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zendesk competitors

15 Zendesk Competitors and Alternatives for 2023

Table of Contents

If you’re looking to better understand Zendesk competitors and Zendesk alternatives, you’ve come to the right place. Take a read of our deep dive of these competitors and alternatives.

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk is an American company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is a cloud-based customer service platform that is designed to improve communication between a company and their customers. Zendesk offers complete customer service solutions that are easy to use and designed to scale as a company grows. Zendesk Sales CRM enhances productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for sales teams. It is known as the biggest Software as a Service (SaaS) customer service platform in the market. 

Zendesk Pricing

Zendesk pricing ranges due to the various features and offerings within each of the Sales and Service plans. Below is a high-level summary of pricing options within each plan:

Sales Plans

  • Zendesk pricing ranges from just $19 per user per month to $99 per user per month for the Sales plans respectively. 

Service Plans

  • Zendesk pricing ranges from just $49 per user per month to $215 per user per month for the Service plans respectively. 

For all plans there is a 30-day free trial that allows new vendors the opportunity to try out a plan before committing to the product.

Zendesk Features

Sales Plans

  • There are four plans within the Sales plan: Zendesk Sell Team, Zendesk Sell Growth, Zendesk Sell Professional, Zendesk Sell Enterprise
  • Each plan offers a variety of the following features: account management, sales tracking, automation, activity tracking, sales engagement tools, communication functions (calendar integration, bulk emailing, text messaging), mobile, collaboration, API, apps, integrations, reporting, analytics, data, support.
  • For the full comparison of features, select ‘See full Sell comparison’ at the bottom of the vendor website.

Service Plans

  • There are four plans within the Service plan: Suite Team, Suite Growth, Suite Professional, Suite Enterprise
  • Each plan offers a variety of the following features: email, live chat and messaging, social, voice, help center, bots, community forums, agent workspace with customer context, collaboration tools, marketplace, workflows, automations and intelligence, knowledge management, workforce and change management, reporting, analytics, data, custom apps and integrations, developer tools, security and compliance, support and services from the Zendesk team.
  • For the full comparison of features, select ‘See full comparison’ at the bottom of the vendor website.

Zendesk Integrations

Customer requests can come from all across the web as messages, questions, live chats, help requests, community posts, and reviews. When those messages go unheard or ignored, tension is created between businesses and their customers. Support teams need visibility across platforms, social or otherwise, so they can respond to queries as needed or just gain additional context to that customer relationship.

At present, Zendesk Support provides connections to Facebook and Twitter as ticket channels. But beyond this, there’s a wealth of additional customer communication that could serve support teams and media managers. By bringing these interactions into Zendesk Support, we empower you to see the whole picture.

The Channel framework lets you build integrations — two-way ticket-creation services — that bring customer communications from anywhere else into Zendesk Support. Examples include ratings and reviews in Yelp, app stores, Amazon or Ebay, or content in communities like Reddit or Quora. You could even dive deeper into social media with channels like Pinterest and Instagram.

You can create a fully functional integration by following this tutorial.

Zendesk Pros and Cons

Zendesk has pros and cons that revolve around its core help desk features. As a help desk software Zendesk provides comprehensive tools that reinforce multichannel customer support efforts. It offers easy integration for users and ranging price points to meet various organizational needs, with a 30-day free trial to get started. The biggest hurdle that Zendesk must tackle is its Answer Bot that is not the most advanced on the market. It is better used to support human customer support for now, although it still works for generic hybrid AI-human customer support.

Zendesk Competitors

When it comes to Zendesk competitors or alternatives, it’s important to look at the different products. Do they have features that better fit with the problem you are trying to solve? Is there a stronger integration in Zendesk competitors that fit your workflow. And of course, pricing is one of the easiest considerations when looking at Zendesk alternatives. Pricing among Zendesk competitors is going to be close but there may be different packages that better fit your needs at other price points.

Zoho Desk – One Of The Top Zendesk Competitors

What is Zoho Desk?

