Freshdesk and Zendesk are customer help desk platforms for small businesses featuring chat, self-help knowledge base, social media monitoring, and ticket automation. Freshdesk is the top choice for businesses looking for the best overall set of features at an affordable price, while Zendesk is a good choice for larger teams needing advanced reporting or customization.
When to Use Freshdesk
Freshdesk is the best tool for small businesses looking for a combination of automated workflows, user-friendliness, and affordability. Freshdesk makes setting up and managing customer support across different channels (email, chat, and so on) easier by eliminating many of the manual support processes you handle on a day-to-day basis. It is especially suited to small businesses that are just getting started using help desk software.
When to Use Zendesk
Businesses that receive a large volume of their support requests via social media or web chat should consider Zendesk. Zendesk has a robust set of social media support features included and its chat features allow the sharing of product guides and image files with customers. It also offers deep chat integration with Google Translate, making it a great option for teams spread across the globe and those that need to collaborate with large documents.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk at a Glance
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| Live Chat | ||
| Social Media Support | ||
| Knowledge Base | ||
| Reporting & Analytics | ||
| Integrations | ||
| Multichannel Support | ||
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| More Information |
How We Evaluated Zendesk vs Freshdesk
We evaluated both Freshdesk and Zendesk based on how well they help small businesses manage their customer support across multiple channels and how easy they are to set up and use. We also looked at how affordable each is for businesses with varying levels of support needs and evaluated how both Freshdesk and Zendesk help streamline the customer support process.
The criteria we used to evaluate the best help desk software included:
- Price and affordability: A good software solution includes the most appropriate features at a price point that is affordable for the business.
- Ease of use: Customer support software should be easy to use on a daily basis, making it useful for a small business overall.
- Workflow automation: How well each solution automatically prioritizes, responds, and routes tickets to the appropriate area will determine how much time and effort it saves.
- Multichannel support: How the software handles incoming support requests across various channels, including chat, email, social media, and a self-help knowledge base.
- Implementation and setup: Customer support software should be easy for your business to set up and should include help in transitioning your business and training your team.
We recommend Freshdesk for most small businesses because of its combination of powerful features, ease of use, and affordability. In addition, Freshdesk is known for its support and assistance getting started, making it the best choice, especially for small businesses that are transitioning their customer support from email to a help desk software solution, and for small businesses with a tight budget.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Pricing & Features
Both Freshdesk and Zendesk offer similar sets of support features at varying levels, depending on the pricing tier you select. Both offer plans with basic help desk features, as well as a full suite of integrated products that include more advanced chat, telephone, knowledge base, and self-help features.
While Freshdesk is a relative newcomer to this software space compared to Zendesk, they’ve caught up quickly. One of the main differences that matter most to small businesses is that Freshdesk offers a free plan including a basic set of features to get you started, while Zendesk charges a monthly fee per agent, even for their most basic plan.
Freshdesk Pricing
Freshdesk has a free plan that includes unlimited agents and offers many of the base level support features. More full-featured plans are available, ranging from $19 to $89 per agent, per month when paid annually. Modules such as call center integration, chat, and social media integration are available as add-ons for an additional fee.
Freshdesk Tiered Features
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| Social Media | ||||
| Chat | (free+) | (free+) | (free+) | |
| Reporting Analytics | ||||
| Email Support | ||||
| Knowledge Base | ||||
| Automated Workflows | ||||
| Time Tracking | ||||
| Surveys | ||||
| Community Forums | ||||
| Custom Roles |
Sprout Plan
The Sprout plan is free and includes basic help desk features and unlimited agents. It includes email ticketing, basic social media channel support, integration with their Freshchat and Freshcaller services (which are an additional fee), the knowledge base, and team collaboration features. This plan allows customers to submit support requests either through contact forms or via a support email address, which then creates support tickets within Freshdesk.
This plan is perfect for small businesses that currently handle most of their customer support through email but are hoping to transition to a help desk solution. It’s also ideal for entrepreneurs and small business owners who need a basic solution on a tight budget, as it offers the email support channel and knowledge base that are ideal for encouraging customers to find their own best solution before engaging with the support team.
Blossom Plan
Blossom is the entry-level paid plan and costs $19 per user, per month. In addition to the features in the Sprout level, it adds time tracking, the advanced social media channel, and customer satisfaction surveys. For most customers, the advanced social media channel and the integration of more than one social media channel is the biggest upgrade with this plan, allowing you to keep tabs on how your brand is being mentioned.
This tier is a good choice for small businesses that have a growing support team and want to add the ability to measure the time performance of their support agents. It is also a good entry point for businesses that have an active social media presence and want a way to better monitor brand mentions on their social media channels for customer support purposes.
