As businesses scale, they require robust customer support. Zendesk is one of the most commonly used helpdesk and customer support software solutions today. It offers services like CRMs, ticketing systems, reporting, knowledge management, knowledge building, and various types of automation that help large companies keep up with their customer support obligations with ease.
However, Zendesk is not a good fit for every company. It sometimes offers “too much"; for example, it doesn’t offer smaller custom plans for smaller companies. So, they have to overpay for features that they don’t or can’t use.
That’s why many companies look for Zendesk alternatives that are a better fit for them. So, we have compiled a list of powerful alternatives that provide various types of features that may be better for your particular setup. If you are exploring other options, then those are what you should consider first.
Why Teams Move Away From Zendesk
Before we begin discussing the alternatives, let us look at the reasons why people may want to move away from Zendesk in the first place. As we mentioned before, the problem pertains to “fit” rather than a lack of features. But then there is also pricing.
Here are common reasons teams start looking elsewhere:
- Pricing increases as you scale
- Zendesk for customers and Zendesk for employees are two separate products with separate payments.
- Advanced features require higher tiers.
- Tiers are inflexible, so customers have to overpay for features they don’t use
- Setup and customization take time
- The interface can feel complex for small teams
- Add-ons increase total cost
So, there are a variety of reasons why a company can choose to let go of Zendesk. With that out of the way, let’s discuss what kinds of qualities should companies look for in Zendesk alternatives.
What To Evaluate Before Choosing a Replacement
When looking at alternative solutions, there are a few things that companies and organizations should consider before locking in their choice. Their details are given below.
Pricing Structure
Is pricing per agent, per ticket, or usage-based? Does it scale reasonably as you grow? Which pricing structure makes the most sense to you? Is the pricing flexible, i.e., you can opt out of certain features to get a better deal? Stuff like this can have a huge impact on your finances in the long run, so consider it carefully.
Ease of Setup
Can your team start using it in days, not weeks? Or is it going to take longer than that? If it is going to take longer, then you will have a few unproductive weeks. Can your company take that kind of hit? If not, then it is wiser to opt for a simpler solution.
Automation Capabilities
Does it support triggers, routing rules, and AI assistance? Since customer support is hectic, automation is almost necessary to ease the burden on the support teams. Without such features, the alternative is not valuable.
Channel Support
You need to consider which channels you use for support. Do you need email only, or chat, phone, and social media too? Do the tools provide options for each channel, or are they all bundled together?
Consider what you need regarding channel support before selecting an alternative to Zendesk.
Reporting and Insights
Reporting and insights are powerful tools that can inform a company's product/service strategy in the long term. So, check whether the Zendesk alternative lets you track SLAs, response times, and agent performance easily.
Integration Ecosystem
If you are already using a different CRM, does the alternative support connecting with it? Does it connect with your eCommerce platform or other internal tools? If not, then look for a different alternative.
In summary, you should know your priorities and then compare tools against them to find the best fit.
Quick Comparison Overview
Here’s a quick comparison of all the tools we have discussed in this article. The detailed breakdown follows after this.
Now, let us break down each option in detail.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is one of the most direct competitors to Zendesk. It offers nearly complete feature parity with Zendesk, such as omnichannel support, automation, and even its own AI. It is a good alternative to check out if you want something quite similar to Zendesk.
Features
Here are the notable features of Freshdesk.
- It provides omnichannel ticketing support. Channels include email, chat, phone, and social media.
- It provides automation rules and workflow triggers to hasten repetitive tasks and auto-proceed them to the next step.
- It provides AI-powered ticket suggestions for faster solutions.
- It has powerful reporting dashboards that show information in one place.
- Provides knowledge base tools for both employees and customers. For example, self-help articles for customers to troubleshoot and solve simple problems on their own.
Pros
Some of the pros of Freshdesk, which make it a great alternative to Zendesk, are as follows:
- It is very easy to set up
- It has a competent free plan available if you just want to test it.
- The interface is clean and straightforward, thus easier to understand.
- It scales well for growing teams
Cons
- Many advanced features are locked behind higher tiers
- Customization is not as deep as Zendesk's
Best For
In the end, it is best for startups and small-to-mid-sized teams that want solid automation without a steep learning curve or extended setup.
Price
- Free plan available
- Growth: starts around $35/agent/month
- Pro: starts around $95/agent/month
- Enterprise: starts around $143/agent/month
There is no custom pricing or plan available, so users are still stuck with potentially unwanted or unneeded features that come with each tier.
Helpjuice
Helpjuice is a dedicated knowledge base platform built for companies that want structured, searchable internal or external documentation. It is not a complete customer support solution, but it does provide powerful tools that can improve your current support infrastructure. For example, its knowledge base capabilities extend to both internal and external bases. So you can create customer-facing self-service knowledge bases.
Features
Here are the most powerful features of Helpjuice that aid with customer support operations.
- Provides advanced knowledge base management
- It provides an extremely powerful, intelligent search function with instant indexing.
- Context-based search and decision trees are provided, which make finding and retrieving data extremely easy.
