Top 10 Freshdesk Alternatives & Competitors

Did you recently search for a customer help desk software other than Freshdesk and got bombarded with a gigantic list of alternatives that seemed too good to be true?

Well, every help desk software company is on a continuous spree to market their product as the best in the business, and such claims can often appear unrealistic and over the top.

Before you begin your quest for the ideal alternative, you need to understand how customers want to approach your business. In the United States, 44% of customers still prefer phone support compared to live chat (23%) and email support (16%). Perhaps, a help desk tool must help to streamline multiple support channels and allow you to cater to your growing pool of users.

We have attempted to make your situation less tensed, and after enough digging, we could find the top Freshdesk alternatives that you can consider for your business.

So, first of all, what makes Freshdesk so great? Let us find out.

Freshdesk tops the customer review charts and is often touted as the best customer support platform. Some of its unique features include self-service portals, AI-based lead scoring, different SLA policies, smart and intuitive automation, the capability to offer support across multiple channels, and integrated game mechanics.

Apart from these unique features, it also offers the standard features for customer support, such as an integrated knowledge base, community platform, and an efficient ticketing system.

Further, you can convert your customer support Emails into support tickets and manage them for a better and quick response. Similarly, you can link your forum queries to a support ticket (vice versa as well) to create streamlined answers for common customer requests and issues.

Some other impressive features of Freshdesk include:

• Email collaboration for agents for ensuring that no query gets missed
• Quick and accurate ticket labelling and routing for fast support
• Automation of all the stages of support processes
• Tracking social media mentions by your customers and responding is easy
• Intuitive answers from the integrated knowledge base

Though Freshdesk is one of the most comprehensive and capable customer support systems, it might not be the one for you. Why? Let us find out.

If your CRM is built on some other platform, you can achieve a better and more seamless integration if you choose the same vendor.

Or, in case you want a deeper social media integration, some Freshdesk alternatives listed here can help you resolve social media tickets faster. A study reveals that 48% of consumers expect a response to social media queries and complaints within 24 hours.

Also, in case you want a native integration of your help desk into your website, a couple of customer support platforms have this capability that Freshdesk doesn't promise.

Apart from giving a list of the best Freshdesk competitors, we made your search easier by offering a comparative analysis of all the solutions with Freshdesk.

So, let us begin.

Top 10 Freshdesk Alternatives:

1. ProProfs Help Desk

ProProfs Help Desk has an impeccable deployment scope and offers support across all customer support verticals. It can perfectly tackle customer issues, requests, and questions. It comes with automated ticket creation and assignment depending on agent availability.

It is easy to manage; you can ask some other agents to join in for help and deliver a quick ticket resolution. One of the most unique features of ProProfs Help Desk is that it allows you to create “child tickets”. This makes it easier and possible for more than one agent to collaborate and work on the solution for tricky customer issues and requests. This tool allows businesses to improve their user feedback response rate by enabling them to share surveys in a matter of seconds.

Its tracking and monitoring features make it easier for you to track and monitor individual agent performance. After all, productive agents are bound to deliver exceptional service. As per a study by American Express, 68% of customers said that a pleasant representative was key to their recent positive service experiences. This tool will surely help you easily find whether an agent has a positive impact on your company or not.

ProProfs Help Desk's UI is more user-friendly and offers many unique features such as Email ticketing, multiple shared inboxes, and private notes.

ProProfs Help Desk Software is best suited for:

ProProfs Help Desk software is best suited for start-ups and SMBs. It can be of consequential importance for building customer-centric brand value and reputation. It also aids in building a customer base and customer retention.

Where does ProProfs Help Desk far better than Freshdesk?

• It is easier to track, prioritize, and solve tickets.
• Offers instant support and knowledge sharing for better and quick customer support.
• It is a scalable solution and is optimized for mobile devices.
• It also empowers you to train your agents and customers for a better self-help experience.

Where does Freshdesk far better than ProProfs Help Desk?

• Freshdesk helps you assign tickets to some specialized agent which is not the case with ProProfs.
• Personalized automatic responses make your customers feel valued and don't give the impression of talking to a bot.
• Repeated action automation, custom ticket creation, shared ownership, creation of customized reports and customer segmentation, etc are some other pros offered by Freshdesk over ProProfs Help Desk.

2. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is also a widely used help desk platform that offers multiple support features in the form of a compact system. It offers all the standard features such as Email support, social media integration, and live chat.

Its main features comprise file sharing, POP3 accounts, contact forms, and gamification.

What makes LiveAgent one of the best Freshdesk competitors? Its user interface is smart, simple and intuitive, which makes it easier for agents to learn and use LiveAgent efficiently and effectively.

