6 Best Freshdesk Contact Center Alternatives for 2023
This article is part of a larger series on VoIP.
Freshdesk Contact Center is a telephony-first customer support solution with low-cost monthly per-user plans. While it has extensive call management features, it doesn’t offer much for digital channel support, customer self-service, and workforce management. The best Freshdesk Contact Center alternatives feature a wide variety of interaction channels, agent collaboration tools, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered experiences.
Here are the best Freshdesk Contact Center alternatives for different business needs:
- RingCentral Contact Center: Best for extensive customer service channel support
- Talkdesk: Best for automated agent and customer experience
- Nextiva Contact Center: Best for integrated customer engagement solution
- 8×8 Contact Center: Best for complex security and compliance requirements
- Kixie: Best for sales outreach automation
- Nice CXone: Best for cross-channel customer journeys
Freshdesk Contact Center & Best Alternatives at a Glance
Freshdesk Contact Center Alternatives | Monthly Starting Price (per User) | Key Features | Free Trial | FSB Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
| 21 days | 4.49 out of 5 | |
 | Contact sales |
| ✕ | 4.26 out of 5 |
 |
| ✕ | 4.23 out of 5 | |
 | Contact sales |
| ✕ | 4.21 out of 5 |
 | Contact sales |
| ✕ | 4.16 out of 5 |
 |
| 7 days | 4.11 out of 5 | |
 | Contact sales |
| 60 days | 4.02 out of 5 |
Before exploring the top Freshdesk Contact Center alternatives, check out our full review of Freshdesk Contact Center to see how it stacks up against competitors.
RingCentral Contact Center: Best Overall for Omnichannel Support
Overall Score:
4.26 / 5
What We Like
- Multiple add-on options
- Integrated with unified communications (UC) capabilities
- Supports 30+ digital channels
Where It Falls Behind
- No ticketing system
- Unpublished pricing
- Purchasing multiple add-ons incurs bigger monthly fees
How It Compares to Freshdesk Contact Center
- Upgrading to RingCentral Contact Center’s base plan unlocks up to 20 digital channels, while Freshdesk Contact Center only supports phone and SMS interactions.
- RingCentral Contact Center plans include video meetings and team chat—collaboration features Freshdesk Contact Center doesn’t offer.
- Freshdesk Contact Center is a virtual private branch exchange (PBX), while RingCentral Contact Center is an omnichannel customer experience solution.
- Unlike RingCentral, Freshdesk Contact Center is small business-friendly, providing a free-forever subscription and cheaper monthly plans.
RingCentral, an industry-leading business phone service, offers a powerful omnichannel contact center solution with a broad range of digital channels. Interact with customers on their preferred channels, such as email, live chat, social media, mobile apps, and messaging platforms. It has a unified platform to manage all digital interactions and access consistent controls to enable intelligent self-service and omnichannel routing.
While ticket management is a core feature offered by Freshdesk Contact Center, RingCentral Contact Center doesn’t support this functionality. If you’re looking for a Freshdesk Contact Center alternative with ticket management, consider Nextiva Contact Center. This provider has powerful ticket assignment, filtering, and sorting features to prioritize and accomplish tickets faster.
RingCentral Contact Center Monthly Pricing at a Glance
Contact sales for pricing details on any of your preferred plans below.
- RingCX Intelligent Contact Center: Interactive voice response (IVR), virtual agent, call recording, call transcriptions, surveys, reporting, and up to 20 digital channels
- RingCentral Contact Center Enterprise: Screen recording, quality management, workforce management, and up to 30 digital channels
RingCentral Contact Center Features
Build your reporting dashboard with widgets and prebuilt templates. (Source: RingCentral)
- Voicemail routing: Provide callers the option to leave a voicemail message or request a callback. This allows you to identify which calls to prioritize.
- Quality management: Measure and track agent performance by knowing when an agent is engaged with a caller and accessing agent reports and call recordings.
- Real-time and historical reports: Get a detailed look at your contact center’s status, including performance metrics, interaction data, queue information, and interaction data.
