The best free customer service software allows businesses to manage customer support services efficiently while they are growing. These platforms include essential support features, such as ticket management, agent productivity, and team collaboration. In this article, we compare several providers based on their user limit, features, ease of use, cost of upgrade, customer support, and expert scores to arrive at the best options.
Our top picks, and their best uses cases, include:
- Freshdesk: Best overall free customer service software for unlimited users
- Zoho Desk: Ideal for support teams looking for a free help desk tool with Service Level Agreement (SLA) management features
- LiveAgent: Top option for ecommerce businesses that need a free customer service tool
- UVdesk: Best choice for businesses wanting a free and open-source help desk system
- Really Simple Systems Service Desk: Recommended for teams wanting a free customer service software with integrated sales tools
- Drag: Ideal for customer support teams that prefer to use a free Gmail-based help desk tool
Best Free Customer Service Software Compared
 |  |  |  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Features on Free Plan | Unlimited | Up to 3 users | Unlimited | Unlimited | Up to 2 users | Unlimited |
No. of Agents on the Free Plan | $15 per agent, per month | $14 per agent, per month | $15 per agent, per month | $8 per agent, per month | $14 per user, per month | $8 per agent, per month |
Starting Price for Paid Plans* | 21 days | 15 days | 14 days | 30 days | 14 days | 14 days |
Free Trial for Paid Plans | ✔ | N/A | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Team Collaboration | Knowledge base, email, and social media tickets | Help center, email, feedback form, and web tickets | Customer portal, contact forms, Slack notifications, customer forum, email tickets, live chat, and VoIP support | Knowledge base, web tickets, and email tickets | Web forms and email tickets (add-ons) | Email |
Customer Communication Channels | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Mobile App | ✔ | N/A | ✔ | N/A | ✔ | N/A |
Reporting and Analytics | Knowledge base, community forums, and 24/7 email support | Knowledge base, community forums, customer portal, and 24/5 email support | Knowledge base, website support, customer portal, and 24/7 live chat, email, phone, and social media support | Knowledge base, webinars, demo, support center, and support via email, live chat, and phone during office hours (Indian Standard Time) | In-page help information, customer portal, video tutorials, live webinars, and email, and chat support during office hours (U.K. Time) | Help center guides and email support |
Customer Support |
Freshdesk: Best Overall Free Customer Service Software
Freshdesk
What We Like
- Offers a free plan that supports an unlimited number of agents
- Free plan includes basic reporting, collaboration, and help widget tools
- 24/7 customer support across all tiers
What's Missing
- AI-powered agent assistant is available only in the highest-cost tier
- Limited workflow automation capabilities in the free plan
- Free plan does not include third-party integrations
Pricing at a Glance*
Support Desk:
- Free: Unlimited agents
- Growth: $15 per agent, per month
- Pro: $49 per agent, per month
- Enterprise: $79 per agent, per month
Omnichannel:
- Growth: $29 per agent, per month
- Pro: $59 per agent, per month
- Enterprise: $99 per agent, per month
Free trial: 21 days
Add-ons:
- Additional bot sessions: $75 for 1,000 bot sessions per month
- Field Service Management: $15 per field agent, per month
*Based on annual billing. Monthly pricing is also available at slightly higher rates.
Freshdesk, customer service software by Freshsales, offers a Free plan that supports an unlimited number of agents. This plan also includes basic help desk features, such as email and social ticketing, ticket dispatch, a knowledge base, ticket trend reports, and team collaboration tools. On top of these capabilities, it is easy to use and gives users access to 24/7 email support across all tiers, making it the best choice for free customer service software.
Despite Freshdesk’s robust offerings for Free plan users, it lacks third-party integrations available in LiveAgent and Really Simple Systems. Aside from that, the free tier does not include service level agreement (SLA) management features, which Zoho Desk has. Still, the combination of its rich help desk capabilities, quality of customer support, and affordable paid plans make it the best choice among the customer service software providers on this list.
