Top Zendesk Alternatives

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk software system that has a plan to fit everyone’s budget needs. There are five plans to choose from, starting with the free forever plan. In this plan, you get:

• Three free agents
• E-mail tickets
• Ticket comments
• Private conversations in tickets
• Spam ticket marking
• Ticket history
• Ticket resolution note
• 10 ticket tags
• Quick ticket view
• Rich text support
• Advanced search
• Response draft
• One email channel
• Help center
• One feedback widget
• One advanced web form
• Two macros per department
• Priority-based service level agreement
• Default for On Hold Status
• Default templates
• Custom tabs
• Customizable form fields

The next plan up is the Standard plan, which is $14 per agent per month when billed annually or $20 per agent per month when billed monthly. This plan offers everything in the free plan, plus multilevel escalations, custom views and much more.

The Professional plan costs $23 per agent per month when billed annually or $35 per agent per month when billed monthly. It offers everything in the Express plan but includes unlimited agents, snippets for quicker responses, real-time updates in ticket list and several more features.

If the Professional plan is not enough, the Enterprise plan is available for $40 per agent per month when billed annually or $50 per agent per month when billed monthly. It includes everything in the Standard plan, plus ticket sharing, custom workflows, multilingual functionality, live chat, custom functions in workflows, AI tools and more.

Learn more: Read our full Zoho Desk review.

Who should use it:

Zoho Desk is the ideal solution for businesses looking to have a comprehensive help desk platform.

Freshdesk is the online help desk platform offered by Freshworks. It has four plans to choose from. The first plan is the free forever plan which includes:

• 10 agents
• Integrated ticketing across email and social
• Ticket dispatch
• Knowledge base
• Ticket trend report
• Out-of-the-box analytics and reporting
• Choice of data center location
• Team collaboration
• 24/7 email support

The next plan up is the Growth plan. This plan is available for $15 per agent per month when billed annually or $18 per agent per month when billed monthly. The Growth plan includes everything in the free plan but also has automation, integrations with 1,000-plus marketplace apps and more.

The most popular plan is the Pro plan, which is available for $49 per agent per month when billed annually or $59 per agent per month when billed monthly. It includes everything in the Growth plan, plus up to 5,000 collaborators, custom reports and dashboards and several other features.

The Enterprise plan offers the most benefits. It is available for $79 per agent per month when billed annually or $95 per agent per month when billed monthly. It includes everything in the Pro plan, plus some AI powered tools, such as an assist bot and an email bot. The Enterprise plan also offers an automated knowledge article and canned response suggester. These are just a few of the advanced features that you get with the Enterprise plan.

Learn more: Read our full Freshdesk review.

Who should use it:

Freshdesk offers a comprehensive free plan that has most of the features needed to run your help desk successfully. It also offers a free trial of all its paid plans.

Jira Service Management is a product of Atlassian. It has four plans to choose from. The first plan is the free forever plan, which allows for up to three agents. It includes rather limited automated features, namely single-project automation with up to 500 automation rule runs per month. However, each paid plan offers increasingly more automation.

The next plan is the Standard plan, which is available for $700 per year under annual billing but $23.80 per agent per month when billed monthly. The Standard plan includes slightly more automation with 500 global and multi-project automations and 5,000 rule runs per month.

The Premium plan is the next tier up. It is available for $1,600 per year or $53.30 per agent per month when billed monthly. This plan includes 1,000 global and multiproject automations, automatic incident creation and 1,000 rule runs per user per month. For example, if you have 200 users on the Premium plan, each user gets up to 1,000 rule runs per month, which amounts to up to 200,000 rule runs per month total.

The Enterprise plan requires you to contact sales for an annual price for the plan and allows for the most automation, such as unlimited automated rule runs each month.

Learn more: Read our full Jira Service Management review.

Who should use it:

Make the workflow run smoother with automations provided by Jira Service Management.

Hiver is the world’s first multichannel help desk located on Gmail. It has three tiered plans to choose from, starting with its Lite plan, which costs $19 per user per month when billed annually. You lose the 20% discount when paying monthly, leaving the cost at $24 per user per month. The Lite plan includes:

• 10 shared labels
• Two shared email inboxes
• Unlimited tags
• One alias per shared inbox
• Unlimited email templates
• Private views
• Up to 10 users
• Conversation ID
• Live chat
• Knowledge base
• WhatsApp channel
• Contacts
• Shared drafts
• Email notes
• Collision alerts
• Collaborators
• Approvals
• Permalinks
• Default access control
• Android and iOS mobile apps
• Onboarding assistance
• 24/7 chat and email support

The most popular plan is the Pro plan, which costs $29 per user per month when billed annually. This plan is $34 per user per month when billed monthly. The Pro plan includes advanced chat features, such as live chat auto-assignment, live chat CSAT and more. The next plan is the Elite plan. It costs $49 per user per month when billed annually or $59 per user per month when billed monthly. This plan includes an AI bot among its chat functions. Companies needing more than 50 seats can call Hiver for a custom quote.

Who should use it:

Give consumers the service they deserve with the instant help chat function offered through Hiver.

Help Scout is a cloud-based help desk that gives you three options to choose from. The first tier is the Standard plan, which starts at $22 per user per month when billed annually and includes 100-plus integrations.

The baseline plan can be upgraded to the Plus plan, which costs $44 per user per month when billed annually. It includes everything from the Standard plan but also integrations with Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot apps, among several other added features.

