Freshdesk is considered as one of the top knowledge base software in the market. But one solution does not fit all. A lot of businesses keep searching for Freshdesk alternatives. Maybe the price is too steep for them, or integration steps are not worth the time.
Deciding what customer support system you need is an important factor as it is one of the three main pillars of customer experience (Marketing, Sales, and Support). Companies are focusing more and more on customer experience as it can be the key difference between them and their competitors.
Fact: Companies that focus on customer experience have reported 4-7% higher revenue than the rest of the industry
(source)
Good customer satisfaction ratings can help grow and make a name for your business. That is why we have compiled a list of the best customer support help desk software. This list will help you decide which alternative you should choose.
Table of Content
Top 7 Freshdesk Competitors
Here are the top seven Freshdesk alternatives you can rely on:
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CloudTutorial
CloudTutorial is a cloud-based system that can help create a knowledge base for your customer support. This customer information system will help them find answers to their questions quickly and efficiently.
“CloudTutorial is a knowledge base software that helps you offer exceptional customer support and allows your customers to find answers fast – real fast.”
The main focus of CloudTutorial is to create a comprehensive and easy-to-use knowledge base so you don’t have to spend hours responding to customer queries and answering the same questions again and again. It is kind of a self-service system where users neither have to wait for a customer agent to be online, nor to create a ticket and wait for the reply. Instead, a complete body of knowledge is created for the customers, where they can search for answers to their queries and get results immediately.
In comparison to Freshdesk, CloudTutorial is easy to integrate as no learning curve is required to set up or create help articles like other help desk systems. It also has customizable web templates that you can easily incorporate within your product documentation or create a new one if needed. CloudTutorial is an excellent alternative to freshdesk.
CloudTutorial features can be used to create:
- Company Policies
- FAQs
- User Manuals
- Release Notes
- Product Guides
- SOPs
- Help articles
To create, maintain, and use all this documentation, our team management features can be used for collaboration. You can assign different pre-defined roles, or create a new one as your team members require. For example, a manager does not need editing rights but needs to approve what the contributor has written.
Why is CloudTutorial the Best Freshdesk Alternative?
- You can create a comprehensive knowledge base /FAQ using already available information or add a new one if needed. Try it here!
- Lightning-fast Google-like search
- Answer all questions in a question-answer format
- Create unlimited categories, and make your knowledge base super-organized
- Intelligent search that provides the right result even for typos!
- Get analytics for every possible dimension: number of searches, results, clicks, and much more
- Get monthly reports for the search terms that did not yield a result
- Set multiple roles for a single person working on different projects: manager in one and editor in the other
Disadvantages:
- The core focus of CloudTutorial is to reduce helpdesk repetitive tasks and minimize the need for customer interactions without compromising on customer experience. That is why we do not offer a live chat feature or a tickets solution. This can also be seen as an advantage as our system can help you reduce the cost of hiring support agents.
Contact us to know more about our system and its amazing features.
Build an advanced knowledge base for your customers and give them answers fast – real fast.
Take your app and help center to the next level with CloudTutorial.
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Zendesk
Zendesk is an enterprise-level customer service software well suited to be a Freshdesk alternative. It offers a complete set of tools for the help desk, chat, knowledgebase, and ticketing system.
Zendesk’s help desk solution lets you set up every stage of a customer’s journey on a single platform.
Just like FreshDesk, automating most of the tasks can help you take the load of your team and avoid repetitive tasks. Zendesk Macros can help create complex custom reply templates, which can be beneficial for multiple-step tasks and tickets. This customer service solution offers a customizable front-end portal and Live chat features.
Finances Online awarded Zendesk as the “Best Help Desk Software” of 2019 for a reason. With a decade of helpdesk services under their belt, they have learned from their customers and have created a very refined system. But the pricing can be a little overwhelming as small firms can find it overpriced.
Zendesk is powered by their very own CRM at the backend. This gives you a powerful tool to build your own custom customer support product the way you want it to be.
Advantages:
- Integration with other third-party tools is quite useful.
- Can integrate with different social media platforms.
- Continuous upgrade of new features and third-party add-ons.
- Readily available tools for increased collaboration.
- One inbox for all communication channels including phone calls, chat, social media, emails, and web.
- Provide high-quality customer support by using tools that improve the productivity of your support team.
Disadvantages:
- Lack of out-of-the-box features can be annoying.
- Add-on costs can become quite expensive in Zendesk.
- Out-of-the-box video call with customers would have been a good add-on.
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HubSpot
HubSpot is a complete help-desk software solution covering all three pillars of user experience i.e marketing, sales, and support.
