Freshdesk vs. Zendesk: How to choose between the two managers? (2023)

Whether you receive hundreds or thousands of tickets a day, a good support app can make everything easier and more efficient. So when companies decide to go with a ticketing system, they are often faced with the choice between Freshdesk and Zendesk.

These are two of the best known and most used support applications that have very similar functionality but also have different aspects. But which support system is better: Freshdesk or Zendesk? Let's find out.

Before you take the plungeFreshdesk versus ZendeskFor comparison, watch this video and decide which help desk will improve your business:

The history and background of the two aid centres

Zendeskthe band comes from Copenhagen, Denmark. There were three first guys working as freelancers in different companies. One day, they combined their strengths and brains to create software that would make customer service more zen. They officially launched the startup in October 2007. Zendesk boasted that it acquired its 1,000. customer and moved to San Francisco in about a year. Today, the company has over 2,000 employees and serves 119,000 paying customers such as Uber, Shopify and Loreal.

Freshdeskwas founded in 2010 in India by two friends. The official story on their website says it was all due to a broken TV and poor customer service they experienced. In June 2011, Freshdesk outperformed all competitors in the Microsoft BizSpark Startup Challenge and was the winner in delivering exceptional customer experience. It took them six months to acquire 100 customers and use this successful launch as a platform to grow further. Today, Freshdesk serves over 80,000 customers, including Honda, Unicef, Cisco and other well-known brands!

Fast facts

What are Freshdesk's and Zendesk's pricing plans?

Monthly payments for support software can run into the thousands of dollars if you have a large customer support team. let's gobrowse Freshdeskvs. Zendesk to find the one that's best for you.

First, the approach to pricing in Zendesk and Freshdesk is different.

Zendesk price list

When comparing Zendesk prices, the first thing you'll notice is that the reseller offers three main products: Zendesk Foundational Support Only, Zendesk Sell, and Zendesk Suite. Each package focuses on a different area of ​​customer service:

• Basic support for Zendesk only: This is the basic package to provide customer-centric support. The package contains the most common functions and is the cheapest.
• Zendesk sale: Sell gives reps access to integrated customer account management tools in one central location. The package also allows you to continuously monitor the sales funnel.
• Apartment Zendesk: The package includes the functionality to provide support via messaging, live chat, social media, email or voice. You can build an integrated help desk and community forum. Or use an AI bot and automation so your customers never have to repeat themselves.

Use Sunshine to customize your Zendesk account for your business. It is a Zendesk platform that enables developers to create custom solutions in mobile, web and social applications.

Fresh desk prices

In Freshdesk, all functions are combined in one product. Therefore, they cannot be purchased separately. Freshdesk offers four pricing plans:

• Free ($0 pr. agent)
• Development ($15 per agent)
• Pro ($49 pr. agent)
• Enterprise (79 USD pr. agent)

To sign up for a Freshdesk account, you need to set up one of the available add-ons:

• Additional bot sessions: Use bots to automate your application handling process.
• Field service management: Manage appointments and schedules, add field agents and provide excellent personal support.
• Freddy AI: An automated bot designed to speed up manual or redundant processes.

Price assessment

Freshdesk and Zendesk differ in the number of pricing plans: Freshdesk has four, while Zendesk has five levels. Freshdesk offers a free plan for unlimited agents; If you choose the cheapest Zendesk plan, you start at $19 per agent per month. If you compare the Zendesk and Freshdesk plans back to back, Freshdesk is slightly cheaper. Regardless of the number of features, Zendesk usually beats Freshdesk.

On the other hand, the amount of features has never been the main advantage when choosing software for businesses. All to provide the best possible customer service. Your goal is to determine which features are essential to your business and provide the greatest benefit to your support team.

So looking at the pricing options for Zendesk and Freshdesk, Freshdesk is cheaper even though Zendesk has a better set of business features. However, it depends on the number of agents and how many customers you plan to serve. Consider the potential growth for customers and agents, then decide which system to choose.

Let's compare price differences on the example of Zendesk vs. Freshdesk.

Figure 1: Price plans

Both Freshdesk and Zendesk have a lot to offer in terms of functionality. But if you compare Zendesk and Freshdesk, it is clear that Zendesk lacks premium functionality. Freshdesk offers more automated options, while Zendesk only comes with predefined responses and business rules.