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk platform designed to help businesses of all sizes manage customer service. Key features include customer support tickets, a customer support portal, contract management, and report creation. The solution collates interactions from various media such as email, phone, chat, social media, a self-service portal, forums, and forms and presents them in one place.

Zoho Desk enables users to make custom changes, such as renaming tabs, adding new departments, customizing email templates, defining business hours, and adding help folders. Tasks such as ticket assignment, service escalations, notification rules, and time-based actions can be automated by setting workflow rules. The solution provides customizable and scheduled reports, happiness ratings, and a graphical dashboard for analyzing customer satisfaction.

The platform integrates with Zoho customer relationship management (CRM), which facilitates the adding of customer information into tickets logged in Zoho Desk and enables service agents to know more about the customers. Many people considering a Zendesk alternative, often consider Zoho Desk as one of Zendesk’s competitors at the top.

Zoho Desk Overview

Zoho Desk Pricing & Features

Zoho Desk has 4 pricing editions, from $0 to $40. A free trial of Zoho Desk is also available. Look at different pricing editions below and see what edition and features meet your budget and needs.

Free Standard Professional Enterprise
$0.00 $14.00 $23.00 $40.00
Completely Free up to 3 agents
Email Ticketing
Customer Management
Private Knowledge Base
Multi Language Help desk
Mobile Apps
Features from FREE +Social & Community Channels
Product Based Ticket Management Help Center Themes Gallery Public Knowledge Base SLAs & Escalations
Features from STANDARD +Multi-department Ticketing Team Management
Automatic Time Tracking
Multilingual Knowledge Base Blueprint –
Basic Process Management
Features from PROFESSIONAL +Live Chat
Zia – Artificial Intelligence
Help Center Customization
Multi-brand Help Center
KB Auto-translation

Zoho Desk Integrations

Zoho Desk offers a number of add-ons and integrations to help you expand the capabilities of your help desk. You can set up telephony, hook your help desk up with SMS alerts, keep your contacts up to date, and more, with these integrations. For more information on apps and integrations, click here.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Zoho Desk helps you manage your tickets, identify trends and patterns in your workflows, collaborate teams effectively, empower customers with self-service, and integrate with other applications. 
  • Zoho Desk offers companies a wide range of support networks and options so they can deliver timely and top-quality customer service. Robust customer service results in bigger profits and better business operations. 
  • With the software’s integrated approach for a support center, companies can provide their customers with different support networks and meet their preferences. 
  • Businesses even have the liberty to select between delivering real-time support through call center functionality or addressing concerns and questions with the help of a ticketing system.

Cons:

  • There is no Desktop application for Zoho Desk which is a crucial missing feature.
  • The shortcut icon for Recent items could be positioned better, maybe in the top header menu instead of in the footer.
  • The footer menu needs bigger icons as some are unrecognizable on smaller size monitors.
  • When demand increases, the functionality depth of some features may feel limited.
  • To get started the system requires a lot of customization.

Freshdesk – Another One of The Top Zendesk Competitors

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software that is both feature-rich and easy to use. With multiple support channels available, including live chat, email, phone, and social media, you can help customers through their preferred communication method.

Freshdesk Overview

Freshdesk Pricing & Features

Freshdesk currently offers 5 plans: Sprout (Free), Blossom, Garden, Estate, and Forest. 

It uses a combination of feature-based pricing and per user (agent) pricing models, meaning:

  • The higher plan you use, the more Freshdesk features you unlock
  • The more agents in your team, the more you have to pay 

That means even though Freshdesk’s pricing starts off cheap but gets really costly as your needs and your team increases. Visit the vendor site to learn more. 

Freshdesk Integrations

Zapier lets you connect Freshdesk with thousands of the most popular apps, so you can automate your work and have more time for what matters most—no code required. Common integrations include WordPress, Mailchimp, Freshworks CRM, Google Apps, Salesforce, JIRA and more. For detailed information on Freshdesk apps and integrations, click here.

