Over the past few years, there has been an epic battle forming between two customer service software – The battle of Freshdesk vs Zendesk.
Both platforms power customer support for thousands of businesses. Having been in the support space for over a decade, these two solutions empower organizations across industries to provide faster, better, and more efficient customer service.
So, if you are struggling to decide which of these tools is best for your support agents and business, worry no more. This Freshdesk vs Zendesk comparison will make all the difference.
Read on to learn the pros, cons, and highlights of Freshdesk and Zendesk for informed decision
Freshdesk is a cloud-enabled customer support platform that suits organizations of all sizes and industries. It has all the standard customer service features – chatbot builder, customizable knowledge base, multichannel query resolution, and automation capabilities.
Thanks to Freshdesk’s power-packed toolkit, your support agents can monitor conversations and their statuses, and stay in the loop about who is serving a particular customer.
The twist? Freshdesk offers a stripped-back free plan for brands that are tight on budget but still need a solution to handle customer issues/queries.
This Freshdesk feature divides customer conversations (parent ticket) into smaller sub-conversations (child ticket), which you can assign to multiple support agents simultaneously. As such, you can fix complex, multi-stage issues faster.
Ticket dispatch automatically assigns customer queries/issues to your support agents based on requesters, keywords, or properties. You can create rules on customer requests to automate support workflows.
Freshdesk’s AI-based assistant, Freddy, enables you to build guides containing the next-best steps and smart recommendations in every customer-facing conversation. That way, resolution time for complex issues reduces significantly, thus improving customer satisfaction.
Freddy AI recommends solution articles to support agents for addressing customers based on the subject and other metadata like ticket field values. This prevents them from manually searching for the appropriate solution article to respond with, accelerating ticket resolution.
Custom reporting helps you effortlessly create reports the way you want, all on your own. You can pick the metric (s) you want to analyze, choose the right filters you want to apply, and select the visualization that best fits your needs.
Freshdesk’s customer service software is ideal for start-ups and small-to-medium businesses. These companies mostly work in the healthcare, home décor, automotive, and fintech industries.
Zendesk is one of the best names in the customer service software realm. The cloud-based platform has impressive features, customizations, and API integrations that work well across industries.
Thanks to its feature-rich platform, Zendesk empowers companies to deliver memorable customer experiences effortlessly. Conversations flow smoothly across different communication channels, boosting agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
Further, you can tailor Zendesk’s functionalities with the tools you already use to fit your current support environment.
Call recording lets you record and store phone calls with customers. You can use these call records to gather insights and use them for training support agents or optimizing future conversations.
Zendesk Messaging lets you engage with customers on various messaging apps, such as Slack, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, 24/7. It keeps all these conversations so support agents have all the context they need to help customers and quickly switch channels.
Trigger – pre-configured business rules – automatically execute actions when certain conditions are met. These include updates on customer satisfaction scores, tag addition and removal, and alerting customers when your agents are unavailable.
Zendesk’s AI-enabled Answer Bot responds to common customer queries/issues around subscription changes, product specs, and order statuses. It uses machine learning (ML) to learn from your knowledge base and provide customers with the best possible answers.
You can define your own benchmarks for how fast your agents respond to or resolve customer requests using Zendesk’s built-in service-level agreements (SLA).
Medium-size and large businesses will find Zendesk’s customer service software highly suitable. These companies primarily belong to the education, cybersecurity, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and cosmetics industries.
Let’s compare Zendesk and Freshdesk in various vital aspects:
Freshdesk
Freshdesk offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface. At the very first glimpse, the dashboard is easy on the eyes and does not scare you away at all. You can smoothly sort and filter customer requests using dozens of conditions on the right side of the screen based on tags, priority, source, and date.
However, navigating Freshdesk’s UI has been a significant concern for users, with one user “finding some minimal and hidden settings become very difficult.”
Some users have even highlighted the platform’s subpar automation functionalities. According to one such user:
“Using APIs on automations can be tricky. There can be room for automations to fail, resulting in lots of failure notifications. For example, automatically adding tags.”
