When it comes to customer service software, then you've probably heard of Zendesk. Till now, Zendesk is used by such companies as Airbnb, Squarespace...
When it comes to customer service software, then you've probably heard of Zendesk. Till now, Zendesk is used by such companies as Airbnb, Squarespace, and Vimeo for their customer service needs.
Zendesk is the topper of its class. Still, with feature options and pricing tiers wise there are plenty of Zendesk alternatives in the market. Zendesk belongs to 72% of the help desk market share; however, due to some major flaws, people are moving over Zendesk competitors.
We have analyzed data from over 40+ different help desk software and made a list of 10 best alternatives to Zendesk for you. We will talk about individual alternatives, their features, pros & cons, and, most importantly, the pricing.
So, without further delay, let's see what Zendesk alternatives are worthy of your attention.
Read also: 10 Best Helpdesk Software of 2024
Zendesk Alternatives: At a Glance
| Software | Key Features | Pricing | Best For |
| ThriveDesk |
| Starter: $25 per month up to 5 user Pro: $99 per month with unlimited users | Small Businesses & SaaS Startup |
| SmartInbox |
| All plans are for unlimited users Starter: $9 per month 100/mo convos | Small & Medium Businesses and Ecommerce Shops |
| Userlike |
| Free: Free plan Team: 90$ per month Corporate: 290$ per month Business: 720$ per month | Small & Large Company |
| HubSpot |
| Free: Free plan Starter: $45 per month Professional: $360 per agent, per month Enterprise: $1,200 per month | Small & Large Businesses |
| Freshdesk |
| Free: For getting started Growth: $15 per month, billed annually Pro: $49 per month, billed annually Enterprise: $79 per month, billed annually | Enterprise |
| Help Scout |
| Standard: $20 per User per Month Plus: $35 per User per Month Company: On contact | Small & Large Company |
| Groove |
| Starter: $12 per User per Month Plus: $20 per User per Month Pro: $35 per User per Month Company: On contact | Small Businesses |
| Front |
| Starter: $19 per user per month Prime: Contact Sales Enterprise: Contact Sales | Businesses of all Sizes |
| HelpCrunch |
| Standard: $12 a month per team member billed monthly Premium: $20 a month per team member billed monthly Enterprise: Custom plan | SaaS and Online Businesses |
| Kayako |
| Growth: $30 per agent per month Scale: $60 per agent per month Classic On-Prem: $59 per agent per month | SMB |
| Intercom |
| Starter: from $79 per month. Free trial available | Enterprise |
| HappyFox |
| Mighty: $29 per month Fantastic: $49 per month Enterprise: $69 per month Enterprise Plus: $89 per month | Businesses of all Sizes |
| Zoho Desk |
| Free: 3 Free Agents Standard: $14 per month billed annually Professional: $23 per month billed annually Enterprise: $40 per month billed annually | Enterprise |
What is Zendesk?
Zendesk is a customer service solution that offers a customizable front-end portal, live chat features, and integration with applications like Salesforce and Google Analytics, and customer self-service features. The cloud-based help desk software is prevalent among businesses for ease of use, quick setup, and APIs. The best part of Zendesk is that there is a centralized system for answering customer requests.
Zendesk Features
It is impossible not to love Zendesk! It is a reliable customer service tool withholding more than 72% of the help desk market, and almost 15% of the live chat market. With more than just ticketing, it is the ease of use and setup process that provides quality support.
However, let's see some of the best Zendesk features.
- Flexible ticket management with automated workflow
- Multi-channel support: email, web, phone, chat, social media
- Mobile support with native iPhone, iPad, and Android apps
- Robust reporting and advanced analytics
- Customer-facing web interface that you can easily brand
- AI-powered chatbot that directs customers to self-service options
- Customer support report cards to track team/agent performance
- Knowledgebase portal and community forums included
- Over 100 out-of-the-box integrations with 3rd party apps
- Open API enabling seamless integration into your business
- Strong security and compliance measures such as TLS encryption, HTTPS
Zendesk Pricing
Support Team: $19 per agent, per month if billed annually
Support Professional: $49 per agent, per month if billed annually
Support Enterprise: $99 per month if billed annually
Why Look for Alternative to Zendesk?
With almost 2375 reviews and 4.35 ratings, Zendesk is one of the highest-rated customer service software in Getapps. As of today, Zendesk proved itself a reliable and feature-rich ticketing system. Now the question is, Why did we need to find an alternative to this despite being so good?
