Desk.com (discontinued) vs. Front

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Desk.com (discontinued)
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Desk.com was a helpdesk, ticketing, and customer support product offered by Salesforce, and oriented towards the needs of small businesses. It is no longer sold and support has been discontinued. Salesforce recommends its modern Service Cloud as a replacement.N/A
Front
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Front is a communication hub that helps businesses keep the human touch in every interaction.
$29
per month per user
Pricing
Desk.com (discontinued)Front
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter
$29
per month per user
Growth
$79
per month per user
Scale
$99
per month (billed annually) per user
Premier
$229
per month (billed annually) per seat (50 seat minimum)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Desk.com (discontinued)Front
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscount for annual pricing on Starter and Growth plans. Scale and Premier plans are annual price only.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Desk.com (discontinued)Front
Considered Both Products
Desk.com (discontinued)
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
With the help of the Salesforce Desk, we can get smarter services, especially for small companies as a part of customer support. This leads to increased productivity. Adding applications from AppExchange is an awesome feature where we can integrate with a number of other …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
We have not used any products like Desk.com
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
I would say it is a best product when you have to take up the customer calls as well as deep dive customer details while addressing their complaints and issues. It is one of the best tools out there in the market and so many multinational companies are taking benefit of the …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Wix Answers was much better compared to Desk.com. It had more excellent and much better and more tools and was very customizable. Luckily it also had a search tool and also the sort and filter tools. The only thing better than Wix Answers on desk.com was that we could keep …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
We liked it as a tool because of the ease and advantages offered by the tool compared to the other solutions evaluated.Due to its ease of implementation and ease of use it adapted very well to the needs of the company, that was the reason why we chose desk.com.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
We would have stayed on desk.com if Salesforce did not force us to move off the platform. To be honest it was a great platform at a reasonable price. I was the administrator and our agents were very happy with how things worked. I would go back to them in a heartbeat if I …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Zendesk is much more light and setup friendly. This system does not require a lot of Salesforce knowledge or certification to set it up. Zendesk is better suited to small to medium-sized businesses.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Desk.com and Salesforce Service Cloud can be very easily implemented, administered, and scaled across support teams within the organization. It is truly an industry gold standard as it has a lot of great out-of-the-box functionality and does not require as much customization …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
This one seemed to have the best salesforce integration and seemed to be the best for having all of our different teams (sales, retention, support, marketing, SRM, etc.) in one place. Also, we were able to get a very good price. The other platforms seemed like they would be too …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Desk connects directly with Salesforce with many other teams in the business use. This tool did take longer to set up because of all the customization possibilities. There is a good amount of customization that needs to be completed in order to make it function correctly and …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Overall, it performs a lot better than all three combined, with a lot fewer glitches and a lot more user-friendly and user experience efficiency. Any new link that needs to be done, takes a lot less time to execute on desk compared to the three others. Simply advanced when it …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
We have used Amazon Connect and it's one of the worst systems we've ever used. It will hang up mid-call or just refresh the whole call and go mute the system was horribly designed we prefer Desk.com and will continue to use desk.com at this office company.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Salesforce Desk is a lot easier to use than Zoho. Zoho has way too much going on, within the software, to be easily manageable. However, SysAid is the easiest, for users, to use because it is extremely basic and straightforward. Our users prefer the easiest method of opening an …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
In my opinion, Intercom is more customer oriented, using chat and real time marketing features. Desk.com is a more old school solution focused on tickets and cases. Desk.com does not have much integration capacities with your platform, Intercom has lots of features around this, …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Lower pricing per user. That's about it! Other companies have all-around better features and easier user interfaces, but Desk can beat them on pricing even at higher account tiers. Included knowledgebase tools are a plus, and fairly easy to manage.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
The big turn off to this product was the price and poor integration to existing systems. We were in the process of launching a new CRM and needed a tool that would work well with this new tool. Desk.com is a partner and works closely where Zendesk did none of that
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
We have not used any other products and probably will not. It's cost effective and easy to use.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Desk.com is comparable, on a smaller scale. We went with Desk.com because it provided the functionality we needed and was more affordable.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Originally, I was using Salesforce to keep track of students and their progress through the system (with an end goal in mind). It was really great for handling students on a case by case basis with the different fields and and sections for multiple people to complete as the …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
I was not involved in the selection process of Desk.com vs. competitors but we are discontinuing our Desk.com subscription this month and instead opting to use Service Cloud as our new ticketing system. It allows better integration with Salesforce.com and also is more client …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
  • Kayako
    • Interesting, but really clunky and unstable at the time.
Front
Chose Front
Front is cleaner from an email communication standpoint. Less details are sometimes better. Hubspot is more of a CRM and that focus is key. While Front is more of a communication channel.
Chose Front
Front was easier to have shared inbox. It also gave us more flexibility in tagging, both tagging users and tagging the emails to triage. It was also quick to set up and get users on boarded and trained. We found it was just a more intuitive and flexible system for us.
Chose Front
We switched to Front because of how simple it looked, then we realized we could tailor it to the type of business we have. I don't see us using any other tool to manage emails besides Front.

