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Kayako

Kayako

Overview

What is Kayako?

Kayako is a help desk / ticketing product and is available is both SaaS and on-premise configurations. Is is built in PHP and uses my SQL. The product competes with HelpSpot, ZohoSupport, Freshdesk and Zendesk. The Kayako Engage edition may be…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Kayako Fusion has been widely adopted by organizations to improve their customer service operations. Users have found that the software …
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Kayako knowledge base

8 out of 10
March 18, 2016
Incentivized
We are currently using Kayako as a knowledge base and ticketing system. Users can login and create support tickets for IT as well as find …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 13 features
  • Ticket creation and submission (11)
    7.0
    70%
  • Organize and prioritize service tickets (11)
    1.0
    10%
  • Ticket response (11)
    1.0
    10%
  • Email support (10)
    1.0
    10%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Inbox

$15.00

Cloud
Per User Per Month

Growth

$30.00

Cloud
Per User Per Month

Scale

$60.00

Cloud
Per User Per Month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $29 per month
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Features

Incident and problem management

Streamlining ticketing and service restoration processes

2
Avg 7.9

Self Help Community

Features that allow customers to self-service for support issues.

1
Avg 7.7

Multi-Channel Help

Features related to providing customer service and support via different communication channels. Communications are organized by ticket/customer/channel for the convenience of agents.

1
Avg 7.7
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Product Details

What is Kayako?

Kayako Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Kayako is a help desk / ticketing product and is available is both SaaS and on-premise configurations. Is is built in PHP and uses my SQL. The product competes with HelpSpot, ZohoSupport, Freshdesk and Zendesk. The Kayako Engage edition may be deployed as a live chat system without ticketing at a reduced cost, featuring click-to-call and site visitor monitoring for customer targeting and engagement.

Kayako starts at $29.

Desk.com (discontinued), Freshdesk, and HelpSpot are common alternatives for Kayako.

Reviewers rate Ticket creation and submission highest, with a score of 7.

The most common users of Kayako are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(46)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Kayako Fusion has been widely adopted by organizations to improve their customer service operations. Users have found that the software allows them to efficiently handle support tickets and maintain a personalized approach to customer interactions. The canned replies feature has proven to be effective in addressing common issues, while still providing a hands-on feel in customer communications. The self-hosted version of Kayako Fusion has demonstrated its reliability even during heavy traffic spikes, ensuring seamless customer support. The software's email support ticketing system has simplified the process for customers to send support requests and has enabled easy tracking and distribution of work to employees. Additionally, users have leveraged the powerful API provided by Kayako Fusion to create tools that enhance and expand the functionality of the software. For example, websites built using the Kayako Fusion API display real-time ticket queue information and alert the help desk about new tickets, resulting in quicker response times. The ability to directly interface with the database has allowed users to customize Kayako Fusion by building modules tailored to their specific business needs, such as a billing module with customized billing rules. Users have also appreciated the ease of configuration modifications and file uploads within Kayako Fusion's database-centric architecture, eliminating the need for permissions on multiple directories. With features like the option to choose between storing file attachments in the database or on the file system, Kayako Fusion offers flexibility in managing the database footprint. Regular backups of both the webserver directory and database ensure data reliability and safety for organizations using Kayako Fusion. Overall, customers have expressed satisfaction with Kayako Fusion, praising its performance as a reliable and versatile system for managing support tickets and facilitating effective customer communications. The software has been utilized across various industries and departments, serving as a case management tool, workflow tool, and company-wide ticketing system. Whether it is used by managed service providers to track service requests across different client companies or by organizations for software issue support and tracking, Kayako Fusion has consistently delivered the desired results. Users have found Kayako Fusion to be easy to program and have appreciated its reliability and the availability of customer support. The software has proved valuable as a help desk system, efficiently routing trouble tickets to the appropriate IT professionals and improving overall efficiency and reliability compared to previous systems. Kayako Fusion has been utilized in many ways, including organizing customer issues, requests, and ideas, facilitating direct communication with clients, tracking user issues and resolutions in IT departments, serving as a ticketing system for clients to submit support questions or issues, and functioning as a knowledge base for self-help documentation. The versatility of Kayako Fusion is evident in its institutional-wide use for IT and academic technology support in educational institutions, benefiting students, employees, and faculty members. Moreover, Kayako Fusion has been utilized by customers and potential customers for various purposes, including sales, support, customer service, and accounting. The software seamlessly converts emails into tickets and organizes them based on their status, progress, source, time, assignee, and intended procedure. Integration with third-party apps and APIs allows for the automatic import of tickets from different channels, such as Gmail and the company's built-in support system. For IT departments specifically, Kayako Fusion serves as a comprehensive tool for tracking user issues and resolutions, managing change and patch management processes, as well as handling permissions requests and user access changes. In addition to its efficiency in streamlining support operations, Kayako Fusion also serves as a ticketing system that provides a paper trail and historic record of client communications. Users have leveraged this feature to maintain a documented history of interactions with clients. In summary, Kayako Fusion has proven itself as a versatile solution used in various industries and departments to enhance customer support operations, track service requests and issues efficiently, improve workflow management, facilitate direct communication with clients, and serve as an institution-wide tool for IT support in educational institutions.

Users commonly recommend thoroughly researching and testing different helpdesk products before choosing Kayako. They advise evaluating the organization's needs and comparing them to the features offered by Kayako. However, they think Kayako is overpriced for the features it delivers.

Users suggest trying Kayako to experience its usefulness, emphasizing that it is user-friendly and intuitive. They also recommend not being afraid to use Kayako and suggest it for small and mid-sized companies as it helps save time and efforts in organizing emails and messages. Proper training and defining processes are advised to avoid struggles with ticket creation and information retrieval.

