Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshdesk
Score 8.4 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
LiveAgent
Score 8.9 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
LiveAgent is a help desk software designed to help users bring personalization to customer interactions. LiveAgent presents an omnichannel universal inbox, real-time live chat, built-in call center, and a customer service portal. It offers customer segmentation, automation, built-in CRM, and an analytics package, as well as gamification features, ultimately containing are over 180+ help desk features, and 200+ integrations. The solution boasts users among companies like BMW, Yamaha,…
$15
per month per seat
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Spiceworks offers a set of free tools for IT network management and help desk support ticketing. The inventory management system essentially provides comprehensive device information for asset management.
$0
(free for 1-5 Seats)
Pricing
FreshdeskLiveAgentSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Editions & Modules
Growth
$18
per month per agent
Pro
$59
per month per agent
Enterprise
$95
per month per agent
Free
$0
per month
Small
$15
per month per seat
Medium
$29
per month per seat
Large
$49
per month per seat
Enterprise
$69
per month per seat
Core Plan
$0
Premium
$6
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskLiveAgentSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Free Trial
YesYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshdeskLiveAgentSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Considered Multiple Products
Freshdesk
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk was the easiest to set up and was the most straightforward product of all the products we evaluated. It had a better user interface for agents, and provided a great solution to meet our needs at a lower cost than the other products that we evaluated. Freshdesk offers …
Chose Freshdesk
As saied before, Freshdesk is very simple to use. It is very agile to our needs and uses, based on the requests are made from our employees only. So, everything they demand, is a well know task or activity in our duties. Zammad does it very well, but needs an on premises …
Chose Freshdesk
We used to use Spiceworks but it was extremely clunky and not very customisable at the time. When we started looking at other options we ended up focusing on Freshdesk, Zendesk and Zoho as they seemed like the best out of all the ones we found. We eventually went with Freshdesk …
Chose Freshdesk
The ticket system from Freshdesk was a breath of fresh air for us compared to Spiceworks. Freshdesk has yet to crash or stop responding (Spiceworks was on-prem and we had to re-install many times.) The reports were also far more informational to our management than Spiceworks.
Chose Freshdesk
I have no experience using Spiceworks, as the first project I undertook at my current place of employment was researching and implementing the new Freshdesk helpdesk. However, the feedback I have received since the implementation has been that it is simpler to use and has …
Chose Freshdesk
Spiceworks was powerful, but we also found it quite clunky and heavy-duty. Freshdesk is a lot lighter, quicker, and generally feels easier to use.
Chose Freshdesk
We have found Freshdesk to be the most comprehensive and capable product for our needs. The UI, support, and ease of implementation were the main reasons why we have signed up for a paid account within the trial period.
Chose Freshdesk
We used Spiceworks before Freshdesk because it was free, and we had nothing but trouble out of it. I couldn’t do all the automations I wanted to do, customers found it difficult to use, and the interface was terrible. Since switching to Freshdesk all of those areas are improved …
Chose Freshdesk
These other softwares do some of the same things as Freshdesk, but Freshdesk excels at doing them better. They make it easier to set up, configure, and start using. They make the user interface enjoyable for both technicians and users. These other softwares are largely text …
Chose Freshdesk
Spiceworks was too much work to get off the road and didn't offer much on the user's side. Freshservice is a lot more focused on IT work and I'd recommend starting with it. Desk.com is great for a whole organization, but rules frequently break with a mixed bag of how useful the …
LiveAgent
Chose LiveAgent
  • Cheaper
  • Better knowledge base
  • Significantly better customer tickets
Chose LiveAgent
We selected LiveAgent over Freshdesk due to a pricing deal LiveAgent was running at the time. If it weren't for the pricing deal, we would have picked Freshdesk due to its far superior UI and UX.
Chose LiveAgent
I used Freshdesk for a few years, but LiveAgent has been better and more intuitive for me.
Chose LiveAgent
We have 5 brands and had to have different solutions for these. But with LiveAgent we could use 1 software to operate all brands!
Chose LiveAgent
We have used some other systems for a very brief period of time but they did not offer us the specific functions we needed.
Chose LiveAgent
The price that LiveAgent has is just outstanding even with the features and helps us save money rather than spending loads of cash on other systems. It has also helped us better support our customers.
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent proved to be the best solution among those tested for quality/price ratio. There are no hidden costs.
Chose LiveAgent
We had been using our own custom based software based on osTicket for a long time but it was getting difficult to maintain the systems. After researching for almost a month and grilling the LiveAgent team for almost a week, we managed to finalise LiveAgent. The system took some …
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent offers:
  • Better visualization (color-coding of tickets and tags).
