Freshdesk vs. Zendesk Suite

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
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk is a customer support solution with built-in ticketing, conversational messaging, and live chat, designed to help businesses of all sizes and industries deliver personalized service at scale. Zendesk's AI agents are trained in CX to help Service teams resolve customer issues faster and more accurately while still providing a human-centered experience. Zendesk ultimately aims to help businesses improve time to value, reduce effort per ticket, and keep costs low.
$69
per month per agent
Pricing
FreshdeskZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
Growth
$18
per month per agent
Pro
$59
per month per agent
Enterprise
$95
per month per agent
Suite Team
$69
per month per agent
Suite Growth
$115
per month per agent
Suite Professional
$149
per month per agent
Suite Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskZendesk Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshdeskZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Freshdesk
Chose Freshdesk
- Zendesk vs Freshdesk is similar but FD is better than zendesk. - SF vs Freshdesk cost is almost ok but got better contacts in FD to begin with. - Siebel vs Freshdesk UI challenge are easier than Siebel. - Jira vs Freshdesk Cost effective than Jira.
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk, Zendesk and ServiceNow are all excellent. Other products have good points and bad points, but, in my opinion, are clearly inferior. It really comes down to implementation and how well the ticketing system is integrated with other systems, and customized for your …
Chose Freshdesk
My company originally selected Freshdesk due to price, but as we grew, we found it lacking compared to its more expensive counterparts. I briefly compared Zendesk to resolve our main issues with Freshdesk, but I'd spent so much time and effort customizing Freshdesk that we …
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
Ultimately we ended up switching from Freshdesk to Zendesk, and then from zendesk to DevRev. We're still trying to find the right fit for us - Freshdesk covers the same options as Zendesk, if you use the whole suite it's probably a good option.
Chose Freshdesk
The decision was made before my time. I want to move to another platform ASAP.
Chose Freshdesk
How do they stack up? Like apples and hand grenades, there’s no comparison. In my experience, Zendesk was a complete nightmare, between being overpriced contracts, difficult to communicate with, impossible to implement, I wouldn’t wish Zendesk on my worst enemy. Stay away!
Chose Freshdesk
We chose Freshdesk for the variety of capabilities and easy-to-use features. Jobber lacked the analytics, history, sales features, and easy-to-use options needed to grow our business. Zendesk was not user-friendly and many of the "integrations" could only be connected by people …
Chose Freshdesk
Value for Money and Ease of Use put it ahead of the competing products when making our decision.

Whilst they all offer similar services, our time to implement, set-up and get the platform running the way we needed was shortest. It was also an easy to use tool for agents - …
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk is cheaper.
Zendesk would also allow customers to close tickets on their own and it also has functionality where a few solution articles are automatically recommended to the customer based on what they wrote and that might already solve the customers' request.
Chose Freshdesk
we decided to use Freshdesk based on the fact that a sister company was also using it and recommended we use it as well
Chose Freshdesk
It is easier to start with, but less robust overall. Freshdesk has a better free tier, and had some advanced customization capabilities. Zendesk is easier to get to an advanced level with, has more and better integrations, and has a better data tool. HubSpot is comparable to …
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk is much more cost effective than competitors.
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk offers so much more support, integration and a great mobile app compared to ZenDesk.
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
For the price point, FreshDesk is a great starter solution for service desk management.

If you need further integration with other systems, you may quickly find yourself looking at other options, or using native tools - because FreshDesk simply doesn't have the integration …
Chose Freshdesk
Compared to the above alternatives, Freshdesk has proven to be easier for our organisation to use for both our colleagues and external parties. The fast and personalised support also rose above the other alternatives.
Chose Freshdesk
I did not make the decision originally on implementation however having inherited it I would choose it again, it's feature rich and cost effective with great support.
Chose Freshdesk
We set up test instances of Zendesk, Zoho Desk, UVdesk, Freshdesk and trakdesk and asked our agents to evaluate the products themselves. It was very clear to all that Freshdesk was the more user-friendly, easy-to-set-up and more innovative solution. In the meantime we are very …
Chose Freshdesk
It's a matter of which one is more straightforward and beneficial for the agents. There was much more features offered with Freshdesk that could help our business flow and workflow which is why we've opted to use it for a client. There was also less cost to using it compared to …
Chose Freshdesk
We purchased both Freshsales and Fresh desk at the same time. The Freshworks products gave the best solution at the time because I believed I'd receive one-on-one support and guidance as well as get all of the features we required between the two products as well as full …
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
We used Freshdesk when it was a relatively new product. We switched to Zendesk later to take advantage of better user management, easier interface and user experience, better reporting tools and to align ourselves with a recognised brand.

