11 Zendesk Alternatives to Help Improve Customer Experience

When it comes to cloud-based help desk software, you can’t get much better than Zendesk.

Zendesk offers integrated customer support, knowledge base and smart self-service options, live chat messaging, and integrated voice software — everything you need to provide quality customer support while taking your customer experience to the next level.

And while this customer experience solution may be perfect for companies like Venmo, Slack, Uber, and Shopify, that doesn’t mean that it’s ideal for your business.

So let’s dive into some of the best Zendesk alternatives for those of us looking for something different.

1. Freshdesk

Source: Freshdesk

Freshdesk is one of the most popular alternatives to Zendesk, trusted by over 40,000 customers including Panasonic, HP, and American Express, this customer service software offers many of the same features as Zendesk with more flexible and affordable plan options.

Freshdesk’s goal is to help businesses of all sizes scale their customer experience effortlessly, without the cost or complexity of legacy software. They do this by allowing companies to set up automation to automatically deliver help desk tickets to the right support agents. This software also includes collision detection, which helps make sure that multiple agents aren’t working on the same issue or inquiry.

Main Features:

• Easy-to-use ticketing system
• Customer support collaboration
• Omnichannel support
• Field service
• Helpdesk automation
• Self-service experience with a knowledge base
• Helpdesk performance analytics
• Customized workflows, customer portals, and agent roles

Best For: Small businesses that need a robust customer experience platform that is easy for their support team to use and companies that need multi-channel customer support.

Free Version: Yes

Price: Freshdesk offers Helpdesk plans starting at $15/agent/month (billed annually) and Omnichannel plans starting at $79/agent/month (billed annually).

2. Help Scout

Source: Help Scout

Help Scout shows up on many customer service software lists as one of the best Zendesk alternatives due to its robust features and ease of use. Trusted by more than 10,000 businesses like Reddit, Litmus, and AngelList, Help Scout is on a mission to empower businesses with tools that “serve people in the most human, helpful way.” And they do this by offering a customer service platform built with the customer-centric business in mind.

Help Scout makes it easy for companies to track their customer engagements from open to close of each ticket. Help Scout also offers self-service portals, including knowledge bases to help customers find the answers to their questions without contacting support.

Main Features:

• Outstanding customer support
• Shared inbox for team collaboration
• Integrated knowledge base
• In-app messaging
• Customer management
• Real-time reporting
• Live chat
• Integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Jira, and more

Best For: Companies that want to offer a customer support experience where each customer feels like a human, not just another ticket through authentic and organic communication.

Free Version: No

Price: Plans start at $20/user/month (billed annually). Help Scout also offers discounts for nonprofits and startups in their first year.

3. Jitbit

Source: Jitbit

Jitbit is a help desk software and ticketing system that offers both self-hosted ‘on-premise’ and cloud-hosted SaaS versions of the software.

The application offers a number of advantages over Zendesk; most importantly with respect to the number of tickets that customers can raise, file attachment sizes, the minimum and the maximum number of agents you can assign, and API requests – all this while remaining a much cheaper alternative to Zendesk.

You can read an elaborate comparison of the two software applications here.

Popular brands that use Jitbit services include ESPN, HP, Philips, Siemens, Oracle, Adobe, Xerox, GE, VMWare, and Vodafone.

Main Features:

• Support for all email protocols like IMAP, native MS Exchange Protocols, POP3, SMTP, etc.
• Integrations with JIRA, Slack, Dropbox, to mention a few
• Free mobile apps for iOS and Android
• Help desk Automation
• Shared inbox
• Knowledge base
• Canned replies

Best For: The on-premise version of Jitbit is ideal for organizations with their own IT management team. The SaaS version of Jitbit is ideal for startups, and enterprises who are upgrading from an email helpdesk.

Free Version: No

Price: The SaaS version of Jitbit starts at $29/month for freelance and small teams, and goes as high as $249/month for the Enterprise version. The perpetual license for a self-hosted version of Jitbit costs between $1699 and $3499.

