Zendesk vs. Freshdesk
If you’re a business that wants to grow, you need a solution that you can count on—both now and in the future. Learn more about Zendesk and how Freshdesk compares.

Why Zendesk is the best alternative to Freshdesk
Last updated September 21, 2023
Delivering an exceptional customer experience and providing top-tier support are growing priorities for 81 percent of business leaders, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report. Is the Freshworks product providing the level of CX experience your customers demand?
Here are three reasons why businesses choose Zendesk over Freshdesk:
-
CX-perts
As a trusted advisor in the market, we empower our customers with the tools, expertise, and best practices they need to improve their CX. Zendesk treats each customer as a partner, offering dedicated account management, success management, and support resources to help achieve your business goals and create positive, memorable experiences with each interaction.
-
Built to be reliable
Zendesk offers a CX solution you can count on—with the stability you need to provide a differentiated customer experience at scale. When time is money, our reliable platform keeps you up and running without worrying about system outages and downtime.
-
Best ROI
Zendesk can handle whatever challenges your business faces and will ultimately deliver more efficiencies, lowering the cost of support. With capabilities beyond basic ticketing—like a unified, omnichannel agent experience, self-service options, and custom reports—you can start seeing your ROI fast.
More in this guide:
- At-a-glance comparison: Zendesk vs. Freshdesk
- Zendesk vs. Freshdesk: Features comparison
- Pricing plans: Freshdesk vs. Zendesk
- Customer stories on using Zendesk vs. Freshdesk
- Other top Freshdesk alternatives
- Frequently asked questions
- Ready to try Zendesk?
At-a-glance comparison: Zendesk vs. Freshdesk
What you need to deliver the best customer experience | Critical capabilities | Zendesk | Freshdesk |
---|---|---|---|
Vendor performance | Analyst rating | Leader | Visionary |
Focus | Best of breed – Customer service | Broad focus – CS, sales, marketing, success, IT, HR, operational tools | |
High customer satisfaction at scale |
|
|
|
Time to value and cost of ownership | Easy setup |
|
|
Easy adoption |
|
|
|
Low implementation cost |
|
|
|
Low short-term TCO |
|
|
|
Long-term value |
|
|
|
Low long-term TCO |
|
|
|
Unified omnichannel experience | Unified omnichannel status + workflows |
|
|
Unified omnichannel customer experience |
|
|
|
Unified omnichannel agent interface |
|
|
|
Unified omnichannel analytics |
|
|
|
Frictionless agent experience | Real-time agent workspace |
|
|
Customizable agent workspace |
|
|
|
Single browser tab agent experience |
|
|
|
Powerful workflow / automation tools | Sophisticated automation + workflows (SLAs, OLAs) |
|
|
Flexible assignment options (round robin vs. pull) |
|
|
|
Intelligent triage |
|
|
|
Intelligent self-service content gap identification |
|
|
|
Sophisticated self-service content management + workflows |
|
|
|
Actionable insights | Custom metrics |
|
|
Custom reports |
|
|
|
Custom dashboards |
|
|
|
Custom attribution |
|
|
|
Custom correlation |
|
|
|
Robust integrations | Highly rated integrations |
|
|
Reliability |
|
|
|
Customer proof points |
|
|
|
Broad set of API endpoints |
|
|
|
Only server side CTI app necessary |
|
|
|
Success + support | Leading customer community + events |
|
|
Support |
|
|
|
Designated success |
|
|
|
Local account resources |
|
|
|
Reliable + secure platform | Reliability + scalability |
|
|
HIPAA enabled |
|
|
|
Data locality |
|
|
|
3-tiered GDPR protection |
|
|
Zendesk vs. Freshdesk: Features comparison
Comparing two help desk software heavyweights takes more than serving up a blind taste test. Let’s dive into the features of Freshdesk vs. Zendesk and see who raises the trophy at the end.
Advanced reporting and actionable data insights
To gather and harness valuable customer data, you need more than one-size-fits-all reporting tools.
Zendesk features advanced reporting and analytics tools that provide in-depth metrics and visualization options that help you identify critical trends, analyze your customer experience, and evaluate your team’s performance. Create actionable insights and optimize your business decisions with powerful features like:
- Point-and-click configurable reports and dashboards: Customize your view in minutes with our first reply time heatmap, even with sophisticated layered datasets.
- Unified reporting: Consolidate data from across all channels.
- Custom metrics: Choose the metrics you want to see and filter out what you don’t.
- Data discovery: You’ll no longer need to export data to Excel spreadsheets.
Reporting with Freshdesk is limited, with around 80 out-of-the-box reports (compared to 250+ from Zendesk). You aren’t able to build custom metrics, so teams must manually add data when exporting reports. Also, Freshdesk’s reporting software updates every 30 minutes rather than providing real-time updates.
