Zendesk vs. Freshdesk: 2024 Comparison of Features, Pricing & Integrations

With consumers putting more importance on their experience and relationship with brands, investing in customer support software has become an advantage and a necessity. While there are numerous options in the market, two of the leading vendors are Zendesk and Freshdesk. Each of these options provides top-notch tools that would help you provide personalized customer support and scale up your operations.

But, how do you decide which solution is best for you? You will need to consider the best features that will fully address your needs. Similarly, it should include smart functionalities that will allow you to do more without eating up your time. This Freshdesk vs. Zendesk comparison will help you decide which customer support software is right for you.

Customer expectations and experiences will continue to play a major role in brand and business loyalty today, with ongoing self-service, personalization, and real-time resolution preferences. What was previously considered a differentiator in customer service is now seen as a need to remain competitive in both customer service and overall customer experience. Despite the rising market pressures faced by companies, some are still lagging in meeting the needs and preferences of their customers. Because of this disconnect between consumers and customer service representatives, people who are in need of assistance often feel neglected, unheard, or otherwise uncared for.

As such, companies are actively investing in customer support platforms that can provide smarter features. According to experts, the top three customer support tools are help desk systems (53%), knowledge base (52%), and shared email aliases (47%). This highlights the need for robust online, self-service portals where customers can search for answers on their own. Similarly, it also underscores the importance of a centralized customer support inbox.

Furthermore, the pandemic underscored the need for a better customer experience, especially on digital platforms. There is an increasing demand for personalization and automation as consumers seek more information and services in less time. As a result, around 39% of CX leaders prioritize the utilization of data and AI to understand customers and develop personalized support. The benefits are highlighted by the fact that organizations that excel in personalization drive about 40% more revenue from such activities than their competitors.

Fortunately, achieving these benefits in revenue and operational growth is not impossible, especially if you have fully-featured solutions. While there are numerous options in the market, the Freshdesk vs. Zendesk comparison below should help you assess the key features, pricing, integration, and other factors that you should consider when purchasing customer support software.

Overview of Zendesk and Freshdesk

Freshdesk

Freshdesk has been recognized for its outstanding customer service capabilities. Through the use of multi-channel support, automation technologies, and productivity enhancements like gamification and self-service portals, organizations are able to better serve their customers. You can achieve operational efficiency for agents by using Freshdesk. Every transaction can be converted into a ticket with the help of a quality ticketing module included.

Additionally, its multi-channel assistance system eliminates the burden of navigating through numerous tools. Using Freshdesk’s live chat, phone assistance, and game mechanics, customers can get help immediately while increasing your team’s productivity. It integrates with traditional productivity products and your CRM when you need to extract customer data. Similarly, it is compatible with popular help desk and multimedia programs such as Google Apps, YouTube, and other widgets that may be used to supplement your knowledge base.

Freshdesk

Try out Freshdesk with their free trial

Zendesk

Zendesk is a customer service software set that enables you to turn your customer care team into agents for client retention and lead generation. Small or large companies alike will benefit from its highly adaptable framework. There are other modules that may be added to the system, including support, chat, contact center, and knowledge base. As a result, you’ll have access to all three basic support options right out of the gate.

A growing organization may begin implementing an industry-class help desk immediately with this solution. For example, you can quickly upgrade to CSAT surveys, online SDK, IVR phone trees, and response bots when your business needs get more complicated. Zendesk comes with an apps marketplace where you can add extended features to integrate with the platform. It works seamlessly with apps such as MailChimp, Shopify, GIPHY, and much more.

Zendesk

Try out Zendesk with their free trial

Comparison of Zendesk vs. Freshdesk

Core Features

Unified Inbox

Zendesk centralizes customer discussions and information, providing agents with all the context they need to assist consumers. Your team can change channels and add or remove bots as necessary. It is easy to integrate messaging and live chat into your website or mobile app to provide rapid help without the need for repetition. It is also simple to connect your customer support platform to social media channels like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

Similarly, Freshdesk’s omnichannel customer timeline consolidates all of your previous contacts with a client, including chat and email, in one place. This enables your agents to quickly get information about the consumer and also respond to them without the customer having to repeat themselves. If your representatives cannot immediately address consumer requests through chat, they can turn these conversations into a new ticket or attach them to an existing one.

