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Desk.com (discontinued) vs. Salesforce Agentforce Service vs. Twilio

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Desk.com (discontinued)

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/ADesk.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

    Salesforce Agentforce Service

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AService Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.

    $25

    per month

    Twilio

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/ATwilio offers a CPaaS and CCaaS solution, with the combination of its programmable Voice, Video, and Messaging APIs, as well as the Twilio Flex cloud contact center. Additional capabilities include Twilio's Elastic SIP Trunking, as well as API for WhatsApp.

    $0

    per min per participant

    Pricing
    Desk.com (discontinued)Salesforce Agentforce ServiceTwilio
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Starter Suite
    $25
    per month
    Pro Suite
    $100
    per month per user
    Enterprise
    $165
    per month per user
    Unlimited
    $330
    per month per user
    Agentforce 1
    $550
    per month per user
    Programmable Video
    $0.0015
    per min per participant
    WhatsApp Business API
    $0.0042
    Per WhatsApp Template message sent
    WhatsApp Business API
    $0.005
    Per WhatsApp session message
    Elastic SIP Trunking
    $0.007
    Per min for termination
    Programmable Messaging
    $0.0075
    per message sent or received
    Programmable Voice
    $0.0085
    per minute to receive a call
    Programmable Voice
    $0.013
    per min to make a call
    Elastic SIP Trunking
    $0.045
    Per min for origination
    Twilio Conversations
    $0.05
    per active user per month
    Twilio Authy
    $0.09
    per authentication
    Programmable Wireless
    $0.1
    per MB
    Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
    $1
    per active user hour (5000 hours free)
    Programmable Wireless
    $2.00
    per SIM card
    Twilio SendGrid Email API
    $14.95
    per month up to 100k emails. (Up to 40k emails free for 30 days)
    Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns
    $15
    per month for 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails. Your first 2,000 contacts are free
    Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
    $150
    per named user per month (5000 hours free)
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Desk.com (discontinued)Salesforce Agentforce ServiceTwilio
    Free Trial
    YesYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing without contracts. 2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as usage grows. 3. Free trial credit that includes full API access.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Desk.com (discontinued)Salesforce Agentforce ServiceTwilio
    Considered Multiple Products
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Incentivized
    Salesforce
    Chose Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Desk.com was our previous foray into customer support, and it was functional and worked quite well. It was not exactly the most intuitive to update, but it got the job done and was reliable.

