Last updated on
Reviewed by Paddy Stobbs
Stackfix Co-Founder & CEO
Atlas and Hiver serve distinct customer support needs, with Atlas excelling in deep customer understanding through unique features like session recording and customer timelines.
Atlas is better suited for technical product teams needing detailed user interaction insights and robust Slack integration. Hiver, operating directly from email inboxes, is ideal for small teams prioritizing simplicity and email-centric support with basic live chat needs.
Advantages of Atlas
Advantages of Hiver
Atlas
Hiver
 Atlas Starting at $19Billed monthly |  Hiver Starting at $0Billed monthly |
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| Stackfix Verdict | ||
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| Functionality | 8 <p>Atlas offers most of the support functionality that SMBs will need. It includes support for most channels, help centre creation, basic AI, automation and reporting functionality. It also uniquely offers "session recording" functionality, which allows you to view a video/ live session of a user using your web product. </p><p>However, it lacks more advanced features such as a chatbot builder, native phone and SMS support, advanced automation, and custom reporting. The product is still evolving, with features in beta. </p> | 6 <p>Hiver turns your email inbox into a lightweight Customer Support platform. It supports multiple channels, including email, live chat, phone calls, and WhatsApp. You can also set up a help center, create chatbots, and use basic AI and automation tools. However, it falls short of being a true omnichannel platform—each channel requires a separate inbox, which limits its efficiency.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 8 <p>Atlas has a gentle learning curve, and really shines with its efficient keyboard shortcuts that power users love. One of its best features is the customer timeline, which gives you a clear, chronological view of every client interaction at a glance. While everything flows nicely for shortcut users, those who prefer mouse navigation might find it frustrating that they can't see all tickets in a sidebar.</p> | 8 <p>Hiver is refreshingly simple because it operates directly from your inbox. The learning curve is minimal, and setup is one of the most intuitive we’ve seen. Most users will feel comfortable navigating the platform within an hour.</p><p>That said, the interface can feel cluttered. The support inbox is filled with too many tabs and action buttons, making it harder to quickly access tickets at a glance. A sidebar showing all tickets would be a welcome addition.</p> |
| Look and feel | 6 <p>Atlas has a modern, clean interface that is pleasing to use. However, the UI lacks the polish of more established competitors, and loading times can be comparatively slow, taking 2-3 seconds for some pages.</p> | 4 <p>Since Hiver integrates with your inbox, its visual appeal really mainly depends on your email interface.</p><p>However, for the support inbox - while functional, the layout feels crowded with too many labels and tabs. Some design elements aren’t responsive, causing text to spill out when resizing the screen. On the plus side, page load times are acceptable at 2–3 seconds.</p> |
| Customisability | 6 <p>Atlas offers a standard level of customisability.</p><p>Users can create custom fields for customers, set up custom views, and track custom events. The live chat widget and chatbot builder have standard customization options.</p><p>However, it lacks more advanced customization features like custom objects, custom actions, and custom reports. Help Centre customization (style, layout) is particularly limited.</p> | 5 <p>Hiver’s customizability is limited. You can make small adjustments to your help center layout and add custom fields or reports, but routing and automation are restricted to individual inboxes. There’s no option for advanced configuration or coding, which may disappoint users who want more flexibility.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 4 <p>Frustratingly, Atlas does not offer a self-serve free trial for its platform. Instead, you'll need to trudge through a sales demo before you can get access. However, the process is relatively short and smooth and once access was granted, we found the tool to be simple to set up and configure.</p> | 7 <p>Hiver offers a self-serve free trial to its platform. Initial setup is fairly straightforward since the platform effectively operates out of your inbox and thus takes less than ten minutes if you're using either Gmail or Outlook. Additionally since, Hiver lacks many facets for customizability, it doesn't take long to fully configure the platform either.</p> |
| Customer Support | 9 <p>Atlas's customer support is excellent. They offer 24/7 in-app live chat with Atlas's team (including the founder!), who are always happy to provide friendly and personal help.</p> | 10 <p>Hiver offers delightful cusotmer support. Their 24/7 in-app assistance connects you to a human agent within seconds during every test we ran. Agents are knowledgeable, responsive, and willing to go the extra mile by providing personalized screenshots and videos. The help center also offers decent depth and quality.</p> |
| Integratability | 4 <p>Atlas only has 15 pre-built integrations. While these integrations cover key areas like CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Close, Pipedrive) and calling (Aircall, Dialpad), it lacks integrations with popular tools in other categories such as project management, data enrichment, and surveys. It does offer an API for custom integrations.</p> | 2 <p>Hiver includes only 9 pre-built integrations with popular tools like Aircall, Jira, Salesforce, and HubSpot. However, it lacks key integrations for industries like e-commerce (e.g., no Shopify support). While it does offer an API for custom integrations, this might not be sufficient for teams relying on niche tools.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 3 <p>Atlas's data export capabilities are somewhat limited. While reporting data for selected reports can be exported directly from within Atlas, most data seem only available for export via API. For example, tickets can only be exported as PDFs.</p> | 1 <p>Exporting data is a pain point. There’s no bulk export option for contacts or conversations—you’ll need to download them one by one. Reports also can’t be easily exported, which is a pain.</p> |
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