Zendesk, on the other hand, goes deeper into customer support by offering a separate set of features for voice, live chat and messaging, and email support. Freshdesk, on the other hand, offers more options for customizing the customer experience. However, if you upgrade to a more expensive plan, you get a more robust, enterprise-ready version of Zendesk.

What makes Zendesk different from Freshdesk?

Zendesk and Freshdesk are the two main players in the HelpDesk market. So it is natural to expect a comprehensive set of features from them.

Both managers offer a number of necessary features and try to stand out with unique functionality and reporting capabilities. In addition, each company tries to offer its customers a set of unique benefits. After all, people usually go through the list of features before making any decisions. This is how every system tries to win its customers.

How does Freshdesk differ from others?

Freshdesk is not new to the market. Over the years, the company has developed many great little features that automate, simplify and speed up many activities. Here are some of the key features you can count on.

Arcade (Griffification)

Freshdesk is the one that offers a gamification system called Freshdesk Arcade. The system is designed to increase agent productivity and make the work of the customer service team less routine. The administrator sets goals and defines rewards in the form of badges and points for completing specific tasks.

This unique gamification functionality in Freshdesk turns customer service into a game and helps break the monotony of work. You can track agent performance and motivate the most successful. The game is task based. Agents can earn mission points by receiving rewards and praise for their work and by acquiring custom agent roles. You can use the ready-made search engine in the Freshdesk panel or create your own search engine.

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Proactive reach

Another great feature of Freshdesk is Proactive Outreach. The main principle of operation is the identification of potential customer problems and their early resolution. The system detects signals of frustration or problems and helps the customer support team contact them via live chat to proactively provide assistance.

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Task reminders

The Freshdesk team has such a feature as task reminders. Their functionality allows both agents and administrators to create task lists for later. You can also set a reminder to notify the selected agent when it's time to complete a task or update the knowledge base.

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Detailed support

Its extensive functionality allows you to set custom statistics related to your tickets. Whether you want to know more about the speed/time of handling cases, describe the most frequently reported problem or even find the best agent, this feature is for you. To set it up, run the initial setup wizard, fill in your stats and wait for the rest to be done automatically. To create a report that can be scheduled and even shared, you need real-time and historical customer data.

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What's special about Zendesk

Zendesk also didn't wait for competitors to develop an advantage and create its exclusive feature pack. The platform is mostly focused on scalability and growth as well as customer support, so here's what you can get.

Want to switch to Zendesk? Transfer your data fromFreshdesk and ZendeskLet.

Share ticket

One of Zendesk's unique features is automatic ticket sharing. Large companies appreciate this feature as it allows you to share tickets between multiple Zendesk accounts. This feature may seem small, but if you're scrolling through hundreds of menus every day, the number adds up, especially if you have a huge customer support department.

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Multi-brand support

As the name suggests, this feature is designed for larger companies whose sole task is to manage brands across different demographics. With this system, you will not only separate both products, but also get individual analyses, reports, sales data and live chat among other things. Additionally, this system fully customizes both brands (unless otherwise noted). This means you can change anything you want about your secondary brand.

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Comparison tool

Zendesk Benchmark is the perfect tool to measure customer service performance in your organization. You can see how you compare with other companies in your industry. You can use this information to improve your company's customer service skills. The benchmark tool uses statistics from over 487 million customers (including business customers) and 1.05 million agents in 140 countries around the world.

The benchmark tool provides information on the following metrics:

• consumer satisfaction;
• first response time;
• new ticket volume.

To see statistics from companies similar to yours, complete the Zendesk comparison survey. In the form, you answer questions about your industry, number of employees, customer type and so on. Later, you will get the benchmark results in the Benchmark widget in the agent interface.

Experience Zendesk

However, Zendesk isn't done yet. Recently, the company has replaced its analytics module with another proprietary product - Zendesk Explore. Yes, you no longer need to rely on intermediate products, reports and analysis systems that were previously available.

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Essentials tab and interaction history

Finally, the Essentials tab and interaction history always work together to provide context to the customer. They enable agents to learn and remember the basics and specifics of each client's case. The combination of two features is the best way to personalize customer service in Zendesk.

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What are the main disadvantages of Freshdesk and Zendesk?

When comparing Zendesk and Freshdesk's customer support tools, it's clear that both systems are great, but they have quite a few drawbacks that you might want to consider before making a major purchase.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk strives to be super accessible, but some features go way beyond that. Let's take a login system for example. For example, agents must go to a separate domain to access their dashboards, not branded dashboards. These transitions add up and can confuse the customer support team. And then Freshdesk has no option to customize the standard roles. Although it may seem like a small thing,most support solutionsof this caliber allows such adjustments.