Both platforms feature agent collision detection as well. Zendesk Plus and Enterprise users have access to this feature, whereas it is available in the Growth, Pro, and Enterprise plans of Freshdesk. It notifies your agents when another agent views and updates the same ticket. This helps prevent agents from attempting to modify the same ticket concurrently. This eliminates the need for your agents to spend time resolving problems that have already been resolved. In addition to agent collision detection, the Traffic Cop function in Freshdesk prevents duplicate responses or responses that have not taken the latest events into account.

Ticket Management

Zendesk and Freshdesk both include powerful ticket management systems that leverage artificial intelligence to provide better customer service and increase agent productivity. These systems also give agents additional support, such as tips on how to effectively tackle certain cases. They automate responses to routine, uncomplicated queries, allowing your staff to concentrate on more difficult work. Both solutions provide consumers with the knowledge necessary to fix difficulties on their own since shorter response times result in happy customers.

Flexibility is the focus of Zendesk’s automated ticketing system. It adapts to your operations and not the other way around. For example, you can implement a simple ticket system, an email-based ticketing workflow, or a mobile ticketing process. On the other hand, Freshdesk aims to help organizations enhance their collaboration. Agents can share ownership of tickets, split tickets into sub-tickets, and link related tickets to similar issues.

Agents can collaborate for faster resolution of customer issues with Freshdesk.

Self-Service Portal

Self-service portals and support systems are both core features of Freshdesk and Zendesk. Both solutions will allow you to craft knowledge bases that will become the base of your self-service support content. Additionally, they come with powerful authoring tools, which makes it easy to publish and maintain help centers. You also customize your help center without having to learn to code.

Furthermore, the two solutions come with community forum features. This makes it easy for customers to help each other and take advantage of specific customer use cases. Additionally, Zendesk’s Answer Bot and Freshdesk’s Freddy Answers both utilize your knowledge base to provide better answers to your customers. Instead of generic responses, they can include specific answers to help customers resolve their issues without ever having to contact a live agent.

These solutions also seamlessly integrate your knowledge base with the rest of your customer communication functionalities. They help you easily send links to relevant content and other information. As such, your knowledge base can become your center for all product and customer support information, which streamlines updates, changes, and more.

Communication System

Collaboration is a key element of modern customer support services. And both Zendesk and Freshdesk provide support teams with internal communication systems. This boosts productivity, speeds up case resolution, and reduces the time to find solutions. Zendesks comes with Side Conversations and Light Agents, which ensure that everyone in the team (and even other departments) is in the loop. Freshdesk also includes similar features that help ticket visibility and invite collaborators into the ticket, such as parent-child ticketing and linked tickets.

Both solutions leverage the omnichannel approach where all customer communications from different channels are centralized in one platform. Freshdesk and Zendesk both allow you to communicate with your customers through voice, chat, tickets, email, and community forums. This multi-channel support also eliminates repetition as the agents can see all conversations with the customer regardless of their communication channel.

Freshdesk makes it easy to work with other agents in real-time and communicate with other departments to ensure full customer support.

Customer Management

Customers are the center of any business operations. Fortunately, Freshdesk and Zendesk know this well. As such, they both built their solutions with customer management at the center. They both aim to centralize your support system and by putting your customer data to work.

At the root of Zendesk’s system is Sunshine, a fully-featured CRM software that powers its integrations, automation and analytics, apps, frameworks, and conversation tools. It provides a single view of customer data, which you can modify based on your business operations. This also allows you to scale as your organization expands without worrying about your CRM.