- It provides detailed content analytics showing stuff like best-performing articles, poor performers, and ignored articles.
- Provides custom domain and design control so you can make things match your branding style with ease.
- Provides role-based permissions so that only the right people get access to the right information.
Pros
- Extremely strong search functionality
- Clean and structured documentation layout
- Deep analytics on article performance
- Fast setup for documentation-focused teams
Cons
- Not a full ticketing system
- Requires pairing with a help desk for omnichannel support
Best For
Teams that want a powerful standalone knowledge base to reduce tickets and improve self-service.
Price
The pricing tiers are as follows:
- Knowledge base: $249 for 30 users per month
- AI Knowledge base: $449 for 100 users per month
- Unlimited AI Knowledge base: $799 for unlimited users per month
There are no custom plans at the time of writing this article.
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is part of the larger Zoho ecosystem. Like Freshdesk and Zendesk, it aims to provide a complete help desk functionality in one interface. If you are already invested in the Zoho ecosystem, then Zoho Desk is a fantastic alternative to Zendesk, as it smoothly meshes with other Zoho products like Zoho CRM, Zoho Forms, etc.
Features
Some of Zoho Desk’s outstanding features are as follows:
- It provides omnichannel support. Supported channels include email, chat, phone, and, of course, social media.
- Zoho Desk comes with its own AI assistant that provides functions like tagging and insights.
- It provides SLA tracking and workflow automation.
- It has a flexible and customizable help center that teams can set up according to their needs and workflows.
- It provides advanced analytics that can help inform future actions and improve workflows.
Pros
Some of its notable benefits over Zendesk are as follows:
- Quite budget-friendly pricing
- Has strong automation tools
- Integrates well with other Zoho products
- Works on mobile devices as well
Cons
- The interface can feel busy due to the customization features
- Integrations outside Zoho are limited, so you are locked into one ecosystem.
Best For
Zoho Desk is best for small businesses and teams that are already using Zoho apps.
Price
- A free plan is also available
- Express: starts around $9/agent/month
- Standard: starts around $20/agent/month
- Professional: starts around $35/agent/month
- Enterprise: starts around $50/agent/month
Custom pricing is not available.
Help Scout
If your primary method of customer support is through email, then Help Scout is a great tool to use. It focuses only on providing support through email channels, and that single-minded focus also makes it much easier to use than other tools in this list.
Features
It has a veritable set of features that help it stand out from the competition, for example:
- It provides a collaborative, shared inbox experience, meaning that multiple people can check one inbox for support tickets and communication instead of CCing each other all the time.
- It has a built-in employee-facing knowledge base builder.
- It can use saved replies and provide automated responses. But it also supports automation in other functions.
- It lets you create deep customer profiles that help agents solve their problems faster.
- It comes with its own set of reporting tools that help you identify gaps in your support network.
- Supports live chat
- Has an “AI-Answers” add-on that gives access to an AI assistant, which can resolve customer queries automatically.
Pros
All the features aside, what makes this tool truly good are the following pros.
- It is very easy to use
- Only minimal training is required to start using it to its full capacity.
- It has a clean and modern interface that doesn’t clutter or confuse users.
- Provides a unified view using a beacon widget that combines live chat, email, and knowledge base into one interface for a comprehensive view.
Cons
- Because it is simple, it has fewer advanced customization options
- There is very limited native phone support
Best For
Once again, it is best for small to mid-sized teams that prioritize email-based support and ease of use.
Price
- A free plan with limited features is available
- Standard: starts around $30/user/month
- Plus: starts around $54/user/month
- Pro: starts around $90/user/month
- AI Answers Add-on: $0.75/resolution
No custom plan is available at the time of writing.
Intercom
Intercom is built around messaging, specifically in-app messaging and live chats. It combines live chat, bots, and proactive engagement tools that improve customer support. It's a great alternative to Zendesk if your support channels are primarily focused on in-app support.
Features
Intercom’s most important features are as follows.
- As stated before, it has live chat and in-app messaging
- It provides AI chatbots and automation to cater to many requests at once.
- It supports customer segmentation for specialized support.
- Provides product tours and proactive messaging features
- It has good reporting dashboards
- Fin AI assistant that can resolve “59%” of queries, according to the company’s webpage.
Pros
The pros that make it a solid alternative to Zendesk are as follows:
- It has strong real-time engagement tools
- Provides powerful automation and bots
- It is great for SaaS companies
- Messaging support is very wide. Includes Facebook Messenger, email, phone, WhatsApp, SMS, and social channels.
Cons
- It can get expensive quickly because of its per-seat pricing and separate AI pricing.
- There are sometimes text formatting issues that prevent customers from seeing tables or otherwise specially formatted content correctly.
Best For
Intercom is best for SaaS and product-led companies that rely heavily on in-app messaging for customer support.
Price
- Essential plan: $39/seat/month
- Advanced plan: $99/seat/month
- Expert plan: $139/seat/month
- Fin AI plan: $0.99 per resolution
- Copilot add-on: $35/agent, with unlimited uses.
- Proactive Support Plus for $99/month.
So, there is some flexibility with respect to add-ons.
