Freshdesk vs. Zendesk: A Head-to-Head Comparison for 2024

Freshdesk and Zendesk are both big names in the support ticketing space. They deliver feature-rich and fast customer service, which businesses need today. Freshdesk dominates for its more accessible and wholesome customer service solutions, while Zendesk dominates for its robust ticketing options and custom integrations.

This is your ultimate comparison guide if you need clarification about Zendesk and Freshdesk. I’ll thoroughly explore their features, pricing, integrations, and other details here. Once you have read this guide, you’ll be able to make a final decision on which customer support software you want to use. So, let’s get started!

What is customer support software?

Customer support software is a platform that helps businesses manage customer inquiries, issues, and requests across various communication channels. It provides customer support teams a unified platform to communicate with customers, organize tickets, and troubleshoot customer requests.

Importance of customer support software for businesses

Customer support software manages customer interactions effectively and provides the support team with the necessary features.

Here are the key benefits businesses get with customer support software:

• Resolve customer inquiries timely.

• Easier communication with customers.

• Streamline workflows with automation.

• Improve customer satisfaction.

• Multichannel engagement.

• Build trust and loyalty.

• Better auditing of the support process.

• Drive revenue growth.

• Valuable insights to make data-driven decisions.

All the above benefits are essential for your business to offer customers the best support experience, keep the support team productive, and remain competitive.

Overview of Freshdesk and Zendesk

Freshdesk overview

Freshdesk is cloud-based customer support software that offers a comprehensive customer service solution to businesses of all sizes. It’s an all-in-one omnichannel help desk solution with AI-driven ticketing that manages customer queries across different support channels, such as phone, email, chat, social media, and more.

The key features of Freshdesk are as follows:

• A unified workspace is used to manage, prioritize, and resolve tickets.

• One inbox to manage support tickets from various channels: phone, email, chat, social media, website, and WhatsApp.

• Collaborative issues resolution with shared ownership, linked tickets, parent-child ticketing, and other functionalities.

• Automated ticket dispatch, intelligent ticket assignment, automatic email notification, time/event-triggered automation, and more.

• Chatbot powered by Freddy AI to answer customers’ questions instantly.

• Self-service portal to create a knowledge base, including how-to guides, articles, FAQs, and more.

• Insightful reports and analytics.

• Dashboard to monitor real-time data about tickets and trends.

• Customization support for agent roles, customer portals, workflows, and more.

In short, Freshdesk provides a 360-degree view of the customer and an advanced omnichannel customer service experience. Moreover, it empowers the customer support team to optimize their day-to-day workflows with modernized and automated features.

Zendesk overview

Zendesk is customer service software that offers tools to help businesses manage customer support operations, including ticketing, chat, and phone support. It’s also a cloud-based solution that integrates the entire customer support process. Zendesk provides a scalable and customizable platform for customer support teams to resolve inquiries and improve customer satisfaction.

While Zendesk is a popular choice, businesses often explore Zendesk alternatives to find solutions that better match their specific needs and budget constraints. These alternatives may offer different pricing structures, unique features, or specialized capabilities that make them more suitable for certain industries or company sizes.

The key features of Zendesk are as follows:

• An intelligent ticketing system is used to track and prioritize requests.

• Unified customer communication across different channels, like phone, email, social media, website, third-party apps, and more.

• Chatbot for real-time chat support.

• Dedicated desktop and mobile apps to provide support on the go.

• Automated customer support activities, like automated ticket creation based on customer messages, ticket routing, automated reminders, and more.

• Effective internal collaboration between teams.

• Integration with many third-party apps and add-ons to make help desk implementation more advanced.

• Self-service knowledge base in multiple languages.

• Advanced reporting and analytics.

In short, Zendesk is another complete customer service platform that streamlines customer support and improves team productivity.

Pricing and plans

Regarding Freshdesk vs. Zendesk pricing, some prominent differences exist in their pricing plans.

1. Free plan and trial

Freshdesk offers a free plan with limited features, while Zendesk does not provide a free version.

The free plan of Freshdesk is accessible for up to 10 agents and provides access to integrated ticketing, knowledge base, ticket dispatch, team collaboration, reports, etc. However, all the features accessible in the free plan have limited functionalities. Besides that, Freshdesk also offers a 14-day free trial in which you can access all the features available in its Enterprise plan.

Zendesk does not have a free version to test. You can only test the platform with its 14-day free trial. Afterward, you have to subscribe to one of its premium plans.

2. Subscription plans

If you compare Freshdesk’s subscription plans to Zendesk’s, you’ll find multiple paid plans with varying features and pricing.

Freshdesk offers three subscription plans:

Looking at the above pricing plans of Zendesk vs. Freshdesk, it’s evident that Freshdesk is more affordable than Zendesk. Its full-fledged Enterprise plan requires fewer bucks than the Zendesk Suite Growth plan.