  • The basic package includes all core functionalities.
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent had the most important features that we needed with a much better cost per user compared to their competitors.
Chose LiveAgent
LiveAgent has impressed us the most out of all solutions that we've tested out. The features and plans seemed crafted to our needs so the decision was to go with LiveAgent. I can now honestly say that it was a good decision. We've recommended LiveAgent to many of our business …
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Chose Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Spiceworks is a great option for a free help desk. In terms of features, it is similar to the free level of Freshdesk. If you want a lot of features and customization though, you should look at JitBit Help Desk or the paid tiers of Freshdesk. Both offer better reporting, …
Chose Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Overall, Spiceworks Help Desk is an easy-to-use option at a GREAT cost. We didn't feel that any other products offered anything that Spiceworks couldn't so we haven't felt the need to explore any more companies. The Spiceworks FREE option is great on its own and it's hard to …
Chose Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
We found that for entry-level SMB in-house needs that Spiceworks had an impressive range of features and options at an unbeatable price-free! For our in-house and multi-tenant needs, we use a different product that is more appropriate to our particular needs, but with no cost …
Chose Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Spiceworks has all of the features we would require. It matched up well in features and definitely price!
Features
FreshdeskLiveAgentSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.4
202 Ratings
2% above category average
LiveAgent
7.7
59 Ratings
6% below category average
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
8.2
56 Ratings
0% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.2197 Ratings7.956 Ratings8.755 Ratings
Expert directory8.1134 Ratings7.947 Ratings6.048 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.06 Ratings7.042 Ratings5.743 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.67 Ratings6.838 Ratings8.646 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.3198 Ratings8.458 Ratings10.055 Ratings
Ticket response8.9198 Ratings8.459 Ratings10.054 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.4
179 Ratings
5% above category average
LiveAgent
10.0
52 Ratings
22% above category average
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
9.0
53 Ratings
11% above category average
External knowledge base8.4162 Ratings10.049 Ratings9.049 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.4167 Ratings10.047 Ratings9.049 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.8
189 Ratings
10% above category average
LiveAgent
8.5
58 Ratings
6% above category average
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk
8.7
53 Ratings
8% above category average
Customer portal8.7160 Ratings10.053 Ratings9.647 Ratings
IVR9.159 Ratings7.028 Ratings5.012 Ratings
Social integration8.5102 Ratings8.150 Ratings9.028 Ratings
Email support9.0188 Ratings7.454 Ratings10.047 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.5119 Ratings10.046 Ratings10.029 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskLiveAgentSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
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
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
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
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshdeskLiveAgentSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(260 ratings)
8.0
(117 ratings)
10.0
(84 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(25 ratings)
9.3
(4 ratings)
10.0
(29 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(42 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
9.7
(10 ratings)
Availability
7.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(41 ratings)
9.3
(24 ratings)
8.7
(26 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.1
(192 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Configurability
6.1
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.2
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.8
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.6
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
8.4
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.4
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.5
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskLiveAgentSpiceworks Cloud Help Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
I believe Freshdesk is well-suited for companies that manage multiple accounts, such as those in the Business Process Outsourcing industry. It has all the necessary capabilities, such as ticket management that uses omnichannel to receive ticket requests from service requests (managed internally) in the system, emails, etc. There are also several workflow automations that can be built within the platform/system. What is lacking is the API documentation, which limits the possibilities for further automations. Overall, it is a highly recommended tool for managing employee productivity and timeliness.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
LiveAgent is great for companies that want to help customers with their issues. It is also great for getting sales for our company. During our chats, if a customer is interested, we like to ask for the sale. It is too easy for the customers to say no. So it is nice that with LiveAgent, they have an automatic process where the customer can enter their item and address information and it is easy for our agents to get the sale.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
It's a great helpdesk solution - we currently have five years of data within it, roughly 25,000 tickets. The older edition is a great inventory and software license tracking tool. It is easy for users to use the interface and submit tickets and requests on the web, and its email integration is solid. The new version is a below-average system monitoring tool, only giving up/down status and a few other metrics.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
  • Having the ability to transfer tickets or chats has proven useful when we are working with a customer who has a specific type of inquiry - perhaps a sales question or an employment request. We’ve found it helpful to have the ability to transfer the chat to the online agent best equipped to answer the inquiry so we are able to serve our customers to the highest standard and with an immediate response.
  • We find being able to add notes and labels to previous chats and tickets incredibly helpful in data collection and also in our ability to work as a dynamic team. By being able to sort our chats and tickets into an organized system that our company created, we can work cohesively to review old conversations for continuity, opportunities for growth, and with transparency between departments.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • It helps to multitask, even on the go with the mobile App.
