Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Answerbase
Score 10.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Answerbase is a knowledge management platform for customer support and e-commerce, allowing users to ask questions, receive quality answers, and browse content and articles to meet their demand for information about your products and services. Each system comes with administration and moderation tools that are designed to help companies customize, manage and grow an engaging platform. According to the vendor, advanced features like moderation, user group management, actionable content insights,…
$49
per month
Freshdesk
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Freshdesk (a product of Freshworks Inc.) is a customer service solution with enterprise capability. Freshdesk unifies channels, conversations, AI capabilities, customer insights, and advanced ticketing into the Freshdesk Command Center so agents are ready to resolve. With Freddy, People-first AI, customer service teams can take AI agents live in minutes to fully resolve complex and simple queries, get response and resolution assistance from AI copilot, and stay ahead with AI insights.…
$18
per month per user
Thinkific
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Thinkific Plus is a scalable learning platform that’s designed to be easy to use for teams and customers. Thinkific Plus offers enterprise-grade features that scale with the needs of enterprises, and the service includes a people seriously dedicated to helping users to reach their goals.N/A
Pricing
AnswerbaseFreshdeskThinkific
Editions & Modules
Basic
$49
per month
Professional
$149
per month
Business
$399
per month
Enterprise
Quote
per year
Growth
$18
per month per agent
Pro
$59
per month per agent
Enterprise
$95
per month per agent
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AnswerbaseFreshdeskThinkific
Free Trial
YesYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAnswerbase Enterprise allows for 100% custom adaptations and developments to take whatever ideas, new functionalities or integration requirements you may have and make them a reality. Our knowledgeable team will manage setup, integration, and provide web-based education and training to make sure your team has all the tools and information they need to successfully manage and grow your site. Therefore, we organize a quote on a per customer basis only for customers interested in an Enterprise implementation.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AnswerbaseFreshdeskThinkific
Features
AnswerbaseFreshdeskThinkific
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Answerbase
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.3
202 Ratings
1% above category average
Thinkific
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.2197 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.1134 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.06 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.67 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.3198 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.9198 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Answerbase
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.4
179 Ratings
5% above category average
Thinkific
-
Ratings
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.4162 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.4167 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Answerbase
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.7
189 Ratings
8% above category average
Thinkific
-
Ratings
Customer portal00 Ratings8.7160 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings9.159 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.4102 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.0188 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.5119 Ratings00 Ratings
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AnswerbaseFreshdeskThinkific
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iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
Articulate 360
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
AnswerbaseFreshdeskThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.4
(260 ratings)
8.2
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(25 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(42 ratings)
7.6
(40 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.9
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(6 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(41 ratings)
9.3
(7 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(192 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
6.5
(6 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.4
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.4
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AnswerbaseFreshdeskThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
Lumin Creative
We implemented a Q&A board since we felt this would be the best way to create high quality content for our team when discussing the next sales strategy process. Really aids customers who have purchased a product from our company to navigate any problems they experience as they can seamlessly check the community question board Increases networking opportunities
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Freshworks Inc
I believe Freshdesk is well-suited for companies that manage multiple accounts, such as those in the Business Process Outsourcing industry. It has all the necessary capabilities, such as ticket management that uses omnichannel to receive ticket requests from service requests (managed internally) in the system, emails, etc. There are also several workflow automations that can be built within the platform/system. What is lacking is the API documentation, which limits the possibilities for further automations. Overall, it is a highly recommended tool for managing employee productivity and timeliness.
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Thinkific
I think Thinkific is very well suited if you want more control and not a ton of competition. It is very well suited if you want to create courses because it does an amazing job with providing course outline examples for you to stay organized and so forth. The only thing I would say where the courses might be less appropriate is if someone is expecting it to be like an udemy where people can see a ton of different course creators all in one place with course recommendations. Thinkific is not that type of platform and I LOVE that. On Thinkific, it almost feels like our site is our own ya know. I tried out other platforms and it just felt like you were competing with so many other people and could see other courses. Felt like being on a platter served with others. Thinkific just feels more unique in the sense it feels like when people come to your page, they are only seeing your page.