Freshdesk Free Plan Features
Omnichannel ticketing feature consolidates email, phone, chat, and social media tickets in one platform. (Source: Freshdesk)
- Ticket management: Email ticketing, automatic email notifications, merge tickets, ticket export, ticket activities, set priority, set status, and outbound email
- Agent productivity tools: Shared canned responses, public and private responses in tickets, dynamic placeholders (personalized automated emails), to-do lists, tags, and quick actions in ticket reply
- Workflow automation: Ticket assignment, setting ticket properties, triggering email notifications, and deleting tickets or marking them as spam
- Knowledge base: Public and private knowledge bases and the ability to convert agent replies to solution articles
- Help widget: Embeddable contact form and solution articles
- Social support: Basic Twitter and Facebook channels; track brand mentions, participate in conversations involving your brand, and re-tweet or pull up past conversation threads from within the help desk
- Collaboration: Chat and collaborate with your team using the Freshconnect integration
- Reporting and analytics: Default dashboard and ticket volume trends
- Customer management: Access and modify contact and company fields
- Customization: Public portal customization (update or rebrand logo of your Freshdesk account)
- Mobile app: iOS and Android apps
- Customer support: Knowledge base, community forums, and 24/7 email support
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Freshdesk’s Free plan offers limited capabilities for ticket management and collaboration. It is best to upgrade to a paid account once your team expands and needs more advanced tools to manage tickets, like ticket sorting, time tracking, triggered automations, and round-robin ticket assignments. Doing so also gives you access to service level agreement (SLA) management, Freddy AI (smart agent assistant), custom reports, and phone and chat support.
Zoho Desk: Best Free Customer Service Software With SLA Management Tools
Zoho Desk
What We Like
- Free plan includes basic SLA management
- Robust ticket management capabilities
- 24/5 email support across all plans
What's Missing
- Free plan is limited to only 3 agents
- No collaboration tools in free plan
- Social media integration is not included in the free tier
Pricing at a Glance*
- Free: Up to 3 agents
- Standard: $14 per agent, per month
- Professional: $23 per agent, per month
- Enterprise: $40 per agent, per month
- Free trial: 15 days
Add-on for paid plans:
- Light agent: $6 per light agent, per month**
- Priority support: 20% to 25% of license fee
*Based on annual billing. Monthly pricing is also available at slightly higher rates.
**A light agent is a default profile that can be assigned to users outside of your support team without having to pay for additional seats.
Zoho Desk offers a Free plan with robust ticket management tools that include ticket tags and history. Its omnichannel support channels enable agents to address customer queries from emails, the help center, feedback widgets, and web forms, all from a single platform. It also has SLA management features that let you automatically set due times for ticket responses and pause the time counter when progress cannot be made on a ticket.
What Zoho Desk lacks in its free tier are real-time collaboration tools and social media integrations. Aside from that, the Free plan is limited to three agents only. Choose Freshdesk if you want a free solution that supports an unlimited number of agents, has collaboration tools, and integrates with social media sites. Drag also allows you to collaborate with your team using Kanban-style boards.
Zoho Desk Free Plan Features
Zia identifies the customer sentiment behind every incoming ticket. (Source: Zoho Desk)
- Ticket management: Email tickets, comment in a ticket, spam ticket, ticket history, ticket resolution note, and 10 tags per ticket
- Agent productivity tools: Quick Ticket View, response editor with rich text support, response draft, and advanced search (search across all modules from a single place)
- Customer support channels: Email, help center, feedback widget, and advanced web forms
- Automations: Notification rules and macros (manually apply combined actions that are performed quickly on tickets)
- SLAs: Default priority-based SLA and option to stop the SLA clock
- Customizations: Default templates, custom form fields, and custom tabs
- Help center: Private knowledge base for agents and article revisioning
- Customer management: Contact and account information management, private notes for contacts and accounts, and dedicated owners for contacts and accounts
- Integrations: Google Workspace and Zoho Assist
- Mobile app: iOS and Android apps
- Customer support: Knowledge base, community forums, customer portal, and 24/5 email support
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
While Zoho Desk’s Free plan offers a robust set of basic ticket management features, it does not include tools for collaboration, help desk customization, activity management, and reporting. A paid subscription also allows you to add light agents and track time spent on tickets, as well as make, receive, and log calls from your help desk. Aside from that, you get access to more app integrations and priority support via live chat and phone.
