Freshservice vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshservice
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Freshservice is a cloud-based service desk and IT service management (ITSM) solution that currently serves more than 10,000 SMB, mid-market, and enterprise customers worldwide.
$29
per month per agent
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
FreshserviceZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
Starter
$29.00
per month per agent
Growth
$59.00
per month per agent
Pro
$119.00
per month per agent
Enterprise
Custom
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
FreshserviceZendesk Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual billing.20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshserviceZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Freshservice
Chose Freshservice
We chose Freshservice because it struck the perfect balance between ease of use , modern design and enterprise grade ITSM functionality.
Chose Freshservice
Price and ease of use was our main reason for going with Freshservice, also the implementation time compared to what I have used in the past was a big selling point
Chose Freshservice
Mainly because of its very easy-to-use design, pricing, support and integration options. It is also very modern and fast in adopting new features.
Chose Freshservice
Ease of use is much better with fresh service, combined with a similar cost and increased suite of applications (asset management, etc) make it a no brainer to use fresh service
Chose Freshservice
We moved from a legacy version of Trackit and there really is no comparison. Freshservice is head & shoulders above Trackit. When we decided to switch from Trackit, we initially decided on Zendesk, but ran into some issues with their contract team. They were difficult to work …
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice has a clean fresh interface and covers all the functionality we need without being prohibitively expensive. Other tools match features and functionality but Freshservice also has sister applications like Freshdesk which we also use. Freshdesk we use for customer …
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice is providing us the ability to customize the user interface. It offers us to auto translate the page to other languages. Also, their marketing team came to our office and gave a detailed presentation about the product. Also, the product is budget friendly and was …
Chose Freshservice
We campared other couple of tools while selecting Freshservice but as per cost and features this is the best software.
Chose Freshservice
1. Cost - I have always had the best cost provided by Freshservice as compared to others
2. Functionality - far more functionality is provided by Freshservice
3. ITIL enabled ITSM tool with better support for different ITIL modules
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice is very easy to set up and manage. Expect to be up and running answering ticket within the hour.
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice to us was a clear winner, for its simple GUI, simple setup and configuration and support, pre and post go live.
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice's cost/feature ratio was by far the best compared to the other solutions. Better UI, more robust automation features that are no/low code, full end to end service management platform for a global enterprise.
Chose Freshservice
We came from Zendesk, which worked well for us as a customer service interaction platform, but we needed a fully-fledged ITSM that would allow for asset management, documentation for internal changes and requests all in one. We found that with additional tools and automations …
Chose Freshservice
We picked Freshservice over the others for many reasons. The first would be the ease of implementation. Another is due to the nice interface the system has. We also like the way we can push out a small piece of software to pull in the asset information for asset management. …
Chose Freshservice
Zendesk is the Cisco of the IT Support world—everyone uses it and no one gets fired for buying it. However, Zendesk is far more than most organizations need and is one of the most expensive solutions. I really wanted to go with HappyFox, it performed well and has a great …
Chose Freshservice
Freshservice offered a number of awesome features pre-baked into the product, where Zendesk is more flexible and has a wider library of integrations. For companies who don't need that deep flexibility, Freshservice is an excellent choice as a ticketing system. The service …
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
We moved from Freshservice to Zendesk due to a larger group in Tech wanting to integrate better with Jira. This imposed a significantly higher monthly cost. While it worked well for the teams using Jira, it was a steep cost increase for the HD Group.