Analytics | Zendesk | Freshdesk |
---|---|---|
Omnichannel |
Unified
Report on all channels across the platform in one consolidated analytics tool. |
Separated
Every Freshdesk channel has a unique reporting tool, so you often need to export and combine data manually. |
Custom metrics, reports, dashboards |
Yes
Define custom metrics unique to your business. |
Yes
You can create custom metrics with Freshdesk. |
Custom attribution + correlation |
Yes
Layer multiple datasets and visualize them in any way you want to identify actionable insights quickly. |
No
Limited ways to layer datasets force users to waste time exporting to Excel or BI tools to analyze further. |
One seamless omnichannel interface
Zendesk features Agent Workspace, an interface with a unified view that puts data from all channels in one place. This single view displays the customer journey, including conversation history, previous interactions, past orders, resolved support tickets, and more. Your agents will have the customer context and information they need to resolve issues faster and provide personalized support.
Freshdesk offers different interfaces for each channel, like chat, phone, and ticketing. This creates a disjointed experience for agents, causing them to toggle between apps, tabs, and systems to find the information or context they need to serve the customer.
Feature | Zendesk | Freshdesk |
---|---|---|
Agent experience |
One unified view
The Zendesk Agent Workspace provides one unified view of customer data, history, conversations, and interactions across all channels. |
Disconnected workspaces
Users must toggle between three apps (Freshdesk, Freshchat, and Freshcaller) to view information from different channels. |
Customer experience |
One unified experience
All channels (voice, chat, self service, form) are unified in one digital experience. |
Disconnected experiences
Web forms and knowledge self service are in a separate widget compared to chat. |
Contextual workspace |
Flexible
A customizable interface adapts to each situation, populating contextual information and workflows for the specific customer request. |
Static
There’s no contextual workspace, which forces agents to be overwhelmed with irrelevant data / tools and search for the right information manually. |
Macros |
Relevant
There’s one-click access to accurate, channel-agnostic macros relevant to the customer’s inquiry. |
Emulated
Multiple features help emulate a macro, but they’re only usable on new tickets. |
Side conversations |
Unified agent and customer experience
Agents can handle multiple conversations at once. |
Cobbled experience
Customers must create a Freshconnect account for side conversations with agents. |
Ticket tabs |
Available
Agents can manage multiple tickets in a single browser tab. |
Unavailable
Agents must open a new browser tab for each ticket. |
Integrations with all the tools your team depends on
To effectively provide the best customer experience, you need a flexible, agile system that integrates with various tools. Though Freshdesk offers a variety of out-of-the-box integrations and add-ons for agent productivity, time-tracking, and chatbots, Zendesk offers a robust library of customizable integration options that set up quickly, are easy to use, and provide more flexibility.
Our dedicated product management and engineering teams build and continuously optimize integrations with systems like Slack, Jira, Salesforce, HubSpot, and more. This allows you to focus your time and money on your customers instead of worrying about the technical stuff.
Robust self-service tools
Our CX Trends Report shows that 37 percent of customers become angry, frustrated, or stressed when they can’t complete simple tasks. A low-quality self-service experience also leads to a higher ticket volume and more outreach to customer support teams, making customer service less efficient.
Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer an array of self-service tools like help center articles, community forums, and client portals where customers can conveniently find the answers they need on their own time. Each software brand also allows you to create knowledge bases for internal and external customers.
Features from Zendesk, like Content Cues, automatically identify areas where you can improve your help center and knowledge base, so your team of experts can keep information up-to-date. AI and chatbots can offer chat support with canned responses, proactively suggest answers to FAQs, or surface help center articles to deflect the customer from creating a ticket for a common issue. With Freshdesk, however, support agents must manually sift through the help center to find outdated information and make improvements.
Customization and branding
Customization options help keep your business in sync. Zendesk offers a flexible platform with various customization options so you can adapt to evolving customer or business needs. Our code and no-code functionality makes it easy to customize everything from reporting dashboards and your agent interface to adding your brand logo, colors, and themes to your client portal.
AI
Unlike other solutions on the market, Zendesk AI is pre-trained and tailor made for CX, which means greater accuracy, easier setup and maintenance, and more cost-savings. Zendesk AI is also quick to implement with little to no technical support. Businesses get robust AI capabilities–agent assistance and productivity tools, intelligent workflows, machine learning predictions, and advanced bots–all from one platform, and ready to go from day one.
While Freshdesk offers AI features that are easy to implement, most don’t include pre-trained models tailored for CX. As a result, Freshdesk customers have to rely on manual setup to ensure the accuracy of their bots.
Pricing plans: Freshdesk vs. Zendesk
Zendesk | Freshdesk |
---|---|
|
|
Zendesk pricing is higher, but don’t let that fool you. A lower sticker price isn’t always a better value, and you should consider several costs.
-
Total cost of ownership
Zendesk offers a lower total cost of ownership in the short and long term. Our platform sets up fast and is easy to use, reducing implementation and training costs and boosting your time to value.