LiveAgent: Best Free Customer Service Software With Ecommerce Integration
LiveAgent
What We Like
- Wide variety of ecommerce integrations
- Free plan includes live chat and call center support
- 24/7 multi-channel support across all plans
What's Missing
- No SLA management feature in free plan
- Time tracking is available only in higher tiers
- Social media messaging costs extra
LiveAgent Pricing at a Glance*
- Free: Limited to 1 chat button and 1 phone number
- Ticket: $15 per agent, per month
- Ticket + Chat: $29 per agent, per month
- All-inclusive: $39 per agent, per month
- Free trial: 14 days
Add-ons**
- Social media messaging: $39 per account, per month
- Time tracking: $19 per account, per month
- Customizations: Range from $5 to $19 per account, per month
- Time report: $19 per account, per month
- Additional data security: $9 per account, per month
*Based on annual billing. Monthly pricing is also available at slightly higher rates.
**Some add-ons are applicable only to specific plans. Check LiveAgent’s website for more details.
LiveAgent’s Free plan offers a variety of customer communication channels, including a customer portal, contact forms, customer forums, email, live chat, and phone. It has a rich set of ticket management tools that allow you to view ticket history for up to seven days, send file attachments, conduct ticket satisfaction surveys, add custom tags, and transfer tickets. This platform also boasts of a wide set of ecommerce integrations like Shopify and BigCommerce.
Unlike Zoho Desk, LiveAgent does not offer SLA management features with its Free plan. Aside from that, you need to spend extra in order to respond to customers’ messages on social media. Freshdesk, on the other hand, lets you track brand mentions and access the Twitter and Facebook functions directly from within your help desk.
LiveAgent Free Plan Features
Canned responses on LiveAgent. (Source: LiveAgent)
- Communication channels: Customer portal, contact forms, Slack notifications, customer forums, email ticketing, live chat, and call center support
- Ticket management: Ticket history (seven days), merge tickets, custom ticket fields, split tickets, internal notes for tickets, file attachments, ticket mass actions, ticket satisfaction survey, custom tags, real-time ticket dashboard, ticket transfer, chat transcripts, file sharing over chat, mobile chat window, and call queueing
- Customizations: Application programming interface (API), contact form widgets, chat widgets, and call widgets
- Reporting: Analytics overview and performance report
- Integrations: Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, WordPress, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Zapier, Magento 2, PrestaShop, Shopify, and OpenCart
- Mobile app: iOS and Android apps
- Customer support: Knowledge base, multiple language support, multiple website support, and White Glove Setup (LiveAgent sets up your help desk account for you); 24/7 support via live chat, email, phone, social media, and customer portal
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
LiveAgent’s Free plan offers a wide range of customer communication channels, including live chat and call center support. However, you’ll need more productivity tools like canned responses and customer email templates once you start hiring more agents to accommodate larger ticket volumes. Paid plan subscribers also get access to time tracking, call routing, and SLA management, as well as agent and channel reporting capabilities.
UVdesk: Best Free Open-source Customer Service Software
UVdesk
What We Like
- Free plan that supports an unlimited number of agents
- Customizable workflows
- Free plan includes email templates and robust ticket administration tools
What's Missing
- Free plan does not offer social media and ecommerce integrations
- No reporting and task management tools included in free plan
- Live support is available only during office hours on Indian Standard Time
UVdesk Pricing at a Glance*
- Open Source (Free): Unlimited agents
- Pro: $8 per agent, per month (minimum of 2 agents)
- Enterprise: $15 per agent, per month (minimum of 2 agents)
- Free trial of paid plan: 30 days
*Based on annual billing. Monthly pricing is also available at slightly higher rates.
UVdesk has a free Open Source plan that supports an unlimited number of agents and has customizable ticket assignment and condition-based workflows. Its ticket administration features allow you to create email tickets, write private notes for agents, use canned responses, prioritize tickets, and add collaborators. You can also create an unlimited number of knowledge base articles and respond to customer queries via email and website tickets.
