starter plan's dual cap of 5 users and 1,000 tickets a month binds quickly, so the $29 headline price often has a short shelf life.
- The premise fails entirely for consumer and ecommerce businesses whose customers are not in a shared workspace.
- No published light-agent or read-only seat tier, so giving engineering or finance visibility costs full seats.
Pricing compared
Hiver
Per-user subscription across three paid tiers, billed monthly or annually, with AI bundled into the seat price from Growth upward rather than metered per resolution. Seats are sold in fixed increments rather than one at a time.
- Growth$25
- Pro$55
- Elite$85
Hiver's value case is adoption and predictability rather than raw capability. You are paying so that nobody has to learn a new tool, and so that your support bill stays the same number every month regardless of volume. Both are worth real money. At $25 a seat with AI included, a five-seat team pays $125 a month for coordination, automation, analytics, and AI drafting, which is less than a single Zendesk Suite Professional seat plus Copilot. The weaknesses are structural: the seat increments overcharge teams whose headcount is not a multiple of five, there is no light agent option, API access costs $55 a seat, and the knowledge base and routing are noticeably thinner than a real help desk. If your support is email-led and your problem is coordination, this is excellent value. If your problem is volume, Hiver is the wrong shape and its bundled AI will not save you.
Thena
Per-user subscription billed annually across three tiers, with a seat cap and ticket cap on the entry plan, AI included in every tier, and no per-resolution charge.
- Starter$29
- Standard$79
- Enterprise$119
Take the benchmark this directory uses: a four-agent team at 500 and at 2,000 tickets a month. At 500 tickets, Thena Starter at $29 per user is $116 a month, comfortably inside both the 5-user and 1,000-ticket caps. At 2,000 tickets the ticket cap forces a move to Standard at $79 per user, so $316 a month. Compare with Unthread's five-seat minimum putting the same team at $375 on Pro at both volumes, roughly $1,106 on Intercom and roughly $1,420 on Zendesk once AI resolutions are counted, $92 on Zoho Desk Professional, and $69 on Jitbit. Thena is by a clear margin the cheapest way to run shared-channel support at low volume, and remains cheaper than Unthread at high volume. The caveat is that the Starter tier's caps are the product's real pricing model, and both of them bind early: five users and a thousand tickets is a small company, not a growing one. Price against Standard if you expect either number to move within a year, and against Enterprise at $119 if any meaningful part of your customer base uses Microsoft Teams.
Editorial verdict on each
Hiver
Hiver solves a real and underrated problem: help desks fail not because they lack features but because agents quietly keep working in Gmail. By putting assignment, SLAs, analytics, and AI inside the mail client people already use, Hiver gets adoption almost for free, and it is one of very few vendors in this category that has refused to attach a per-resolution meter to its AI. A five-seat team pays $125 a month at any volume, which is a genuinely differentiated offer in 2026. The reservations are concrete rather than philosophical: the two-then-five-then-fives seat structure overcharges most teams, there is no light agent seat, API access costs $55 per user, and the knowledge base and routing are thinner than a real ticketing platform. Buy Hiver if your support is email-led, your team is on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and coordination rather than volume is your problem. If you need deflection at scale or a configurable ticket model, buy something else.
Read the full Hiver profileThena
Thena is the cheapest credible way to put ticketing discipline underneath shared Slack channels, and for an early-stage B2B company that is the deciding fact. At $29 per user with AI ticket detection, summaries, tagging, SLAs, and account-level reporting included, a four-agent team pays $116 a month against $375 for the nearest equivalent and roughly $1,420 for a comparable Zendesk configuration. Discord support is a real differentiator for community-led developer products, and nothing is billed per AI resolution, so deflection is not taxed. Two things need modelling before you buy. The Starter tier's caps of five users and a thousand tickets bind early, so price against Standard at $79 if either number will move within a year. And Microsoft Teams sits at $119 per user, so a customer base that standardises on Teams makes Unthread the better fit despite its higher entry price. Slack-first, budget-conscious, and growing: buy Thena. Teams-heavy or escalation-heavy: buy Unthread.
Read the full Thena profileHiver profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Thena last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.