Talkdesk: Best for Automated Interactions
Overall Score:
4.23 / 5
What We Like
- Intuitive interface
- Automated agent assistance
- Custom quote for various industries
Where It Falls Behind
- Base plan lacks mobile app access
- Pricey monthly plans
- No annual or volume discounts
How It Compares to Freshdesk Contact Center
- Unlike Freshdesk Contact Center, Talkdesk appeals to tech-savvy companies wanting to utilize AI for streamlining workflow.
- Talkdesk has more add-on options than Freshdesk Contact Center.
- Freshdesk Contact Center emphasizes voice-based customer support, while Talkdesk focuses on AI-powered digital channel interactions.
- Freshdesk Contact Center has fixed monthly plans, starting at $18 per user, whereas Talkdesk has custom plans starting at $75 per user.
Talkdesk is known for its powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and automation capabilities for its contact center software. Powered by conversational AI, the virtual agent tool engages with customers in natural, two-way conversations and detects issues requiring live agent support. Agents are equipped with a virtual assistant that suggests contextual information and the next best action to take with a customer. Interaction analytics deliver AI-derived insights to identify key topics and sentiments.
Small businesses on a budget may find Talkdesk’s plans more expensive than Freshdesk Contact Center’s free and low-cost monthly per-user fees. If you’re looking for a close competitor that is priced cheaper, check out Kixie. Monthly plans start at $35 per user (billed quarterly), but multiple pricing options are available for different budget needs.
Talkdesk Monthly Pricing at a Glance Displayed rates are based on a three-year contract
- CX Cloud Essentials: $75 for intelligent call routing, virtual agent, live dashboards, reporting and analytics, API access, and knowledge management
- CX Cloud Elevate: $95 for screen recording, digital channels (chat, email, and SMS), mobile app, automated notifications, and quality management
- CX Cloud Elite: $125 for custom reporting, compliance solution, and performance management
- Experience Clouds: Custom quote for industry-specific solutions, 100% uptime, and any two add-ons from the options: workforce management, customer experience analytics, agent assist, and proactive outbound engagement.
Talkdesk Features
The Talkdesk Automation Designer is a no-code visual tool for creating flows and templates for different business processes.
(Source: Talkdesk)
- Automatic call distributor: Route incoming calls to specific agents or departments based on agent skills, customer data, business hours, and interactive voice response (IVR) selection.
- Automated workflows: Sends recordings and data into your customer relationship management (CRM) system after a call ends. It automatically creates tickets for missed calls, which you can customize to indicate call data, caller details, and voicemail recording.
- Forward-to-phone: Forward phone calls to a smartphone, landline, or computer from anywhere in the world. This is useful for distributed teams that want to contact customers with local numbers.
Nextiva Contact Center: Best for Digital Customer Engagement
Overall Score:
4.21 / 5
What We Like
- Geo-redundancy ensures service reliability
- Unified omnichannel reporting
- Inbound call center plan available for as low as $50
Where It Falls Behind
- Business phone service is sold separately with the contact center plan
- CRM connector has extra fees
- Limited integrations
How It Compares to Freshdesk Contact Center
- Unlike Freshdesk Contact Center, Nextiva has more advanced contact center offerings like workforce optimization and quality management.
- Nextiva Contact Center offers an entire workflow automation suite, whereas Freshdesk Contact Center only has a routing automation feature.
- All Freshdesk Contact Center plans only support voice-based contact center, while Nextiva Contact Center only offers the base plan for the same offering.
- Freshdesk Contact Center comes with built-in business phone service, while Nextiva sells its contact center and business phone service separately.
Nextiva ranks as one of our top phone systems for small businesses due to its rich customer engagement and lead management solution. The Customer Experience plugin uses workflow automation for sending automatic surveys, tracking sentiment, and making follow-ups. Call pop is an upgraded caller ID that instantly shows caller details like sentiment, survey response, and account value. Other features include contact management and account experience score.
Nextiva’s CRM connector includes prebuilt integrations with popular CRM solutions like Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft, and ServiceNow. However, this involves extra fees, which can increase your monthly plan. Consider 8×8 Contact Center if you want to integrate your CRM platform at no additional cost.