  • We can customize to meet your needs with automated responses, notifications, and templates.
  • Detailed reports allow managers to keep track [of] and analyze data.
  • Allows for a database to store notes helpful for future tickets.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
  • LA doesn't provide you SMS integration.
  • You cannot divert your phone call from your local carrier to LA agent directly. You need to get a third party number which is way much costly. Also, if you get a third party number to divert your calls from a local carrier to LA, then the callers have to wait more than the usual time in order to get them connected with the Customer Support Team.
  • WhatsApp Integration also unavailable.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • I have always wanted a way to redirect a support request into another IS bin, such as a development task.
  • It's possible to extract the data from the Spiceworks database, but it would be helpful if the process to do so were easier.
  • Improved ability to customize the system generated emails to improve the formatting and company branding.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
I am giving this rating as Live Agent is a very good software that is essential to any small or big business that provides customer support services. It gives you the possibility to manage any of your clients issues, answer questions and keep a good relationship with them by providing quick solutions.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks is a free tool, so there would be no hesitation if we are required to upgrade it. We have installed Spiceworks on a dedicated server with more than enough resources to get the most from this tool, so we will have this running in our department for years to come.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
The initial setup, onboarding and training is easy. The system provides 2 graphic version of interfaces in black or white default colors. I would appreciate, if there were more. Some of the setup forms are not correctly resized. Overall, I'm always able to find what I am looking for in LiveAgent.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks is user friendly and easy to set up. It can be customized to suit your needs. If there are any problems, you can go to the community forums for support and be in contact with many IT Pros, as well as the Spiceworks support staff and development teams who are always happy to help users out
Read full review
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
QualityUnit, LLC
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
We use it both locally on our own server so up time is decided by us and we also use the hosted help desk. We have never had an outage of that.
Read full review
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
QualityUnit, LLC
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
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
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
The one time that I contacted the customer support at LiveAgent, they were very quick to help me out and the customer support representative walked me through every thing that I needed to know to set up what I needed. Over all, the support staff at LiveAgent were perfect.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
Spiceworks has been working out of the box, and some of the basic customizations have been successful with just our internal staff handling. We don't have any other issues with the tool. It provides us with the inventory information we want in a quick and concise report in a variety of formats for our team.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Freshworks Inc
Was a fairly quick implementation for us. However, we are only doing email integration and not some of the more complex integrations that are possible. One clarification on an earlier question. I selected that Freshdesk doesn't have a given feature, but this is not true. I selected this because there wasn't a selection for I don't use the feature. This is a weakness in the survey.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
Implementation was quick and when not counting a bug on our website, it took a couple hours. It was mostly done on our end or with the assistance of LiveAgent's live chat support team. We recommend to check out LiveAgent's tutorial videos on their youtube channel or browsing their knowledge base - we've almost always found answers to our queries there.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
If you can spin up a VM to run it on, you'll thank yourself later. If you have remote sites, set up a local server (or dedicated computer) at each site and set them up as remote collectors for the main site. You'll save time and bandwidth
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Freshworks Inc
Compared to Crisp, Freshdesk offers much more organization and is just much more helpful when it comes to having more than one region/team. Not that Crisp is bad, but with Freshdesk, internal communication and collaboration are much easier, which was quite important for our team to grow.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
Before making the decision, we evaluated many tools, but none of them met all of our needs or the costs we could bear for them, until we found LiveAgent. The implementation process was super simple and supported by the LiveAgent support team, who are excellent!
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
EGroupware UI is clunky and hard to use, Jira is great but the pricing is expensive in comparison with spice works that has a free version and you can test it out properly before buying and make a correct decision based on your business plan and company objectives with the right software.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
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.
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
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
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
No answers on this topic
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
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
Read full review
QualityUnit, LLC
  • Less expensive than having multiple individual email accounts.
  • LiveAgent has helped decrease our errors since it's more straightforward than sharing a traditional inbox with multiple team members.
  • Sometimes the emails sent from LiveAgent end up in our customer's spam/junk folder because the auto-generated alpha-numeric ticket looks suspicious.
Read full review
Spiceworks Ziff Davis
  • Positive - Allow organizations to implement structured Help Desk procedures.
  • Positive - IT can begin to quantify their tickets and uncover needs within the organization.
  • Positive - IT can develop a solid roadmap with [the] management of future needs, equipment refresh schedules, etc.
  • Positive - IT can pinpoint employees who may need extra training or updated equipment based on historical ticketing data.
Read full review
ScreenShots

LiveAgent Screenshots

Screenshot of Inside of TicketsScreenshot of Chat - Support ViewScreenshot of Chat - Customer ViewScreenshot of Chat - Fully Customizable