Although Freshdesk has a free plan and cheaper monthly subscriptions, the total cost of ownership over the course of multiple years favors Zendesk. Zendesk provides hands-on onboarding and training for a seamless implementation process, protecting against the costs of a cobbled deployment. Freshdesk emphasizes fast-paced setup—but without a dedicated onboarding team like Zendesk provides, the risk runs higher for issues during the implementation process.
-
Scalability
Zendesk can support businesses of all sizes and industries, from startups to enterprises, and has the flexibility and agility to grow with your company. Zendesk features tools that create a great employee experience—like AI and automation features that help deflect customer tickets and offer 24/7 support—allowing you to serve more customers at scale.
Our highly rated, mature software features scaled support and operations, leading to customers who stick around. Freshdesk scales best with teams of up to 15 agents but has limited scalability beyond that. The company’s customers must re-evaluate every 12 months, resulting in additional implementations or switching to alternative software—creating additional costs.
-
Efficiency
Zendesk delivers efficiencies that will save you money down the line. Customizable workflows and an intuitive user interface help boost agent productivity and efficiency. Investing in Zendesk provides a better lifetime value for businesses and customers, with the impact felt through higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) and loyalty.
Freshdesk offers a collaboration app for ticket management, but agents must switch to the Freshconnect interface to collaborate on a ticket. The single ticket forms clutter the agent workspace, limiting productivity and efficiency.
Customer stories: What are customers saying about using Zendesk vs. Freshdesk?
Don’t just take our word for it: Hear from brands that made the switch.
Thinkific
“The daily challenges related to using [Freshdesk’s] new UI made it very clear that we needed to prioritize exploring other platforms… [Freshdesk] apps didn’t really work as expected, and the product team couldn’t get the support it needed to troubleshoot them.”
Katerina Graham
Support Operations
Read more
Showpo
“When we were on Freshdesk, an agent would have eight, nine, 10 different tabs open—DHL, Australia Post, Magento, all these different tabs.”
Paul Waddy
Head of Operations
Read more
Ola
Ola used Freshdesk for customer support, but by 2015, the tool didn’t offer the advanced configuration, scalability, or reporting options the company needed. Ola chose Zendesk because it was quick to deploy and easy to configure. Four teams at Ola now use Zendesk.
Sankar Rao Amburkar
Director of Products
Read more
Other top Freshdesk alternatives
Freshdesk alternative | Starting price | Free trial | Key features |
---|---|---|---|
Zendesk | $19 per agent/month | 14 days |
|
HubSpot Service Hub | $450 per month (up to 5 users) | 14 days |
|
Zoho Desk | $14 per user/month | 15 days |
|
Salesforce Service Cloud | $25 per user/month | 30 days |
|
Jira Service Management | $7.75 per user/month | 7 days |
|
Help Scout | $20 per user/month | 15 days |
|
Frequently asked questions
Freshdesk seems cheaper. Why should I choose Zendesk?
Although Zendesk has a higher price, your total cost of savings and faster return on investment make switching to Zendesk worth it. Zendesk reduces implementation and training costs with our fast setup and ease of use. This allows your teams to keep serving customers without any downtime. Our platform supports businesses of all sizes and provides tools that allow you to serve more customers at scale.
What makes Zendesk and Freshdesk different?
When comparing the customer support software features of Freshdesk vs. Zendesk, understand that while Freshdesk may appear to offer more, Zendesk prioritizes building best practice solutions over disconnected features and quality over quantity.
Freshdesk is great for the basics—but Zendesk boasts omnichannel support, so you can meet your customers where they are on the messaging platforms they prefer. Our Agent Workspace gives agents a single view of the customer journey with all the data and context needed to provide a top-tier customer experience. Custom dashboards, robust self-service options, and AI chatbots make the employee experience great, too.
Freshdesk says that they’re easier to use and that Zendesk is too complex. What should I know about this?
At Zendesk, we hang our hat on making things easier for the agent and the customer. Our dedicated account and success teams are eager to jump in and streamline the process—simplifying anything you may need help with.
Why is Zendesk popular?
Zendesk is a robust, reliable, and scalable solution backed by experts and built to last. It’s an open and flexible platform that sets up quickly, is user-friendly, and has customization and integration options that fit companies of all shapes and sizes—from small businesses to enterprises. It can grow with your business as it scales, and it enables you to create an amazing experience for all your customers. You’ll get the best return on your investment.
Does Zendesk offer a free trial?
Zendesk offers a free 14-day trial where you can try out the entire suite of features. The best part? Once you decide to switch platforms and sign up for a plan, your customer profile data is already there—so you can seamlessly pick up right where you left off at the end of the trial.
Ready to try Zendesk?
We like making everything easy for our customers—including making the switch. Our team members are ready to help guide you through the process so you can start creating the personalized experiences your customers deserve.
Additional resources
Learn more about Zendesk and how it stacks up against the competition.