Zendesk is good, but there's some dissatisfaction, too. Let's discuss the issues down below,
- It's complex: It is incredibly difficult to keep track of business users. When you are a SaaS supporting clients who have end-users, organizing tickets, and documenting issues is very important to find patterns. This is not possible in Zendesk, at least at the Team feature level.
- Chats, emails, and other channels are managed separately: Zendesk separates chats and email tickets, so there's no way to answer customer requests in one queue.
- Lack of modern interface: Compared to modern advanced tools and other customer service software, Zendesk's interface looks very outdated.
- Missing email automation functionality: Zendesk doesn't offer email marketing functionality, and you do not set any automated email sequences tool to cover your customer communication.
- Missing kick features: Zedesk offers features like custom chatbots, product tours, or video support, which seems like an old ticketing system. Nothing innovative here.
- It's expensive: Zendesk offers four pricing tiers. For customer service, the available Essentials plan is the cheapest plan with very unelectable features where the price for premium plans bites. Nowadays good cloud-based help desk software comes very cheaply.
Let's see some of the terrible user experiences of Zendesk users. These rating breakdown sources are from Getapp.
What was Our Selection Criteria for Zendesk Alternative?
To bring out the best Zendesk Alternative we have tried as well as studying plenty of Zendesk competitors. However, to give you the best guide here are our selection criteria to identify the best alternatives.
- Core customer service features: The product must offer core customer service features: ticketing, knowledgebase, and multi-channel support.
- Minimum of 20 user reviews on Capterra and Getapp: Real-time user review helps to analyze the pros and cons of the products and make decisions rapidly.
- High "likelihood to recommend" rating: Each product should have a minimum average recommendation rating of 8 out of 10 on Capterra and Getapp's site.
- High "features & functionality" rating: The products should have a minimum functionality rating of 4 out of 5 on Capterra and Getapp.
ThriveDesk is a simple, affordable help desk software for exemplary customer service. It is the best solution for Bootstrap-based SAAS startup, WordPress theme or plugin business, and eCommerce business. You can easily track conversations and improve responsiveness with easy-to-use, built-in functionalities like shared inbox, Live chat, Reporting, Knowledge base, Email Signature Generator, and a lot more integration.
ThriveDesk is so easy to use and understand that anyone in your company can become a support-pro quickly and without difficulty. The team can collaborate and provide support efficiently with canned replies, auto drafting, collision detection, tagging, and much more. Being new in the market this is the true Zendesk alternative you can count on so far.
Features of ThriveDesk
- Shared Inbox
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Live Chat & Chat Bot
- Knowledge Base
- Email with unlimited addresses
- Email Signatures
- Contact form
- Ticket file attachment size
- Customizable chat form
- Offline messaging
- Ticket file attachment size
- Incoming email authentication
- Automated replies from the knowledgebase
- Proactive messaging
- Conversations reporting
- Help Desk Integration
and many more...
| Pros of ThriveDesk | Cons of ThriveDesk |
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Pricing of ThriveDesk
ThriveDesk is a customer service software that provides Shared Inbox, Live Chat, Reporting, Community, Knowledge Base, and WooCommerce Integration all-inclusive at a single price.
Starter: $25/month for up to 5 users
Pro: $99/month for up to unlimited users
SmartInbox is a simpler, better solution designed for small and medium businesses including for ecommerce to easier track and faster respond to conversations from around the web, designed to improve your ecommerce customer relationships. The one-click software will have you up and running for single owners or teams to collaborate and answer your audience.
Use the built-in live chat or Shopify app, and easily offer a responsive way for your visitors to ask questions and customers to get the help they need quickly. See all their product views and recent purchases and respond to their queries on Facebook, Messenger, and throughout the web.
Features of SmartInbox
- Shared inbox for one person or an entire team
- Default replies for faster responses
- Unlimited support agents
- A clean app that’s easy and smooth and won’t slow you down
- 2 Factor Authentication
- Chat personalization
- Integrated lead form
- Additional promo highlight
- Availability & autoresponder
And many more...
| Pros of Freshdesk | Cons of Freshdesk |
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Pricing of Freshdesk
Starter: $9 per month - 100/mo conversations
Growth: $49 per month - 1000/mo conversations
Business: $149 per month - 2000/mo conversations
Userlike is an all-in-one live chat software that you can implement on your website and connect with your customers across messaging channels. Its focus is combining website chat and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Customer conversations are conducted from the central hub of Userlike: the Message Center. It looks similar to the browser version of Facebook Messenger, but then with a business layer on top.
