The problem we kept hearing
We built Vidual Projects for makers who run bespoke commissions — framebuilders, tailors, furniture makers, jewellers. It gives every build a timeline, a client portal, payments, and a story. But in almost every onboarding call, the same thing came up: “This is great for active projects, but what about all the emails and DMs that come in before something becomes a project?”
Enquiries. Warranty questions. Someone asking about lead times on Instagram. A past client coming back for a second commission. A supplier chasing a PO. These aren’t projects yet — they’re conversations, scattered across email, IG DMs, and the live chat on the brand’s site. For most small brands, those conversations live in a shared email account that three people share the password to, plus one person’s phone for the DMs, plus whoever happened to be at the desk when the chat pinged.
The failure modes are predictable. Two people answer the same email, or nobody does. A follow-up sits because everyone assumed someone else had it. And the only way to find out who replied to what is a dig through the sent folder.
Why the existing tools don’t fit
The obvious answer is a help desk. Freshdesk, Zendesk, Help Scout, Groove — there are dozens of them. They’re mature, capable products with years of development behind them. And for a support team of twenty or fifty people, they’re excellent.
But for a tailoring workshop with two people, or a frame builder with a small team, they’re overkill. Ticket numbers feel clinical. SLA timers feel corporate. The pricing is per-seat, which punishes you for inviting your apprentice. The mobile apps exist but feel like afterthoughts. And the setup — custom fields, automation rules, routing logic — takes longer than your team has patience for.
What we kept hearing amounted to: we just want to answer emails together, without feeling like a call centre. That became the brief.
What Vidual Inbox is
Vidual Inbox is a shared inbox for small teams. One place where your whole team sees every customer conversation — email, Instagram DMs, live chat, and WhatsApp. Nothing disappears when someone replies. Nothing hides in a personal inbox. It’s the simplest possible version of “let’s all see the same conversations and know who’s handling what.”
You forward your shared email address — info@, hello@, studio@, whatever it is — to a unique Inbox forwarding address. Every email that arrives becomes a conversation. Your team replies from inside Inbox, and the reply goes out from your brand’s email address. The customer never sees “Vidual.” They just get a reply that looks like it came from you — because it did. Gmail users have it easiest of all: authorise Inbox in a single popup, forward your shared address, and you’re done. No DNS records to wrangle. If you’re coming from a shared Gmail login — or weighing delegation and Google Groups — we’ve written a full guide to shared inboxes for Gmail.
Assignment happens naturally: reply to a conversation and it’s yours. You can reassign with a tap. Filter by “mine,” “unassigned,” “waiting,” or “closed” to cut through the noise. Internal notes let the team discuss a customer without the customer seeing. Tags — “Warranty,” “Commission enquiry,” “Follow up” — keep things organised.
There’s a customer context sheet that slides up when you tap a person icon: notes, tags, conversation history, files, all in one place. It persists across every conversation with that customer, forever. And when the same person emails you and DMs you on Instagram, you can merge their profiles into one unified record — the conversation history follows the human, not the channel.
What it isn’t
This matters as much as what it is. Vidual Inbox is not a help desk. There are no ticket numbers. No SLA timers. No escalation workflows. No automation rules. No canned responses. If you need those things, Freshdesk or Zendesk are better choices, and we’ll happily point you there.
It’s not a CRM. It doesn’t have pipelines, lead scoring, or sales forecasting. If you need to manage a sales funnel, pair Inbox with a dedicated CRM.
It’s not an AI auto-replier either. Up Ahead briefings nudge you on what needs a reply. Catch Up recaps summarise long threads. Otto, our little helper, drafts and suggests — always with your oversight. None of it ever replies on your behalf. We think customers can tell the difference.
And it’s not trying to be everything. We built it for teams of one to ten who want something better than a shared Gmail but refuse to adopt enterprise software. If that’s you, it’s exactly right. If it’s not, we’d rather tell you now than have you find out later.
The small things that matter
We spent a disproportionate amount of time on details that don’t show up in a feature list but change how the product feels.
When you share a link in a reply, Inbox fetches the page title, description, image, and favicon and renders it as a rich preview card. Your messages look polished — not a bare URL pasted into a text box.
When a spam sender finds your shared address — and they will — one tap blocks them permanently. The conversation archives, and every future email from that address is silently rejected. No more scrolling past the same SEO pitch every morning.
Email signatures are built in, with three archetypes to choose from: Classic, Modern, and Bold. Each one pulls in your name, role, brand logo, and contact details. The logo uploads with a crop tool and renders at retina resolution. It’s a small thing, but a branded signature that looks intentional rather than cobbled together from HTML fragments makes a difference to how your replies land.
And the whole thing is built mobile-first. Not “we have a mobile app that mostly works” — the primary design target is a phone screen. Because most small brand owners check email between tasks, not from a desk. The iMessage-style bubble layout, the swipe to archive, the compose bar that stays out of the way until you need it — all designed for thumbs, not mice.
How it connects to Vidual Projects
Inbox is a standalone product. It has its own billing, its own identity, and its own login. You don’t need Vidual Projects to use it, and it works perfectly on its own.
But if you do use Projects, the two connect. Tap “Connect Vidual Projects” on the Integrations page, log in to your Projects account, and approve the connection. Once linked, a “Create Project” button appears on conversations. One tap opens a modal pre-filled with the customer’s name, email, and conversation subject. The entire email thread gets compiled into a backstory for the new project. The conversation that started as an enquiry in Inbox becomes a full commission in Projects, with all the context preserved.
If you’re on a Projects Studio or Atelier plan, Inbox is included free. The connection activates automatically.
Pricing
One plan. £34.99 a month. Everything included. Unlimited team members, unlimited conversations, every feature, every channel. No per-seat charges, no premium tier, no “contact sales” for the thing you actually need.
We chose this because per-seat pricing is hostile to small teams. If adding your apprentice to the inbox costs another £50 a month, you won’t do it — and then they’re back to checking the shared Gmail on their phone. One flat price means the whole team is in, from day one.
There’s a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. At the end you can subscribe or just… not. We don’t delete your data.
What’s next
Inbox is live today. The core is solid — shared inbox across email, Instagram DMs, and live chat; assignment; internal notes; the cross-channel customer context sheet; tags; signatures; spam blocking; smart link previews; Up Ahead briefings, Catch Up recaps, and Otto; Shopify and WooCommerce order lookups in the customer sheet; Klaviyo and Mailchimp subscriber data; and the Projects integration. It does the job it was built to do.
WhatsApp Business has now folded into the stream — the last big channel. What comes next is shaped by what we hear from the people using it.
If you’re a small team running customer service from a shared email account, and the big help desk tools feel like too much — have a look. If you’re not sure, book a demo and we’ll walk you through it — including the bits where we’d tell you to use something else.
Vidual Inbox is available now at vidualinbox.com. 14-day free trial, no credit card required. £34.99/month after that.