Nextiva Contact Center Monthly Pricing at a Glance
Contact sales for pricing details on any of your preferred plans below.
- Core (voice): Blended inbound/outbound, call recording, agent desktop, and geo-redundancy
- Premium (digital engagement): Chat, email, SMS, basic scorecards, and screen recordings
- Optimum (workforce optimization): Coaching capabilities, advanced evaluations, system security, strategic planner, and proactive notification
- Ultimate (workflow automation): Interaction analytics, workflow automation, and no-code workflows
Nextiva Contact Center Features
Nextiva lets you distribute surveys when specific actions are met. (Source: Nextiva Contact Center)
- Threaded conversations: Combines all conversations in a single view to easily follow and respond to customer communication, whether email, chat, phone, or SMS.
- Call flow builder: A visual canvas with drag-and-drop functionality for setting up call menus and routing calls based on business hours, a specific user, or set days and times.
- Online customer survey: Design surveys using various question types and customize them by adding your company branding. Get real-time insights on survey results and create custom reports to view the data you need.
8×8 Contact Center: Best for Security & Compliance
Overall Score:
4.16 / 5
What We Like
- Strong security capabilities
- Built-in collaboration tools
- Mix-and-match plans
Where It Falls Behind
- Limited app integrations
- IVR access has extra fees
- Microsoft Teams integration is a paid add-on
How It Compares to Freshdesk Contact Center
- Unlike Freshdesk Contact Center, 8×8 Contact Center has stronger security policies and compliance standards for protecting user data.
- 8×8 Contact Center supports cross-company collaboration through team chat and video meetings, whereas Freshdesk Contact Center has no similar offering.
- Freshdesk Contact Center supports local numbers in over 50 countries, while 8×8 Contact Center has a wider global coverage with over 100 countries.
- Both providers support advanced reporting capabilities.
8×8 Contact Center fulfills various security and compliance requirements to protect data and operations from various threats. This is ideal for companies that highly value user privacy, financial data, and customer information. Its security program comprises nine key components, including data encryption, 24/7 monitoring, and third-party validation. 8×8 also adheres to the National Institute of Standards in Technology 800-53, the gold standard for security controls.
One weak point about 8×8 Contact Center is the limited number of third-party apps that integrate with its software. If your company is looking for a fully integrated customer support solution, choose Talkdesk. This provider integrates with around 40 industry-leading apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Pipedrive, Shopify, and Zendesk.
8×8 Contact Center Monthly Pricing at a Glance
Contact sales for pricing details on any of your preferred plans below.
- X6 (voice-based): Skills-based routing, multi-level auto-attendant, CRM integrations, call monitoring, reporting, call analytics, queue callback, presence detection, and team chat
- X7 (omnichannel): Omnichannel routing (voice, chat, email, SMS, and social media) and co-browsing
- X8: Auto-dialer, speech analytics, and quality management
8×8 Contact Center Features
The 8×8 speech analytics uses interactive graphics to highlight keywords based on the frequency they appear in calls. (Source: 8×8)
- Speech and text analytics: Combines call recording and automated transcripts to analyze the full spectrum of voice conversations. It searches for keywords and phrases to examine what makes customers satisfied or frustrated.
- IVR journey maps: Create custom workflows with scripting tools to save time adjusting self-service options. Built-in reporting and analytics offer insights into customer journeys within IVR paths.
- Customer experience analytics: Advanced search and intuitive navigation help identify issues and trends in customer experiences. Analyze customer feedback to boost satisfaction scores and fix issues causing dissatisfaction.
Kixie: Best for Outbound Sales Campaigns
Overall Score:
4.11 / 5
What We Like
- Sales engagement features
- Base plan includes CRM integration
- Purpose-built for outbound call centers
Where It Falls Behind
- Clunky interface
- Unlimited minutes to U.S. and Canada require a $30 charge
- Lacks omnichannel support
How It Compares to Freshdesk Contact Center
- Freshdesk Contact Center offers monthly and annual billing, while Kixie has quarterly and yearly billing cycles
- Kixie has fewer third-party integrations (16 apps) than Freshdesk Contact Center (1,000+ apps).
