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
Kayako
Score 4.9 out of 10
N/A
Kayako is a help desk and customer support platform that helps businesses automate workflows, improve agent productivity, and deliver personalized customer experiences across email, chat, and social media.
$79
per month
Pricing
FreshdeskKayako
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
Kayako One
$79
per month
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskKayako
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshdeskKayako
Features
FreshdeskKayako
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.6
194 Ratings
4% above category average
Kayako
2.0
11 Ratings
122% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.2190 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Expert directory8.1128 Ratings1.05 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.43 Ratings1.08 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.64 Ratings1.07 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.3190 Ratings7.011 Ratings
Ticket response9.0190 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.4
174 Ratings
4% above category average
Kayako
1.0
9 Ratings
156% below category average
External knowledge base8.5158 Ratings1.09 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.3162 Ratings1.08 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.8
183 Ratings
10% above category average
Kayako
1.0
10 Ratings
156% below category average
Customer portal8.9155 Ratings1.07 Ratings
IVR8.957 Ratings1.02 Ratings
Social integration8.698 Ratings1.04 Ratings
Email support9.2182 Ratings1.010 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.6116 Ratings1.06 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskKayako
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
FreshdeskKayako
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(260 ratings)
1.0
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(23 ratings)
7.8
(11 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(43 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
7.8
(7 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
Performance
8.1
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.4
(41 ratings)
2.1
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.5
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(191 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
6.8
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.7
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.7
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskKayako
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
I recommend Freshdesk for people who need to handle a large volume of inquiries through tickets and follow-ups. This platform provides tools that will improve problem-solving efficiency, ensuring customers are satisfied with the speed with which their issues are resolved. Overall, it will optimize customer service support operations and the resolution of their problems.
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Kayako
When it works, It's without a doubt a great help desk solution. It is perfect for our usage, and have rolled it out company-wide. It's great if you have multiple departments. We have it set up so most items come through a single desk that then hands out tickets to their proper department. There may be cheaper options for smaller organizations but for one that is as service-driven as ours, we really think Kayako is a great fit.
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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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Kayako
  • Gives a very good report on an individual level of what is being done for a customer or corporate issue.
  • Easy to understand who has what, what the tickets are about, how long they have been opened and how many times the customer/employee have gone back and forth with each other.
  • Nice dashboard view.
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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.
Read full review
Kayako
  • Departments need a bit of work. Even though you can have multiple departments, the only changes that can be made are globally. If you want independent queues within the departments, you have to do a lot of work that can be very confusing.
  • Survey system is not up to speed. Kayako really needs to add Net Promoter Score into their system. Also, if a staff user removes their name from an incident ticket, it removes them from the survey so you really can't even get a good estimate of how well your staff is in the eyes of the customer.
  • Very difficult to implement when you already have a customer base. Setting them up in organizations is difficult. Also, the sign-up for new customers is quirky. If you send an email to Kayako, it will say you are not an authorized user, however, it will store your email address. If you try to send an email a second time, it will go through. This is one of many reasons why we decided to move from Kayako to Oracle Service Cloud.
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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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Kayako
  • We are grandfathered in on their old Software-assurance pricing and our continued use costs us only a few hundred dollars a year (excluding hosting expenses)
  • Our team's processes are now heavily ingrained in the system
  • We have not been shown a more compelling option that is more cost-effective while still offering all the features we've come to expect
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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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Kayako
I did not come from an IT background and I picked this program up quickly
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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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Kayako
They are really good, but it takes a while to get back, because of the large time difference to the Eastern US. However, they are very helpful.
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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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Kayako
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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Kayako
  • We didn't have to use support too much, but when we did, they were able to assist us and help us make everything work.
  • Mostly we used their Online KB and step by step instructions to get all of our issues resolved.
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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.
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Kayako
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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Kayako
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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Kayako
Three years in we are about as happy with Kayako as we could be. We've had several employee's leave and on-boarding new hires was easier than it has ever been as things are uniform and consistent across the entire application.
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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
Kayako
We were using Spiceworks for a few years before switching to Kayako but found that it wasn't as customizable or as user friendly for our customers. The SNMP scanning and inventory features with Spiceworks was nice but we needed more of a Help Desk that would allow us to scale our services to more companies.
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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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Kayako
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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Kayako
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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Kayako
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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Kayako
  • Tickets were definitely responded to faster once we implemented the audible alarm that would go off when new tickets came into the queue. This was possible because of the API.
  • Since the system was email based we could set our monitoring software up to generate tickets automatically via email for customers when it found something out of the ordinary.
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ScreenShots