While Freshdesk does not have a native CRM system, it integrates well with other customer management platforms to extend its functionality and help support teams. It unifies customers’ experiences, so you do not have to switch between your CRM and Freshdesk. And you can track customer communication and measure their satisfaction through the platform.

Zendesk Sunshine makes it easy to manage and customize customer data.

Reporting and Analytics

Just like any other modern business solutions, Zendesk and Freshdesk use data to help you provide better service to your customers. The two platforms both come with reporting and analytics capabilities, so you can turn information into actionable insights.

Using Zendesk Explore, you’ll be able to examine, interpret, and share your business data. As soon as you’ve finished your report, Explore lets you collaborate with others. A person or group of people might get a one-time or regular report, depending on their role in the business and the strategy they have in place.

Similarly, Freshdesk helps you visualize the performance of your team and your customers’ satisfaction. It measures help desk productivity, agent workload, service efficiency, and much more. The system also integrates with GoodData for more advanced reports, dashboards, and KPI alerts.

Both platforms also allow you to monitor and generate reports on agent performance. You can manage metrics such as agent activity, performance, productivity, and more. It is also quite easy to drill down into their individual performance or take a big-picture view of their productivity over time.

Integrations

The comparison between Zendesk and Freshdesk in terms of integration with third-party business apps is pretty close. Both platforms feature marketplaces where you can see hundreds of free and paid applications that work well with them. As a result, the these customer support software allow you to develop a truly centralized workflow.

Top integrations include those with popular business solutions such as Slack, Google Calendar, MailChimp, Hubspot CRM, and more. This means, if you are already using software from well-known vendors, it is likely that they integrate easily with Zendesk and Freshdesk. Both marketplaces are well-organized and include powerful search functions if you are on the lookout for new apps.

Because Freshdesk is a part of the Freshworks family of software, this means it works quite seamlessly with the other products in the suite, such as Freshsales, Freshservice, Freshteam, and more. On the other hand, Zendesk Marketplace also includes themes that make it easy for you to customize your platform’s front-end without extensive coding. Additionally, the marketplace also comes with a list of service providers that can work with you to develop integrations and solutions using Zendesk.

Aircall integrates well with Freshdesk, making it an all-in-one voice support for customers.

Pricing

One of the essential parts of choosing between the two solutions is to compare Zendesk and Freshdesk pricing. Fortunately, both solutions offer numerous packages that ensure you use all the features you are paying for. Both also provide free trial options so you can truly test all functionalities.

Zendesk offers three categories of pricing tiers. The Foundational Support tiers start at $19 per agent per month, which is billed annually. This already comes with integrated ticketing across emails, Facebook posts, Tweets, business rules, customer details and conversation history, and more. If you need more features, you can opt for the Full Suite options, which start at $49 per agent per month, billed every year. These packages already include a ticketing system, messaging across different channels, a unified agent workspace, and other functionalities.

Bigger companies can also contact Zendesk for bespoke solutions starting at $150 per agent per month. The service provider also offers its platform for free to startups for six months. If your company has 50 employees or fewer, you can apply for their Startup Program.

Freshdesk also offers two types of pricing packages for different types of organizations. The Support Desk tiers include ticketing, self-service, and reporting features. It comes with a Free plan for unlimited agents, which is great if you only need basic email and social ticketing. Advanced features are available in higher tiers that start with the Growth plan costing $15 per agent per month and billed annually.

Suppose you need more than the ticketing and messaging features. In that case, the Omnichannel packages combine telephony features along with all other customer channels starting at $29 per agent per month on the annual plan. Freshdesk features are all available for free with the 14-day free trial.

Zendesk provides numerous pricing tiers based on the size of the company and the features they need.

Ease of Use

The Freshdesk vs. Zendesk comparison of ease of use showcases both solutions’ strengths and very few weaknesses when it comes to interface, usability, and accessibility. Both follow modern best practices in design and user interface. The UI’s are clean and utilize text and visual cues to highlight key information.