Garden Plan
The Garden plan is $35 per user, per month, and adds multilingual support within the help desk software, community forums, and ticket templates as well as the ability to schedule reports and customize the cascading style sheets (CSS) of the help desk pages. The multilingual help desk feature is powered by Google Translate and allows agents to view and handle tickets that may have been created in a language other than their own.
This service plan is ideal for growing businesses that deal with international customers and need to provide support to customers who may not speak the same language as your support team. This makes it especially ideal for smaller online retailers who ship products to customers in other countries. The reporting features are ideal for users who want to be able to have reports automatically generated and sent to their email on a scheduled basis.
Estate Plan
The Estate plan is $49 per user, per month, and has advanced-level reporting as well as agent collision and custom agent roles. Both of these last features help to streamline the process of assigning and managing tickets. Agent collision makes sure that two separate agents aren’t both working to resolve an issue at the same time, preventing duplicate efforts and the possibility of conflicting responses to customers.
This plan is geared towards larger businesses that have multiple levels of customer service management and that want to be able to fine-tune how tickets are handled. It’s ideal for large support teams with multiple levels of customer service management like software or service industry customers. This plan is also the choice for businesses that receive large volumes of support tickets, like larger ecommerce vendors.
Zendesk Pricing
Zendesk doesn’t offer a free plan. However, the basic plan starts at $5 per agent, per month when paid annually. This plan provides a basic level of features, including email support and basic reporting. More feature-rich plans are available that include advanced reporting, customization, and team management tools.
Zendesk Tiered Features
| Pricing | |||
| Chat | |||
| Email Support | |||
| Social Media | |||
| Knowledge Base | |||
| Automated Workflows | |||
| Reporting Analytics | |||
| Custom Roles | |||
| Community Forums | |||
| Surveys | |||
| Time Tracking |
Essential Plan
The entry-level Essential plan includes basic help desk features for $5 per user, per month when paid annually. It includes email ticketing, basic social media channel support, and the web support widget. It also includes the light version of Zendesk Chat, Talk (call center), and Guide (self-service). Additional levels of each of those features can be added on to each Zendesk pricing plan.
This plan is a good place to start for smaller businesses that need chat and call center capabilities, but are on a tight budget. Both of these features are also offered by Freshdesk, but only as a part of the higher-priced plans. This plan is an ideal fit for retailers or ecommerce sites that are beginning to build out a customer support team and need an affordable solution with basic features.
Team Plan
The Team Plan is $19 per user, per month (billed annually), and allows the customer to add custom features to support fields, additional analytics tools, and custom rules to trigger automated processes. This tier also includes additional support options from Zendesk, including email support during business hours.
With better team-level controls, the Team plan is a good choice for businesses that are already using Zendesk but find that their teams are growing and need additional analytics tools. This plan is also designed for mid-sized teams that need more advanced tools to fine-tune their support process but aren’t at the enterprise size or level of support complexity.
Professional Plan
The Professional Plan costs $49 per user, per month (billed annually), and adds multilingual support, time tracking, and Service Level Agreement (SLA) management. It also allows users to send customer satisfaction surveys and provides a more robust set of reporting and management tools to allow more control over performance monitoring. The professional plan also includes both 24-hour, five days a week email and phone support from Zendesk.
This tier is designed for larger support teams that provide support across different countries, or businesses that provide contracted support according to service level agreements. It also works well for businesses, especially ecommerce companies, that are already using Zendesk and want to get customer feedback about their support experience through customer satisfaction surveys.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Social Media Integrations
Freshdesk and Zendesk both offer the ability to engage with customers on social media and monitor brand mentions in order to help resolve support requests. The social media tools available depends on the service plan chosen, with Zendesk providing an overall more robust set of features for managing support through social media channels.
Freshdesk Social Media
Freshdesk social media interface
Freshdesk’s social media support channel allows businesses the opportunity to engage with their customers in the same place they start the conversation (Facebook or Twitter). Since many customers interact with companies through social media, this provides the ability to monitor, engage, and interact with customers where they can most often help resolve many support issues.
Freshdesk allows agents to monitor social media channels and initiate tickets based on social media posts while responding back within the same channel. For smaller businesses that receive a lot of support inquiries through social media, this plan can help you manage the conversations that require your attention and turn them into support tickets.