All the aspects of its user interface are well planned and can be accessed easily. So, your customer support team can easily understand and master the software in a short amount of time. Because of its ease of use, your support team is empowered to handle a large number of customer queries in a short amount of time.

LiveAgent is best suited for:

LiveAgent is best suited for SMBs, and the organizations that have a range of employees working online; especially for the sales and operations team, and core marketing teams.

Where does LiveAgent fare better than Freshdesk?

• It has a more extensive feature set.
• Simplified and fast setup.
• 24X7 support from its vendor, even for small businesses.
• In-house customer support from its vendor for quality service.
• Flexible pricing packages to pay only for the features you use.
• Single license for all websites.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than LiveAgent?

• Quick tracking of agents’ turnaround time for every single customer query.
• Identification of trends to enhance customer support experience.
• It allows you to set up a single customer support system for all the brands and products you use.
• Perfect for users working across different time zones and belonging to different language groups.
• Generates a complete overview of your support system with accurate analytical tools to get to the root cause of issues.

3. Zendesk

Zendesk is a cloud-based help desk system that is perfect for enterprise-level organizations. It offers a highly comprehensive and all-inclusive suite of features such as call centre, chat, help desk, customer support, and an integrated knowledge base. It empowers the agents to deliver exceptional support experiences in every stage of the customer journey.

Zendesk comes with many smart features like notifications and task automation etc. that make it possible to streamline the support processes. It employs various unique ways to organize customer data (including communication) from any channel. Some of them are web widgets, context-based and pre-defined ticket responses, and search history of the customer.

Analytics, customer satisfaction ratings, reports, and smart dashboards are some of the other fantastic features that make Zendesk one of the popular Freshdesk competitors.

Zendesk allows your agents to create conditional and custom ticket fields and gather all the details relevant to customers. It supports more than 40 languages, has robust self-service modules, FAQ portal, and amazing analytics tools for managerial staff.

Zendesk is best suited for:

Zendesk is best suited for businesses and brands that have a large inflow of customer requests with different SLAs.

Where does Zendesk fare better than Freshdesk?

• It has an intelligent shared inbox that allows you to aggregate all customer issues and concerns from various channels in one place.
• It offers better pricing than Freshdesk with its free plan and a dozen other plans which make it perfect for organizations of any size and any budget.
• Zendesk is the most scalable support system and is extremely easy to use.
• Its structure stems from the flexible CRM developed by the team at Zendesk. Hence, it empowers your team to deliver personalized customer experiences that are crucial to your business and growth.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than Zendesk?

• Freshdesk offers a better and more comprehensive social media integration as compared to Zendesk.
• Freshdesk has a unique built-in phone channel that allows you to set up a call center on the go.
• The customer support portal and feedback widget make an easy system to collect customer issues and requests.
• Knowledgebase and support forum offer better self-help to customers as compared to Zendesk.

4. ServiceDesk Plus

ServiceDesk Plus is an integrated help desk system that is built on ITIL Framework. It is mainly used for project and asset management and has an intuitive UI which is easier to use and understand as compared to Freshdesk. This software offers customer support across multiple channels with document storage which is absent in Freshdesk.

Asset-based business organizations find it of extreme help as it offers unique features such as asset and asset lifecycle management, change management, and charting for better management of your business assets.

ServiceDesk Plus is available in 29 different languages and allows the IT support teams to curate A-level customer service with reduced complexity and costs. Its functionality and ease-of-use stem from its ITIL-ready structure.

One of the best things about this support software is that it offers a Standard Edition free of cost for on-demand and on-premise models and that too for 5 technicians. So, its lucrative pricing makes it all the more suitable for businesses with all kinds of budget and SMBs as well.

ServiceDesk Plus is best suited for:

It is best suited for organizations working in the IT-support industry, including start-ups and SMBs. It is also one of the best options for asset management and IT project management.

Where does ServiceDesk Plus fare better than Freshdesk?

• Using ServiceDesk Plus you can create customized SLAs and enjoy intuitive SLA management with four levels of hierarchy.
• It comes with 150+ inbuilt reports, flash reports, and custom reports and allows you to integrate with lots of other IT platforms to offer you a 360-degree view of your organization’s IT.
• When it comes to asset management and IT customer support, ServiceDesk Plus fares way better than Freshdesk with its advanced ITSM functionality.
• It automates IT purchasing processes and supplier interactions that facilitate tracking your purchases and contracts, reducing delays, and improving compliance.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than ServiceDesk Plus?