The features that are notably absent from UVdesk’s Open Source plan are task and email management, as well as ecommerce and social media integrations. In addition, it does not offer 24/7 customer support, unlike Freshdesk and LiveAgent. You might want to explore Drag if you want a free help desk tool that offers task and email management tools.
UVdesk Free Plan Features
Binaka provides quick support to your customers on your website via an integrated knowledge base. (Source: UVdesk)
- Ticket formation: Ticket category, Google ReCAPTCHA (Google’s free spam protection service), and custom ticket fields
- Ticket administration: Email ticket, delete ticket thread, forwarding tickets, secret notes, saved responses, ticket priority, ticket status, ticket tags, add collaborators, and group creation
- Email management: Email setting, placeholders, and customizable email templates
- Multichannel support: Unlimited mailbox and website support
- Knowledge base: Unlimited knowledge base folders, categories, and articles
- Customizations: Logo, ticket create option, and homepage content
- Workflows: Customizable ticket assignment, condition-based workflow, and event-based workflow
- Customer support: Knowledge base, webinars, personalized demo, blog articles, support center, and multilingual support; support via email, live chat, and phone from Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Indian Standard Time (11:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time)
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
You’ll need to move up to a paid plan if you decide to include social media in your customer support channels. This decision entails more responsibilities for your agents. UVdesk’s Open Source plan does not offer tools for increasing productivity, like task management, customer follow-up, data importation, file viewer, form builder, and reporting. A paid plan gives you access to additional ticket administration tools like agent collision detection and to-do lists.
Really Simple Systems Service Desk: Best Customer Service Software With Integrated Sales CRM
Really Simple Systems Service Desk
What We Like
- Tools are easy to learn and operate
- Free plan includes sales forecasting and custom reports
- Custom fields, dashboards, and pages available in free plan
What's Missing
- No mobile app
- Customer service management features are only available as add-on in higher tiers
- Does not have social media integrations
Really Simple Systems Pricing at a Glance*
- Free: Up to 2 users
- Starter: $14 per user, per month
- Professional: $30 per user, per month
- Enterprise: $46 per user, per month
- Free trial of paid plans: 14 days
Add-ons:
- Simple Marketing: $22 per month**
- Advanced Marketing: $46 per month
- Service Desk: $46 per month**
- Customization Service: Contact sales for pricing
*Based on annual billing. Monthly pricing is also available at slightly higher rates.
**Either Simple Marketing or Service Desk can be included for free with five or more users on the Enterprise plan. Both tools can be included for free with 10 or more users.
Really Simple Systems offers a free, easy-to-use sales customer relationship manager (CRM) with an option to add a Service Desk CRM for an additional fee ($4 per month). This add-on includes tools for case management, SLA management, case-level ranking, web ticketing, custom reports, and email integration. The Free plan allows you to integrate your CRM with Google Maps, Google Contacts, and Zapier. You can also access customer support via email and live chat during standard U.K. office hours.
The main setback of Really Simple Systems is the cost of the Service Desk add-on, which is only available to Professional and Enterprise subscribers. Other platforms like Freshdesk and Zoho Desk offer free plans with robust help desk features. Aside from that, Really Simple Systems does not have a mobile app, unlike most of the providers featured in this guide.
Really Simple Systems Free Plan Features
Case management system. (Source: Really Simple Systems)
Service level agreements. (Source: Really Simple Systems)
- Sales CRM (customer relationship management): Contact and pipeline management, opportunity history, sales probability and stages, product lines, tasks, events, calendars, linked accounts, and document storage
- Service Desk CRM (add-on): Case management, SLA management, email integration, and case reports
- Reporting: Ad hoc listing, sales forecasts, and custom reports
- Customizations: Fields, tables, drop-down lists, dashboards, and pages
- Integrations: Google Maps, Google Contacts, Zapier, and API
- Customer support: In-page help information, customer portal, video tutorials, live webinars, and email and online chat support from Monday to Friday (9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. U.K. Time)
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Unlike all the other providers in this guide, Really Simple Systems’ Service Desk CRM is available only as an add-on to its higher tiers. Therefore, you cannot access this functionality at all with a free plan. In addition, a paid subscription allows you to have email, accounting, voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP), and single sign-on integrations. Higher tiers let you set security permissions for multiple department users and get access to phone support and team training.