4. Groove

Source: Groove

Groove helps streamline the customer support process, allowing customer service agents to provide support through email, Twitter, Facebook, live chat, phone, and text message. This all-in-one customer experience software also offers a support widget that companies can display on their website to help customers engage with their knowledge base and open support tickets when necessary.

This software offers companies the option to create a knowledge base and customer portal to help customers proactively answer their own questions. With a number of helpful integrations, Groove also offers users an intuitive UI that makes it easy to learn how to use the software quickly.

Main Features:

• Shared inbox
• Team collaboration
• Support automations
• Knowledge base
• Omnichannel communications
• Reporting
• Live chat system
• Ticketing and tagging
• Mobile app
• Integrates with Slack, Stripe, Facebook Messenger and more

Best For: Companies that want to cut down on support hours by getting the most out of automation and businesses that need a customer support software that integrates with the systems they’re already using.

Free Version: No

Price: Groove prices start at $12/user/month. All plans currently include a free 120-day trial. Groove also offers a 93% discount for early-stage startups with less than 10 employees.

5. LiveAgent

Source: LiveAgent

LiveAgent is another Zendesk alternative that helps customer support teams streamline ticketing and servicing. Trusted by companies like Forbes, NASCAR, and the University of Southern California, this all-in-one solution allows companies to create a call center, offer live chat support via website and social, and create a knowledge base for self-service support.

One of the greatest benefits of LiveAgent is that it offers many different ways for support teams to communicate with customers like live chat, email, telephone, and video chat. LiveAgent also offers fully customizable customer-facing portals, so companies can tailor the customer experience.

Main Features:

• Universal inbox
• Ticketing
• Automated ticket distribution
• Time tracking
• Knowledge base
• Real-time chat, including video chat, social, and phone support
• Integrates with Slack, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, and more

Best For: Businesses that need a branded, customizable customer-facing portal and companies that want the option to provide support through several different communication channels.

Free Version: Yes

Price: LiveAgent plans start at $15/agent/month for full-sized ticketing solution with free trials available for each solution.

6. Front

Source: Front

Front is a collaborative email platform that helps bring all of your business communications into one place. Front is all about “personal support, not tickets,” and they back this up by bringing teams a way to quickly resolve issues with a human touch.

With Front, you can build automated workflows to sort, route, and assign incoming support requests so that no requests get lost. One of the unique benefits of Front is its email templates, which make it easy to instantly resolve common issues and FAQs with consistent answers through pre-written responses.

Main Features:

• Unified inbox
• Auto reminders and responders
• Collaborative workspace
• Real-time analytics
• Social media integration
• Rules-based workflow
• Full-featured mobile apps

Best For: Companies that provide the majority of their customer support through email or those who want to streamline their email support.

Free Version: No

Price: Pricing for Front starts at $9/user/month (billed annually), and you can try every plan for free for 7 days, no credit card required.

7. Kayako

Source: Kayako

Kayako is a long-time competitor of Zendesk. While it is limited in its functionality compared to Zendesk, this all-in-one solution looks and functions much like a ticketing system, making it easy for teams to navigate.

With Kayako, you can provide email, live chat, Twitter, Facebook, and mobile support while also making it easy for customers to help themselves via a Help Center that features a self-service portal and knowledge base. Teams can collaborate effortlessly on Kayako, sharing internal notes, and inviting team members to contribute.

Main Features:

• Unified omnichannel communication
• Real-time messaging
• Advanced ticketing workflows and automations
• Automatic escalations
• Knowledge base
• Native mobile apps for iOS and Android
• Fully customizable help center
• Integrates with Zapier, Salesforce, Slack, and over 500 other business apps

Best For: Organizations that want an intuitive, collaborative customer support platform, but don’t need all the bells and whistles that Zendesk provides.

Free Version: No

Price: Kayako plans start at $15/agent/month for small teams that need a shared email, chat, and social inbox. All plans offer a 14-day free trial.

8. Intercom

Source: Intercom

Intercom specializes in helping companies build more authentic customer relationships throughout the customer journey through conversational, messenger based customer experiences.