• The mobile app of ServiceDesk Plus fails when it comes to monitoring via your mobile. The app also lags behind Freshdesk in terms of user-friendliness.
• Freshdesk offers impeccable speed and never slows down your support system, which is where the ServiceDesk Plus lags.
• When it comes to dashboards, and their views or configuration, Freshdesk fares far better.
• Freshdesk offers you the ability to customize your ticket responses and add custom triggers for the same. It also offers a large degree of customization that is not the case with ServiceDesk Plus.

5. Zoho Desk

Often touted as one of the best Freshdesk alternatives, Zoho Desk offers an impeccable suite of SaaS applications for businesses. It enables your agents to deliver awesome customer support via tools that enhance their productivity. The agent performance can be evaluated via the analytics and reporting features of Zoho Desk.

Zoho Desk is one of those very few alternatives to Freshdesk that are beneficial to customers as well. It allows them to find the right support in a quick and easy manner.

The distinctive features that make it so popular include Task automation, a suite of useful tools for quick and responsive support, and multiple support channels. Agents and employees from different departments can collaborate to offer a superior and consolidated customer experience that translates into better customer satisfaction.

Further, Zoho Desk is cost-efficient, scalable and offers extreme customization in terms of page layouts, fields, templates, and tabs.

Zoho Desk is best suited for:

Zoho Desk is perfect for businesses of all sizes and scales, including freelancers. Ticketing, agent tracking, development, and monitoring, and an excellent range of features with impeccable customization make it a highly diverse customer support system.

Where does Zoho Desk fare better than Freshdesk?

• A larger suite of features with an extreme degree of customization and all the help desk essentials.
• It offers many useful tools that aid in building more profitable and closer customer relationships.
• It offers your agents to choose either the ticketing system or call center functionality, which makes it better than Freshdesk.
• Zoho Desk offers a deeper social media integration as compared to Freshdesk and allows you to create content-rich knowledge bases that can be used by your customers.
• It offers lucrative pricing starting from free to highly affordable plans for start-ups as well.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than Zoho Desk?

• Freshdesk allows you to enhance the productivity of your customer support team via task automation.
• A great feature of FAQ answering with a canned response.
• Automatic ticket assignment and prioritization so that the ticket reaches the right agent at the right time.
• Managers can check the number of unresolved tickets for the day and issue alerts to agents for a quick resolution.

6. JIRA Service Desk

JIRA aims at accelerating work in customer service environments and ITSM or IT Service Management. As per a report by Oracle, 80% of organizations are striving to implement AI-powered customer service solutions by 2020. JIRA has been quick to grasp this and employs Machine Learning and AI in self-service features that accelerate workflows and is also one of its most distinguishing features.

JIRA Service Desk comes with ticket automation for streamlining rerouting processes. It enables effortless collaboration across local and virtual teams and offers impressive customization options and automatic Email notifications for better tracking of changes.

Another plus point of this support software is its fantastic filtering capabilities and document storage feature, which is absent in Freshdesk.

JIRA Service Desk is best suited for:

JIRA Service Desk is ITIL Certified, which makes it perfect for customer support in the IT industry. It is highly scalable and is perfect for SMBs and enterprise-level organizations.

Where does JIRA Service Desk fare better than Freshdesk?

• JIRA Service Desk is better than Freshdesk when it comes to IT Service desks.
• It comes with notification schemes that are highly configurable and offer free customizations on the agents receiving notifications.
• Its ticket interface is simple and highly customizable, and you can add more features offered by the vendor at any stage.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than JIRA Service Desk?

• Freshdesk allows you to respond to multiple tickets of the same nature at once.
• Freshdesk offers a large number of features in the same software package. You don’t have to use add-ons that tend to add to your operational costs.
• It has better dashboards that can be configured depending on job roles and departments.

7. Hesk

Hesk is another alternative to Freshdesk that offers customer support capabilities relevant to IT business organizations. It also offers asset management, inventory management, and incident management. It is a FREE help desk software that comes with an integrated knowledge base and is simple to use.

Hesk comes with an integrated knowledge base that allows your customers to solve the basic issues on their own. It offers better customer service features such as ticket prioritization, organization, and filtering. It allows client partners to resolve all their client queries.

Hesk offers multiple ticket functions such as tracking time spent while working on a ticket, status modification, attaching files, and adding notes for customer queries. It can be deployed on-premise and on the cloud.

Hesk is best suited for:

Hesk is best suited for IT organizations to make their IT help desks better and to elevate customer satisfaction levels.

Where does Hesk fare better than Freshdesk?

• Hesk is more suitable for IT organizations and offers interaction tracking which is absent in Freshdesk.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than Hesk?

• Freshdesk offers a more consolidated and all-inclusive customer support system.
• Better ticketing, automated routing and customizable branding – Freshdesk offers a large number of features.
• It also offers SLA management and multichannel communication which is absent in Hesk.