Zendesk

The first thing Zendesk should add to its feature set is that once a message is sent, there is no way to undo it. It seems small, but what if your intern made a grammar mistake or attached the wrong file? Or have you entered the wrong address? So this feature should be something, especially given the general focus on live chat channels.

Figure 2: Zendesk and Freshdesk pins

Comparing Zendesk and Freshdesk: what do they have in common?

Personalization and branding

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer several customization options, the most valuable being the ability to customize the Help Center and Support Portal. Whether it's implementing a logo or changing the color of the interface, they have everything you need to get started. Freshdesk or Zendesk, you also get HTML and CSS support right out of the box. So they look like extensions to your website so that customers don't get lost in an unfamiliar environment.

Ticket organization and management

Similarly, Zendesk and Freshdesk rely on tickets. When a user contacts the company via email, phone, chat, social network or telephone, the software converts their request into a unified request form.

As a result, you get inquiries from different channels organized in one place. You also have a number of features to efficiently manage tickets and collaborate with your team.

In terms of ticket handling, if we look at Freshdesk and Zendesk, they are almost identical. However, they all offer a few extra features.

Zendesk ticket management

1. Zendesk offers perhaps the most complete ticket management suite ever. From Zendesk support to automation, you can customize almost everything. You can turn a single Zendesk issue into a story, report, case study; name it. Or get the information from the database to provide customer service.
2. Zendesk also has a macro system. It scans the database and shows possible solutions. It's not always accurate, but it easily solves the basic problems. You can combine this functionality with an AI-powered chatbot and get amazing results.
3. As part of its ticket package, Zendesk also offers CCing. This function is similar to the email function, but is much more reliable.

Administer your Freshdesk tickets

1. Freshdesk basically includes a robust ticket management system in all its packages. It might not be as feature-rich as Zendesk, but it has more advantages. The first thing that comes to mind is the Discussion tab. This feature allows you to communicate with team members directly in the ticket.
2. Canned Reply is a template created from your previous messages. The system detects whether the customer's case is similar and provides a suggestion based on previous attempts.
3. The system for adding assigned people is quite simple and has several features such as a preview screen, which makes it the right choice for people who work with messages.

Comparison of ticket handling

Figure 3: Managing Zendesk or Freshdesk tickets

Knowledge base and self-service options

In both help desks, you can create separate knowledge bases: for customers and for internal purposes.Freshdeskincludes knowledge base functionality in all plans. It evokes

• publicly available knowledge base containing answers to the most frequently asked questions;
• private knowledge base containing educational material for internal use;
• automatic conversion of responses to draft articles ("Email to Knowledge Base" feature);
• customer search function;
• automatic generation of sitemaps, thanks to which new articles appear faster in search results.

WZendeskUsing the team plan gives you access to the following self-service features:

• public knowledge base;
• integration med Google Analytics;
• a contact form where you can ask a question;
• integration of the knowledge base with the free Knowledge Capture application that allows you to search for answers without having to leave the request.

Customer support provided by Freshdesk and Zendesk themselves

Both companies offer customer support via phone, email and live chat. Freshdesk and Zendesk also offer a comprehensive knowledge base to help you get the most out of each product. In addition, you can integrate the tools you use or find new applications to extend the functionality of your support software.

Integrations

Both platforms offer integration with the eBay and Amazon marketplaces. In addition to the basic functionality, Zendesk additionally offers eBay and Amazon autoresponders and multilingual Amazon support. On the other hand, Dispatch for Freshdesk helps you set advanced triggers based on specific customer data and orders from eBay and Amazon.

BothZendesk and Freshdesk offer integrationswith other channels:

• e-mail, Twitter and Facebook;
• phone integration;
• free live chat integration via FreshChat Sprout and Zendesk Chat Lite;
• free integrations for Shopify and MailChimp.

However, Zendesk beats Freshdesk with over 700 integrations available compared to over 330 apps for Freshdesk.

Reporting tools

Both Zendesk and Helpdesk offer different reporting options.

ZZendesk Suite - Team Meeting, You can:

• display the most important statistics on the dashboard;
• view detailed reports on specific performance zones;
• compare company statistics with statistics of other companies in the industry;
• track Zendesk Help Center usage statistics.