As an intermediate user, you’ll be able to understand and explore Zendesk’s straightforward interface without difficulty. It might be difficult to use for novices because of its many features and sophisticated capabilities. Intelligent suggestions on how to utilize them are provided by an AI-powered bot and a large resource library on the site. You can pay for extra training and coaching sessions by signing up for their premium support programs.

Freshdesk features a pretty user-friendly and straightforward UI, although less tech-savvy customers may encounter a learning curve when they first start using it. The primary menu selections are structured to make it simple to find what you’re looking for. And clever pop-ups provide advice and guidance on how to utilize the system. A product consultant is available to answer any questions you may have, or you can check out its free library of resources.

Zendesk leverages visual and textual cues for a cleaner and more intuitive interface.

Getting Started

Because both Zendesk and Freshdesk are software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, getting started is as easy as registration, logging in, and you are good to go. Both solutions work on your browser, which means they are independent of your OS requirements.

However, it is important to remember that the two solutions come with powerful features that will require customization to ensure that they work well with your workflow. Fortunately, Freshdesk and Zendesk provide tons of how-to guides and instructions through their support centers. Both are well-organized with powerful search functions, so it is easy to find what you’re looking for.

Additionally, both offer developer tools so you can create your bespoke solution using the platforms. They provide all the technical guides that you will ever need to get started. Also, based on your subscription, you can contact experts who can help you with any questions or assist you in using the platform.

Zendesk comes with easy-to-publish knowledge base and help center.

Use Cases

Freshdesk vs. Zendesk use cases are pretty similar as both solutions aim to serve organizations of all sizes in many industries. The customizability of the features also ensures that the platforms adapt to your customer service workflow and not the other way around. Furthermore, integrations with the most popular business software mean both Zendesk and Freshdesk easily fit with your current tech stack.

On top of that, the two providers developed features for operations that require specific functionalities. For example, Freshdesk for Healthcare organizations includes features for doctors, caregivers, administrators, and patients. The platform supports both HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliance, which means you do not have to worry about data privacy and security.

Similarly, Zendesk offers functionalities targeting businesses of various sizes. For instance, Zendesk for Small Business combines existing tools and apps to help growing organizations do more with less manpower. Its AI-powered automation and dynamic workspaces ensure that small teams do not miss any customers.

Repetitive tasks can be easily automated with Zendesk.

Zendesk vs Freshdesk Comparison Table

Zendesk vs. Freshdesk — Which Is Better?

The growing demand and expectation for superb customer experience cannot be ignored by businesses anymore. In order to stay competitive, you need to consider smart customer support software such as Zendesk and Freshdesk. These solutions will not only help your customer service efforts but will assist you in developing better relationships with your clients.

Zendesk is an excellent tool for those who need advanced functionalities and covering a large customer market. Its customizability, comprehensive reporting, and smart analytics will transform your data into actionable insights that will produce real results. However, Zendesk is targeted at the higher end of the market, which means you need to fully consider if you need each feature to maximize your investment.

On the other end of the spectrum, Freshdesk retains its identity as a small business customer support solutions leader. Its Free plan is enough to serve a growing number of customers. It is also part of the Freshworks family of products, so it is easy to integrate Freshdesk into your process if you are already using those. But, many of its extended features will require you to upgrade to higher-tier plans.

You will surely find Zendesk and Freshdesk viable investments with whichever solution you choose. A centralized solution in your arsenal will make customer support and management much more efficient so you can focus on growing your business further.

By Nestor Gilbert

Nestor Gilbert is a senior B2B and SaaS analyst and a core contributor at FinancesOnline for over 5 years. With his experience in software development and extensive knowledge of SaaS management, he writes mostly about emerging B2B technologies and their impact on the current business landscape. However, he also provides in-depth reviews on a wide range of software solutions to help businesses find suitable options for them. Through his work, he aims to help companies develop a more tech-forward approach to their operations and overcome their SaaS-related challenges.