Products / Mail & messages
Hoq Support
Every customer who writes to you, in one inbox your whole team answers.
What it does
Hoq Support is a shared help desk. Each inbox gets a forwarding address. Point your support@ mailbox at it and every message becomes a numbered conversation your team can assign, tag, snooze, merge and answer.
A message joins an existing conversation only if it comes from that customer and passes DMARC on our own receiving servers. Anything else is held for a teammate to accept or discard. Bounces are matched to the reply that bounced. Short thank-yous do not reopen a closed conversation.
Customers can also write through a contact form, read and answer their conversation on a web page, and rate the answer. The help desk sends any one outside address at most three automatic emails a day, so the form cannot be used to flood someone's inbox.
AI agents can work in the help desk through MCP. You set each agent per area: off, read, ask first, or change. Requests that need approval wait for a person.
In numbers
25 MBlargest attachment taken from an incoming email
3automatic emails at most per outside address per day
7 dayslife of the emailed link to a customer's past conversations
4permission levels per area for each AI agent: off, read, ask, change
15 minbefore an unseen push alert is sent again by email
Specifications
| Where the help desk lives | One .support file per company in its owner's Hoq Storage drive. Attachments go to the owner's drive. |
|---|---|
| How mail arrives | Each inbox has its own forwarding address on hoq.app. Forward your existing mailbox to it; changing the address keeps old conversations working. |
| Sender check | A reply joins a conversation only if the sender is the customer and passes DMARC by our receiving servers' Authentication-Results. Otherwise it is held. |
| Threading | By a reply token in the address and by Message-ID and References headers. |
| Attachments | Up to 25 MB per attachment. |
| Replies | Sent from the Hoq mail cluster as "Your company via Hoq Support", retried on failure. A reply that waited more than two days unsent is not sent late. |
| Team alerts | Phone or browser push first, then email if nobody has seen it after 15 minutes. |
| Retention | Keep files 7 to 3,650 days and closed conversations 3 to 120 months, or forever. |
| Sensitive data | Remove a card number or password from a message; the message stays, marked removed. |
| Sign-in | Hoq ID single sign-on. Teammates are invited by the email they sign in with, as teammate or admin. |
Features
21 features, all shipped. Listed from the product's code and documentation; each row shows the day it was last checked.
| Views | Mine, unassigned, open, pending, snoozed, closed and all, with search. | |
| Assign and round robin | Give a conversation to a teammate, or let an inbox hand new ones out in turn. | |
| Status, snooze, priority, tags | Open, pending or closed; snooze until a time in your company's timezone; low to urgent priority; tags with counts. | |
| Notes | Notes only the team sees, beside the customer's messages. | |
| Merge and split | Merge duplicate conversations or move some messages into a new one. | |
| Who else is here | See which teammate is reading or typing in the same conversation. | |
| Log a phone call | Write down what a customer said by phone or in person as their own message. | |
| Start a conversation | Write to a customer first, as the team. |
| Held messages | Mail that cannot be verified as the customer waits for a teammate to accept or discard it. | |
| Spam and blocked senders | Mark spam and block an address or a whole domain. | |
| Delivery state | See whether a reply went out, and try a bounced or failed one again. | |
| Quiet thank-yous | A one-line thanks from the customer does not reopen a closed conversation. |
| Contact form | An optional web form per inbox, with a bot trap, a timed stamp and per-address limits. | |
| Conversation page | Customers read and answer their conversation on the web and rate the answer. | |
| Past conversations link | Customers ask for an emailed link to their past conversations; it works for 7 days. | |
| Customer records | Customers with name, email, phone, company and notes; merge duplicates. |
| Saved replies | Saved replies with shortcuts and eight variables such as customer name and conversation number. | |
| Signatures | A signature per teammate and per inbox. | |
| Push alerts | Phone and browser notifications for conversations given to you. |
| Agent permissions | Set each AI agent per area to off, read, ask or change; approve or turn down what it asks. | |
| JSON API and MCP | 55 actions over one JSON door, also offered as MCP tools. |
Works with
Your data
| Where it is kept | One .support file per company in its owner's Hoq Storage drive, with attachments in the same drive. |
|---|---|
| Getting it out | not published |
| If you leave | not published |
APIs and standards
- JSON API: POST /api/support/w/{key} with a Bearer key (scope support:use)
- MCP server at /mcp/support: one tool per action (55)
- Public pages: /c/ contact form, /t/ conversation page, /p/ past conversations
- Standard: SMTP
- Standard: DMARC
- Standard: Message-ID and References threading (RFC 5322)
- Standard: Auto-Submitted (RFC 3834)
- Standard: Web Push
Compared
| Checked 2026-11-01 | Hoq Support | Zendesk Support Team | Help Scout Standard | Front Starter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid tier | Not published | $19/agent/mo yearly, $25 monthly1 | $25/user/mo2 | $25/seat/mo billed yearly, up to 10 seats3 |
| Contact form | Yes, per inbox, off by default | Not on Support Team1 | not published2 | not published3 |
| Inboxes | not published | Unlimited email addresses1 | 2 included, up to 202 | not published3 |
| Attachment size | 25 MB per attachment | Up to 50 MB1 | not published2 | not published3 |
| Knowledge base | No | not published1 | 2 Docs sites2 | not published3 |
| AI | Bring your own agent over MCP, with per-area permissions | 5 automated resolutions per agent/mo, then $1.50 to $2.00 each1 | AI Assist, Drafts and Summarize included2 | Copilot $20/seat/mo add-on3 |
| API | JSON API and MCP server | Included1 | 200 requests/min2 | Not listed on Starter3 |
| Live chat, social, phone channels | No; email, web form and logged calls only | Messaging needs a higher plan1 | not published2 | not published3 |