Zendesk
Zendesk is a considerably powerful customer support platform. For organizations handling hundreds of support requests, Zendesk provides advanced filtering options for easy sorting/categorizing of customer queries/issues.
If you are looking for customization options, Zendesk does not disappoint. You can change the background color, add widgets to your dashboard, and see conversations’ statuses in real time.
While getting used to Zendesk is not absurdly complex, it is not intuitive right from the get-go, especially for the admins. Deploying and leveraging the software to its full potential demands real expertise.
Here is what users say about Zendesk’s UI:
“It’s very complex to set it up initially and if you don’t have a person that knows the ins and outs you’d most likely go back and forth with the account manager or spending time on their support page.” – A user on Capterra.
Another Zendesk user highlights that “Substantial customization options provide flexibility, however, they may need a little technical expertise or devoted resources to fully optimize the platform for particular workflows and business procedures.”
Freshdesk
Freshdesk enables you to engage with customers through live chat (Freshchat), email, widgets, knowledge base, social media, and chatbots.
Talking about self-service, you will not only have a knowledge base but can also include a holistic self-service portal for your customers. In addition, you can upload in-built themes and do plenty of customization to the chosen theme.
Zendesk
Akin to Freshdesk, you can handle customer queries/issues using Zendesk’s platform through live chat, email, phone (Zendesk Talk), WhatsApp, social media, and AI-powered Answer Bot for self-service.
For instance, Zendesk’s native connections with common social media apps, such as WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook, let you manage private messages and public posts. Moreover, the Talk feature helps you handle SMS also.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk’s parent company, Freshworks, offers a vast catalog of native and third-party integrations. Freshdesk lets you connect over 1000 tools with its customer support platform, including Shopify, Slack, Jira, WhatsApp, and Salesforce.
You can filter these business tools across multiple categories, such as e-commerce, agent productivity, reporting & analytics, and surveys & feedback. Plus, you can develop and customize apps to meet your unique needs using the Freshworks Neo platform.
Zendesk
Zendesk Marketplace has a diverse library, housing around 1500 apps and pre-built integrations. Zendesk’s customer service software ties up nicely with enterprise tools you use for everyday support operations, including Trello, Salesforce, Mailchimp Hubspot, and more.
You can add filters to find the tool of your choice based on various categories – collaboration, e-commerce & CRM, and productivity & time-tracking. Besides, if you do not see what you need, you can build pretty much anything using Zendesk’s API and apps framework.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk offers a web widget on its support page for live conversations. In addition, it provides interactive support content to its users. You can access a vast video library that incorporates interactive videos on topics, including using canned responses, ticket management, and creating knowledge base articles.
Besides, the knowledge base is packed with how-to’s and best practices guides on automation configuration, admin configuration, and customer portal setup. If you are a first-timer, you can enroll your support agents in the Freshworks Academy, where they can upskill, get certified, and join the community.
Zendesk
You can reach out to Zendesk’s customer support agents over live chat or email and expect an instant reply. Moreover, Zendesk has a massive collection of frequently asked questions (FAQs) in its help center. You can explore topics around data privacy, accounts & billing, and plans & pricing.
Besides, your agents can even join Zendesk’s worldwide online community forum. In this space, they can interact with like-minded people, ask expert users for tips and tricks, and get real-time updates or news.
Freshdesk
You can choose from the following four Freshdesk plans:
The Freshdesk pricing model is pretty straightforward. If you want to test-drive the tool, you can go for the Free plan and later upgrade to a paid plan based on your customer service needs.
Except for the Free plan, all Freshdesk plans have sufficient features to drive customer support – collision detection, custom SSL, 1000+ integrations, and automation capabilities.
Zendesk
Here is how Zendesk’s pricing structure looks like:
Zendesk offers its plans at a 20% discount if you renew them once a year. All Zendesk plans include essential support features, including a web widget, social channels, call recording, macros, and API access.
So, who wins in this Freshdesk vs Zendesk comparison?
Freshdesk offers support-centric features adequate enough to keep your support operations afloat. Plus, you do not have to pay a fortune for its subscriptions. But Freshdesk gets quickly expensive as you add on agents, customers, and features.