Integrations and customization

Integration with other tools and platforms

Integrations enable you to leverage their existing tools and platforms to provide a seamless customer support experience. Freshdesk and Zendesk integrate with various third-party tools and platforms, including CRM systems, chatbots, and social media platforms.

Freshdesk offers 1,000+ ready-to-install integrations, such as Slack, MS Teams, Shopify, Salesforce, Jira, WhatsApp, and more. Some integrations are free, while others require payment.

On the other hand, Zendesk offers 1,200+ ready-to-connect apps, including Salesforce, Trello, Google Play Reviews, MS Teams, Zoom, monday.com, and more.

Customization options for customer support agents

Customization empowers you to tailor their customer support process to their needs and requirements. It’s central to both Freshdesk and Zendesk customer service software. Both platforms offer customized options for customer support agents, including custom fields, workflows, and integrations.

Zendesk offers various customization options but is limited to specific subscription plans. Some of its core customization options include user/organization fields, automation, agent statuses, group views, live dashboards, live-agent status drill-ins, and more. With its Enterprise plan, you can even obliterate Zendesk branding. However, the process could be more straightforward.

Freshdesk also offers a wide range of customization options, which depend on which subscription plan you use. The core customization options include custom fields, workflows, ticket assignments, custom reports, custom roles, multilingual support, and more. Moreover, you can also customize the Freshdesk portal with your branding.

Security and data protection

Freshdesk vs. Zendesk offers tough competition when it comes to security features. Both platforms provide robust security features, including data encryption, access controls, and audit logs. These features ensure your customer data is well-protected and that you comply with data protection regulations.

All Freshdesk plans include SSL encryption. It offers HTTP with TLS 1.2 encryption for data in transit and AES 256-bit encryption for data at rest. Moreover, it’s ISO, HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR-compliant.

Zendesk also deploys AES 256-bit encryption and encrypts service data at rest in AWS. It also complies with various standards/regulations, including ISO, FedRAMP LISaaS, SOC 2 Type II, etc. It also offers advanced data privacy and protection add-on with data masking and access logs.         

Data analytics for customer support teams

Data analytics help identify poor customer service areas for improvement and optimize their support process. Freshdesk and Zendesk offer data analytics and reporting tools, enabling customer support teams to track key metrics and improve performance.

Freshdesk Analytics is a powerful reporting and analytics tool. It provides useful insights to measure and monitor customer service performance. The insights relate to ticket volume, response time, resolution time, customer satisfaction, and agent productivity. The tool’s reports are user-friendly and rich with vibrant colors and visualization capabilities. Moreover, it also supports customizing reports.

Zendesk offers a more comprehensive reporting experience with many metrics. It provides analytics about omnichannel, customer satisfaction, agents’ performance, real-time historical data, and more. It also offers customizable dashboards and reports. However, its customization requires a learning curve.

Customer support features

Omnichannel support and ticketing systems

Omnichannel support unifies all conversations with customers across different channels without losing context. Even if a customer first starts the conversation from live chat and then switches to social media, customer support agents will have complete access to the previous discussions.

When comparing Freshdesk vs. Zendesk for omnichannel support, you’ll find that both platforms offer this centralized support experience. They enable customers to interact with businesses across multiple channels, including email, chat, phone, live chat, and social media. However, Zendesk does offer more customer conversation channels than Freshdesk.

Besides that, both platforms have advanced ticketing systems that help manage customer inquiries and issues in a centralized and organized manner. The Freshdesk ticketing system includes the following functionalities:

• One inbox for multiple channels

• Automated routing

• Agent collision detection

• SLA management

• Create custom ticket statuses

• Automate repeated actions

• Canned responses

Similarly, the Zendesk ticketing system includes:

• Centralized inbox

• Automated routing

• SLA management

• Access to complete customer context

• Automation in routine ticketing tasks

• Predefined responses

AI-powered customer support tools

AI-powered tools help automate routine tasks, improve response times, and provide personalized customer support. Both platforms offer AI-powered customer support tools, including chatbots, automated workflows, and sentiment analysis.

Freshdesk’s powerful AI, Freddy AI, offers generative AI capabilities to boost agent productivity and delight customers. It can automate ticket summaries, improve response quality, auto-create responses, and sentiment-based ticket prioritization. Furthermore, agents get Freddy Copilot, a virtual AI assistant who handles repetitive tasks, automates responses, and more.

Similarly, Zendesk AI can assist in generative replies, auto ticket assignments, sentiment analysis, conversation bots, and more.

Self-service tools for customers

Zendesk vs. Freshdesk again offers tough competition by offering various self-service tools. Both platforms encourage you to create self-service portals for customers to help them find solutions quickly.

Both platforms empower you to create highly customized self-service portals for customers. This way, you can reduce the workload of customer support teams and improve customer satisfaction.

Knowledge bases and community forums

Creating knowledge bases for customer support

Knowledge bases help you to reduce the number of customer inquiries and improve response times. Both platforms offer knowledge-based tools, enabling the creation of a centralized repository of information and answers to common customer questions. You can create how-to guides, FAQs, articles, tutorials, and other informative content for customers.