- Both providers are limited to voice and SMS channel interactions.
- Kixie focuses on automated sales outreach, while Freshdesk Contact Center emphasizes telephony-first customer support.
Kixie offers a smart outbound calling solution for creating highly targeted sales campaigns via phone, SMS, and email. Its flagship feature, Powercall, is an advanced sales dialer that combines power dialing, local presence, and CRM integration to get more lead connections in just a few dials. Increase answer rate with progressive caller ID that lets you automatically rotate caller ID numbers on each outbound call.
Kixie can be limiting when it comes to digital channel experience as it only supports voice calling and texting. If you’re looking to expand your customer service into new channels, Nice CXone is your best choice. It supports up to 30 digital channels, including chat, messaging, and social media.
Kixie Monthly Pricing at a Glance
- Integrated: $35 for business phone service, SMS, click-to-call/text, IVR, ring group, call recording, and reporting
- Professional: $65 for call queues, call coaching, voicemail drop, and DNC list auto blocker
- Outbound Power Dialer: $95 for single and multiple line power dialer and campaign and session management
- Enterprise: Contact sales for custom automation, auto-dialing, SMS, and integration
- Free trial: 7 days
Kixie Features
Kixie’s power dialer lets you call up to 10 leads without connection lag. (Source: Kixie)
- ConnectionBoost: Increases answer rate by picking a phone number most likely to be answered by a customer from a pool of over 50,000 numbers. It has three core functions: local presence dialing, spam protection, and progressive caller ID.
- Call coaching: Kixie offers three ways to coach call center agents effectively: listen to a live call, use the whisper function to directly talk to the agent, or take over the call as needed. You can allow new hires to listen to your best agents’ calls.
- Scheduled SMS: Automate text messages and send them based on CRM tasks or calendar events. Customizable SMS templates are available for sending one-click SMS.
Nice CXone: Best for Customer Journey Mapping
Overall Score:
4.02 / 5
What We Like
- Free trial length of 60 days
- Smart contact center tools (automation, self-service, and workforce intelligence)
- 30+ digital channel options
Where It Falls Behind
- Not user-friendly due to its overwhelming feature set
- Lacks built-in chatbot function
- Can be overkill for small call centers with limited needs
How It Compares to Freshdesk Contact Center
- Nice CXone provides up to 30 digital channels, while Freshdesk Contact Center only supports voice calling and SMS.
- Nice CXone offers a complete contact center solution, whereas Freshdesk is a voice-focused call center software.
- Unlike Freshdesk Contact Center, Nice CXone has workforce management, digital self-service, and customer journey analytics
- At Nice CXone, the monthly estimated price is up to $100 per paid version. Freshdesk Contact Center is more budget-friendly due to its free plan and cheaper monthly per-user fees.
Nice CXone Journey Orchestration is a set of features that lets you connect customer journeys across any channel from self-service to agent-assisted conversations. It provides native support for different interaction channels, while flexible routing modes (i.e., skills-based or AI-powered) match customers to the correct resource, live agent, or self-service. With proactive support, businesses can reach customers in any channel they prefer.
However, Nice CXone’s sheer number of high-level contact center features may be overkill for small businesses on a budget. If you need a no-frills call center platform at an affordable cost, check out Kixie. This provider offers the cheapest monthly per-user plans starting at $35, billed quarterly. It uses blended calling and texting solutions for seamless customer service and to connect with more leads.
Nice CXone Monthly Pricing at a Glance
Contact sales for pricing details on any of your preferred plans below.
