Freshdesk vs. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

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
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
ServiceDesk Plus is free help desk software from ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation.
$10
Starting Price Per Month
Pricing
FreshdeskManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Editions & Modules
Growth
$18
per month per agent
Pro
$59
per month per agent
Enterprise
$95
per month per agent
Standard
$10.00
Starting Price Per Month
Professional
$21.00
Starting Price Per Month
Enterprise
$50.00
Starting Price Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
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
FreshdeskManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Considered Both Products
Freshdesk
Chose Freshdesk
FreshDesk was the best combination of ease of use and price. While inexpensive, even the lowest tier offered more functionality than the other guys, and the learning curve is almost nonexistent so it's easy to add new agents and get them up to speed quickly instead of having …
Chose Freshdesk
ManageEngine was our first customer support ticketing system we implemented (instead of using a massive Excel file) - it vastly improved our ability to engage with customers, but we quickly outgrew it's feature-set and needing a solution that would continue to grow with us. Sale…
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Chose ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Great overall ticketing system. Everything is very organized. Easy for someone to learn quickly without even seeing the product before.
Features
FreshdeskManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.0
200 Ratings
2% below category average
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
7.5
21 Ratings
9% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.2195 Ratings8.021 Ratings
Expert directory7.9132 Ratings6.614 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications5.95 Ratings7.115 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation6.86 Ratings8.917 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.2196 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response8.9196 Ratings00 Ratings
Service restoration00 Ratings6.116 Ratings
Self-service tools00 Ratings8.019 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards00 Ratings8.019 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.4
178 Ratings
5% above category average
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
-
Ratings
External knowledge base8.4162 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.3166 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.7
187 Ratings
8% above category average
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
-
Ratings
Customer portal8.7159 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR9.059 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration8.4101 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support9.0186 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.5119 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
7.8
16 Ratings
6% below category average
Configuration mangement00 Ratings8.515 Ratings
Asset management dashboard00 Ratings8.015 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement00 Ratings7.111 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
8.5
17 Ratings
1% below category average
Change requests repository00 Ratings8.116 Ratings
Change calendar00 Ratings8.512 Ratings
Service-level management00 Ratings9.015 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
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
FreshdeskManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(261 ratings)
9.0
(21 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(25 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(42 ratings)
8.1
(5 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(41 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(192 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.7
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.4
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.4
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
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.
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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
ServiceDesk Plus is very easy to configure at the start, and then adjust the categories and rules as the implementation is refined. Its greatest strength is the ability to program without requiring a full time administrator. There is very little jargon involved. Reporting not so much. The canned reports are useful but do not always cover some of the basics. Fortunately, the user groups freely share report definitions so one could springboard from something close to your desired result.
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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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
  • Ticket logging for end users, so they can see the progress on their help requests
  • Asset management; it has an agent that can be installed on machines which can then feed back information on installed software, active times, logged on user etc
  • Project management; larger projects can be managed within ManageEngine ServiceDesk as well as end user help tickets, where progress/milestones etc can be recorded
  • Active Directory import of users, so that it automatically updates when users are created/deleted and links their accounts in ManageEngine ServiceDesk with their email address as well to enable email alerts
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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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
  • When trying to select the top row ticket, you have to be careful not to select all tickets. Happened to us twice and we assigned all open tickets to one technician. Took a few minutes to correct.
  • Site is sometimes a bit sluggish to respond. Don't know if that is an issue with our network infrastructure or the program itself, though.
  • When users send emails to the help desk, we sometimes experience delays until the tickets appear on the site for the technicians.
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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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
we are looking at other tools like Zendesk which may replace ServiceDesk. We are currently evaluating both tools to see which one would serve our needs better
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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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
It is still very cumbersome, lots of data entry on the back end to build how we want it but it is still not completely user friendly. Many functions still dont work and contacting someone for help isnt always easy or we get told solutions for issues we have just arent built yet.
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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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
Our network administrator usually gets a good response when contacting ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus customer service. They are quick to respond and so far have been able to eliminate most of our issues. We have been through several upgrades of the software over the years and have no issues to report in regards to customer service.
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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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
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.
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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
No answers on this topic
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.
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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
Spiceworks was free, which obviously had both benefits and limitations - I will say that the community around Spiceworks has always been great. If we could replicate that experience with the ME user base, it would be terrific.
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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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
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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ManageEngine, A Div of Zoho Corporation Pvt Ltd
  • The tool does not scale well from an ROI perspective. As you add a customer, you must add a new instance, hence a new license.
  • The tool is probably on the expensive side (34,000 USD per 130 technicians per year).
  • There is no usage beyond incident, change, and problem management. The CMDB feature is extremely limited and cannot generate additional ROI. There is no knowledge-base or integration with other software (other than ME Desktop Central).
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ScreenShots