The Freshdesk knowledge base is accessible through an intuitive interface and offers various customization options when creating content. It supports multiple languages, has a help widget, and has a powerful search feature. Agents can also convert their replies to articles using the Email-to-KBase feature.

Zendesk also empowers you to create a comprehensive knowledge base and organize the content in sections and categories. You can also create custom templates for articles and add a search bar. For complex articles, it offers advanced formatting options. Moreover, you can integrate Google Analytics to identify popular topics. The best part is that its AI-powered Content Cues can assist in analyzing customer inquiries and creating relevant articles.

Community forums for customer engagement

Community forums help build a loyal customer community and improve customer engagement. Both platforms offer community forums where customers can interact, share queries/feedback, and help each other. They also provide access to third-party community forums.

Customer support team management

Managing customer support teams with Freshdesk and Zendesk

Team management features help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their customer support teams. Both platforms offer tools and features to help businesses manage their customer support teams, including agent management, workflow automation, and performance analytics.

Freshdesk curated reports help you understand how agents and groups perform based on different help desk metrics. They also let you see customized agent roles and access permissions.

Zendesk provides a unified agent workspace that displays customer data, facilitates collaboration, and helps track agents’ progress on key metrics. It also supports customized agent roles and access permissions.

Features for customer support agents

Both platforms offer features specifically designed for customer support agents, including customizable workflows, automated tasks, and real-time analytics.

Some of the key features for customer support agents you’ll find in Freshdesk include:

• Automated ticket assignment.

• A unified interface to manage conversations across multiple channels.

• Automatic email notification.

• Collaborative issues resolution within or outside organizations.

• Shared ownership of tickets.

• Link related tickets.

• Freddy AI to assist in replies, sentiment analysis, content creation, and more.

• Email to Kbase to convert ticket replies into knowledge-based articles.

• Integration with other tools to enhance productivity.

• Insightful reports and analytics.

Similarly, Zendesk offers the below key features for customer support agents:

• AI-driven ticketing system to assign, route, prioritize, and manage tickets.

• Omnichannel customer support system.

• Automated repetitive tasks.

• Collaboration tools for agents.

• Automate ticket reminders.

• Zendesk AI to get help suggesting ticket responses, automating responses to common questions, and providing agents with next-step guidance.

• 1,200+ integrations to enhance capabilities.

• Advanced reporting and analytics.

Scalability and growth

As your business grows, it needs to scale its customer support operations. Scalability features maintain high customer satisfaction levels as they grow. Freshdesk and Zendesk offer scalable solutions, enabling businesses to expand their customer support teams and operations.

Freshdesk allows you to easily scale customer support across multiple products, languages, and regions. Its single dashboard lets you keep track of multiple mailboxes and respond seamlessly. Similarly, Zendesk offers smooth scalability with centralized management of vast support operations. Its 1,200+ integrations allow it to elevate customer support to match the business growth.

Growing your customer support team

Growing a customer support team improves customer satisfaction and drives revenue growth. Both customer support software offer features and tools to help businesses grow their customer support teams.

Freshdesk and Zendesk offer recruitment tools and training resources to streamline the process of hiring more members of the customer support team. Secondly, they also provide effective collaboration solutions and performance analytics so that the growing support team can collaborate and work proficiently.

Choosing the best help desk for your business

Now that we have discussed the similarities and differences between Freshdesk and Zendesk, the next question is which is the right customer support software. In this perspective, below are some key factors to consider when choosing a help desk:

Bonus tip: A better alternative to Freshdesk and Zendesk – intuitive, cost-friendly, & feature-rich

Undoubtedly, Freshdesk and Zendesk dominate for their exceptional features, but both have some limits, whether pricing, initial setup, or more. What if we tell you that there is an even better alternative to Freshdesk and Zendesk, which is more intuitive, cost-friendly, and powerful? 

This is what you get with HelpDesk.

HelpDesk is the easiest yet powerful help desk system for businesses of all sizes. It provides a more intuitive AI omnichannel ticketing system, advanced automation features, better collaboration, 24/7 chat assistance with every plan, and more.

Compared to Freshdesk, HelpDesk is faster to configure with a visually minimal environment and easy to set up automation with self-explanatory features. Compared to Zendesk, HelpDesk provides more access to team roles and internal communication, smooth automation and personalization. 

In addition, the highest ready-made HelpDesk plan costs just $59/agent/month, compared to $95/agent/month for Freshdesk and $115/agent/month (billed annually) for Zendesk. The best part is that switching to HelpDesk from Freshdesk or Zendesk is simple.

Summary

The thorough comparison of Freshdesk and Zendesk has shown that both offer exceptional customer support tools and features. Both are complete customer support suites that can assist businesses of almost all sizes.

The final choice mainly depends on your company’s budget and feature needs. So, use this guide as your reference and decide which tool to use. However, if none meet your expectations, check out HelpDesk - intuitive and cost-friendly customer support software.