Chose Front
I have only used Gmail in the past and Front is any day better than Gmail in terms of the interface and ease of usage. The ability to send scheduling links and comments between the email threads makes it better than Gmail. The shared inbox also makes it easier for the entire …
Chose Front
Front's UX/UI is more intuitive. The work seems to flow better in their app.
Chose Front
A few features are very good in Front that are not in Outlook, like sharing draft content with teammates, commenting, read receipts, etc., which made us choose Front.
Chose Front
The tagging feature stands out. Their tagging can be quite deep and effective if it's set up properly. For example, I can pull out all the clients who [have] an issue with billing. Or better yet valued clients who [have] a specific MRR that has an issue with billing that needed …
Chose Front
Front is honestly an amazing blend of an email server and slack, as it allows for nimble, efficient, and immediate communication between team members without needing to forward a single email back-and-forth before finally responding to a client. Front also saves time when …
Chose Front
This is something I am not familiar but it seems like it is [available] in Gmail. Thus I cannot give any feedback about it. What I am sure about is Front works for our team and I see Zoom using the service in the Customer Success Organization in a long run.
Chose Front
Thanks to Front, it has allowed us to have smooth and effective internal communication between departments, attaching projects, problems, and endless files without any problem. It is allowing us to have practical and soft customer support.
Chose Front
Front is better than any other tool. It is a great app to use also because of its multipurpose features. Anyone can also use this app for your customized business needs and manage your work accordingly. I feel that Front is easy to use and it is also very user-friendly due to …
Chose Front
I love how scalable the software is. Also, Front comprises many good features that are needed for helping teams work efficiently and effectively for sales and support.
Chose Front
Front has been simple to implement and operate on our team. It is not possible to lose an email; it is impressive how it adapts better while being used daily. We can have excellent communication between colleagues, the percentage of evaluations, and changes in planned tasks …
Chose Front
Front is always getting the newest capabilities of the industry [and] is never behind. Instead, it provides you with features that [you] would not even think exist. Also, it is faster than other apps [and] takes just a moment for you to get started in your daily tasks.
Chose Front
Front was not designed as a ticketing system and doesn't have great reporting tools, but the commenting and draft features were important and other platforms' versions of these features were weak or unintuitive.