With Intercom, customer support agents can provide multi-channel support through live chat, email, in-app messaging and push notifications – all from one unified dashboard. Intercom also allows you to automatically route and prioritize customer issues with assignment rules and ticketing workflows.

Looking for an alternative to Intercom? Check out our list here.

Main Features:

• Live chat
• Targeted outbound chat
• Team inbox with tags
• Automated assignment rules
• Ticketing workflows
• Help center with knowledge base
• Custom bots
• Reporting for team performance, leads, and effectiveness
• Integrates with Slack, HubSpot, GitHub, Salesforce and more

Best For: Organizations that want to prioritize and streamline their client communication with a customer support software solution that’s easy for the whole team to learn and use.

Free Version: No

Price: Plans start at $39/month for basic live chat and outbound messaging. You can also customize your plan with special add-ons like Product Tours and Advanced Lead Generation.

9. HappyFox

Source: HappyFox

HappyFox is an all-in-one help desk ticketing system that makes it easier to provide faster, more effective customer support. PCMag Editors’ Choice for Best Help Desk Software four years in a row, HappyFox is trusted by Fortune 500 brands like Lowe’s and Whirlpool.

With this helpdesk solution, organizations can provide support through email, live chat, social media, and phone. Companies can also create a knowledge base for customer-facing content that allows customers to find answers before contacting support.

Main Features:

• Ticketing system
• Task and asset management
• Live chat
• Omnichannel support through voice, email, chat, social media and mobile
• Smart rules for automation
• Integration with social media channels like Facebook
• In-depth help desk reporting

Best For: Organizations that prioritize real-time data with streamlined ticketing and documentation for avoiding overlaps and delays.

Free Version: No

Price: HappyFox plans start at $24/agent/month with enterprise plans available.

10. Zoho Desk

Source: Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a feature-rich customer service software that offers many of the same capabilities of Zendesk and its competitors. Aimed at improving support agent productivity, Zoho Desk includes an automation-powered ticketing system that makes it easy to assign tickets to the right agent while informing agents and customers automatically about ticket progress.

One unique feature of Zoho Desk is Zia, artificial intelligence built for customer service teams. Zia can speak to customers to help them find solutions quickly, auto-tag tickets, and provide relevant solutions from the Knowledge Base to use in ticket responses.

Main Features:

• Ticket management including mobile
• Ticket assignment automation
• Ticketing workflows
• Customer service AI
• Self-service with knowledge base
• Time tracking
• Reports and dashboards
• Customized layouts, templates, and branded help desk
• CRM integration

Best For: Organizations that need features that support team productivity or those who want AI support in providing help to customers.

Free Version: Yes

Price: Zoho Desk plans start at $12/agent/month (billed annually) with 15-day free trials available for every plan, no credit card required.

11. AzureDesk

Source: AzureDesk

AzureDesk is a simple and affordable Zendesk alternative that focuses on providing support through email. It integrates with your organization’s current email system, helping your support team track and provide support in a straightforward and simple manner.

With AzureDesk, you can prioritize and categorize tickets as they come in and assign issues to the appropriate support agent, quickly and easily. This software also allows for agents and team members to attach private messages to tickets so that everyone is on the same page when providing customer support.

Main Features:

• Ticket Management
• Collaborative Support
• Email to Ticket Conversions
• Unlimited Mailbox
• Knowledge Base
• Reporting
• Integrates with Jira, Slack, and More

Best For: Organizations that don’t need a feature-rich platform, but just want an easy-to-use customer support solution.

Free Version: No

Price: AzureDesk offers one plan for all at $33/user/month (billed annually) with a 14-day free trial available.

Choose Your Zendesk Alternative

With so many different Zendesk alternatives out there, there really is something for everyone. (And I didn’t even go into detail about Crisp, Helpjuice, Salesforce Service Cloud, or virtual call centers like Cloudtalk.) The best Zendesk alternative for you will depend on which features you find essential and which software fits into your budget.

Speaking of budget, make sure you keep an eye out for deals on the AppSumo store, where we often have deals on customer support and help desk software that can help you provide a better customer experience for all.