Once the larger teams …
Chose Zendesk Suite
I started in the company with Zendesk Support Suite already, so experience with it was an easy learning curve. Freshservice is just as good as well. The GUI interface is friendly to look at and easy on the eyes. When you're in support and [staring] at the screen all day, …
Features
FreshserviceZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
8.2
172 Ratings
1% below category average
Zendesk Suite
8.8
179 Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.1172 Ratings9.4178 Ratings
Expert directory7.8121 Ratings8.0122 Ratings
Service restoration7.8106 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-service tools8.4153 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.3124 Ratings8.7125 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.1143 Ratings8.1126 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards8.0149 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.5178 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.2177 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
7.7
137 Ratings
7% below category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Configuration mangement7.9128 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset management dashboard7.4132 Ratings00 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement7.795 Ratings00 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
7.9
133 Ratings
8% below category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Change requests repository8.0126 Ratings00 Ratings
Change calendar7.5107 Ratings00 Ratings
Service-level management8.1123 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.2
161 Ratings
2% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.2155 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.3148 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshservice
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
174 Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings9.2142 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.273 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.2115 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.3171 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.9132 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshserviceZendesk 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
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.3 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshserviceZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(170 ratings)
9.2
(208 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(14 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(15 ratings)
8.8
(82 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(5 ratings)
9.1
(14 ratings)
Performance
7.8
(6 ratings)
9.1
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
6.9
(136 ratings)
5.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.2
(3 ratings)
6.4
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.8
(10 ratings)
9.1
(19 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(5 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
7.7
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.5
(7 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.1
(6 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
8.6
(4 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.3
(4 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(5 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshserviceZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Freshworks Inc
Freshservice is well suited for companies looking to implement ticketing / case management across the organization, but only if IT will be using it. Otherwise, I'd recommend Freshdesk. IT departments that don't function in the ITIL style of incident, request, change, and project management may find it overkill if they are only looking for a simple Help Desk solution.
Read full review
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
  • The smartphone app is very well designed and adding assets from there is very easy
  • If you have questions or support, the support desk is fast to respond and setup a meeting to explain the features
  • Very customizable and everything can be easily changed with a wizard
  • Reporting feature does what it needs to do and is not complicated to work with
  • The overall ticketing system is very good and we have not run into any issues
  • The whole system is incredibly responsive and does not hang or freeze
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Cons
Freshworks Inc
  • To have more options on what to do with the emails that arrive in the support mailbox (which goes to Freshservice), Setting some special rules or detailed filtering is not possible.
  • Non 3rd party tools to connect to Intune are missing. Additionally, the third-party tool available in the store is not satisfactory. It would be nice to have native support for importing devices from our Azure cloud.
  • The contract requires you to prolong your contract end-date by two years instead of just one year, which to us is a bit aggressive.
Read full review
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?
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Freshworks Inc
We are pretty invested in Freshservice right now and have integrated it pretty heavily into our environment, so it would be hard to move away from it. For the most part, we are happy with Freshservice and the ease of use it gives us in managing tickets through the system. The only complaint we've had is customer service.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Usability
Freshworks Inc
The UI design of Freshservice is simple and intuitive. You don't have to be a technical expert to navigate your way into the different pages/modules available. There are no buttons that are hidden in plain sight. Even our HR team required little to no help when they started using Freshservice.
Read full review
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
In our 3 years of using Freshservice, we've experienced several outages in the first 2 years. There were times where it only took minutes or hours but there are also times where it took a few days. Each time, Freshservice remained transparent and constantly communicated their progress. We haven't had one in the past year which indicates Freshservice have improved their servers.
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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.
Read full review
Performance
Freshworks Inc
Pages load quickly but internet connectivity can also play a big role. Integrations doesn't affect the performance but internet connectivity may be a big factor. As a company with most employees working from home, different network providers from different areas/countries can have different experiences. Search load time needs improvement.
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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.
Read full review
Support Rating
Freshworks Inc
Support from OEM is decent but needs improvement. Sometimes OEM also needs to understand the criticality of the customer and help as an Ad-hoc, which is somewhat lacking at Feshservice. Although the normal support team is well-equipped and helps according to the matrix, if something critical for the partner or customer requires immediate attention, it still goes through the L1-L2-L3 levels, which wastes a lot of time.
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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
Training was enough to use the base website
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Freshworks Inc
Their documentation is pretty good, but only available in English. This makes it difficult for some of our users to understand. There are also some basic video courses available.
Read full review
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
Creating the correct groups for the stakeholders and enabling the right notifications are one of the most important aspect of the implementation. Creating Change templates will also help in the long run and it's a good practice to create one, if applicable.
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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
Easy setup and a lot of customization which can be made. They offer the full ITSM tool for 75$ per agent and all the PRO are included in the package, which makes it easy to calculate and use. There are only a few add-ins that you need to pay for, based on the number of agents or the number of executions.
Read full review
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
Freshservice allows flexibility with contract terms and pricing model. Monthly and annual payments are allowed. The unit pricing needs a bit of improvement. It would be great if they offer unit pricing per capability instead of one pricing for all the capabilities. Small businesses have different use cases and not every agent needs all the modules available.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Freshworks Inc
We were able to scale easily across multiple departments. As our company keeps growing, we have not needed to change anything in terms of scaling since we started using Freshservice. There were no changes to the admin and end-user experience from when we were a 1,000-employee company vs to our current head count of 2,000+.
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Zendesk
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
Read full review
Professional Services
Freshworks Inc
We did not have professional services.
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Freshworks Inc
  • We had no ticketing system at all so we had no idea of the workload, we now do
  • We have been able to go from nothing to seeing workload to identifying areas for improvement by having the metrics
  • We have lowered MTTR every month since turning on fresh service
  • We have increased 1st all resolution every month
  • We have been able to start talking about real SLA's with the business
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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

Freshservice Screenshots

Screenshot of Android App SupportScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Project ManagementScreenshot of Asset ManagementScreenshot of Change ManagementScreenshot of Project Management

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