Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshdesk
Score 8.5 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
Help Scout
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Help Scout is help desk software. The vendor’s value proposition is that that their solution reduces time spent on training users because Help Scout is simple to use and set up and scales like any enterprise product. This solution includes multiple mailboxes to support as many email addresses as needed in order to work collaboratively across teams, and manage several products or brands from one account. Reports on conversation trends, team performance, productivity, and customer happiness are…
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
Pricing
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Editions & Modules
Growth
$18
per month per agent
Pro
$59
per month per agent
Enterprise
$95
per month per agent
Standard
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
Plus
$90
per month starts with 200 contacts
Company
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Considered Both Products
Freshdesk
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk has a more modern and intuitive user interface, while Help Scout's interface is simpler and more minimalist.In case of features, Freshdesk offers a wider range of features, includes omnichannel support, AI powered automations, and advanced analytics. Help Scout is …
Chose Freshdesk
The product that Freshdesk compares to the most on this list is Zendesk, which was considerably more expensive and was missing a server integration that we required. It did have a lot of great features, though, and its Support and Account Managers are located in the U.S. (vs. …
Chose Freshdesk
Brings everything a company may need to elevate customer service and empower teams to solve the unique challenges and complex issues related to customer service. Helps bring in the right experts to collaborate even if they are not within the organization.
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk has a cleaner and more intuitive interface, and we also found support to be more responsive with a much quicker turnaround on quick questions and issues. Although we have found reporting shortfalls with Freshdesk, it is vastly better than its competitors, which is one …
Help Scout
Chose Help Scout
This is tricky because there's helpdesk apps and chat apps (now Help Scout offers both).

We first used just an email inbox (of course not scalable but we were very small), then we turned to Freshdesk, which was painful to use. It had some cool features but in general it was …
Chose Help Scout
We primarily chose HelpScout because they were an affordable, moderately robust, HIPAA compliant solution. All the other options (e.g. Zendesk, Freshdesk, Kayako, etc.) were out of our price range or did not provide the necessary features that our team has come to rely on.
Chose Help Scout
They all had their positives and negatives. For us, it came down to signing a BAA (Zendesk wanted $28,000 to sign one). We enjoy working with vendors who can support healthcare initiates such as we are building.
Features
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
7.8
198 Ratings
5% below category average
Help Scout
8.5
23 Ratings
4% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.2194 Ratings9.023 Ratings
Expert directory8.1131 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications4.54 Ratings7.713 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation6.45 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.3194 Ratings7.821 Ratings
Ticket response9.1194 Ratings9.322 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.5
176 Ratings
6% above category average
Help Scout
8.3
21 Ratings
3% above category average
External knowledge base8.6160 Ratings8.620 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.5164 Ratings8.019 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.9
185 Ratings
11% above category average
Help Scout
8.3
23 Ratings
4% above category average
Customer portal9.0157 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR9.158 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration8.699 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support9.2184 Ratings9.523 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.6117 Ratings7.215 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskHelp Scout
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
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(262 ratings)
9.3
(23 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.7
(26 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(43 ratings)
9.4
(6 ratings)
Availability
7.9
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(42 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.5
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.3
(193 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.7
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.3
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.8
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
Overall, it does a great job of handling support, which is our user case. It is best for narrowly focused issues and issues that are resolved in a few interactions. When issues are broad and have several paths of issues and/or corrections it is not easy to segment off the work and responses necessary. This makes it hard to have several support personnel work on an issue that is more diverse and requires multiple skill sets.
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Help Scout
Small businesses that want a conversational type of customer support experience. Nothing wrong with support tickets, but it does make you feel like a number. Also, we needed to get up and running quickly so the "inbox" feel of the dashboard was already familiar with the team so they could adopt the new software quickly.
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Pros
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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Help Scout
  • Extremely simple to use and understand as a user - treats communications like human beings and provides a much more personal feel to communication (as opposed to making people feel like numbers).
  • The email newsletter.
  • They are super responsive. They are pretty rad and transparent: if something goes wrong on their end they are not afraid of admitting fault. Which leads me to trust them because I can believe them. I know that tells you very little about the product, but as leadership, that's something that I really need
  • Help Scout does exactly what it needs to (facilitate organized, efficient conversations between customers and support people) without getting in the way.
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Cons
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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Help Scout
  • Trying to group tickets is a bit unflexible. You can create folders which can be part of a workflow (automatic trigger) but you can't create a folder based on tags. This needs to be improved because there's a need to create smarter segments and mix them.
  • Metrics are useful but there needs to be more details about them. You can drill down in some but others are still not very actionable or visible (ok, that number went down, but what was the cause? what's the criteria with what you measure that?)
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Likelihood to Renew
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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Help Scout
We are receiving feedback from the organizational level that they may want us to transition to a different solution to provide consistency across the company.
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Usability
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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Help Scout
Help Scout is a great solution for support teams. There are many articles and webinars to help you learn how to use Help Scout. There are also many features to help make your workflows easier and more efficient. I would readily recommend Help Scout to any small or medium-growing support teams.
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Reliability and Availability
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.
Read full review
Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Performance
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.
Read full review
Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
Freshworks Inc
Support Team's knowledge and understood the company's requirement, and always shared the insight of the usage of the tool to it s full potential, moreover the team checks periodically to check if we using the tool right and if we are facing any kind of challenges. Also they would update us on new features that can make the work easy.
Read full review
Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Freshworks Inc
Video tutorials, questions answers round before and after testing and Fresh desk team would always share best practices on the needs. Furthermore would periodically check if we are able to work smoothly. Would send alerts to known any issues, send recommendation on new features. Freshdesk team always available when we need certain advise.
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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Freshworks Inc
Our team easily implemented Freshdesk, and as soon as we started, we were pros with it. In a matter of days, we had integrated signatures and canned responses. The biggest problem was the Help Center part, but after some time, that was also integrated. We did not know some features when we started, but that is normal.
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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Freshworks Inc
Freshdesk has a more modern and intuitive user interface, while Help Scout's interface is simpler and more minimalist.In case of features, Freshdesk offers a wider range of features, includes omnichannel support, AI powered automations, and advanced analytics. Help Scout is more focused on providing a simple and efficient ticketing system.
Read full review
Help Scout
Only have minimal experience with G-Suite for a much smaller company. This worked well for that organization but did not have similar specialization functions that suite our larger organization very well. Help Scout's pricing makes sense, and continues to service our needs well. Minimal usage of other programs, but have no need to explore alternatives at this time.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
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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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Scalability
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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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Freshworks Inc
Very professional, they would always ask for the steps followed and where we went wrong, they would politely share the video recording to review in case any other team member faces the same issue
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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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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Help Scout
  • We are able to retain our customer base due to the outstanding customer service our Customer Experience department provides. Without an organized tool like Help Scout, this would not be possible. We pride ourselves in quick response times to customers and are able to do so by effectively routing tickets to the right agents.
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ScreenShots

Help Scout Screenshots

Screenshot of Build better relationships with your customers, and work together better as a teamScreenshot of Tools designed specifically for team collaboration on customer supportScreenshot of Docs Knowledge Base provides self-service that sets your customers up for successScreenshot of The conversation report can change the conversation with your customers from problems to praise by pinpointing what they write in about and when.Screenshot of Productivity Reports track your team's customer-helping velocity and identify sticking points to push through with even greater momentum.Screenshot of Happiness Reports are the closest you can get to your customer's true feelings without hiring a telepath.