Zendesk Social Media
Zendesk social media monitoring
Zendesk monitors your social media channels and automatically converts incoming messages into tickets that can be handled by agents in the support desk. When agents respond, the reply is sent via the social media channel and the ticket updates within the support desk. Zendesk’s social tool allows agents to respond to customer complaints or issues quickly, hopefully resolving issues before they become bigger problems.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Live Translation
Freshdesk and Zendesk both provide the ability for agents to assist customers needing support, even when they are located in a different country or speak a different language. Both take advantage of Google Translate to provide language support. However, they offer different levels of integration, with Zendesk providing real-time chat translation and Freshdesk providing a more global page translation.
Freshdesk Live Translation
Freshdesk uses Google Translate to let your support agents view the support portal in any language they choose. Freshdesk also allows you to install the Google Translate app on your customer portal to allow customers to view your knowledge base and other support features in their own language.
Zendesk Live Translation
In addition to offering translation of the support portal for both customers and agents, Zendesk also supports Google Translate for real-time translation of the chat feature. This allows agents and customers to chat in their native language while the user on the other end of the chat may view responses in their own language. This is especially helpful for businesses with customers outside their own country, or who speak different languages.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Customizable Roles
Both Freshdesk and Zendesk give you the ability to control the permissions and access of your support team. You can assign different roles to individuals based on whether they are an agent or manager, and control how they interact with customer tickets. You can also automatically assign tickets based on the type of customer problem and the skills or expertise of the agents.
Freshdesk Customizable Roles
Freshdesk assigned support tickets
Freshdesk includes custom agent roles, which allow you to define the level of permissions depending on that agent’s role (e.g., agent, manager, or escalations) to handle specific tickets. In addition, dedicated agents who handle specific areas of support (e.g., shipping versus billing issues) can be assigned support requests in Freshdesk based on their specific skill area.
Zendesk Customizable Roles
Zendesk assigned tickets
Zendesk does include custom roles, including advanced permissions; however, it is only available in the Enterprise level. In the lower level plans, you assign someone as an agent or administrator when you create the agent account and users will only see the parts of the portal allowed based on their permissions. You can assign agents to groups and teams based on the types of tickets they handle, making it easy to distribute support requests to the right agent.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Reports & Analytics
Both Freshdesk and Zendesk are highly customizable and are flexible enough to handle just about any company’s support needs. Where Zendesk has some advanced features that allow a higher level of customization, Freshdesk features advanced automation and workflows built in that make it easier to use out of the box. Freshdesk also features a more intuitive interface that many users find easier to navigate and get work done.
Freshdesk Reports & Analytics
Freshdesk reporting features
Freshdesk gives you agent and team performance reporting capabilities in every plan. The higher plans also give you access to time tracking, satisfaction surveys, trends, and customer analysis. It also gives you the option to create custom reports based on filters and automatically runs and sends reports based on the schedule you set.
Zendesk Reports & Analytics
Zendesk reporting features
Zendesk gives you reporting tools to measure the overall performance of your support team, as well as monitor how individual agents are performing. You can establish key metrics and service level agreements, and measure your support team against the criteria you set. You can easily view the numbers of new tickets (or support requests), solved tickets, satisfaction rating, and the amount of time that it takes to first address a ticket.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Ease of Use
Both Freshdesk and Zendesk are highly customizable and are flexible enough to handle just about any company’s support needs. Where Zendesk has some advanced features that allow a higher level of customization, Freshdesk features advanced automation and workflows built in that make it easier to use out of the box. Freshdesk also features a more intuitive interface that many users find easier to navigate and get work done.
Freshdesk Ease of Use
Freshdesk’s intuitive interface
Because of its highly intuitive user interface and workflow automation, Freshdesk is very easy to use, even for users who are new to help desk software. Freshdesk makes managing support tickets easy by automating the workflow and by providing scripted responses to common issues.
Freshdesk places the main navigation areas in a sidebar, using icons to represent the various areas that agents use on a regular basis. The clean interface makes finding your way around easy. Users are able to quickly find information about customers and take action on tickets through simple drop-down menus without having to navigate through multiple screens.
“With Freshdesk, it’s easier to manage our workload, as it helps us know what we’re actively working on in an organized manner. We can prioritize different tickets according to the query, client, and action required. As a result, this allows us to work towards set deadlines and ensures that we respond to all inquiries in the most appropriate manner.”
– Natasa Christofidou, Content and Marketing, alldayPA
“With Freshdesk, it’s easier to manage our workload, as it helps us know what we’re actively working on in an organized manner. We can prioritize different tickets according to the query, client, and action required. As a result, this allows us to work towards set deadlines and ensures that we respond to all inquiries in the most appropriate manner.”Zendesk Ease of Use
Zendesk agent interface
Zendesk also uses a clean interface, using a sidebar with icons for navigation. Zendesk condenses many of the features into four main navigation areas, including Home, Tickets, Reporting, and Admin. Zendesk also features tabbed navigation, which allows for quick transitioning between areas without navigating away from your current work. For some users, however, tabbed browsing can cause confusion when switching between multiple tabs at once.
