Freshdesk vs. Zoho CRM

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshdesk
Score 8.6 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 10 agents per user
Zoho CRM
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Zoho CRM is a simple, very low-cost CRM option for the smaller end of the SMB segment. The product has several useful integrations with other products, including QuickBooks, and Google Apps and Google Docs. The product also has an integrated project management module.
$14
per month
Pricing
FreshdeskZoho CRM
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Up to 10 agents
Growth
$15
per month per agent
Pro
$49
per month per agent
Enterprise
$69
per month per agent
Standard
$14.00
Per User/Per Month
Professional
$23.00
Per User/Per Month
Enterprise
$40.00
Per User/Per Month
Ultimate
$52.00
Per User/Per Month
Plus
$57.00
Per User/Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskZoho CRM
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$14 /user/month
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshdeskZoho CRM
Considered Both Products
Freshdesk
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk is the middle of Zendesk and Zoho Desk when it comes to pricing. For us the biggest reason to switch from Zoho Desk to Freshdesk is because we wanted to consolidate our sales and support team into just one helpdesk software and we really liked the help center and …
Chose Freshdesk
1. Freshdesk is best suited for ticket management.
2. Its very costly but still worth the price.
3. It has many features with multiple support channels including live chat, email, phone and social media.
Chose Freshdesk
We chose Freshdesk as a combination of features, flexibility and usability vs. cost.
Zoho CRM
Chose Zoho CRM
For our organizations requirements, Zoho CRM fits for it and pricing to less than other products and it also has all suite plan where accounts team and marketing team use.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
FreshdeskZoho CRM
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.4
145 Ratings
6% above category average
Zoho CRM
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.7141 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory8.195 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.43 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.64 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission8.8142 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response8.7142 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.3
130 Ratings
7% above category average
Zoho CRM
-
Ratings
External knowledge base8.4116 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.3120 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.4
138 Ratings
9% above category average
Zoho CRM
-
Ratings
Customer portal8.1116 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR8.143 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration8.572 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support8.7138 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.284 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.7
274 Ratings
0% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.3266 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings7.8253 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings7.4186 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.2240 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings7.5239 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings7.6191 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings7.6190 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings7.9237 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings7.3182 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.1
210 Ratings
6% below category average
Case management00 Ratings7.2203 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings6.9163 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings7.2181 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.1
253 Ratings
7% above category average
Lead management00 Ratings8.2248 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings8.0210 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.9
251 Ratings
4% above category average
Task management00 Ratings8.1236 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings7.7171 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings7.8230 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.9
246 Ratings
4% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings7.6206 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings7.9224 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.1237 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.9
265 Ratings
4% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings8.4263 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings7.9210 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings7.3170 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings7.8193 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.4
253 Ratings
1% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings8.4220 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.4248 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.1
158 Ratings
11% above category average
Social data00 Ratings8.1157 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings8.0149 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.6
200 Ratings
6% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings7.8197 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings7.5130 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.7
219 Ratings
3% above category average
Mobile access00 Ratings7.7219 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskZoho CRM
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshdeskZoho CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(212 ratings)
8.3
(298 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(14 ratings)
3.4
(33 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(35 ratings)
8.3
(168 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(4 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
8.6
(4 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(33 ratings)
4.9
(65 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.4
(142 ratings)
7.2
(10 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(3 ratings)
8.1
(110 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.5
(21 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.8
(2 ratings)
7.2
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(7 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.8
(2 ratings)
9.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskZoho CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
Using a collection of Skill Based Ticket Assignment, Ticket Allocation, and alerts, we’ve been able to bring our average resolution time to under half our previous time. This is done by making sure the right tickets get to the right agents, and by ensuring agents are followed up on to ensure they do not forget deadlines on tickets in their queue. Furthermore, tickets which would be open for weeks due to lack of a client response are now closed automatically following a prompt email to the end-user
Read full review
Zoho
For customizing a CRM without needing specialist support, Zoho CRM is great. The admin UI is pretty intuitive and easy to use. Zoho CRM also works great for tracking contact records and relationships to other records. For instance, we run 10+ different programs, and we need to track every contact's relationship to any and all of our programs. Besides the program relationship, we also track organization/employer relationships, host site relationships for interns, team relationships for several of our programs, and we are starting to track grant disbursement as well. Zoho CRM's "joiner modules" handle all of these different connection points fairly well, though the data import process can be a pain.