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Pros
Lumin Creative
  • Increases your team to collaborate with each other as you are available to post questions that more people can answer to express and opinion or idea
  • Browse existing community pages to see if your question has been answered
  • Allows you to share relevant documents with specific staff
  • Excellent customer service support team that are always on hand to help
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
  • No prior experience with similar platforms is required to use Freshdesk. I found its interface to be quite intuitive, at least for the end user.
  • It's easy to connect with other platforms, so you can sync and manage data from other platforms because the integrations work correctly.
  • Freshdesk's technical support is quite responsive, with short and effective response times. They have easily handled my questions and issues.
  • It has tools for customizing automated chats, answering frequently asked questions before transferring to an agent. Its configuration is extensive and highly customizable.
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Thinkific
  • Enables course creators to deliver high quality courses very fast
  • Offers unlimited hosting for videos included in the subscription price
  • Provides an easy to use administration interface that's powerful and accessible
  • Easy to scale subscription tiers on B2C plans, cost effective highly scaleable B2B plans (Thinkific Plus) ideal for companies who want to start a customer education program
  • Amazing support and account management team - great mindset and people in the teams.
Read full review
Cons
Lumin Creative
  • Onboarding checklist would be a great addition as setting up can be complicated
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
  • Freshdesk is buggy, full stop. I don't know how many support tickets I submitted related to user login.
  • There can be a language barrier with support and sales.
  • There were a couple of hours-long outages that significantly impacted my company's customer experience.
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Thinkific
  • auto formatting of some course building content, does not format well on phone vs desktop
  • filter by group functionality for website based content, it's mostly filter by enrollments
  • the plug and play web building is convenient but really we need a UX/UI designer to build a super good looking website. Plug and play builder works but doesnt look SUPER sharp if done by someone with no dev skills or coding ability
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Likelihood to Renew
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
New support agents can learn the system quickly, minimizing training time and maximizing productivity from day one. Agents are more willing to use a system that is simple, reducing resistance to change and ensuring all interactions are logged (a common problem with complex systems). The platform is known for being easy to set up and customize, allowing teams (especially smaller ones) to get started with minimal technical expertise.The platform makes it easy to set and monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs), ensuring customers get timely responses and helping managers enforce performance standards.
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Thinkific
I'm very likely to renewal as long as Thinkific stays focused on helping small businesses like myself to stay in the know of new and more effective ways to use digital learning tools to help our students get better success. I will also stay with Thinkific if they do not intend to hike up the prices and keep the different price plans suit all businesses regardless of the size.
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Usability
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
Freshdesk is extremely easy to use as implemented it on our own with average technical skills. A lot of the options are straightforward and Freshdesk provides easy-to-understand explanations for some of the more complex-sounding ones. We recently onboarded new specialists and they were able to learn Freshdesk with minimal training.
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Thinkific
Under Site Builder, when trying to add a new section, so many templates appear; however, preview is not shown, which makes it super difficult and time consuming to identify a template that suits the purpose. Customization of certification designs is a bit difficult too. There are limitations to the type of quiz questions I can create - for example, there's no option to have fill in the blank questions.
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Reliability and Availability
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
I have encountered a lot of errors in the Freshdesk, however, they tend to resolve it on priority or at least they will share the timeline by when this can be resolved. Most of the time the issue has been from the other partner's end. They take time to resolve their vendor issues and they don't have any timelines in case of developed app errors.
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Thinkific
I've never had any issues with accessing Thinkific but I can see when it has been a problem for others. When I get updates on when they are doing maintenance to their platform I tend to make sure that is not the day I plan to be working on my school so as not to get frustrated
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Performance
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
The reports take a lot of time to download if the time period is large. Also, the tickets take their sweet time to open and load. It is not fast as Zendesk. Only 30 tickets are visible in a single go and there isn't any option to select all. If we need to change the pages and dashboards it takes a lot of time to open.
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Thinkific
When it comes to the performance of Thinkific for me I find that it's good but could be better. I tend to think that the larger the files and videos you upload on your courses may add to the impact of it's uploading (not sure if that's actually true or not). But overall the performance of Thinkific via my tablet and desktop is very good when I have a fast speed broadband speed
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Support Rating
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
Because I never worked with a company that responds so quickly to their customer! They are always fast at responding and very open to new ideas and quickly turning them around to include them in future releases. They walk us through when we need assistance and are very good at communicating. Overall top notch support
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Thinkific
I rate Thinkific a ten because of its excellent customer service, ease of use, high-quality product, fair price with excellent ROI, and because they keep making improvements. Using Thinkific solved the problems of piecing together our course with various WordPress plugins, iframes, and payment processing software. It's easy to create a course website for people who can't write code.