Freshdesk Groeiplanusers get the following reporting functionality:

• agent performance reports;
• some detailed reports to track requests, time and SLA metrics;
• tracking time spent on a ticket to bill customers;
• surveys and reports to track customer satisfaction.

Automation and triggers

When it comes to comparing Freshdesk and Zendesk automations and triggers, both help desks are quite similar: both platforms allow you to automate routine tasks through automations, triggers and smart bots.

Automation

Automations are time-based messages. With them you will define a rule based on your workflow and the helpdesk will send you an email. For example, you can automatically send reminders to users to provide additional information about an issue.

Triggers

Triggers work based on customer behavior and wishes. When agents perform certain actions on tickets, the system checks whether triggers should be activated. For example, when users submit a ticket, they receive an email notification with a confirmation and a ticket number.

Bund

Finally, bots can help reduce agent workload by answering common questions. Both Zendesk and Freshdesk use intelligent learning engines to provide the best answers. For example, when users submit a ticket, they will receive an email with suggested articles to resolve the issue. The customer can close the ticket if the information is helpful or wait for the agent to respond.

Security

Freshdesk and Zendesk support SSL certificates and include HIPAA-compliant digital signatures.

Zendesk or Freshdesk: What is not?

Live chat

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk have a live chat function. As a result, they improve the customer experience and promote you as a brand.

First, Freshdesk offers an elegant app called Freshchat. The user interface is stylish and eye-catching and can be placed on your website. Additionally, it allows you to route tickets to chats and vice versa. The navigation is similar to Slack, but the Freshchat tracking history has redirection options and customer data. The only downside to this tool is that it can be slow.

Zendesk, on the other hand, enables customer service teams to deliver rich customer service across the web, apps and social channels. It is easy to use and scalable to the individual customer's needs.According to Statista surveys in 2021Zendesk Live Chat remains among the top five live chat software with 11.28% market share. With supplier live chat, your company can:

• Stay connected on all channels
• Manage all your customer conversations from one place
• Enable 24/7 support with automation
• Increase productivity with live chat analytics
• Adapt it to your brand's look and feel

Board systems

Similar to our previous Zendesk vs Freshdesk comparison section, both help desks share many similarities in their dashboard systems. The main difference is that one is less complicated (Freshdesk) in terms of user experience and the other (Zendesk Dashboard) has some extra features to make it work.

Freshdesk offers an interesting set of features for small and medium-sized businesses. But if you have a large organization or plan to grow, you can always use a third-party app to add missing features. This will increase your bill in the long run, but gives you more flexibility.

Zendesk, on the other hand, has more sorting options and is designed from the ground up with large companies in mind. In addition, Zendesk allows you to manage roles directly from the dashboard. Finally, you have the option to add social media channels. The biggest downside to this dashboard system is that it loads slowly and can sometimes take a while to update.

Professional services

Unlike Freshdesk, Zendesk provides customer-centric services”Professional services.” It is designed to help you with various processes such as launching a channel, optimizing the feature set or fine-tuning the integration. In addition, experts can also help you migrate your customer database to Zendesk.

However, it is necessarypay at least 8 thousandfor the basic selection package, which includes account assessment, on-demand training, discovery and design sessions, and a package implementation checklist. So if you just want to migrate your help desk data to Zendesk, consider an automated migration service.

metHelpdesk migration, You canIN)Transfer customer service data; B)consolidate Zendesk instances,or evenc) combination of service desk and help desk platforms. The pricing structure is pretty simple: you only pay for the records you migratefrom $39.

What customers are saying about Zendesk vs. Freshdesk?

While many people search "Freshdesk vs Zendesk Reddit" for user feedback, we've gathered some unbiased statistics from the most popular review sites.

Figure 4: Zendesk or Freshdesk reviews

What to choose: Freshdesk or Zendesk?

Which support platform is better: Zendesk or Freshdesk? Let's look at the main points:

• Freshdesk stands out for its affordable price, convenient reporting and self-service functionality. Zendesk, on the other hand, offers training programs, dedicated team support, and over 770 integrations.
• Freshdesk may appeal more to smaller customer support teams, while medium and larger teams will benefit from Zendesk's flexibility.
• Zendesk can automatically convert incoming messages into tickets, while Freshdesk allows you to do the same manually.
• The Freshdesk social media module enables the same channel response and resolution as Zendesk.

Therefore, the best way to compare Freshdesk with Zendesk is to try both tools. Create a trial and see which system you will be more comfortable working with, especially in the knowledge base department.

Frequently asked questions