With this tool, you can use canned messages, automatic and instant translations, tagging, and forward chats to colleagues. Another rather unique feature: you can offer your website visitor to switch to an audio call.
Features of Userlike
- Website Messenger
- Connection to messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Threema, and SMS
- Full customization to tailor to your web design
- Share various types of media files (image, video, documents) that can be viewed directly in the conversations without leaving the site
- Feedback options to let contacts rate the service they received via star ratings, surveys, and optional comments
- Multi-language support
- Audio calls
- Live translation
- Connect a chatbot
| Pros of Userlike | Cons of Userlike |
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Pricing of Userlike
Free: Free plan
Team: 90$ per month
Corporate: 290$ per month
Business: 720$ per month
HubSpot Service Hub - All-in-One Zendesk Alternative
Hubspot Service Hub is one of the top Zendesk alternatives on the market. Some of its most popular features include the help desk & ticketing software that allows you to save time on repetitive data entry and focus on helping your customers, a knowledge base to help reduce your number of support tickets and turn your FAQs into searchable help articles, and a live chat and chatbot builder so you can assist your customers more efficiently and in real-time. It also offers a shared inbox and features powerful automation to route messages to the proper channels and improve productivity.
HubSpot Service Hub is best when used in tandem with other HubSpot tools, notably the HubSpot free CRM that allows you to track a customer’s entire journey with your company. This can provide the very insightful context needed when trying to solve a problem of theirs.
Features of HubSpot
- Help desk
- Ticketing
- Live Chat & Chat Bot
- Customer Portal
- Shared Inbox
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Knowledge Base
- Team Email
- VoIP Calling
- Powerful automation workflows
- 1:1 Video Messaging
- Customer Feedback Surveys
- Conversation Intelligence
- Reporting dashboard
- Contact scoring
and many more…
Pros of HubSpot | Cons of HubSpot |
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Pricing of HubSpot
Free: Free plan (includes help desk, ticketing, live chat, CRM, and more)
Starter: $45 per month
Professional: $360 per agent, per month
Enterprise: $1,200 per month
If you want a platform as Zendesk alternatives without actually being Zendesk, then Freshdesk is the best one to be considered. With a 7.84% market share, Freshdesk ranks second behind Zendesk and one of the top Zendesk competitor available on the market right now.
From the agent standpoint, Freshdesk is highly optimized with features like automation, automatic delivery of help desk tickets to the correct department, reports, and knowledge base construction. Making the customer success workflow more collaboration-driven Freshdesk can be adapted with just about any business model.
Features of Freshdesk
- Ticketing made easy
- Resolve issues together
- Support across channels
- Manage your field workforce
- Increase your team's productivity
- Chatbot powered by Freddy AI
- Measure and improve efficiency
- Complete customization capabilities
- State-of-the-art data security
| Pros of Freshdesk | Cons of Freshdesk |
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Pricing of Freshdesk
Free: For getting started
Growth: $15 per month, billed annually
Pro: $49 per month, billed annually
Enterprise: $79 per month, billed annually
Help Scout is a relatively smaller customer service softwares solution that is super-accessible and effortless to set up. It is used by many freelancers and small businesses and is widely considered to be the best Zendesk competitor of time.
Trusted by 9,000 businesses in over 140 countries, Help Scout is a wonderful asset for small to large teams. By doing away with automated emails and ticket numbers, Help scout provides the most robust notification systems to date. Also, It doesn't use a conventional UI, and so the tool is straightforward to use and super fast at the same time.
Features of Help Scout
- Outstanding support, no matter plan
- Integrated knowledge base
- Deliver instant answers with Beacon
- Looks like a normal email
- Easy to use, no training manual required
- Optimized for search
- Send better replies in less time
- Collaborate with teammates
- Keep customers in the flow with Messages
- Live chat software but more helpful
- 40+ integrations with 3rd party apps
| Pros of Help Scout | Cons of Help Scout |
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Pricing of Help Scout
Standard: $20 per User per Month
Plus: $35 per User per Month
Company: On contact
Groove is another excellent Zendesk alternatives with simple design and ease of use. The process of collecting customer inquiries, providing support as needed, and converting support tickets into amazing customer experiences of Groove is impressive.
It allows multiple agents to collaborate via both customer-facing channels on a single support instance in real-time. The most exciting feature of Groove is its integration with an email like Gmail and Outlook. Besides, Groove also allows users to create a support widget that can be displayed on their website.