Pros and Cons

Pros Provides prompt and efficient customer support
Adapts quickly to changes and improves the quality of the application
Intuitive interface for users of all levels of familiarity
Cons Include more assets in the base product, very limited are included and extra assets are costly
Insufficient desktop features for the mobile app client
Support portal could be easier to customize; currently you are limited to basic changes and need to know coding languages to further customize

Help Scout – SMB Zendesk Competitors

What is Help Scout?

Help Scout is a cloud-based help desk solution that helps small businesses and small teams manage their customer relationships.

Help Scout Overview

 

Help Scout Pricing & Features

The first time you land on Help Scout’s pricing page, you’ll see three plans: Standard, Plus, and Company prominently displayed on the page. But if you take a closer look, you’ll see it also offers the Basic plan.

Help Scout Integrations

The following Help Scout integrations are currently offered by the vendor:

  • Bronto
  • Bitium
  • Customer Thermometer
  • Capsule CRM
  • HipChat
  • Highrise CRM
  • Snapengage
  • BigCommerce
  • ClickDesk
  • Shopify
  • Campfire
  • PipelineDeals
  • Infusionsoft
  • MixPanel
  • OnePage CRM
  • KISSmetrics
  • Constant Contact
  • Olark Live Chat
  • MailChimp
  • Kato
  • FreshBooks
  • Slack
  • Magento
  • Talkdesk
  • Campaign Monitor
  • Zapier
  • Pipedrive
  • Userlike Live Chat

For more detailed information on Help Scout integrations, click here.

Pros and Cons

Pros Easy to UseExcellent customer service
Customer-centric
Real-time chat and knowledge base
Cons Fewer Integrations that competitor services
Fewer features and customizations
Expensive messaging feature

ServiceNow – A Top Zendesk Alternative

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is a cloud-based workflow automation platform that enables enterprise organizations to improve operational efficiencies by streamlining and automating routine work tasks.

With roots in IT Service Management, ServiceNow has evolved to become the enterprise service management platform for organizations, uniting all business functions from customer service to HR to security, and more.

ServiceNow Overview

ServiceNow Pricing & Features

Contact ServiceNow for pricing details. The key features of ServiceNow are: management of IT services, analytical reporting, operations – IT, business management, field service, client management, mobile applications and security management.

ServiceNow Integrations

The Service Now platform supports most common integration technologies including but not limited to web services, file retrieval/import sets, JDBC connections, LDAP, REST and SOAP, and Excel, CSV, and e-mail transmissions. For more information relation to integrations, visit the vendor website here.

Pros and Cons

Pros Easy to automate and has various features to prioritize tickets, handle priority tasks and support incidents. The biggest advantage is the ability to integrate with different systems such as Agiloft, JIRA, SecurityScorecard, CRM, etc. ServiceNow helps the implementing team to focus more on collaboration and process development rather than coding since it absolutely limits coding. It is also a well known enterprise GRC tool and has released a Vendor Module, which can be used in Source-to-Pay projects.
Cons ServiceNow is too expensive for small and mid-size companies to use. They don’t do Proof of Concept (POC) in most cases, which forces teams to trust them purely based on the demos and their reputation.

Sugar Serve – Zendesk Competitors You Haven’t Heard Of

What is Sugar Serve?

Sugar Serve is SugarCRM’s flagship customer service solution that brings you a high-definition view of your customer experience. Serve is a turnkey cloud-based customer service and support solution optimized for the needs of midsize organizations.

Sugar Serve Overview

Sugar Serve Pricing & Features

The pricing for SugarCRM starts at $52.0 per user per month. SugarCRM has 5 different plans:

Sugar Professional at $52.00 per user per month.

Sugar Sell at $80.00 per user per month.

Sugar Serve at $80.00 per user per month.

Sugar Enterprise at $85.00 per user per month.

Sugar Market at $1000.00 per month.

