Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshdesk
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software that helps businesses of all sizes to deliver customer support. Freshdesk converts requests coming in via email, web, phone, chat, and social into tickets, and unifies ticket resolution across channels. Additionally, Freshdesk lets the user automate workflows, provide self-service, manage SLAs, and measure metrics, to stay on top of customer support. Freshdesk also offers out-of-the-box features like an AI-powered support chatbot,…
$0
Up to 2 agents
Help Scout
Score 8.7 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…
$20
per user/per month
Pricing
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Up to 2 agents
Growth
$15
per month (billed annually) per agent
Pro
$49
per month (billed annually) per agent
Enterprise
$79
per month (billed annually) per agent
Standard
$20
per user/per month
Plus
$35
per user/per month
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.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.5
186 Ratings
5% above category average
Help Scout
7.3
20 Ratings
10% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.1182 Ratings8.620 Ratings
Expert directory7.9122 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.43 Ratings4.011 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.64 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.2182 Ratings7.419 Ratings
Ticket response9.0182 Ratings9.320 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.3
167 Ratings
5% above category average
Help Scout
7.0
18 Ratings
12% below category average
External knowledge base8.4151 Ratings7.517 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.1156 Ratings6.516 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.6
176 Ratings
9% above category average
Help Scout
7.2
20 Ratings
9% below category average
Customer portal8.6150 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR8.554 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration8.394 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support9.1175 Ratings9.020 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.5111 Ratings5.512 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 8.8 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(253 ratings)
8.9
(20 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(22 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.8
(42 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
7.7
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(40 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(183 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
6.6
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
6.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.5
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
6.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskHelp Scout
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
Freshdesk is really good for start-up companies that want to update their current system or buy a new one. It is the best option possible when it comes to having a structure, following up, and making a better strategy because you can always see what your team is doing, and you have some great reports to help you.
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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
  • The price is great for small startups just large enough to need a support ticketing system.
  • This may seem minor, but many tools don't have this: the ability to link a contact to multiple companies/accounts.
  • Agent collision detection is great for making sure agents don't duplicate each others' work!
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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
  • Data Security.
  • SLA Policies where it is not customer / contract driven but agents / groups driven.
  • Audit Trail is not available in Pro version makes the tool adoption difficult from compliance perspective.
  • Chat Bot and Fresh Chat Services has greater potential to explode, but the pricing model tagged to chat bot sessions .are illogical as it limits the ability to use the fresh chat feature
  • Agent Logon Screen use earlier version of Captcha as it is annoying for the agents to login. Very frustrating 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
We are extremely happy with Freshdesk and can foresee using it for the next year. We might only consider using a different platform if our average daily ticket volume reaches four digits and its AI isn’t enough to handle our needs by then. While we haven’t tested this yet, we have read reviews that it’s AI capabilities are lacking
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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
I gave it a rating of 9 out of 10 because they delivered on everything we asked them to do. Easy to setup, easy to deploy to end users, easy to customize, easy to enter tickets and so much more. Our experience with their support is top notch! After opening a ticket for support they call use back within 10 minutes every time!
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Help Scout
It is simple and intuitive. I haven't run into difficulty using any of the features that I have wanted to use. Additional help in the form of documentation or support is available as needed, and their response times are pretty good :)
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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.
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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.
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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Freshworks Inc
The main thing about Freshdesk user service is that once a request has been made for information about a feature of the platform, the support team responds to tickets quickly, within a day of writing and submitting them, with information that is concise enough so that there is no need to ask for help on the same topic again.
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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
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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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Online Training
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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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Freshworks Inc
Most important, Freshdesk is a user- friendly platform which directly supports interfaces and navigates user to start. Helps to provide multiple and complex documentation and troubleshooting. It provides build templates for different workflows and processes also refuces effort and time to implement and perform corporate tasks and complete the execution.
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Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Freshworks Inc
AI-powered automation, with its ability to integrate multiple communication channels—such as email, chat, and phone—into a single platform, helps us resolve common issues more quickly, reducing response times and allowing agents to focus on more complex inquiries. Their 24/7 customer support is highly responsive, and they proactively engage with clients through regular reviews to ensure alignment with business goals.
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
- good customer support
- personal contact
- usage limited to basic product features, individually designed solutions seem unlikely
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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.