Additionally, users recommend exploring other options like Salesforce Essentials or Agile CRM for integrated helpdesk features. They believe Kayako is an excellent product for basic customer support but may not be suitable for advanced functionality or robust custom fields. They recommend trying out the demo and contacting support for any questions.

Users find the knowledge base feature of Kayako great and easy to set up. However, they think the live chat and support platforms may be better in other products. They mention that customer service is easier and faster with Kayako compared to live chat.

Overall, users appreciate the ease of use, simple setup, and customer satisfaction of Kayako. They suggest reading the documentation for better understanding and utilization of the software. Furthermore, they recommend Kayako for companies in the beginning stages with budget constraints and basic support needs.

Lastly, users suggest adding more custom reporting options and introducing collaborators to the Inbox plan. They recommend using the cloud version of Kayako to avoid purchasing hardware but also mention that the self-hosted version can be considered as an alternative option.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Jon Shurtliff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • We used Kayako as our primary IT Help Desk ticketing system. We purchased and used the On-Prem version and quite some success in its implementation.
  • Kayako allowed us to easily manage Help Tickets, communicate with our users, document all our past tickets, and create a knowledge base to help users and personnel look up and store past issues and solutions.
  • Help Desk Ticketing
  • Knowledge Base
  • The usability could be improved to reduce the learning curve.
  • Make it easier to reply to a customer
Kayako was only ok - We switched because there are much better software platforms out there that manage Ticketing and KBs. Also, we feel like we were forced off the On-Prem platform - being pushed to the Cloud software. Not liking this push, we decided to go to another provider instead.
Incident and problem management (6)
71.66666666666667%
7.2
Organize and prioritize service tickets
80%
8.0
Expert directory
30%
3.0
Subscription-based notifications
90%
9.0
ITSM collaboration and documentation
80%
8.0
Ticket creation and submission
70%
7.0
Ticket response
80%
8.0
Self Help Community (2)
75%
7.5
External knowledge base
70%
7.0
Internal knowledge base
80%
8.0
Multi-Channel Help (5)
18%
1.8
Customer portal
N/A
N/A
IVR
N/A
N/A
Social integration
N/A
N/A
Email support
90%
9.0
Help Desk CRM integration
N/A
N/A
  • Kayako was fairly priced at the time for the On-Prem solution, so good ROI because the investment was small
Jira is much more pricey but more complete. It integrates with our Scrum Board and Agile Software Development platform. So we can much more easily turn Tickets into User Stories, and our techs and devs only have to live in one software platform instead of having to switch between multiple and copy and paste so much.
  • 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.
June 03, 2015

Kayako Supports

Marie McCourt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At StyleEase Software, LLC, we use Kayako as our Support Ticket system. This is mainly used in the support department, but it can also be used for wholesale questions.
  • It creates an easy interface for answering tickets from a regular computer screen.
  • It allows you to categorize well, so that you can create reports of common problems.
  • You can customize support ticket issues to get more detailed information.
  • Kayako needs to make it easier to use our ticketing system on the go. It is very difficult to use on an iPad or iPhone, for example.
  • They could make the system a little less clunky, and easier to manage from the Admin side.
  • I'd like to feel like the system is more up to date with other software out there.
I think Kayako works well for small ticketing systems, but maybe not for full CRM.
  • We have better customer service, and less dropped conversations
  • The ROI is worth it, because we are not losing tickets to spam filters as often
We only looked at a few. For a small software company, that only wanted to provide better support, it was affordable and easy enough to assimilate into our system.
3
2
It is easy to stay with both for financial and ease-of-use.
Implementation was smooth. We hired a company to "skin" the help desk for us, to match our website. It was less expensive than learning it ourselves. Everything is simple to figure out, and it has worked well since, even with upgrades.
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used as the US HQ help desk system. All trouble tickets for all departments go through this system to the appropriate IT professional to resolve. The previous system was poor at routing the trouble tickets to the appropriate person to resolve it, and Kayako Fusion ended up being far more reliable and customizable.
  • Customer service while installing and troubleshooting the application was excellent.
  • Plenty of customization options while still retaining a simple to use and easily understandable UI for the end users.
  • Very fast and reliable response time from the application.
  • Customizing the UI is difficult to accomplish.
  • The transition from SupportSuite to Fusion was difficult for the users initially, even though Fusion is the upgrade for SupportSuite.
  • Learning curve was a bit steep for non-technical users.
It is suitable when you want a reliable, fast responding help desk system that doesn't need a lot of customization in order to get it working. It is also helpful when your users are somewhat technically minded or willing to go through a bit of training in order to get up to speed on the product.
  • Faster and more reliable ticket response times.
  • Less customization up front allows the company to grow with the software rather then assume what they want upfront and hope that they end up using their customizations.
  • Reliable and stable software enables administrators to focus on improvements rather than general health of the system.
  • OTRS
I choose Fusion over OTRS because of the simple nature of the set up and management of Fusion. OTRS required a lot of initial setup and the company was looking for a reliable base system to build onto over time rather than a complex help desk system up front. If you are looking for a help desk system that you can put a lot of time into customizing to your preference, OTRS is a good option. If you want something reliable and easy to set up initially, I would recommend Fusion instead.
I am no longer working for the same company that was using Fusion, but I really liked working with Fusion and the setup and administration of the system was all-around positive for me. I would suggest the system to anyone looking to get their help desk up and running quickly, but would also like the oiption of expanding it in the future as the business learns what demands it has for the new software.
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