LiveAgent
LiveAgent is an all-in-one help desk focused on multichannel communication with a special emphasis on live chat. It supports multiple channels for support. It also provides ticketing, so it checks all the boxes of help desk software. It is flexible enough for either enterprise or small business use.
Features
Here are the features of Live Agent that make it a compelling tool.
- It provides email ticketing
- Provides live chat and call center support
- Supports social media integrations for ticketing
- It provides gamification features for agents to enhance their training
- Provides knowledge base tools, including a self-service customer-facing repository of articles and guides.
- Supports integration with different CRMs.
- Provides API access if users want to create custom integrations
- It provides customizable report generation to measure customer service performance.
- Provides automation features for repetitive tasks.
- There is an AI chatbot too that can handle simple and repetitive queries.
Pros
There are quite a few pros of Live Agent that make it a compelling alternative to Zendesk, for example:
- Its wide channel coverage
- It's affordable mid-tier plans
- It's built-in call center support
- Its advanced ticketing features
Cons
However, on the downside:
- Its interface feels dated
- The mobile app experience is quite limited
Best For
Given all of that, Live Agent is best suited for teams that need voice, chat, and email in one place without enterprise pricing.
Price
- Free plan available with limited features.
- Small Business: starts around $15/agent/month
- Medium: starts around $29/agent/month
- Large: starts around $49/agent/month
- Enterprise: starts around $69/agent/month
All paid plans are billed annually and come with all AI features.
Kustomer
Kustomer is a help desk software that focuses on customer timelines rather than traditional tickets. It gives agents a unified conversation history for each client/customer so they can have better context and make better decisions. It is well-suited for large businesses due to its strong features, such as macros for fast responses and ticket escalation.
Features
Here are some more features of Kustomer that showcase its strengths.
- It supports omnichannel messaging.
- All customer messages, regardless of source (e.g., email, SMS, social media), are shown in a single unified interface.
- Provides custom branding so that users can make Kustomer look and feel like their brand.
- Provides knowledge base features, including customer-facing self-service options.
- Has intelligent routing for better communication.
- Provides sentiment analysis from customer communications.
- Supports custom workflow automation
- Integrates with CRMs
Pros
These features naturally provide the following pros.
- A strong customer context view
- Advanced automation
- Good for high-volume teams
- Powerful insights with the help of AI
- Strong integration options
Cons
However, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. Kustomer does have some glaring flaws, such as:
- Higher starting price
- Substantial onboarding time due to complexity and learning curve
- Like Zendesk, it provides far more features than what smaller teams require.
Best For
Keeping its pros and cons in mind, Kustomer is best suited for mid-sized to enterprise teams that want a full customer history in one view. Smaller teams should stay clear of this tool due to its higher pricing and steep learning curve.
Price
- Enterprise plan starts at $89/user/month
- Ultimate plan starts at $139/user/month
- AI add-on for Customers is $0.60 per conversation
- AI add-on for reps is $40/user/month
According to Kustomer’s website, both enterprise and ultimate plans contain all core features such as omnichannel messaging, conversation timeline, and so on. The difference is that the Ultimate plan contains more AI features than the Enterprise plan.
HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub is the last tool on our list, but by no means is it the least. It's a practical choice for teams and organizations that are already invested in the HubSpot ecosystem. It provides a number of valuable features, and its seamless integration with the broader HubSpot ecosystem is also a point in its favor.
Features
Some of the most notable features of HubSpot Service Hub are as follows:
- Provides a shared inbox that all team members can view.
- Provides extensive ticket automation
- CRM integrations with both HubSpot and other brands
- Provides a knowledge base builder
- Provides Extensive customer health reporting and feedback for collecting valuable insights
- Detailed reporting dashboard
- Provides live chat for direct and prompt communication with customers
Pros
Some of the pros of the HubSpot Service Hub are as follows:
- Provides deep CRM visibility
- Has strong automation workflows
- Very good for sales and support alignment
- Advanced ticketing makes it easy to track customer queries
- Detailed analytics provide valuable insights
Cons
With the pros, there are some veritable cons as well, for example:
- Costs increase with advanced features
- Only provides the best value when used with HubSpot CRM, so it encourages you to buy more of HubSpot’s products. This can feel limiting.
- The customization features are quite lacking.
Best For
Customer success and revenue teams that want support tied closely to CRM data and are already invested in the HubSpot suite.
Price
- Free plan with barebones features and forced HubSpot branding
- Starter: starts around $20/seat/month
- Professional: starts around $100/seat/month
- Enterprise: starts around $150/seat/month
No custom plans are supported.
Final Thoughts
Zendesk is powerful help desk software, but it is clearly catered towards larger organizations and enterprises. Its pricing plans and feature set corroborate that claim.
This is one of the reasons why people look for Zendesk alternatives. Smaller organizations often only require a couple of features and need a lower price. Many of the alternatives we discussed provide that.
Zendesk is also many times just not the right fit for an organization, so alternatives that provide similar functions but fit better are necessary. From this list, you should be able to find all kinds of Zendesk alternatives that suit your workflows better.