    Freshdesk was our primary next decision, and we would have gone with them except we were …
    Incentivized
    Chose Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Service Cloud is a step up from Desk mainly because of its reporting, but if you can integrate other Salesforce products together, I'd recommend looking at its other solutions and looking at its own integrated CRM case closer. Service Cloud isn't the perfect solution, but it …
    Incentivized
    Chose Salesforce Agentforce Service
    We chose Service Cloud because of its deep, native integration with Salesforce, unified billing, and for the fact that we didn't have to learn or train on an entirely new platform. These other products were excellent, but for us it was more time and cost effective to use …
    Incentivized
    Chose Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Salesforce has increased their traction in the SMB space for service with the acquisition of Desk.com. It provides a good entry level solution for customer service and knowledge for less complex organizations. Additionally, it gets them up and running quicker. Without Desk.com, …
    Incentivized
    Twilio
    Chose Twilio
    We have looked at some of Twilio competitors, like Infobip, Sich and Bandwith. Prices on all of them for voice minutes and SMS are way cheaper than Twilio. But none of them seem to offer as many features and ease of use as Twilio. Specially from an API point of view
    Incentivized
    Chose Twilio
    I think Twilio is as stable as Avaya in the sense that it comunicates well, but the market is really more into Avaya, so we had to go into a lot of effort to convince everyone in the company that Twilio was good and would work. I think it doesn't hold up againt Watson, because …
    Incentivized
    Chose Twilio
    I would say that Salesforce is possibly a more comprehensive product that I have used in the past (and still do occasionally for a client) but Salesforce wouldn't be suitable for the service-based SME which Twilio was used for in this instance.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    78%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    91%
    Would buy again
    52 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    66 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    43 Answers
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    58 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    83%
    Happy with the feature set
    15 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    68 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    85%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    45 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    39 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    56 Answers
    Features
    Desk.com (discontinued)Salesforce Agentforce ServiceTwilio
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Desk.com (discontinued) and Salesforce Agentforce Service and Twilio
    Feature
    Desk.com (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    8.0
    81 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.279 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings7.857 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.267 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings6.962 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.779 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings7.978 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Desk.com (discontinued) and Salesforce Agentforce Service and Twilio
    Feature
    Desk.com (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    8.7
    76 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    External knowledge base00 Ratings8.567 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.874 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Desk.com (discontinued) and Salesforce Agentforce Service and Twilio
    Feature
    Desk.com (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    7.9
    81 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Customer portal00 Ratings7.858 Ratings00 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings8.037 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings7.451 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings8.880 Ratings00 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings7.870 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Desk.com (discontinued)Salesforce Agentforce ServiceTwilio
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Simplify360
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Customer.io
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    SAP Service Cloud
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Desk.com (discontinued)Salesforce Agentforce ServiceTwilio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.2
    (38 ratings)
    8.7
    (100 ratings)
    8.1
    (94 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.4
    (14 ratings)
    6.2
    (8 ratings)
    7.5
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    8.3
    (19 ratings)
    8.2
    (22 ratings)
    9.5
    (10 ratings)
    Availability
    1.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.5
    (45 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.6
    (7 ratings)
    8.0
    (38 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.2
    (21 ratings)
    7.0
    (20 ratings)
    5.7
    (16 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Desk.com (discontinued)Salesforce Agentforce ServiceTwilio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Once I had to search the logs to find cases and data on a particular keyword, but I was not able to do so as there was no search tool available, nor was there a sort or filter tool. I was totally frustrated as I had to skim through the data to complete my task manually.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I think Service Cloud is best suited for medium to large operations that require both proactive and reactive service. It’s a great fit for post-sales support. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for very small companies because it can be quite costly, and many of the features may go unused. Salesforce also performs best when you have a capable team managing it, so it’s important to consider your organization’s size and readiness before starting. Once you do, I recommend exploring other parts of the Salesforce ecosystem—Service Cloud works even better when integrated with Sales Cloud, since it allows better visibility across teams.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    I have tried other competitors. But I always end up going back to Twilio because I feel like it is dependable, easy to use, and, has competitive pricing. The only time I wouldn't recommend Twilio to someone as if they are completely inexperienced about using webhooks or APIs. Because you can't really just sign up and start using Twilio without connecting it to another platform first.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • Desk.com automatically tracks analytics on all cases coming in and going out.
    • Desk.com helps prevent multiple people from working on the same case. However, it does allow us to assign the case to someone else if we feel that person is more qualified to address the case.
    • Desk.com has very few bugs or server issues that we've seen. This helps prevent any delays in communicating with our customers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Email to case is an interesting piece of it. The threading is very strong, sometimes too strong, but it does very well at handling the incoming emails.
    • The omnichannel routing, using skill-based routing is really effective.
    • Pathing. So making the workflow and helping the team understand what it is that they're trying to do, what they have to accomplish, those step-by-step pieces. That's really helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • Easy to see my team in one place, when they log in and out and what call status they are in.
    • Twilio is a simple, user friendly way to log in and out of work activities.
    • Excellent services and support.