Features include:

  • Predictive lead scoring: You’re looking for more qualified leads but finding the time to do so yourself is hard. SugarCRM has automation-driven predictive lead scoring that will identify more marketing-qualified leads or MQLs.
  • Multi-channel marketing: SugarCRM promises multi-channel marketing options such as predictive analytics, social media engagement, and email marketing for both inbound and outbound purposes.
  • Form builders: Do you want to send an email that shines or build a landing page that converts? SugarCRM has a free form builder that also works for making opt-in forms and other types of forms. The form builder is a drag-and-drop type.
  • Lead interest analysis: Which leads are the likeliest to convert? With lead interest analysis from SugarCRM, which uses AI, you’ll know.
  • Data reporting: SugarCRM has Advanced Analytics within its Sugar Market that provides BI-level reporting.
  • Sales predictions: What will your company’s sales look like over the next month or even further out? The SugarCRM AI known as SugarPredict will tell you.
  • Full customer records: From the moment you log customer information into SugarCRM, it begins creating a historical database on that customer, including their past and present interactions with your sales staff.
  • Automated data-logging: Your sales team will appreciate having more spare time to focus on selling when SugarCRM logs data using automation workflows.
  • Subscription accounts: Keep your audience subscribed now and in the future by using subscription support.
  • Call routing: For customer service reps, you can route all incoming customer service calls to other members of the team so reps only tackle the issues pertinent to them and their skill sets.
  • Compliance: Do you worry about staying compliant with GDPR and other regulations? SugarCRM can help you.
  • Mobile support: SugarCRM has a mobile app, so you can take your marketing or sales tasks with you no matter where you have to travel for work (or pleasure).

Sugar Serve Integrations

Sugar Serve integrates with several tools and apps you already use. For a detailed list of up-to-date integrations visit the vendor website.

Pros and Cons

Pros Easy to use
Navigation is super easy.
User interface is nice.
The support team is very amazing.
Dashboard user experience is good.
Cons The plugins don’t work well.
Initial cost is higher.
It is not so customizable, although it has a lot of features.
It is sometimes laggy or takes time to load.
Lack of integration with other tools.

Front – Communication Focused Zendesk Competitor

What is Front?

Front is a customer communication hub that surrounds every high-stakes conversation with team collaboration capabilities and contextual data to ensure responses are always fast, accurate, and deeply personalized. Front’s modern interface is inspired by email clients, which team members love because it’s familiar and easy to use. Behind the scenes, powerful automation capabilities eliminate manual workflows across systems, and detailed analytics make it easy to improve team performance and the health of customer relationships.

Front Overview

Front Pricing & Features

  • Starter: $19/per user/per month for minimum 2 users and maximum 10 users (billed annually) 
  • Growth: $49/per user/per month for minimum 5 users and maximum 50 users (billed annually) 
  • Scale: $99/per user/per month for minimum 10 users.(billed annually)

 

Image obtained from vendor website on June 14, 2022.

For more information about pricing and features, visit the vendor website.

Front Integrations

Front integrates with various softwares including Asana, Intercom, HubSpot CRM, Jira Software, Slack, Pipedrive, Aircall, Drift, Zapier, Salesforce, Forumbee, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and more. For more detailed information about integrations, click here.

Pros and Cons

Pros The most common users of Front are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees) and the Computer Software industry.
Easy email integration, forwarding and sending.
Detailed in reporting and documentation.
Team work building and lively video conferencing.
Cons Opportunity cost for starting is quite high.
Zoom Meeting Integration as there are some clients who want to have a call immediately.
Tagging can be improved.Mobile apps are feature limited.
Front has their own calendar appointment but it would be good if I don’t need to leave the interface to set up [calendar] appointments.

Kustomer – Meta Owned Zendesk Competitor

What is Kustomer?

Kustomer is a modern customer support solution focused on providing fast, personalized customer service by empowering agents with all the information they need in one screen. Our platform is built around conversations, not tickets, so everything you need (customer data, order history, past conversations) is available in a single timeline view. Kustomer unifies communication across every channel (social, chat, email, SMS, voice) within the platform to avoid agent collision and customer frustration. Kustomer’s powerful intelligent automation capabilities eliminate tedious manual tasks that saves you time and money.