- Customer Engagement:
- Digital: Automatic call distributor (ACD) digital agent and digital channels
- Voice: ACD voice agent, self-service IVR, 5GB storage, and standard recording
- Omnichannel: ACD digital/voice agent, self-service IVR, 5GB cloud storage, and advanced recording
- Essentials: Self-service IVR, 5GB cloud storage, advanced audio recording, screen recording, and quality management
- Core: Workforce and performance management
- Complete: Customer interaction analytics and customer feedback analytics
- Free trial: 60 days
All plans include over 90 prebuilt reports, softphone, agent desktop, and unified administration
Nice CXone Features
Nice CXone Customer Journey Analytics delivers complete visibility into every multichannel customer journey. (Source: Nice CXone)
- Customer Journey Analytics: Collects and analyzes interaction data to measure customer experience across channels. Powered by AI, the Journey Excellence Score predicts how likely a specific journey will trigger a cancellation or complaint.
- In-app messaging: Engage with your mobile app users by providing secure, in-app messaging within your business’ mobile app. Users can chat with live agents or bots.
- Real-time interaction guidance: Agents receive real-time coaching with embedded desktop tips based on certain metrics or spoken phrases. It provides immediate guidance on soft-skill behaviors and the next best actions.
How We Evaluated the Best Freshdesk Contact Center Alternatives
We looked at dozens of contact center providers offering better capabilities and feature sets than Freshdesk Contact Center. We included solutions offering higher-level functionalities like omnichannel support, workforce management, and self-service options. From there, we designed a rubric table and assigned scores for the following criteria: pricing, general features, niche features, ease of use, customer support, and expert score.
Learn how we evaluated the best Freshdesk Contact Center alternatives by clicking on the tabs below:
15%
Pricing
25%
General Features
20%
Advanced Features
10%
Ease of Use
10%
Customer Support
20%
Expert Score
15% of Overall Score
Affordability is the major selling point of Freshdesk Contact Center, which offers a free version and low-cost plans starting at $18 per user. We evaluated alternatives based on their cost, free trial length, and availability of discounts for bulk purchasing and annual billing.
25% of Overall Score
Freshdesk Contact Center offers a wealth of call management capabilities and routing options but lacks omnichannel support. We looked for providers supporting digital channels and core contact center features like call monitoring, automatic call distribution, and call activity analytics.
20% of Overall Score
Leading contact center solutions have industry-specific offerings catering to unique business needs. We looked for features that increase agent productivity, like virtual assistant and workforce management. We also checked for tools that help streamline customer services, such as outbound dialers and CRM integrations.
10% of Overall Score
We assessed each provider’s user-friendliness by testing it ourselves and checking user reviews from reliable websites. We considered if there are learning curves experienced during the setup and configuration phase.
10% of Overall Score
We evaluated the provider’s quality of customer service by checking the hours and days it is available. 24/7 coverage is equivalent to extra points. We checked the availability of support channels, including phone, live chat, email, community forum, and help desk.
20% of Overall Score
We tested each contact center platform and compared their functionalities and performance against Freshdesk Contact Center. We also considered legitimate reviews from business users and analyzed each provider’s ratings from popular review websites.
*Percentages of overall score
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes. Freshdesk Contact Center offers a free plan consisting of basic phone system features, such as inbound caller ID, call notes, custom greetings, call metrics, and call blocking. However, these features may not be enough to handle large call volumes. Upgrading to any paid plan gives full access to Freshdesk Contact Center’s advanced functionalities.
The best Freshdesk Contact Center alternative for your business depends on the following factors: budget, company size, industry type, and workflow complexity. Once you have identified your requirements, look for the specific use cases of each provider to find which one caters to your unique operational needs.
Yes. With its free and low-cost plans, Freshdesk Contact Center is ideal for small businesses on a budget, especially solopreneurs and startups. It has basic call management capabilities for managing incoming and outgoing call flow. However, there may be better choices for businesses needing advanced and customizable features for self-service, workforce management, reporting, and omnichannel support.
Bottom Line
While Freshdesk Contact Center is affordable and easy to use, it has several missing features essential to workflow efficiency, customer service management, and agent training. Among all the providers we’ve selected, we pick RingCentral Contact Center as the best Freshdesk Contact Center alternative due to its extensive omnichannel support and cross-company collaboration tools. Contact sales to learn more or sign up to access its entire demo library.
