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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 Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 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

(1-18 of 18)
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Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Kayako is way more scalable than Spiceworks' helpdesk offering. We had trouble visualizing our current layout within their environment.

Zendesk was priced quite a bit higher than Kayako while offering similar functionality. It didn't make sense to want to migrate to a new platform.

We have also evaluated various Sharepoint-based help desks, but their speed and reliability did not match our standards for what a help desk should be.
Jon Shurtliff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Kayako's interface is far less complex than Zendesk, so it looked like a good platform. Unfortunately, the features didn't work and their support team is the worst. I went back to Zendesk and I got everything to work including their chat function. Zendesk just works. You don't need support, have a lot of documentation, and have a live community.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Kayako beats the competition with the price but unfortunately loses the battle on all other fronts. Simply not enough options, not enough customisability, very nice and friendly customer support but not the most capable. If the code was less buggy it could be a stronger competitor but at this moment it simply doesn't keep up. With some work and overhaul, it could become much better. The experience of using Kayako was not unpleasant. Only insufficient.
Joshua Tobiansky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Kayako is a great tool for the service industry. I think it is better suited for businesses that do 1-off interactions rather than using it to manage and maintain a larger repeat customer base. This was just our opinion based on the industry we are in. We are in the hosting industry and IaaS and SaaS industry and we usually have multiple contacts for each organization. Kayako also does not easily interract with any CSM tools you may use so keeping up with user accounts is pretty impossible.
Jericho Fulgencio | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We evaluated Spiceworks and it tried to do too much. Kayako addressed our need for email support and distributing/tracking work without trying to introduce direct monitoring, knowledge base, and all kinds of other tools. It was much simpler to configure for our needs.
Nathaniel Bannister | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Zendesk,LivePerson
We went with Kayako at the time of purchase because there was a much more cost effective self-hosted option that we have been able to leverage to our benefit. That option has become much more expensive now, but we feel like we'd still make the decision again.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
July 23, 2014

"Catchy Title"

Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • numara footprints
Kayako's interface is definitely better in the "ease of use" category.

I find that the functionality of Kayako trumps Numara in a few different ways, and the search functions are a little bit easier to navigate.
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