Kustomer Overview

Kustomer Pricing & Features

  • Enterprise: $89 per user/month (billed annually) 
  • Ultimate: $139 per user/month (billed annually)
  • Free trial: Not Available
  • Free version: Not Available

Kustomer features include: Searches & Views, Voice & Personalized IVR, Shortcuts, Sentiment, Native Satisfaction, Context Cards, Kustomer Chat and Collaboration. For more detailed information visit the vendor website.

Kustomer Integrations

Kustomer offers a wide array of integrations and apps including Amazon Connect, Magento and Big Commerce. Also, Kustomer is the only full-featured customer service CRM available in the Shopify Plus program. For more information on apps and integrations, click here.

Pros and Cons

Pros Kustomer is a great tool for customer support and chat interaction. 
Highly configurable in terms of features/functions and in its integration with outside tools.
Cons Complex web interface that is not the most intuitive. 
SDKs can be difficult to integrate due to poor documentation, unusual integration patterns. 
iOS SDK is written in Objective-C.

Gorgias – Ecommerce Focused Zendesk Competitor

What is Gorgias?

Gorgias is an all-in-one customer service, customer support, and live chat helpdesk for Shopify, Magento, or BigCommerce stores, which offers tools including email integration, autoresponders, ticket management, customer history tracking, request assignment, and more to aid with customer service. 

The cloud-based helpdesk solution aids customer service teams in resolving issues by connecting with third party eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, and pulling data on orders, payments, refunds, and more. It also integrates with various support platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Outlook, Live Chat, and more so that customer queries from multiple channels can be aggregated and managed in one place.

Gorgias Overview

Gorgias Pricing & Features

Gorgias offers three pricing tiers:

  • Basic $60/month. Includes: 350 Tickets, Unlimited users, Live Chat, Impactful third-party integrations
  • Pro $300/month. Includes: 2,000 Tickets ($.10 per), Unlimited users, Live Chat, Impactful third-party integrations, Onboarding Services, Revenue Statistics
  • Advanced $750/month. Includes: 6,000 Tickets ($.083 per), Unlimited users, Live Chat, Impactful third-party integrations, Onboarding Services, Revenue Statistics, Dedicated Support Specialist.

Gorgias features include Unlimited users, Live Support, Impactful third-party integrations, Customer Satisfaction Ratings, Revenue Statistics, Dedicated Support Specialist, Ticketing System, Social Media Posts and more. For more detailed information about pricing and features click here

Gorgias Integrations

With a deep Shopify integration, Gorgias allows you to not only pull customer data into your helpdesk, so that agents can more easily access it, but they allow you to edit shipping information, adjust tags, and refund orders, and create very helpful rules and macros.

Pros and Cons

Pros Easy to use, highly customizable dashboard
Live chat and customer support area to answer questionsIntegrates with WhatsApp and Instagram
Allows multiple languages in one price planHelpful customer service
Cons No option to pause your plan when installing integrations
No phone support

Intercom – Expensive Zendesk Competitors

What is Intercom?

Intercom is a Customer Communications Platform. With Intercom, you can build better customer relationships through personalized, messenger-based experiences across the customer journey. Companies like Atlassian, Shopify, and New Relic use Intercom to deliver conversational customer experiences through chat, bots, and personalized messaging. Intercom is a great tool but if you’re looking to save money, it’s not a Zendesk alternative that makes sense. It’s one of the Zendesk competitors that’s extremely expensive.

Intercom Overview

Intercom Pricing & Features

Intercom offers four different packages of tools based on the size of your business and its corresponding needs. If you’re only starting your struggle to the top of the corporate world, you’ll probably be more than satisfied with the ‘Start’ ( $59/mo) or ‘Grow’ ($119/mo) pricing plans. ‘Accelerate’ and ‘Scale’ subscriptions’ prices vary from $499 to $999 per month and include 10 seats, custom bots, Salesforce integration, and complex workflows.