We use Intercom to engage with …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is more established than these two companies and provides a more robust solution for multi-channel support. Intercom is better suited for chat support and Freshdesk doesn't offer as many features and Zendesk does.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Freshdesk lacks the integration across channels. Their chat and email experience feels disconnected. Their reporting lacks customizability and some data is just not available.
For agents pulling in external information is more complex due to it's lack of fully integrated apps …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite provides a unified agent workspace and advanced AI agents, flow builders, customer intent as well as triggers, automations and rules that drive efficacy unlike Freshdesk.
Chose Zendesk Suite
We Initially started working the Zendesk Suite and it is more easier to understand all the functionalities and workflows. It is more secured and well managed platform
Chose Zendesk Suite
Here are the explanations for my preference of analysis Zendesk Suite to this end:

Power + Usability: Zendesk Suite has abundant omnichannel coverage, acceptable automation, and decent reporting but does not go all in to full-custom dev mode, so hangs nicely in the space of …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite seemed to have a lot more customization and flexibility. We have multiple "brands" that need to follow different flows and have different needs and Zendesk Suite allowed us to easily do that. We also had strong needs for a help center and liked how their worked …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Although Zendesk Suites has a higher value when it comes to it's pricing, Zendesk offers more features and functionality also Zendesk Suites has already established it's name and is trusted by many businesses and organizations. Other similar products maybe cheaper and simple …
Chose Zendesk Suite
The customisable reporting every time. Our leadership reply on me to run my team and want to know what customers are telling us so they can elevate our products. We have extensive custom reports that tie up all aspects of our product and customer journeys. I've not found …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk was the most organized, integrateable option between the other options I've used before.
Chose Zendesk Suite
If spoken honestly Intercom is a level-par with any nearest competitor, Tools like Zendesk has to catchup with them in speed. However, there is an advantage to Zendesk with its simple and easy-to-get software which falls in every mid and small-size business pocket wherein …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is the industry leader in terms of the number of other platforms you can connect it with (CRM's, Customer Success Tools, Billing Tools, etc)—this makes it extremely sticky and a core part of your workflow. Zendesk also offers a variety of channels all in the one …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk has been easy to implement and evolve over time. They have launched more online Client learning sessions and occasionally offer in-person local client group sessions to aid in our learning. They offer their training modules for free. The key is we can create the needed …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Support Suite might be pricey but the cost definitely outweighs numerous benefits. Other platforms focus solely on the customer but what our organization likes about Zendesk is that it not only aims to provide a great experience for the customer, it also keeps in view …
Chose Zendesk Suite

Zendesk offers an all-in-one solution and great analytics to analyze the ticketing in the company.

Zendesk seems to be more customizable than others and it seemed to be the best option for the price paid. It's secure and stable which is what we needed in the company.

Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is currently on par with both of these services in that they are great ticketing software programs but are light in Contact/Sales management. The autoresponder with Zendesk is much easier to implement and customize compared to the other options. The option of the mobile …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk was the best of the bunch and allowed us the best value for what we were looking for. It allowed us to import data from our other ticketing system and was very user friendly when it came to ticket and email integration. We also were able to setup on our website where …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is a world recognised tool, that ITIL recommend. Easy to use format, great search tools to cross reference issues that are logged. Personalisation allows you to brand your customer facing site.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk competitors include:
  • Microsoft Parature -- this product intreface is possibly the worst I've seen for customer service. Looks like a mid-90s enterprise application and is about as intuitive to use. We have help migrate dozens of instances away from Parature into Zendesk …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Freshdesk, Sherpadesk
Chose Zendesk Suite
Other platforms I have evaluated: Kayako, Fogbugz, Bugzilla, Assembla, FreshDesk.