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In-Person Training
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
In-person training is provided to all the agents and it is very easy to learn the basics of the Freshdesk interface. Solving tickets via dashboards, replying to the guest queries in bulk via Freshdesk. The training which is a bit hard is creating the logic according to the ticket flow and intergeration.
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Thinkific
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
This tool is no doubt easy to learn but in-person training is a lot better than online training. It takes time to grasp things in the online training, however, in pandemic we have done all the training online. Apart from a bit more time we haven't faced any issues with online training.
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Thinkific
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
Was a fairly quick implementation for us. However, we are only doing email integration and not some of the more complex integrations that are possible. One clarification on an earlier question. I selected that Freshdesk doesn't have a given feature, but this is not true. I selected this because there wasn't a selection for I don't use the feature. This is a weakness in the survey.
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Thinkific
The implementation period took time like it would in earning and using any new tool. It was more about being organised, having better time management processes in place and having people you were able to reach out to if you were every able stuck. The other key ting with the implementation period was giving yourself a realistic time scale to get the job completed.
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Alternatives Considered
Lumin Creative
Just from a personal viewpoint, I feel that the ease of use with Answerbase is amazing and with first class customer service support team, that could not be more friendlier and helpful. The decision was easy and they designed specific requirements that met our needs. It has really complemented our workforce and saved time.
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Freshworks Inc
Compared to Crisp, Freshdesk offers much more organization and is just much more helpful when it comes to having more than one region/team. Not that Crisp is bad, but with Freshdesk, internal communication and collaboration are much easier, which was quite important for our team to grow.
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Thinkific
ClickFunnels is great for funnels, but as of now, it does not do well with e-learning. Maybe they'll change that in ClickFunnels 2.0. But for now, I use Thinkific because I need a place where the students can come into their own dashboard, find all the courses they have purchased on a single place and be able to track their progress.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
I was not very involved with the purchase/contract (my company purchased Fresjdesk before I was brought on), but I will say that pricing per agent made it difficult to grow our support team. Additionally, we were kind of disappointed after our upgrade because it didn't solve our pain points as much as we expected.
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Thinkific
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
My company had Freshdesk agents from support and success. It's generally difficult to customize permissions for different agent "roles." We were a fully distributed company, so "multiple sites" doesn't apply to us. We found Freshdesk features lacking as we grew our customer base, and adding agents wasn't easy because price steeply increases with number of agents.
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Thinkific
The opportunities to scale your online course business with Thinkific is endless. They provide a great range of plans with features, integrations and support to suit the needs of any business as different levels. The key here is knowing where to start with the budget you have and then knowing when it's time to scale up and the tools and resources it will require.
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Professional Services
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
- good customer support
- personal contact
- usage limited to basic product features, individually designed solutions seem unlikely
Read full review
Thinkific
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Lumin Creative
  • Increased collaboration in the workplace
  • Saved time on staff asking the same questions
  • Provides customers a 'live' community to liaise with
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
  • Increased response times - Client Success maintains at 98% SLA for resolution
  • Categorization of feedback and issues - custom ticket fields make it easier for us to review why clients contact us on a high level
  • Standardization of internal procedures via templates, canned responses and automations
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Thinkific
  • I have to work harder to insure I get a monthly return on my investment.
  • A positive is once I create a course, I market it over and over each year.
  • Being able to mix hosting a live masterclass with course modules allows me to offer more value to my customers, which is good for my business.
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ScreenShots

Answerbase Screenshots

Screenshot of Each customer has access to an Admin Site where they can access the tools they need to effectively manage all of your content, users and access.Screenshot of The public interface comes with a standard template. Customers are encouraged to customize the look and feel, so that it is accomplishes their goals and accurately reflects their brand.Screenshot of Each admin and moderator has access to a “My Work” area where they can see their content assignments.Screenshot of Admins and moderators have advanced tools for moderation to control each piece of content from one area.Screenshot of Admins can have full control over customization to accomplish any look and feel they want.Screenshot of Widget builders and API’s empower you to accomplish even the most sophisticated integrations or even build your own Answerbase-powered Q&A applications.