How do I migrate from Front and keep my data?

To ensure a seamless transition from Front to Missive, follow the steps below carefully.

1. Create Your Missive Organization & Invite users

1.1 Create your Missive organization and subscribe to a paid yearly plan.

1.2 Invite all team members to join it.

1.3 Connect all necessary personal/shared accounts (email, SMS, etc.).

1.4 Set each email account to sync All history. This ensures Front comments align with the correct emails in Missive.

2. Stop using Front

Confirm your team is fully operational in Missive and no longer requires Front. This means that, amongst other things:

• All your rules have been recreated.
• Organization labels have been recreated.
• Contacts have been imported.
• Check table below to see what is imported and what is not.

Once confirmed, stop using Front and create all new content (comments) exclusively in Missive.

3. Request Export Data from Front

Contact Front's support to request an export of your:

• Shared inboxes
• Private inboxes
• Comments

Have questions? Refer to Front's export guide.

Important: Be sure to explicitly request an export that includes attachments and EML files. Without these, the data cannot be properly imported into Missive.

4. Send the Export to Missive

Once you receive the .zip file links from Front, forward them to support@missiveapp.com.

5. What Will Be Imported?

6. We Check and Import the Data

Our team will process the files and run checks on the integrity of the data. If all looks good we will proceed to import data into the appropriate conversations only after the above steps have been completed, no exceptions.

We will only import comments from your Front account. Emails themselves will not be imported, except in one of these cases:

• Two-way sync accounts (e.g., Gmail, Office 365): If your email account was connected to Front using a supported two-way sync, emails will not be imported from Front’s export. Instead, you must connect the same email account directly to Missive so messages can start syncing automatically in both directions.

• SMTP-forwarded inboxes: If your Front inbox was configured with SMTP forwarding, we will import those forwarded emails directly from your Front export files.

Not sure if you have an SMTP-forwarded account? You can read more about it below.

We will begin importing the most recent data first. Processing times depend on the volume. Here's an estimate:

Special Notes

SMTP-forwarded Emails

Some emails may only exist in Front if you used Front’s SMTP forwarding feature. This is common in the following situations:

• You connected an email account not hosted on Gmail or Office 365.
• You connected a Google or Office 365 account via SMTP (instead of using the two-way sync option).
• You used Google Groups, Microsoft Shared Inboxes, or similar configurations.

In these cases, emails may not exist on your original mail server and can only be retrieved from the Front export files. These will be:

• Imported into a selected Missive-connected email account.
• Stored as archived messages since we can’t determine their original status.
• Available to you even outside of Missive.

How do you connect these types of accounts in Missive?

To bring group emails into Missive, start by setting your email server to forward group messages (like support@company.com) to individual accounts such as user1@company.com.

In Missive, you then connect each of these personal accounts under Settings > Accounts. Once connected, you can add the original group address under Organizations > Message sharing as a Shared address, which ensures those emails are automatically shared with coworkers and can follow the shared inbox assignment workflow.

An alternative many former Front customers prefer is using a single “catch-all” account, such as general@company.com. With this setup, all aliases (support@, marketing@, accounting@, etc.) funnel into one account. From there, Missive can route each alias into the right team inbox, for example, support@ to the Support team or accounting@ to Finance. This method not only makes migration from Front smoother but also reduces overhead in the long run.

Because most communications stay centralized in the catch-all account, you won’t need to worry about transferring emails when someone leaves the team.

Shared vs. Private Conversations in Migration

Shared / Team Inboxes

• Conversations from shared email accounts or team inboxes in Front will remain shared in Missive.
• All comments and access rights are preserved for users who had access to the inbox.

Private Conversations (via @mentions or tags in Front)

• Conversations that were originally private in Front but shared through @mentions or tags will not stay shared in Missive.
• After migration, these conversations become private again for the original owner.
• Comments from mentioned/tagged users may still appear, but each user will only see their own private copy.
• To continue collaboration, you’ll need to manually re-share these conversations in Missive.