“Marketing, sales, and service software that helps your business grow without compromise. Because “good for the business” should also mean “good for the customer.”
Introducing the inbound methodology to the world, HubSpot brought customer experience into the limelight. Hubspot believes customer happiness is the key to retaining customers. This is the exact principle at the core of HubSpot services hub, helping companies respond to inquiries quickly and encouraging customers with personalized assistance to make them your brand advocate.
The HubSpot services hub along with their free CRM makes it a powerful centralized system to take care of all customer support needs of your company, hence considered one of the good alternatives of Freshdesk.
With HubSpot Services hub your company will get:
- Conversational tools
- Help desk automation
- Knowledge base
- Customer feedback surveys
- Reporting
- Ticket management system
- Email tracking
- Team collaborative tools
- And much more
Automation is also a strong suit of HubSpot. you can create custom automated responses and actions with a very little learning curve.
Similar to FreshDesk, a single inbox for all communication channels can help centralize support efforts. You can assign new incoming inquiries to different team members, or let the Ai based live chat talk to the customer answering the questions in real time, thus eliminating repetitive tasks.
HubSpot also has hundreds of add-ons built by third-party developers, adding a lot of custom solutions and functionalities. Hub DB and HubL language can be used if any custom solution needs to be built, making it more flexible and customizable.
Advantages:
- Similar to Freshdesk, HubSpot has an extensive knowledge base to help you plan and execute the best support practices.
- Cover the whole journey of a customer on a single system, from a visitor to a lead, to a customer, and then to your brand ambassador.
- Amazing reporting and customizable dashboards.
- One centralized system for all marketing, sales, and support activities.
- Integration with most in-demand apps is available.
- Setting up and customization of reports is quite simple in HubSpot, unlike FreshDesk where the process of customizing a report is a little steep.
- The platform is capable of helping you manage customer support alongside sales operations.
Disadvantages:
- Can become expensive software as the database keeps growing.
- Navigation can be a little messy sometimes.
- Services hub is rather one of the new features integrated into this software. The main focus is on the marketing hub. But it is evolving rapidly over time.
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SalesForce
Salesforce is a help-desk software offering marketing, sales, and customer service. While the core product of Freshdesk is their helpdesk, Salesforce is a complete system offering marketing, sales, and customer service with their CRM at the base of their software. It falls in the same category as HubSpot. Considered as one of the good alternatives to Freshdesk, it can also be much more than that.
Salesforce Service Cloud is where you can find their help desk features. Salesforce believes in fast and responsive services on all communication channels. That is why they help deliver a personalized, quick experience to every user. You can create workflows, automate responses, create communities, use Ai based chatbots e.t.c.
SalesForce includes live chat for mobile apps and web, ticketing for customer requests, and marketing automation.
SalesForce also has its own marketplace called AppExchange. With 5000+ ready to install apps, you can find almost any features a business requires.
Their agent portal is very productive as it puts all the required information in one place, with ease of accessibility for the agent. Agents can also overview a specific user, his activity, and history of the problem, making their response more insightful and quick. Their tickets management system has all the required features.
SalesForce cloud voice service has Amazon Connect integrated. The combination of Amazon Connect with salesforce makes it a powerful voice solution. Using cloud service, the support team can call and help customers more effectively in real time. As soon as an agent receives a support call from a customer, SalesForce Ai jumps into action and suggests relevant articles to the agent based on the available information. This helps solve the issue quickly.
Advantages:
- Great for managing complex customer service interactions.
- One window management system for the whole team.
- Salesforce academy has a great number of useful content.
- The tickets management system has all the required features.
- Manage customer support while on the go using the native mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Disadvantages:
- Setup can be quite complex for simple users. You have to hire help for the whole setup.
- An expensive solution, more suited for enterprise-level companies.
- You will be billed yearly. No option to be charged per month.
- Salesforce only provides support if you buy Premiere Support plans.
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Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk considered a complete customer service software out there in the market. Ideal for small to medium businesses, you can create a free account for up to three customer communication agents with lots of useful add-ons that can be purchased and added later on.
With other typical help desk solutions like live chat and tickets, it also offers VoIP solutions, social media integration as well as excellent real time reporting options. Tickets can be created using any platform like a services portal, social media, or email.
One of the great Zoho Desk features is it helps turn a support solution into an article for future support queries. This reduces a lot of stress on the support team. Their app is user friendly. You can handle incoming customer inquiries on the go easily, be it your windows machine, tablet, or your phone.
To make it easier to switch, they support migration from Freshdesk and other helpdesk softwares also.
Advantages:
- Easy setup and integration.
- Affordable cost. Small teams and startups can also afford this software solution.