Perhaps, the most famous and highly demanded Intercom’s feature is their Business Messengers, aka Live Chat. You can enhance Intercom’s messenger with different chatbots, apps, knowledge base articles, etc. It’s also quite simple to integrate it with your SaaS product and send targeted messages there as well as shoot automated chats to your customers and visitors. Though live chat is their core functionality, Intercom offers a great number of other features as well:

  • Help desk (Team Inbox)
  • Basic CRM
  • Email marketing (Outbound Messages combined with Campaigns)
  • Knowledge base (Help Center Articles)
  • Product tours
  • Bots
  • Banners

Depending on the Intercom pricing plan, you can combine these features and tools in your Intercom dashboard — anything for your money.

Intercom Integrations

Intercom lets you talk to consumers almost anywhere: inside your app, on your website, across social media and via email. With apps for support, marketing and sales Intercom let’s you connect to apps you already use everyday such as WhatsApp Business, Jira Service Management (Jira Service Desk), Salesforce.com, SlackStripe, Twilio Segment, Zendesk Support Suite, Status page, HubSpot Service, HubMeta for Business, Calendly, Pipedrive, Google Meet, Zapier, Heap, Tribe Community Platform, Zoom Video Webinar, Adobe Marketo Engage, LiveSession, Instagram, Twitter and more. For information related to apps and integrations, visit the vendor website.

Pros and Cons

Pros Synchronous communicationEasy-to-reply chat bots to manage conversations
Easy-to-use interface 
Cons Data analysis and reporting could be better
Not a full CRM tool
Could be more intuitive

Webex – Older Zendesk Competitors

What is Webex?

Cisco Webex is a video conferencing and collaboration product suite. This cloud-based collaboration suite comprises software including Webex Meetings, Webex Teams and Webex Devices. Cisco Webex products provide capabilities including online meetings, team messaging and file sharing. The suite is considered a leading collaboration platform in the unified communications area and is geared toward both small group collaboration for SMBs as well as large group meetings for enterprise-wide deployments. Users can join video conferences from a desktop or mobile app.Users can also share files and participate in team messaging features. Webex is one of the Zendesk competitors that is dated.

Webex Overview

 

Webex Pricing & Features

  • Basic Plan: $0/mo – HD meetings with up to 100 people, screen sharing, and a personal room.
  • Meet Plan: $13.50/mo – Premium meeting features. HD meetings with up to 200 people, screen sharing, recordings, breakout rooms, & more.
  • Meet + Call Plan: $25/mo – HD meetings with up to 200 people, screen sharing, recordings, breakout rooms, & more. A cloud-based phone number for each license, phone menus, extensions, & more.

Contact Webex for more information on pricing, and for custom enterprise plans.

Webex Integrations

Webex integrates with hundreds of industry-leading apps and tools and each Webex user account is limited to 20 integrations. Third-party apps — including Miro, MURAL, Slido and Shared Timer — will be natively integrated into Webex devices so users can simply select the app and start using it without having to download anything.

Pros and Cons

Pros Voice options from phone or computer audio, HD video.
Users can join calls on multiple devices, and can switch devices mid-call.
Users can share various files among participants, and content sharing extensions are available for web use. Annotation tools are available.
Calls can be recorded.
Chat and screen share features are available.
Screens can be controlled remotely.
Added security features.Integrates with applications such as Cisco and Microsoft Teams.
Cons Cost is higher in comparison to Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
Some users may find the menu system and UX hard to navigate intuitively.
Glitches with audio have been experienced for non-Webex users when connecting to audio. Some have also found it difficult to migrate from legacy Webex systems.

LiveAgent – Help Desk Zendesk Competitors

What is LiveAgent?