Read our Really Simple Systems review to discover how this software can benefit your growing business.
Drag: Best Free Help Desk Tool for Gmail Users
Drag
What We Like
- Easy-to-use Kanban boards
- Free plan supports an unlimited number of users
- Email templates and email tracking available on free tier
What's Missing
- Free plan does not include workflow automation
- Very limited collaboration tools on free plan
- No customer service management tools
Drag Pricing at a Glance*
- Free: Unlimited users
- Plus: $8 per user, per month
- Pro: $12 per user, per month
- Enterprise: Contact sales for custom pricing
- Free trial of paid plans: 14 days
*Based on annual billing. Monthly pricing is also available at slightly higher rates.
Drag is a Gmail-based help desk tool built for support teams using Google Workspace. It features shareable drag-and-drop Kanban boards you can use for organizing tickets, creating checklists, and logging activities. You can also put due dates on tasks to ensure your team meets important deadlines. In addition, this app allows you to use email templates and tracks emails when they are opened.
One of Drag’s biggest disadvantages is the lack of customer service management tools for ticket management and customer communication. The only collaboration feature available in its free tier is the ability to create 10 Kanban boards. If you are looking for customer service software that offers ticket management tools and multi-channel customer support within a free plan, check out Freshdesk and Zoho Desk.
Drag Free Plan Features
Drag turns your Gmail into your support team’s workspace. (Source: Drag)
- Collaboration: Create 10 Kanban boards in Gmail
- Productivity: Solo boards, lists, tasks, email notes, checklists, activity logs, sort and filter boards, and drag-and-drop functionality
- Basic workflow: Personalize up to 10 email templates and track when emails are opened
- Integrations: Google Calendar, Google Groups, Gmail add-on
- Customer support: Help center guides, live chat, and email support
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
While Drag’s Free plan allows you to add an unlimited number of users, a paid plan is more appropriate for a growing support team that needs more advanced productivity and collaboration tools. The Plus and Pro plans allow you to create more Kanban boards and shared inboxes. They also help lighten your team’s increasing workload and manual tasks with its tools for agent collision detection, conversation assignment, and workflow automation.
How We Evaluated the Best Free Customer Service Software
The best free customer service software provides small and growing businesses with a free plan that supports an unlimited number of agents and includes basic ticket management features. It also boosts agent productivity with canned responses and quick ticket views. Aside from that, it allows you to manage customer queries via multiple channels, including email, chat, phone, and social media.
With a score of 4.96 out of 5, we’ve evaluated Freshdesk as the best overall choice for support teams wanting free customer service software. It gained the top spot in this category because its free plan supports an unlimited number of agents and offers a robust set of ticket management and agent productivity tools. It also includes multi-channel customer support, ticket reports, mobile apps, and 24/7 email support for users.
The tabs below offer more insight into our evaluation process for selecting the best free customer service software:
40% of Overall Score
Small business owners prefer a free customer service platform that supports an unlimited number of agents. Here, we considered the maximum number of agents included in the free plan and the cost of upgrading to a paid tier. We also factored in the availability of a monthly billing option.
20% of Overall Score
We evaluated the overall set of features offered in each provider’s free plan. These include ticket management, team collaboration, agent productivity, customer communication channels, and reporting and analytics. We also looked at the availability of a mobile app and third-party integrations.
15% of Overall Score
The best free customer service software should not require technical skills to understand and use, and it should also have an intuitive interface. Each solution in this list was evaluated on how easy it is to set up and operate.
15% of Overall Score
Business users looking for free customer service software favor solutions that come with 24/7 customer service via phone, live chat, and email. We assessed the platforms in this article to see the quality of help and support they offer their users.
10% of Overall Score
We checked customer reviews on reputable sites to learn how satisfied their customers are. We also noted common issues the users had. Apart from reviews, we weighed the features that stood out, their value for money, and their popularity to narrow down the best free customer service platforms.