Features of Groove
- Email Integration
- Customer DataBase
- Self Service Portal
- Live chat system
- Alerts/Escalation
- Knowledge Base Management
- Multi-Channel Communication
- Third Party Integration
- Response Automation
- Attachments/Screencasts
- Ticket Collaboration
- Automated Routing
- Customizable Branding
- Tickets and Tagging
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management
| Pros of Groove | Cons of of Groove |
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Pricing of of Groove
Starter: $12 per User per Month
Plus: $20 per User per Month
Pro: $35 per User per Month
Company: On contact
Front is a collaborative email platform that brings all of your business communications in one place. As of today, nearly 5,000 businesses rely on their Front inbox for better workflows, efficient collaboration, and smooth communication.
One of the most significant benefits for Front is assigning internal dialog around external communication. These will keep your team synchronized behind the scenes. You can also automatically assign messages to the team members and even localize other chat content in a single intuitive user interface.
Features of Front
- Unified inbox
- Auto reminders
- Auto responders
- Multi-channel management
- Real-time Analytics
- Social Media Integration
- Real-time notifications
- Collaborative workspace
- Activity audit and tracking
- Email tracking and Search
- Rules-based workflow
- Native iOS, Android Apps
- Custom Integrations
| Pros of Front | Cons of Front |
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Pricing of of Front
Starter: $19 per user per month
Prime: Contact sales
Enterprise: Contact sales
If you want to shift away from a traditional ticketing approach and move to something handier and cheaper than HelpCrunch is the best alternative to Zendesk. This innovative option includes live chat for mobile apps and web, ticketing, marketing automation, and email marketing, and many more relative things.
The chat widget is 100% customizable, and even after sign up, you can create knowledge base articles, optimize them, and divide that by categories and sections. In a single tool, HelpCrunch gives you multiple communication channels with email marketing and popup functionalities, which Zendesk doesn't offer at all.
Features of HelpCrunch
- Live Chat with Email Automation
- Help Desk and Ticketing
- Real-Time Messaging
- Customer Engagement
- Customer Conversion
- Personalized Email Marketing Campaigns
- Multi-Channel Customer Communication
- Unlimited Conversations, Contacts, and Leads
- Free Chat and Email Support
- Customer Onboarding Campaign
- Triggered Auto Messages
- Customer Data and Actions Tracking
- Default and Custom Filters
- Precise Targeting
- Selective Feedback Collection
- Promo Campaigns
- Time-Limited Offers
- Mailbox Forwarding
| Pros of HelpCrunch | Cons of HelpCrunch |
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Pricing of of HelpCrunch
Standard: $12 a month per team member billed monthly
Premium: $20 a month per team member billed monthly
Enterprise: Custom plan
Kayako is the oldest alternative to Zendesk and one of the prior Zendesk competitors from the very beginning. However, with limited functionality compared to Zendesk, it's an all-in-one tool that looks and functions like a ticketing system, something Zendesk lacks.
You will receive all customer requests in a shared inbox to support customers as a team and keep the personal touch. Customers will enjoy collaboration features like private notes, collision prevention, assignment rules, and real-time visitor monitoring. Also, integrate the live chat with your website and mobile apps through mobile SDKs.
Features of Kayako
- Unified conversations across multiple channels
- Real-time messaging for your help center and website
- Real-time visitor monitoring
- Beautiful Help Center so customers can help themselves
- Advanced ticket workflows and automations
- Custom fields to collect all the information you need
- Rich customer and organization profiles
- Set SLAs to keep on top of your customer conversations
- Define business hours for accurate performance tracking
- Automatic escalations ensure nothing gets forgotten
- Native mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Simple Insights into your team's performance
- Advanced Insights - coming soon
- Multilingual customer support and localizations
- Manage and offer unique experiences for multiple brands
- Full control over the look-and-feel of your Help Center
- Zapier integration to connect with over 500 business apps
- Simple webhook integration to push customer data into Kayako
- Slack integration
| Pros of Kayako | Cons of of Kayako |
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Pricing of Kayako
Growth: $30 per agent per month
Scale: $60 per agent per month
On-Prem: $59 per agent per month
Intercom is a flexible Zendesk alternative focused on enabling organizations to build authentic relationships with their clients not only for support but also for sales and marketing. In terms of support-oriented solutions, Intercom is a far better option than Zendesk.
From custom live chat, account-based marketing, targeted product tours, advanced email marketing functionality, no other tool comes even close to the level of innovation that Intercom offers. Apart from this, features like live chat, help desk, and knowledge base also make it so great.