LiveAgent is a cloud-based Help Desk Software with over 195+ compatible integrations. It streamlines all customer communication channels and manages them from a single shared company inbox. It includes social media integration, unlimited ticket history, call recordings, hybrid ticket streams, and more. Companies like BMW, Yamaha, Huawei, Orange, and Forbesfone use LiveAgent to deliver services to 150M end-users worldwide. LiveAgent is one of the Zendesk competitors focused strongly on the help desk.

LiveAgent Overview

LiveAgent Pricing & Features

LiveAgent offers a 14-day free trial, no credit card required, no contracts.

Subscription plans:

  • Free: $0/agent/month 
  • Ticket: $15/agent/month 
  • Ticket + Chat: $29/agent/month 
  • All-inclusive: $49/agent/month
  • Self-hosted licenses starting at: $11,950 – 20 agents included, +$690 for each additional agent.
  • Enterprise: $34,950 – 50+ agents.

Features vary per plan, for an overview visit the vendor page.

LiveAgent Integrations

LiveAgent provides a large number of integrations in the form of plugins. With over 130 ticketing features and 200+ integrations with apps you already use, check out all the available integration solutions here.

Image: screenshot of LiveAgent platform. 

Pros and Cons

Pros A powerful, elegant and complete solution for helpdesk, live chat and ticketing needs
Free tier offers premium features.
Responsive and helpful customer serviceGood separation of modules that allows users to grow into greater use of the system.
Cons The extent of features makes it challenging to customize, set-up and learn how to use

HappyFox – Customer Support Zendesk Competitors

What is HappyFox?

HappyFox is a web based customer support software hosted on the cloud. It helps to track and manage all customer support requests across multiple channels like email, chats, social media and phone in a centralized ticket support system. Integration with other web apps like CRM, live-chats, voice and bug tracking apps makes it a practical help desk. Similar customer support queries can be handled using canned actions and smart rules to automate responses.

HappyFox Overview

 

HappyFox Pricing & Features

The entry-level tier, dubbed Mighty, is $29 per agent on an annual contract. 

The remaining three levels (Fantastic, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus) are $49, $69, and $89 per agent per month respectively.

For large organizations and unlimited agents, pricing starts at $1,499 per month for an annual contract and drops to $1,299 if you sign up for a three-year commitment. 

These plans also come in four different levels: Starter, Growth, Scale, and Scale+. Each adds some level of additional functionality and the number of tickets included in the base price (10,000 for Starter, 20,000 for Growth, 100,000 for Scale, and 250,000 for Scale+).

HappyFox Integrations

HappyFox integrates with various leading business apps including Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Slack, Asana, Shopify, Facebook, WhatsApp and more. For detailed information on vendor integrations, click here

Pros and Cons

Pros Relatively inexpensiveEasy to use and set-up
Responsive customer serviceHighly customizable user interface
Tight integration with Slack
Easy multi-step ticket managementExcellent and free training resources
Cons Less Integration like asset management cannot be linked to the system
Reporting needs improvement
Social media connections limited to Facebook and Twitter
Some features such as asset management only available at enterprise tiers

AzureDesk – Affordable Cloud Based Zendesk Competitors

What is AzureDesk?

AzureDesk is a cloud-based help desk and ticketing management solution for businesses of all sizes. Primary features include ticket management, email-to-ticket conversion, a customer-support center, team collaboration, knowledge base management and reporting.

AzureDesk helps users manage customer service operations such as ticket assignment, private notes and inline image addition to tickets. Other features include data reporting, customer self-service and email integrations.

The ticket management module tags tickets according to their importance and automatically assigns them to agents. The reporting module lets users run reports for a specified time frame and displays them in a dashboard. AzureDesk offers integration with Slack, Olark, ChargeDesk, JIRA, Asana, Chalio, smooch.io and Freshbooks.

AzureDesk Overview

AzureDesk Pricing & Features

Monthly and annual subscription pricing is available. Support is offered via phone, email and through online help pages. Pricing is per user per month.

AzureDesk offers a limited feature “Free Plan” and a “Plus Plan” which costs from $5/agent per month and includes all the available features.