- Social media integration is a plus.
- Available support when switching from other platforms like Freshdesk and Zendesk
- This software is excellent for boosting customer support operations and increasing conversions.
Disadvantages:
- UI/UX has an old look and feel. Can be improved.
- Their support can be a bit laggy. Freshdesk user support has an advantage over them.
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Live Agent
Live Agent is a widely used help customer support software that is getting more and more popular over time. What makes them worthy of attention is there simple and easy to use UI. Their core focus is on integrating all communication channels into a single inbox, making it easier for the support team to handle all incoming inquiries on a single platform.
In LiveAgent, you can store customer data in the contact information box or, you can also integrate the CRM platform into your LiveAgent.
Live Agent integrates multiple channels into a single inbox, including email, chat, calls, Facebook, Slack, Twitter, Viber, forums, contact forms, video calls, and feedback, claiming to save 15 hours worth of time every week.
Live Agent also claims to have the world’s fastest chat widget that can provide instant service through chat support, hence decreasing response time. Live Agent has everything you need to deliver exceptional customer support.
Their call center VoIP solution is easy to use and has advanced features like IVR, call back requests, call routing, call recording, and HD video calls.
Advantages:
- Quick and easy setup.
- One window chat for all communication channels.
- Quick load time of the widget i.e little to no effect on site loading speed.
Disadvantages:
- Android app can be better
- Unlike Freshdesk, Live Agent has no WhatsApp integration available.
- UI can be better
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Atlassian
Launched in the year 2020, Atlassian’s Jira Service Management can be one of the strong alternatives to Freshdesk. Formerly know as JIRA Service Desk, this system is ideal for high-velocity teams. Atlassian has several helpful features for collaborative customer support at a reasonable cost.
Easily connect Jira Cloud to your CRM platform.
You can set up CRM for Jira Cloud in less time compared to separately looking up a customer’s information in your CRM and Jira Software. Provide your account credentials, tell them which CRM fields you need to display, and the process gets complete.
Already popular for their project management tools, Jira Service Management offers a centralized system for all team members, a self-help portal where both users and agents can find the answer to questions they have, Assign tickets to relevant team members, and track any issue if needed.
Atlassian explains that back in 2013 when they created Jira Service Desk they noticed most of the customers (nearly 40%) adapted the JIRA model for their service requests as well. This inspired them to create a helpdesk system that is based on JIRA principles out of the box.
” Jira Service Management is an ITSM solution built on Jira to help IT operations and development teams collaborate at high velocity. It empowers teams to respond to business changes rapidly and deliver great customer and employee service experiences.”
JIRA is quite popular among Saas products and software houses. Jira Service Management becomes an ideal purchase because most of them can already be using Atlassian products. Their tickets management system is popular among software houses as a lot of collaboration is needed to solve complex problems.
Atlassian also has a huge marketplace with third-party tools that integrate easily into the system and can be used as required. with over 1000+ extensions, it can be the tool your team requires.
Advantages:
- Highly customizable. There is no limit to customization. A clear advantage over Freshdesk.
- Their tickets system is very clear and useful.
Disadvantages:
- Setup needs expert hands.
- Can be very slow.
- Needs a good learning curve. The whole team needs to be trained to use it.
Why CloudTutorial is the Best Freshdesk Alternative?
You probably might have a few softwares shortlisted at this point, and let us tell you a few more things about CloudTutorial before you make the choice.
- You can create a comprehensive knowledge base /FAQ using already available information or add a new one if needed.
- Reduce the pain of explaining the same information again and again and focus more on creative work.
- Minimize the number of required live chat user agents.
- Smart search to show relevant results, even if misspelled terms are entered.
- Useful analytics like most searched questions, the number of views e.t.c to identify actionable items.
- Better than complex platforms because no learning curve is required to set it up and is very easy to use.
- Divide your content into as many categories as you want.
Build an advanced knowledge base for your customers and give them answers fast – real fast.
Take your app and help center to the next level with CloudTutorial.
FAQs
Conclusion
Which Freshdesk alternatives are the best? it depends on your requirement. We atCloudTutorialfeel a strong knowledge base with smart search can eliminate the need for support tickets and live chat. This self-service model offers a quick solution to the problem without the hassle of waiting for a support agent to come online, or to submit a ticket and then wait for the company agents to reply.
Looking for an easy to set up system? You can opt for CloudTutorial or Zoho. Looking to scale up and offer a customized customer service solution? Have a look at Atlassian, HubSpot, or Salesforce. Want to decrease your response time? Live Agent can be a good platform.
Want to know more about CloudTutorial? Our experts will be happy to walk you through our system.Contact us for more details.
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