I ended up picking Zendesk for several reasons, but there was really 3 reasons why I ultimately picked them:
Features
FreshdeskZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
7.7
199 Ratings
6% below category average
Zendesk Suite
8.8
173 Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.2194 Ratings9.3172 Ratings
Expert directory7.9131 Ratings8.2118 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications4.54 Ratings8.7119 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation6.45 Ratings8.2122 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.2195 Ratings9.4173 Ratings
Ticket response8.9195 Ratings9.2172 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.4
177 Ratings
5% above category average
Zendesk Suite
8.2
157 Ratings
2% above category average
External knowledge base8.4161 Ratings8.1151 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.3165 Ratings8.3144 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.7
186 Ratings
8% above category average
Zendesk Suite
8.8
169 Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal8.7158 Ratings9.1138 Ratings
IVR9.058 Ratings8.471 Ratings
Social integration8.4100 Ratings8.4112 Ratings
Email support9.0185 Ratings9.3166 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.5118 Ratings9.0128 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskZendesk Suite
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
FreshdeskZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(261 ratings)
9.1
(208 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(25 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(42 ratings)
8.8
(82 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(6 ratings)
9.1
(14 ratings)
Performance
7.1
(6 ratings)
9.1
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(41 ratings)
5.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(3 ratings)
6.4
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(192 ratings)
9.1
(19 ratings)
Configurability
5.9
(7 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.0
(5 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.7
(6 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.5
(6 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
8.2
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.4
(5 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.4
(5 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskZendesk Suite
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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Zendesk
Being a customer support agent, I found it very good when it comes to send an email or call or chat- with the user. I can do all that from the one single platform which is so easy and time saving for you. It does not take much time to use this, We can chat- with the user and at the same time we can send an email to them as well.
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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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Zendesk
  • UI/UX; mature macros and automations, slick and well thought out UI.
  • Reporting, reporting, reporting. With user, org, and ticket level tags, we can track every aspect of our ticket flow.
  • Extensibility; the app marketplace is a great resource for expanding functionality from the baseline offering.
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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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Zendesk
  • Is there a way for AEs and CSMs to be informed in a weekly summary of all their accounts and any tickets? Example: Disney submitted a ticket on XYZ. Google has an urgent issue on X still unresolved.
  • Is there a way for CSMs or AEs to have a Dashboard that's specific to their accounts instead of seeing all the tickets in the queue that are not relevant to them?
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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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Zendesk
Zendesk is an amazing tool for communicating with your customers easily. The communication tickets from sellers to us or from us to sellers are stored, and there are statuses used to make communication easy. We have internal conversations between departments, linked with useful software such as Zingtree, Talkdesk, and Webs.
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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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Zendesk
Pros: The agent interface is sleek, contemporary, and relatively easy to learn compared to many other enterprise tools. For common tasks, admins are given point-and-click options- adding fields, modifying workflows, constructing macros. The knowledge base (Guide) editor is easy to use for non-developers. Drawbacks: Once you move past the initial things - complex automations, reporting/analytics in Explore, and/or customizations integrating the API, it requires much more advanced training to use successfully. Navigating between the different modules (Support, Explore, Chat, Guide) can feel very disconnected; often you are reminded that it really is a "suite" of products brought together -not really one unified platform. If you're using multiple brands managing simultaneous support tickets, or heavily customizing workflows to meet your brand, you may run into a bit of struggle with usability. So: it's a lot more user friendly than the palaces (Salesforce Service Cloud, ServiceNow), but is not used as quickly or with as much streamlined flow as a product made for a small shop. So if you are looking for a great balance, this is a good option if you are a net new organization or an organization on their way to scaling from 15 - 50 employee. Expect some elbow grease from the admin team once learning, adapting, and working efficiently once you move past the basics with your support tickets and initial customizations.
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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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Zendesk
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
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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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Zendesk
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
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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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Zendesk
We rarely need to contact their support team, but when we do they are responsive. However there have been notable times when communication between myself and the support rep was challenging despite me providing clear explanation of the issue, screenshots, and a thorough explanation of the goal we hope to achieve. It took several back and forth attempt, on a few occasions, to get resolution on an otherwise simple request
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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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Zendesk
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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Zendesk
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
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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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Zendesk
I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy
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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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Zendesk
The customisable reporting every time. Our leadership reply on me to run my team and want to know what customers are telling us so they can elevate our products. We have extensive custom reports that tie up all aspects of our product and customer journeys. I've not found another product that allows me as much freedom as Zendesk Suite explore does, so far.
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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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Zendesk
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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Zendesk
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
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Professional Services
Freshworks Inc
- good customer support
- personal contact
- usage limited to basic product features, individually designed solutions seem unlikely
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Zendesk
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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Zendesk
  • Integrating other AI solutions for an organization with high volumes can cost about USD5000 monthly. With Zendesk AI and by building onto the same with AI powered apps built for Zendesk Suite we save a projected USD4000 monthly.
  • Robust Zendesk APIs have enabled us to integrate our internal system with a customized app saving us hundreds of hours every quarter spent loading customer profiles that are not loaded instantly from the app.
  • Plug and play apps like Round robin save us weeks of sprint delay timelines as they do not require additional coding or developer support to install and start using.
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ScreenShots

Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of the Zendesk Agent WorkspaceScreenshot of Omnichannel MessagingScreenshot of Zendesk TicketingScreenshot of Bots powered by Zendesk AIScreenshot of Tone shift with Zendesk AIScreenshot of Zendesk ticketing side conversations