  • Free Plan starting price: $5.00 per user/month
  • Plus Plan starting price: $33 per user/month

A 14-day free trial is available for both plans. For more information on pricing, click here.

AzureDesk Integrations

AzureDesk offers several integrations including Slack, Olark, ChargeDesk, JIRA, Asana, Chatlio, Smooch.io, Freshlooks. For a detailed list of integrations, visit the vendor website.

Pros and Cons

Pros Easy to useQuick to set-up
Streamlined reporting, ticketing and e-mail features
Cons Some users experience ticketing glitches
Need for mobile support
Demand for additional features and integrations

Crisp – All In One Zendesk Competitors

What is Crisp?

Crisp is an all-in-one multi-channel customer platform for interacting with customers and improving customer satisfaction. From sales to customer support, Crisp helps keep the workflow simple. Users can add teammates to support chat and email, all from a single user interface. Users can see what visitors are typing in real time, allowing them to respond with the right information in little to no time. Teams can reply to all inbound queries from Crisp Live Chat, email, messenger, Twitter, and SMS. Messaging features include bots, mentions, notes, video and audio chat, canned responses, file sharing and emojis.

The Crisp CRM allows users to manage, edit and export all users and leads information, from conversations, social networks, company information, phone number, and more. Crisp Campaigns allows companies to onboard, engage and retarget customers, as well as send personal emails to users segments and follow open-rates using advanced targeting options. Simply build in-chat and email sequences straight from Crisp.

Crisp also offers many more features to help small and medium size companies to better serve their customers. 

Crisp Overview

 

Crisp Pricing & Features

Crisp pricing is either $25 or $95 per month per website. There is also a free option with very basic live chat features. Customers are able to sign up for a 14-day free trial to test their preferred plan before paying.

  • Basic: $0 for two seats and basic live chat
  • Pro: $25 per month for four seats and canned responses
  • Unlimited: $95 per month for analytics and chatbots

Image obtained from the pricing page of the vendor website on June 15, 2022.

Crisp Integrations

Crisp is a client-side integration which needs to be inserted into your site or your mobile app as JavaScript, or as SDKs for iOS and Android. You can use integrations such as WordPress, Shopify or Google Tag Manager to install it too. For more information on integrations, visit the vendor website.

Pros and Cons

Pros Prompt and reliable mobile application notifications
Chatbots are more intuitive to configure than competitors’ bots
Good value for the price, particularly with the Unlimited plan
Cons MagicBrowse tool requires a strong Internet connection to function properly
Agent-specific reports must be custom-built with API
Email editor is slightly more complicated than in competitors’ tools

The Best Zendesk Competitors

The top Zendesk competitors according to recent software buyers are:

  • Help Scout
  • Zoho Desk
  • ServiceNow
  • Freshdesk
  • Gorgias
  • HubSpot Service Hub
  • Kustomer
  • Front
  • HappyFox

There is some overlap of features and functionality with these tools, but most have nuances that make them better suited for certain use cases.

Free & Affordable Alternatives to Zendesk

Most competitors offer a free trial period or first-month free. The top most affordable alternatives to Zendesk are:

  1. HubSpot
  2. Freshdesk
  3. Zoho Desk
  4. LiveAgent
  5. Engagebay

Who is Zendesk’s Biggest Competitor?

Freshdesk is a top Zendesk alternative and might be the better option if you’re looking for a simple, more affordable option. Over half of the Freshdesk online reviews come from small companies, but that’s not to say that larger companies don’t also use Freshdesk.

The platform is used by over 50,000 brands, including Bridgestone, HP, Harvard University and DHL to improve customer service. While Zendesk has a broader lens of the entire customer experience, Freshdesk is more narrowly focused on customer support (although it can be integrated with other Freshworks products). 

The platform is touted for its usability and you can get set up in just a few minutes. According to one review, “Freshdesk is easy to set up and get started. It has the quickest go-to-market deployment, even when considering novice users.”

 

Check out out software evaluation guide if you need help evaluating Zendesk or one of their competitors.

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