8. HappyFox

HappyFox is a popular alternative to Freshdesk that has received various awards and accolades. Its biggest perks are – an easy to use UI, cloud-based functioning and ability to offer support across multiple channels. HappyFox comes with a Smart Rule Engine that can easily tackle redundant and complex workflows.

It comes with community forums and a robust ticket support system that helps you handle all inbound requests in one system. It has a more data-driven approach as compared to Freshdesk and helps you create actionable reports based on various metrics.

HappyFox is easy to customize and offers customization of fields, workflows, and its dashboard. Security has been a top concern, especially when it comes to handling customer data. In 2018, spending on security services reached a massive 59 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. HappyFox has bet big on security and comes with advanced SSL security that offers role-based secured access and restricts access based on IP. It offers top to bottom detailing and a highly adaptable dashboard.

HappyFox is best suited for:

HappyFox is perfect for businesses of all scales and types including the IT Help Desk.

Where does HappyFox fare better than Freshdesk?

• HappyFox offers the ease of installation, ease of setup, ease of admin and ease of doing business with and excels Freshdesk in these areas.
• It enhances your customer support via multi-channel ticketing, custom report creation, auto-assignment, and canned actions.
• It has also been rated higher then Freshdesk when it comes to the quality of support and meeting the requirements.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than HappyFox?

• Though both Freshdesk and HappyFox support customization, only Freshdesk supports themes.
• Freshdesk allows you to customize the page layouts to your liking which is absent in HappyFox.
• Freshdesk offers AI and Help Widget to offer better customer support.

9. Solarwinds

Solarwinds Service Desk is perfect for business organizations of all scales and is easier to use as compared to Freshdesk. Faster ticket resolution, better task automation, simplified customer support, and smart customer service are some of the outstanding features of Solarwinds.

It comes with incident ownership and tracking features that allow your team to prioritize and manage incidents. It also increases productivity by reducing time spent on process management. Solarwinds comes with incident management that allows your employees to work without getting impacted by incidents.

It also comes with IT asset management to ensure that your employees have all the tools they require. Its other impressive features are change management, a self-service portal, problem management, real-time reporting, benchmarking and procuring tools.

Solarwinds is best suited for:

Solarwinds is best suited for SMBs and IT organizations to deliver better customer support to their internal customers.

Where does Solarwinds fare better than Freshdesk?

• It is more user friendly and has a simpler approach as compared to Freshdesk.
• It offers almost all the features offered by Freshdesk in addition to document storage which is absent in Freshdesk.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than Solarwinds?

• Solarwinds lags behind when it comes to tracking overdue tickets and their resolution.
• Tagging and reassigning are easier in Freshdesk and it offers seamless integration in the client system.
• Easy report generation and no bugs.

10. AzureDesk

The last notable mention in the list of top Freshdesk alternatives is AzureDesk that is also ONE and ONLY helpdesk software that comes just at $5 per agent. AzureDesk comes with all the crucial features of an enterprise-class help desk software and is perfect for businesses of all scales.

AzureDesk runs entirely on Microsoft cloud and offers the full stack of Microsoft tools to make business processes better. It is easier to use as compared to Freshdesk and is a budget-friendly software.

It integrates perfectly with your current Email system and empowers you to track tickets with ease. It also enables you to prioritize and categorize tickets in an easy manner. Customer support staff can also attach private messages to tickets to offer instance-specific information.

AzureDesk is best suited for:

AzureDesk is best suited for organizations of all scales seeking better Email communication systems and offering stellar support via tracking tools and intelligent assignment systems.

Where does AzureDesk fare better than Freshdesk?

• It has a very responsive and fast UI that comes with an intelligent assignment system.
• It allows you to set up a self-service portal with a dynamic search.
• It solves the problem of managing multiple Email inboxes and offers tabbed ticket displays.

Where does Freshdesk fare better than AzureDesk?

• Freshdesk offers various categories such as Live Chat, Conversational Customer Engagement, and Shared Inboxes, etc. There are no such categories in AzureDesk.
• Freshdesk allows you to make, receive and record calls that cannot be done in AzureDesk.
• Freshdesk also offers interactive voice responses.

Final Verdict

Of all the top ten Freshdesk alternatives mentioned here, ProProfs Help Desk is one of the best options to choose because of its amazing features and high customer ratings. Zoho Desk and Zendesk are the runners-up that you can consider as a commendable replacement.

This brings us to the completion of our discussion on the best Freshdesk alternatives that you can start using now. We hope all our readers will be able to choose an alternative to Freshdesk that suits their business in the best way.