    • The omnichannel feature which allows agents to get request from all channels.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • 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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • We had a principle initially to try and use Omni as much as we can from the user experience perspective, but have found that fairly restrictive. It was very difficult to actually get the right customer experience and customer engagement going. So we're actually on a journey at the moment to replace all of our Omni with Lightning web components that gives us that flexibility. That's probably one area where we've had some challenges in terms of how we've used the product out of the box.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • Control panel. Often, navigating through lists is challenging. I want endless scrolling, not pagination.
    • Conversational intelligence service require a Language. I would like it to detect it.
    • We would like to have some credit on clients that chose to use their own Twilio account.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.
    Read full review
    Twilio
    Unless we can get this handled quickly -- less than 1 week -- we will likely switch to another provider who, in my opinion, we'll have to spend close to $3,000 in development time to build a new integration for texting. Our clients need texting and I feel Twilio has failed us miserably.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    Desk.com and Salesforce Service Cloud's usability is seamless to get up and running, administer, and scale across the organization. It allows us to get up and running in days rather than weeks and has transformed our customer support teams globally into efficient, world-class teams. The best practices that the Salesforce and Desk.com teams provide are also very valuable, as we have the right case studies and tips to implement right away in our organization.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I had Salesforce experience prior to using Service Cloud which made it a little easier to learn and navigate, but overall my team (some who had no Salesforce experience) caught on very quickly and found Service Cloud to be easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    Twilio has well documented APIs and examples. There are several tutorials, videos and Q&As regarding their services. So, usability is very good. I must say that advanced knowledge of telephony, API/Programming and error-handling is essential to make good use of Twilio. It's not just plug-and-play unless you are integrated with a system that has all of the programming built for it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    We've never had a problem with Desk.com's availability.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Working on an application that caters to customer needs requires a platform that acts as a mediator between the actual person and the client. This mediator handles the customer and resolves many of their doubts, helps them map through the entire process, and automates the processes. Such a platform is Salesforce Service Cloud. For queries that cannot be serviced by the platform, it creates a separate ServiceNow ticket for us, and it is assigned.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    Fast, responsive, gorgeous, and fun. It's always run like a thoroughbred for me.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    The Salesforce Service Cloud generally has very good performance, however the overall new Lightning user experience can bring that down. For example, if you have too many tabs open, then it can take a while for the Lightning UI to load. This UI is probably not well equipped to handle loading of all of that information at once, but Users tend to leave their tabs open all day long. It can also be fickle depending on which browser you use, what extensions you have installed, and whether you've cleared your cache. This can be the downfall with any software as a service though, not just Salesforce
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    Twilio executes what it is designed to do: send SMS messages at scale while providing very good deliverability. I believe that Twilio is very good at what we use for adding SMS messages to our comms strategy. We can see those messages get opened and replied to, which is exactly what we are looking to achieve.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Their support leaves much to be desired. They do not respond quickly and do not follow up with feature requests. There is also a lack of on-demand or live training available for the teams to use as they learn a new tool. Because there is so much customization, a lot of questions do come up regularly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.
    Read full review
    Twilio
    I have not had to communicate with Twilio support in the last 3 years but my past experience with them has been very positive. They replied to my previous requests promptly and kept me well informed to resolve my inquiries. With their documentation that's available, I hardly imagine why anyone would need to contact support since it's all there in a concise and easy to understand format. It would probably take you longer to type out a support ticket than to just open their doc websites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    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 comes to execution this platform is.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    We selected this product because we already had some competencies in Salesforce. We own a Salesforce partner with expertise in this area, and on top of that, Salesforce purchased it — it was originally called Velocity. When Salesforce decided to acquire it, that finalized the decision for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    We evaluated many fundraising-based text-to-give programs and found the subscriptions prohibitively expensive for our small scale and uncertain first few years of development. While we may be willing to invest that kind of money after discovering how things work, we're happy with Twilio now and have no desire to start over.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Being in South Africa, direct local currency support would be nice
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The product has scaled up with our company growth just fine. No issues here other than slowness in clicking around and running reports
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • Better customer service and employee efficiency when dealing with cases
    • It's so universal, meaning that everyone can use it and it's easy to understand.
    • The only negative impact is that our IT department who is assigned tickets has responded to customers instead of to the local reps and we have to ensure they know to change the email if it's assigned to them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
    • The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
    • Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • We found that associates who had the opportunity to respond to a survey about their assigned job were 37% more likely to return to a job site
    • We were able to reduce the number of resources required to manually respond to associates using Twilio Studio, so those resources could have more time to complete other tasks
    • We were able to scale the number of associates who received survey messages at least by a factor of 8 without increasing our resource demand
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Desk.com (discontinued) Screenshots

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

    Salesforce Agentforce Service Screenshots

    Screenshot of Workflows and OrchestrationScreenshot of Service CatalogScreenshot of Contact Center

    Twilio Screenshots

    Screenshot of the “Explore Products” section, which is where to build products.Screenshot of the optional drag-and-drop visual editor and code editor.Screenshot of Flex, which is a programmable Contact Center that puts you in control.