– Ryan Alovis, CEO, LensDirect.com
“Zendesk has proved to be a perfect match for our company. The live chat features useful tools such as real-time translation services, file uploading, and customer feedback. The ticketing system allows for quick and easy customer support and follow-ups. Zendesk is highly adaptable and can be customized to fit our every need.”Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Support & Customer Service
Since Freshdesk and Zendesk are both customer support software services, it makes sense that they both offer top-notch support to their own customers. Both receive high reviews from customers, but Freshdesk seems to win over customer’s hearts by going above and beyond, especially when setting up new customer accounts.
Freshdesk Support & Customer Service
Freshdesk is known for providing extra help to their customers, especially as they get set up or transition from another service. This sets them apart as a top choice for small businesses due to the level of support they provide. They also feature a robust knowledge base and training to make sure your team is as prepared and as effective as possible as you interact with your own customers needing support.
Zendesk Support & Customer Service
Zendesk also features a robust self-help knowledge base for their customers, but only makes email and phone support available to customers on the higher-priced tiers. This could be a challenge for small businesses that need a higher level of support since they are just starting out or transitioning from another help desk solution. Phone support only becomes available to customers on the Professional Plan.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Customer Reviews
Freshdesk and Zendesk are both popular choices that are well-liked among their users. Both receive overall positive reviews, especially for the features that help businesses efficiently manage their customer support process. Users of both software have opinions about how they provide their own customer support, with Freshdesk generally coming out ahead here.
Freshdesk Customer Reviews
Freshdesk receives positive reviews for how easy it is to set up and use, as well as the level of support Freshdesk provides to its customers. Users like that when customers submit support requests, Freshdesk automatically suggests solutions, reducing the number of tickets that need to be handled by agents. You can read more customer reviews on our Freshdesk review page.
Zendesk Customer Reviews
Zendesk customers say that they like the robust set of features and the overall integrations available to connect with other services. Customers don’t like that Zendesk offers limited support unless you are on a higher-priced plan, and feel that Zendesk can be overwhelming to get set up as a small business. You can check out more customer reviews on our Zendesk review page.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Integrations
Both Freshdesk and Zendesk are a part of larger software ecosystems that include customer relationship management (CRM), marketing, and other productivity tools. While both feature a robust set of software that help businesses manage the entire customer relationship, Freshdesk is more focused on the needs of small to mid-sized companies, while Zendesk offers more enterprise-class tools.
Freshdesk Integrations
Freshdesk is a part of Freshworks, which includes products for web chat, voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) calling, conversion rate optimization, recruiting, and customer relationship management (CRM). Many of these software tools offer free pricing tiers that provide basic access to features that help you get started as you add new customer-facing processes, including a leading CRM that is one of the best choices for small businesses.
Zendesk Integrations
Zendesk offers a comprehensive suite of tools that include chat, an intuitive enterprise-class CRM, call center software, and powerful analytics tools. Zendesk’s software ecosystem connects well with outside tools as well, and the help desk includes a greater number of third-party integrations. However, they are more focused on serving the needs of larger businesses.
Bottom Line
For most small businesses, Freshdesk is the best all-around affordable solution. While Zendesk is certainly a leader in the industry, for most small businesses, Freshdesk is a better choice for handling your customer support needs. It includes the features needed in an intuitive and easy-to-use software tool at a price point for every small business budget.
Consider Freshdesk if you’re looking for an affordable, easy-to-use help desk software service with customer support, agent assignments, and reporting features. In addition to their free Sprout plan, they also offer a 21-day free trial of their paid tiers, allowing you to try out any of their plans to see if it’s a good fit for your business. Visit Freshdesk to get started today.
Clint Eschberger
Freshdesk is great, unless you don’t like spam. They have no automated spam filtering and it is only manual. Even blatant spam that fails with a very high Spam Assassin score gets through. Nothing like close 2000+ spam tickets from Russia. What’s worse is they have known about this for years with complaints in their forum. Made the difficult choice of switching, much easier.
Jason Aten
Hi Clint, I know that dealing with extensive amounts of spam tickets would be something that would frustrate anyone. I also know that Freshdesk does allow you to enable Captcha on your portal submission forms, which would eliminate bot spam. One nice thing about this is that if your customers are already in your Freshdesk database, it will automatically turn off the Captcha, allowing them to bypass that step.
I know that doesn’t solve the problem for every user, and it sounds like you made a choice that was best for your business based on your experience and your businesses needs. I appreciate you sharing your feedback with our readers.