The highest tier is the Pro plan, which is only offered on an annual billing cycle for $65 per user per month. This plan includes everything from the Plus plan, plus increased API access for even greater integration into your tech stack.

Who should use it:

Help Scout offers more than 100 integrations to help simplify your workflow across multiple platforms and tasks.

Spiceworks is a trusted resource utilized by more than 280,000 companies that create more than 14 million tickets annually. It provides the features needed to manage incoming help requests effectively. Businesses love it, especially because it is free to use with no upcharge for features that you usually have to pay for with other vendors.

Businesses can take in help requests via mobile devices, a dedicated user portal or emails. These tickets are assigned to administrators, who then establish tickets. The system then allows you to manage tickets, provide custom reports, customize settings for email and more. Spiceworks ultimately provides organization management and simplifies IT operations.

Who should use it:

Spiceworks is free without any upgraded plans, providing a multitude of features needed to provide support. This makes it an ideal solution for small businesses with tight budgets.

Freshservice is an IT management solution offered by Freshworks. It has four tiered plans to choose from, starting with the Starter plan at $19 per agent per month when billed annually. It goes up to $29 per agent per month when billed monthly. This plan includes:

• Separate workspaces by team or department
• Incident management
• Knowledge base
• Self-service portal
• SLA management
• Workflow automator
• Orchestration
• ServiceBot on Microsoft Teams and Slack
• Access controls
• Analytics starter
• Multiple portal languages
• Custom SSL
• Marketplace apps
• Mobile apps
• 1,000 Orchestration transactions per month per account

The Growth plan is the next tier up. It is available for $49 per agent per month when billed annually. The price goes up to $59 per agent per month when billed monthly. This plan includes everything in the Starter plan, plus more features to support a dedicated workspace, such as business rules, approval workflows as well as 2,000 orchestration transactions per month per account.

The most popular plan is the Pro plan. This is available for $95 per agent per month when billed annually. This jumps to $115 per agent per month when billed monthly. This plan includes everything in the Growth plan, plus project management, SaaS management, contract management, team dashboards and more for your IT workspaces.

There is also an Enterprise solution available for $119 per agent per month when billed annually or $145 per agent per month when billed monthly. This plan includes everything in the Pro plan to facilitate work among your large IT teams, plus a ServiceBot with a virtual assistant, Freddy agent assist and 20,000 orchestration transactions per month per account

Who should use it:

Help desk staff can stay organized with the dedicated workspaces that help coordinate help desk task flows.

Front offers a complete solution for all customer operations. There are four tiered plans to choose from, starting with the Starter plan at $19 per seat per month when billed annually. The Starter plan comes with too many tools to list here, but we want to especially call out its instant messaging features through WhatsApp, SMS, social channels, third-party chat and more. In fact, you can connect any messaging platform to Front via API. You can also share message drafts, schedule and snooze messages, or take advantage of Front’s message templates. Front also includes a customizable chat widget for web and mobile in its base plan.

The Growth plan is the next tier up and comes with even more instant messaging features, such as chatbots, customized pre-chat forms and more. The Scale plan has several features, but those specifically suited to instant messaging include AI-powered message composing and the ability to hide a teammate’s name from chat visitors.

The final tier is the Premier plan and includes more features that are not necessarily geared towards instant messaging but are nevertheless helpful, such as expanded API rate limits and access to pre-release and beta features.

Who should use it:

Front lets you take control of instant messaging with the ability to prioritize tickets and snooze conversations.

HappyFox is a cloud-based solution that can help businesses establish and manage a help desk. It has four plans to choose from, starting with the Mighty plan, which costs $29 per agent per month when billed annually. That cost is $39 per agent per month when billed monthly. There are also two-year savings plans that customers can pay upfront and three-year contracts that are billed annually to save even more. The Mighty plan includes:

• Omnichannel ticket creation
• SLA management
• Knowledge base
• SSO (Google Workspace, SAML, Azure)
• SSL certificate hosting
• Migration assistance

Happy Fox also offers the Fantastic plan, Enterprise plan and Enterprise Plus plan, each with an expanded list of features as you go up. All plans require businesses to have a minimum of five help desk agents. There are discounts for nonprofits and educational organizations.

Who should use it:

Once you know that HappyFox is the platform for your business, you can save by signing up for the long-term contracts it offers—good for up to three years.

Gorgias is a help desk system that bases pricing on the number of tickets you experience each month. There are five tiers to choose from, starting with the Starter plan. This plan only has a monthly price of $10 per month. It allows:

• 50 tickets per month
• Overflow costs of 40 cents per ticket
• Three user seats
• Unlimited social media channels
• 94 app integrations
• Unlimited Shopify stores
• Live chat
• Klaviyo
• Yotpo
• Recharge
• Postscript
• Macros
• Rules
• Intent and sentiment detection
• Chat campaigns
• Rule templates
• Autoresponders
• Self-service
• Help Center/FAQ
• Satisfaction survey
• Support performance statistics
• Live statistics
• SSO
• Self-onboarding
• Email support
• Gorgias Academy

The Basic plan is the next level for $50 per month when billed annually or $60 per month when billed monthly. This plan includes everything in the Starter plan but allows 300 tickets per month, an overflow cost of $40 per 100 tickets and other features. The Pro plan, Advanced plan and Enterprise plan allow for increasingly more tickets per month, and the overflow cost goes down slightly with each upgrade.

Who should use it:

Most platforms charge monthly per user. Gorgias takes a different approach and charges a flat monthly fee based on the number of tickets you expect to process.