Read full review
Pros
Freshworks Inc
  • Follow up on all conversations that enter and are easy to use by the employee and save responses ready for use.
  • Find out the average rate of the number of conversations that occur in the company and conduct the analysis.
  • There is a feature it allows one to take a permit in the name of the employee who responds to the conversation and to know the problem faced by the customer and the solution.
Read full review
Zoho
  • Zoho CRM has so much space to capture lots of information.
  • Zoho CRM can be customized for your organization's needs.
  • Zoho CRM is great for running reports to help make business decisions.
  • We love all the different dashboards we can create.
Read full review
Cons
Freshworks Inc
  • Ticket templates and canned responses should be able to be used interchangeably. We frequently have the same response in both fields.
  • The spam filter can be a little too aggressive. We have had issues with tickets being accidentally marked as spam then filtering incorrectly for weeks at a time.
  • Freshdesk doesn't quite have the right integrations with our other providers (Vonage, and Avochato, to name a few).
Read full review
Zoho
  • our team found it very challenging to integrate directly to our wordpress site
  • while there may be a way to integrate to the SMS system, we have not discovered how a sales rep would be able to get an sms when customers leave their contact info (not through the app)
  • we have one team member who still works with outlook calendar. it was easy to integrate with google calendar, but a second calendar, depending upon the user
Read full review
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
Read full review
Zoho
Zoho has been a wonderful tool for us for several years and there is so much more we can do with it. New features are released often which give a team like us the option to further fine tune our business process management techniques. I honestly couldn't imagine running our business not on Zoho.
Read full review
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!
Read full review
Zoho
The methodology of the 'out of the box' user interface is fairly easy to learn. In some cases however, the interface is not consistent throughout the software. Upgrades to the interface has certainly improved some of this--- but now we are seeing the same kinds of inconsistencies across Zoho apps, particularly those more recently added to their platform. This issue is not major in that everybody on staff seems able to learn how to work the programs--- it's just annoying and less than efficient when inconsistent user interfaces or inconsistent terms are used in the programs and/or the requisite documentation.
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
Zoho
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.
Read full review
Zoho
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.
Read full review
Zoho
We did the training and that was a huge waste of money. The information provided was basic and the instructor was sloppy (he even forgot to turn off his mic when he used the restroom - no one should ever hear what we heard). I offered up a 9 because we were able to find what we needed on your website.
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
Zoho
It was harder to learn when there were mostly real estate users in the room. We are sales solely.
Read full review
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
Zoho
Online training is tough, but Zoho and their partners do a good job of explaining things.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Freshworks Inc
Not applicable. I have never used a support desk system before and FreshDesk had already been implemented at my company before I joined. I am not involved in financial decisions and I have no opinion on buzzwords like "time to productivity" and "time to value"
Read full review
Zoho
When you switch CRMs, you can automatically assume everything isn’t going to match up correctly. We had used Salesforce for 10+ years and had a ton of data and customizations. It was not a clean transfer, but we were able to sort it all out. The only issue that really bothered me was Zoho support. Even simple questions couldn’t be answered over chat, and we would have some team members try for hours to find the right answer
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Freshworks Inc
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 them spend days getting use to the UI.
Read full review
Zoho
Zoho is the only product we have used. Our company is fairly new and before purchasing Zoho a few years ago, client files were only saved and looked at through our company server. Because of how great Zoho has been, we have never considered looking for another product because there really is no need
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Freshworks Inc
The pricing we had taken is on yearly basis but the subscription and billing frequency that we have is on monthly basis. I would not want to make any changes to it, it is a seamless process with all the contract terms and we both agreed on it. It should be as per the customer's need.
Read full review
Zoho
I think Zoho CRM is priced at a reasonable amount. Simply put, you get what you pay for and Zoho does not disappoint. My organization is comfortable with what we pay and pleased with continually renewing the software. The billing frequency is just right. There are no complaints on our end
Read full review
Scalability
Freshworks Inc
The product they have developed is amazing. They have made different products for emails, tickets, chats & calls as well. It is flexible according to multiple departments. The finance team can use it, the Customer support team is using it, we can use it in call centres, emails etc. We can use these tickets internally as well to create child tickets and assign them to different departments for query resolution.
Read full review
Zoho
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Freshworks Inc
No answers on this topic
Zoho
In addition to being a user of Zoho CRM, we are a reseller as well. Often, at times our Partners request for on-boarding the platform configuration for them. During such requirements, we have utilized the Professional services team directly from the Zoho CRM team. Our partner feedback was quite positive, throughout.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Freshworks Inc
  • Freshdesk is certainly better than nothing, or a simple shared inbox
  • Freshdesk is frustrating to incorporate social media with
  • Freshdesk excels at ticket management
  • Freshdesk needs to do more to bring it into alignment with business, rather than 'just' service desk needs.
Read full review
Zoho
  • ROI is good, providing your entire team is involved with the program and uses it
  • During busy season, Zoho keeps the flow going with reminders for quote follow-ups
  • Our company saw an estimated 20% gain in closing sales that went through Zoho as compared to quotes not answered through Zoho
Read full review
ScreenShots

Zoho CRM Screenshots

Screenshot of Deals - Cash in on all opportunities. Close more deals. Great sales management is all about prioritizing, tracking, and monitoring the deals in your pipeline. Zoho CRM gives you everything you need to manage deals across territories and sales structures.Screenshot of Activities - Keep track of all the tasks, meetings, calls, events, or activity records. Neatly organize the numerous records along with the activities associated to them such as follow-up, pre sales and post sales activities, phone conversations etc.