Zendesk, on the flip side, offers a super powerful customer service platform with loads of functionalities. While the software is incredibly robust, deploying and using it daily can be a headache. Moreover, the cost of Zendesk subscriptions poses a barrier for smaller support teams.
Long story short, Freshdesk is the optimal choice if:
Zendesk is the clear winner if:
Or you can choose Helpwise – another strong Freshdesk and Zendesk competitor!
Here is a brief comparison of Freshdesk and Zendesk in key aspects:
| Freshdesk | Zendesk | |
| Features | Parent-child ticketing Ticket dispatch AI assistant Article suggester Custom reporting | Call recording Messaging Triggers Answer bot SLA management |
| Pricing | Paid plans starting at US$15/user/month | Paid plans starting at US$59/user/month |
| Ease of use | Easy to setup and use; limited support features | Complicated UI with a significant learning curve |
| Support channels | Email, chat, phone, social media, chatbots, and self-service options | Chat, email, phone, SMS, email, AI-driven bots, and social media |
| Integrations | With 1000+ business tools | With about 1500 business tools |
| Customer support | 24/7 email support, 24/5 phone and chat support, knowledge base, community forums | 24/7 chat and email support, help center, and worldwide community forum |
| Customer reviews | 4.4/5 on G2 | 4.3/5 on G2 |
At its core, Helpwise enables your support agents to quickly prioritize, answer, and resolve customer issues/queries in real time. You can instantly boost your team’s productivity and deliver personalized resolutions with Helpwise’s:
All these capabilities are available in a user-friendly interface that too without breaking the bank.
Let’s compare Zendesk and Freshdesk with our customer service software.
Freshdesk creates a ticket and assigns it to different support agents whenever a particular customer contacts you on various channels. As such, your agents get confused due to the loss of context, leaving customers frustrated.
Helpwise keeps a specific customer-facing conversation within the same thread no matter how they contact you. Hence, the same support agent handles the entire conversation, resulting in accurate resolutions and happier customers.
Zendesk has a complex interface. Learning how to deploy it and optimally utilize its advanced features requires real technical expertise. Moreover, you need to spend a lot of time testing the platform to ensure everything works as expected. Fortunately,
Helpwise integrates with popular email clients and offers a clean and simple UI. So, you do not have to undergo a steep learning curve to get used to the platform. Just sign up, onboard your agents, and get started in minutes.
Furthermore, Helpwise offers a better a price-to-feature ratio than Freshdesk and Zendesk. Its basic plan just costs US$15/user/month and equips you with 55+ integrations and valuable collaboration and productivity features. In fact, switching to Helpwise’s mid-tier plan from that of Freshdesk will save you US$11,880 per year (for 10 users).
All these benefits easily make Helpwise a viable alternative to Zendesk and Freshdesk. Our users agree with us too:
Freshdesk has a simple UI with limited functionalities for customer support, while Zendesk has loads of advanced features which take quite a while to get used to.
Freshdesk’s ideal customer base is start-ups, small, and mid-size businesses with budget constraints. Large organizations having ample resources find Zendesk a better tool.
Zendesk offers SMS support, which Freshdesk does not. Further, Freshdesk offers more affordable plans than Zendesk.
Freshdesk’s interface is more user-friendly as it offers essential features with no bells and whistles. On the flip side, Zendesk provides loads of advanced features, which makes its UI tough to use and understand.
Freshdesk offers four plans for its customers – Free, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. The paid plans start at US$15/user/month all the way to US$84/user/month.
Zendesk also has four plans – Suite Team, Suite Growth, Suite Professional, and Suite Enterprise. It starts at US$59/user/month, goes until US$199/user/month.
Both Freshdesk and Zendesk offer more than 1000 integrations, including Slack, Shopify, Salesforce, and Mailchimp.
Freshdesk is better for small businesses as its basic plan is way more affordable than that of Zendesk. Plus, its forever-free plan comes with basic support features, making the platform a preferred choice among small businesses.
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