It should be noted that we ended up developing our own messaging …
Chose Front
It offered newer features and more ways to control user communication inflow, as well as team roster management. The Front app also had a presence on the app, mobile web, and web, which was helpful for on-the-go email queue management. In short, at the time we made this …
Chose Front
We have used Yesware. It's a really good lead prospecting tool, but doesn't have the shared inbox, or collaborative capabilities of Front.
Chose Front
Zendesk is by far the market leader here and offers a tremendous solution. It is, of course, very expensive -- especially if you require multi-brand support. Many of the other solutions (except Groove) offer some flavor of multi-brand support but they are not as good as …
Chose Front
We had all our leads going to a gmail account before front. Front solved so many problems that Gmail had. It was much more user friendly for somethings and it was a much more flexible software that we were able to use to meet our needs. It also has a reporting feature that …
Chose Front
Front is a flexible and quickly growing tool that integrates with almost every system we use. Front have been our go-to support system since we started and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Features
Desk.com (discontinued)Front
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Front
7.7
Ratings
6% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings6.80 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Front
7.1
Ratings
12% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Front
8.8
Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Desk.com (discontinued)Front
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Desk.com (discontinued)Front
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Availability
1.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Desk.com (discontinued)Front
Likelihood to Recommend
Desk.com and the Salesforce Service Cloud provide a sophisticated suite to easily create and track cases coming in, along with automatically routing and escalating issues as they arise. It allows me to configure my own workflows and customizes consoles with easy drag and drop functionality. It is the perfect help desk software, which integrates with the Salesforce Sales and Commerce clouds seamlessly. The in-app and mobile support is also very expedient and helpful.
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I think Front is very useful for every company with multiple teams working together on different emails from clients. Not so useful if a lot of different teams need to work on a request at the same time, because when an email is sitting in multiple shared inboxes things can get messy. Also would not recommend for teams that work is individualized, as team work is the main point of Front.
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Pros
  • Help Center. Desk has worked endlessly with us to perfect our Help Center. They are dedicated and willing to work in order to make your product right.
  • Customization. Though we exceeded the rule limitation for Desk, they have still allowed us to take their product and make it our own. We have our own labeling, and priority system which help us hit important SLAs.
  • User education. Whenever there is a new feature released, I feel like I'm in the know about it which is extremely important when we've been requesting certain features for a long period of time. Their communication is on point.
Read full review
  • I call them "sticky notes" but Front calls them Comments. It's a way to collaboratively make comments on messages sent to joint inboxes for folks to coordinate a response before it goes back to the sender.
  • When exchanging with someone using the Comments feature, someone can create a draft reply and then share it before it goes out. It also includes the typing indicator letting you know they are not just replying, but specifically working on a draft reply. These things are really great for individuals, or teams, that don't sit next to each other.
  • Tagging. It's a fairly simple concept, but very useful for classifying notes and being able to manage, what could be, a messy inbox. Additionally, the ability to have your own personal tags really allows the user to manage their own messages in a way that works best for them.
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Cons
  • Internal knowledge tools are clunky and annoying to access, outside the regular workflow of everyday staff
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in business rules and custom fields
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in case handling - for example, if you begin a case as a phone call you CANNOT email the customer from the case. As though no one working at Desk has ever sent a follow-up email...?
  • Not very good for B2B, mid-to-large businesses. Difficult to set business rules based on company information (for example, service level/tier) and nearly impossible to track key stakeholders and get clear insight into the relationship at a high level
  • Reporting tools are clunky, slow, and just all-around pretty useless
Read full review
  • Zoom Meeting Integration as there are some clients who want to have a call immediately.
  • Tagging can be improved - looks scattered.
  • Calendly Integration, they have their own calendar appointment but it would be good if I don't need to leave the front to set up [calendar] appointments.
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Likelihood to Renew
We will be very likely to renew our contract with Desk.com. It is easy to use, and provides us with everything we need to keep our customers and employees happy. They have also been very helpful in catering the application to our specific and unique needs, including working across brands and adding specific content for our products
Read full review
We are very happy with Front and don't anticipate changing
Read full review
Usability
Once it is fully set up with all of the unique and necessary customizations for your organization, it becomes easier to use, but before that, it is not very user-friendly and there are not a lot of training resources available. You likely need a Salesforce admin for initial set-up who is experienced with customization.
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It's very easy to understand and use by new customer support agents as well. Be it a technology, product, or marketing person, we have trained most of the company folks to read and respond to customer conversations in their free time with the help of the Front app. It is also easy to set up for an admin and manage his/her team with communication rules.
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Reliability and Availability
We've never had a problem with Desk.com's availability.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Fast, responsive, gorgeous, and fun. It's always run like a thoroughbred for me.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
I always get the support and needed answers in a timely manner. Whether by email, ticket, or call. There's always a solution available or a potential one available. Everything is clear and straight to the point in customer support from Desk. I didn't face any difficulty so far with that.
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The support is good, and it's definitely prompt, but still lags when it comes to technical requirements, as I guess they are slow in developing newer features fast. So no complaints in terms of responsiveness, but yeah, at times it's not very helpful when you need certain features or are blocked on things which can't be unblocked.
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Implementation Rating
As I stated earlier, implementation of Desk.com went more smoothly than most. The resources in the "Support Center" are fantastic, and I never ran into anything that left me stumped, angry, or disappointed.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Wix Answers was much better compared to Desk.com. It had more excellent and much better and more tools and was very customizable. Luckily it also had a search tool and also the sort and filter tools. The only thing better than Wix Answers on desk.com was that we could keep internal communication records by adding notes on tickets, and it saved a lot of time.
Read full review
This is something I am not familiar but it seems like it is [available] in Gmail. Thus I cannot give any feedback about it. What I am sure about is Front works for our team and I see Zoom using the service in the Customer Success Organization in a long run.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • It has definitely had a positive impact by helping our team quickly address issues people are having with our product.
  • Desk.com has helped our team and company get better by addressing customer and tester issues faster, and tracking data so that our team can improve the quality and speed of all of our outgoing communications.
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  • Quality- with all the benefits given, in just matter of time, all your organization will find it familiar and less effort is needed when composing emails.
  • Effectiveness- no one wants to miss an email, or never respond to a possible customer. Front will help you that. If you do not want to send that email now, you can set a timer and Front will send it for you later on.
  • Simplicity- Front is not the most difficult app to handle, indeed, it is too easy to learn. From the first moment you will have a guided tour and will learn all the good things that it has for you.
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ScreenShots

Desk.com (discontinued) Screenshots

Screenshot of Desk.com ConsoleScreenshot of Desk.com Issue ScreenScreenshot of Desk.com Reporting and Analytics

Front Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of