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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Kayako

    Score6.8 out of 10
    N/AKayako 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

    Tidal by Redwood

    Score6.8 out of 10
    N/ATidal Automation, from Redwood Software since the early 2023 acquisition, is an enterprise workload automation platform for automating and orchestrating cross-application, cross-platform workloads – in on-prem, cloud or hybrid environments – from one central point of control. Tidal is used to optimize mission-critical business processes, manage…N/A
    Pricing
    KayakoTidal by Redwood
    Editions & Modules
    Kayako One
    $79
    per month
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    KayakoTidal by Redwood
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    KayakoTidal by Redwood
    Considered Both Products
    Kayako
    No answer on this topic
    Redwood Software
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    21 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    20 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    21 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    17 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    18 Answers
    Features
    KayakoTidal by Redwood
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Kayako and Tidal by Redwood
    Feature
    Kayako
    2.0
    11 Ratings
    122% below category average
    Tidal by Redwood
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets1.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory1.05 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation1.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission7.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response1.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Kayako and Tidal by Redwood
    Feature
    Kayako
    1.0
    9 Ratings
    156% below category average
    Tidal by Redwood
    -
    Ratings
    External knowledge base1.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Kayako and Tidal by Redwood
    Feature
    Kayako
    1.0
    10 Ratings
    156% below category average
    Tidal by Redwood
    -
    Ratings
    Customer portal1.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    IVR1.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social integration1.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email support1.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration1.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workload Automation
    Comparison of Workload Automation features of Kayako and Tidal by Redwood
    Feature
    Kayako
    -
    Ratings
    Tidal by Redwood
    8.3
    19 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Multi-platform scheduling00 Ratings8.716 Ratings
    Central monitoring00 Ratings8.618 Ratings
    Logging00 Ratings8.519 Ratings
    Alerts and notifications00 Ratings8.519 Ratings
    Analysis and visualization00 Ratings8.019 Ratings
    Application integration00 Ratings7.818 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    KayakoTidal by Redwood
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Apache Airflow
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Redwood RunMyJobs
    Score9.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    KayakoTidal by Redwood
    Likelihood to Recommend
    1.0
    (22 ratings)
    7.4
    (21 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.8
    (11 ratings)
    2.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    2.1
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    KayakoTidal by Redwood
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    On coming to well suited experience while error handling and effortless recovery processes are crucial, Tidal performs exceptionally well. It can identify and fix automated issues, reducing downtime and interruptions. A smaller automation solution may be more cost-effective if a business primarily utilizes a single platform or uses a small number of applications that do not require complex integration.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    • Tidal Automation allows us to automate and schedule/ perform various tasks in a easy and effective manner. It is highly interactive and effective allowing nearly 4k -5k jobs to run a day.
    • Tidal is designed to be easily shareable and collaborative allowing multiple users to work at a particular time making work effective.
    • Tidal allows us to ensure that every event which is triggered is exactly when it's supposed to be regardless of other activities which are going as well.
    • It is user-friendly to generate the reports required of a particular object and allows us to test the codes perfectly well before executing in live environment.
    Read full review
    Cons
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    • Still a bit slow when navigating. If you close a job you have to wait a few seconds to open another one. Even when you made no changes.
    • When viewing a job and make no changes, the "ok" button changes the last modified date as if you made a change. No big deal, but wastes time when troubleshooting a problem and looking into what jobs were changed last.
    • You can see the parameters column in the "job activity", but not in "Job definitions".
    • Can't search the parameters field in the filter.
    • Changing a variable name does not change it on the job. It still works because Tidal Automation uses the ID number. It just causes confusion when you see a variable on a job and can't find the variable under "Variables". On top of that, Tidal Automation does not show the ID column under "Variables" making it even more difficult to find the variable.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    We are on the fence. The increased pricing for renewals is staggering. With new automation options like Microsoft's Power Automate and Event Driven Ansible on the field, there are other options now available.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Kayako
    I did not come from an IT background and I picked this program up quickly
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    Having provided consulting services for years on Tidal by Redwood, I recommend going with a solutions partner or consultant to deploy it. I believe there are sizing and tuning guidelines that should be followed for environments of scale. I believe they are not critical when first lighting up the product, but if you are not aware of them you will encounter performance degradation after a few thousand job objects are added.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    1. Tidal is good at processing large volume pf data and is cost effective. 2. Tidal can automate the scheduling of production objects, ensure that materials are delivered on time 3. Tidal Process large volumes of data which cannot be done everyday by running codes/scripts manually which does it with ease when required.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Redwood Software
    • Better decision-making and more process visibility are achieved through reporting and monitoring.
    • Lowered time frames and streamlined administration of the workflow.
    • Improved cost and resource allocation, especially in cloud contexts.
    • A decrease in manual errors and related expenditures.
    • Unusual problems that could occur during automation.
    • Possible difficulties shifting to a new automation tool.
    • The expense of beginning implementation and training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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