Features of Intercom
- A/B testing
- Audience segmentation
- Behavior triggered messages
- Conversation search
- Customer user profiles
- Email campaign creation
- In-app message/email composer
- Inbound email address
- Real-time performance monitoring
- Personalized reply templates
- User event tracking
| Pros of Intercom | Cons of Intercom |
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Pricing of Intercom
Starter: from $79 per month. Free trial available
HappyFox is a multi-channel helpdesk solution that is very similar to LiveAgent. With some seamless notable integration options and a vast knowledge base, HappyFox is an all-in-one organization solution for any customer service needs.
It provides information to the clients via email, live chat, social media, and even by phone. With incredibly helpful and knowledgeable support, HappyFox allows organizations to easily update their knowledge base and other customer-facing content. Also, the self-service portal provides information regarding the content of every customer's inquiries.
Features of HappyFox Customer Service Software
- Live Chat Integration
- Group Contacts
- Intuitive user interface
- In-depth reporting
- Over 35 languages supported
- Convert emails into tickets
- Smart rules for automation
- Social media integration with Facebook
- Supports voice, email, chat, social media, and mobile channels
- Works on iOS, Android, and Windows mobile devices
| Pros of HappyFox | Cons of HappyFox |
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Pricing HappyFox
Mighty: $29 per month
Fantastic: $49 per month
Enterprise: $69 per month
Enterprise Plus: $89 per month
Zoho Desk is an AI-based context-aware Zendesk competitor and a great tool to increase agent productivity. It's included automation system powered the ticketing system just like Zendesk does. For the managing capabilities, Zoho Desk dedicated asset management system is the best.
You can customize the layout, design, and color of the tool to match your brand and connect it to popular third-party platforms like JIRA and Slack. With ticketing service, live chat, and multi-channel customer support, It also offers collaboration features such as tagging and commenting.
Features of Zoho Desk
- Accounts and Contacts
- Alerts and Notifications
- CRM integration
- Contracts and SLA
- Customizable reports
- Customization
- Scheduled reports
- Self-service portal
- Service escalations
- Social Media Support
- Third-Party Integration
- Ticket assignment and management
| Pros of Zoho Desk | Cons of Zoho Desk |
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Pricing of Zoho Desk
Free: 3 Free Agents
Standard: $14 per month billed annually
Professional: $23 per month billed annually
Enterprise: $40 per month billed annually
Crisp is an all-in-one multi-channel help desk software solution for customer messaging and a strong Zendesk competitor available in the market. To interact with customers and improve customer satisfaction, Crisp keeps the workflow simple. All over 100 000 businesses use Crisp at crisp.chat now.
The Crisp Knowledge Base allows customers' support team to rely on existing content to better serve their customers and easily link content to customers' questions. With Live Assist, users can grant agents temporary control to resolve issues directly and see what visitors are typing in real-time.
Features of Crisp
- Alerts / Escalation
- Automated Routing
- Customizable Branding
- Document Storage
- Email Integration
- IT Asset Management
- Interaction Tracking
- Knowledge Base Management
- Multi-Channel Communication
- Network Monitoring
- Real-time Chat
- Self Service Portal
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management
- Ticket Management
- REST API and Frontend API
- Mobile SDK
| Pros of Crisp | Cons of Crisp |
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Pricing of Crisp
Basic: Free
Pro: $25 per month per website
Ultimate: $95 per month per website
ProProfs Help Desk is a simple yet powerful Zendesk alternative that allows your team to monitor customer conversations from wherever they come. Agents can reply to customers via live chat or email and receive requests via dedicated web forms. You can even build a self-service knowledge base using pre-built templates and reduce your support ticket volume.
When it comes to insightful reports and analytics, ProProfs does not disappoint. For example, support managers can track the average first response time, ticket resolution time, customer satisfaction, and other metrics relevant to their business.
Features of Crisp
- Share surveys with customers and allow them to rate their support interaction instantly
- Set agent roles and permissions to determine their level of access to the tool
- Break complex support tickets into multiple child tickets
- Develop powerful chatbots to grow leads and assist website visitors 24x7
- Create custom fields to mention additional information about tickets
| Pros of Crisp | Cons of Crisp |
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Pricing of Crisp
Essentials: $10/agent/month
Premium: $15/agent/month
Enterprise: Custom plan
Wrapping Up
This was the list, guys. Here, we are trying to cover almost every popular alternative to Zendesk, as well as top Zendesk competitors. Each of these Helpdesk software is well trusted, useful, and proved itself worth using by millions of companies.
Which one did you use or decide to use after reading this article? Let me know in the comment sections below. Also, share your user experiences after using them too. Till then, enjoy the article.
