--- title: "Team email costs ₹420 an agent on Zoho Desk and US$25 on Hiver" summary: "What four help desks charge per agent, from their own pricing pages, to run a shared support or HR inbox, with the INR, GST and DPDP view. September 2026." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/email-management-best-practices format: Note desk: "SaaS & business software" published: 2025-01-02 facts_checked: 2026-09-30 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["email management","shared inbox","help desk","Zoho Desk","Freshdesk","Hiver","HubSpot Service Hub","SaneBox","pricing","GST","DPDP"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/email-management-best-practices.png --- # Team email costs ₹420 an agent on Zoho Desk and US$25 on Hiver *What four help desks charge per agent, from their own pricing pages, to run a shared support or HR inbox, with the INR, GST and DPDP view. September 2026.* Note · SaaS & business software · By TechBag · Published 2025-01-02 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/email-management-best-practices Managing a team’s email costs ₹420 an agent a month on Zoho Desk’s cheapest paid plan, US$19 on Freshdesk and US$25 on Hiver, all billed annually.[1][2][3] That is the purchase this piece was really about in 2022, when it described an “email management system” with ticket numbers, a receipt queue, spam filtering and tagging. Every one of those components is now a feature of a help desk or a shared inbox. The personal tips that filled the rest of the piece, rules, folders, templates and follow-up reminders, are free inside Gmail and Outlook. ## One person and a team are two different purchases For one person drowning in mail, the tool is a sorter. SaneBox, which the original recommended, lists US$4.54 a month for one account and US$22.04 for four, on two-year billing.[5] Mailstrom, the other personal tool named in 2022, is still online under 410 Labs but prints no price on its home page.[6] Neither assigns a message to a colleague, tracks a reply deadline or shows a manager what is waiting. A support@, accounts@ or hr@ address needs exactly those three things, and that is what the per-agent price buys. **Figure: The entry price per agent runs from ₹420 to US$90 a month, and only Zoho prints it in rupees** *Cheapest paid plan with assignment and ticketing, per agent per month, annual billing, as published, September 2026* ₹420 Zoho Desk Express; free for up to 3 users plus 18% GST US$19 Freshdesk Growth; 14-day trial, no free plan listed Freshworks US$25 Hiver Growth, inside Gmail and Outlook; US$35 billed monthly Hiver US$90 HubSpot Service Hub Professional, plus US$1,500 onboarding HubSpot Source: Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, Hiver and HubSpot pricing pages · as of 30 September 2026 · Zoho Desk is shown in INR as published for India; the others publish US$ only ## Choose by where the agent works, not by the feature list The four tools do the 2022 checklist equally well: a ticket number on every thread, a queue for pending replies, rules that sort on arrival, saved responses. The real difference is where the person answering spends the day. Hiver runs inside Gmail and Outlook, so a finance or HR team that lives in its inbox learns nothing new.[3] Zoho Desk and Freshdesk are separate consoles with deeper reporting, a knowledge base and more channels, which suits a customer support team. HubSpot’s Professional tier, with its onboarding fee, only makes sense if the company already runs HubSpot as its CRM.[4] Our view Our view: a team under ten agents that answers internal or vendor mail should start on Zoho Desk’s free plan or Hiver, and move only when it needs reply-time targets. Buying Professional tiers for SLA reports nobody reads is the common overspend. ## If you are buying this in India Zoho Desk is the only one of the four that publishes rupee prices: ₹420, ₹800, ₹1,400 and ₹2,400 an agent a month across its paid plans, before 18% GST.[1] The others list in US dollars and are invoiced in rupees through a reseller, with GST on top. Zoho and Freshworks were built in Chennai and Hiver was founded by Indian entrepreneurs.[7] A help desk holds customers’ and employees’ names, addresses and complaints, which is personal data under the DPDP Act; the Rules were notified on 13 November 2025, and the security-safeguard and breach-notice duties apply from 13 May 2027.[8] Ask where the mailbox data is stored before you choose. TechBag resells Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, Hiver and HubSpot. How we did this Figures as of 30 September 2026 Prices are each vendor’s cheapest paid plan that assigns and tracks messages, read from its own pricing page, per agent per month on annual billing; HubSpot’s lower annual Starter figure was excluded because the page does not label it clearly. SaneBox prices are its two-year rate, the only one the page shows. Monthly billing costs more on every plan. Rupee figures are Zoho’s; no exchange-rate conversion was applied. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [Zoho Desk, pricing (India, INR per agent per month billed annually; free plan with three user licences)](https://www.zoho.com/desk/pricing.html) — undated page 2. [Freshworks, Freshdesk pricing (Growth US$19, Pro US$55, Enterprise US$89, annual)](https://www.freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing/) — undated page 3. [Hiver, pricing (Growth US$25 annual, US$35 monthly; Pro US$55)](https://hiverhq.com/pricing) — undated page 4. [HubSpot, Service Hub pricing (Professional US$90 to US$100 a seat; US$1,500 onboarding)](https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/service) — undated page 5. [SaneBox, pricing (Snack, Lunch, Dinner; two-year billing)](https://www.sanebox.com/pricing) — undated page 6. [Mailstrom, home page (410 Labs)](https://mailstrom.co/) — undated page 7. [TechBag, Hiver, Zoho Desk and Freshdesk intel pages (origin, deployment, plans)](https://www.thetechbag.com/hiver) — September 2026 8. [Legismith, DPDP Rules 2025 commencement timeline](https://legismith.com/dpdp-rules-2025-timeline/) — notified 13 November 2025 Related on TechBag: the [ITSM and service desk guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/itsm-service-desk) compares the help desks that also run internal IT tickets. **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [ITSM and service desk guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/endpoint-management/itsm-service-desk) — help desks compared, including Zoho Desk and Freshdesk - [Hiver hub: the help desk inside Gmail and Outlook](https://www.thetechbag.com/hiver) — plans, the 2-seat minimum, quoted in INR with GST - [Zoho Desk intel page](https://www.thetechbag.com/zoho/zoho-desk) — the INR plan ladder and the Zoho CRM link