Nowadays, providing top-notch customer service and customer support is all but essential for companies of all sizes, in any industry.

In fact, Microsoft’s Global State of Customer Service found that at least 90% of consumers believe customer service is “somewhat” or “very important” when considering different brands.

Statista echoes these findings, reporting that a good customer service experience makes consumers more likely to:

  • Make a repeat purchase (94%)
  • Refer a brand to others (82%)
  • Forgive a brand for a poor experience (80%)
  • Make an initial purchase (78%)

By today’s standards, a completely manual approach to customer service and support just isn’t going to cut it. To cater to the modern consumer’s needs, service and support teams need to be able to act quickly, decisively, and effectively — which simply can’t happen without some technological assistance.

To this end, over one million companies currently in operation have adopted some form of customer service management software. While there are a number of such tools available, two of the most commonly-used are Zendesk and Freshdesk.

In this article, we’ll compare the key features of these tools to help you better understand the benefits of each — and which will better help you serve the needs of your customers.

Before diving into the nitty-gritty aspects of Zendesk and Freshdesk, let’s give a quick overview of what each helpdesk ticketing solution is all about.

Zendesk

Zendesk “provides the complete customer service solution that’s easy to use and scales with your business.”

It’s commonly used in the SaaS, IT, and retail industries by teams of roughly 10-50 employees — though larger teams (of up to 200) have also utilized it for various service-related purposes.

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Generally, teams that use Zendesk generate up to $10m in annual revenue.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk offers “the most complete support solution with fastest time-to-value” on the market.

Like Zendesk, it’s typically used by IT teams, SaaS providers, and retail organizations of up to 50 employees in size.

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Freshdesk’s core audience also consists of teams doing up to $10m in revenue.

Overall, both Zendesk and Freshdesk aim to streamline and empower teams’ customer service and support initiatives — in turn empowering their end-users along their path to success.

Freshdesk Vs Zendesk: Digging Deeper With a Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Zendesk and Freshdesk offer a wide range of customer service-related features — many of which pretty clearly overlap with one another.

That said, there are also a number of nuanced and significant differences between the two tools. Here, we’ll take a point-by-point look at how the key features of Zendesk and Freshdesk stack up against each other.

Support Ticket Management

Most prominently, both Zendesk and Freshdesk allow teams to easily manage support tickets and other such digital helpdesk tasks.

Zendesk’s fully-integrated and centralized ticketing system acts as the core for all customer service actions and processes.


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This central hub keeps all service requests and related information in one spot to ensure teams never lose a request — and always have what they need to deliver top-notch support to their users. Teams can also quickly access customer data and engagement history directly within this hub to further personalize the experience.


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With Zendesk, you can allow your users to set the priority level for their service requests — or you can leave it up to your team to do so upon intake.

Zendesk also automatically sends important notifications to both team reps and customers, while also streamlining manual outreach via templated responses. This helps keep all stakeholders in the loop throughout a service instance without taking away from the actual service being provided.

Freshdesk also provides a centralized inbox where all service requests are stored and accessed internally. This also allows support teams to take a more collaborative approach to delivering service, giving colleagues the ability to split tasks within each ticket as appropriate.


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Freshdesk leverages artificial intelligence technology within its helpdesk system in a few key ways:

  • Delivering automated responses and reminders to customers and team members
  • Prioritizing, categorizing and filtering incoming requests
  • Delivering guidance and additional resources to users via chatbot


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Customer service teams can also take manual control of these processes via Freshdesk’s Custom Objects features. This lets teams tailor their automated and hands-on service efforts to their users’ needs and other company-specific circumstances.

Multi- and Omnichannel Support

Zendesk and Freshdesk both enable customer service teams to provide omnichannel support to their customers, and to operate internally on multiple channels, as well.

Beyond multichannel operations, an omnichannel approach to customer service ensures service teams and users can communicate on any channel, at any time — and can keep the conversation going regardless of what channel is being used.

As such, both tools support omnichannel communication via company website, mobile app, and  social media channels — along with email, phone, and even third-party apps like Slack and WhatsApp.


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Both Zendesk (via Sunshine) and Freshdesk (via Omniroute) seamlessly push service engagements and conversations to the best possible channel for the circumstances. While this sometimes means simply keeping communications on the user’s preferred channel, it may also mean bringing them into a phone call or video chat to enhance the service rep’s effectiveness.


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Again, this is all made possible through each tool’s centralized hub, in which all necessary information is kept front-and-center for all involved parties.

Self-Service and Knowledge Base Tools

In addition to empowering hands-on customer service, Zendesk and Freshdesk also allow their users to make use of several self-service tools in an effort to   to their customers — in a few ways.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk allow teams to create knowledge bases for internal and customer-facing purposes.


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To this end, Zendesk offers its Team Publishing feature, where service teams can identify key topics to cover, articles to create, and content to update within their knowledge bases. Zendesk also makes it easy for teams to repurpose blog posts and other content for their knowledge base (and vice-versa).

Freshdesk’s knowledge base feature focuses on streamlining the production and publication processes via approval workflows, collaborative editing, and version controls. Teams can also create templates to further streamline the creation of knowledge content without starting from scratch each time.


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Taking self-service a step further, both Zendesk and Freshdesk enable teams to provide proactive and interactive support to those in need. With Zendesk, teams can provide in-context self-service via widget, both on their website and within their actual software. Freshdesk’s answer bot, Freddy Answers, provides quick answers to simple questions — while pointing users to further resources as needed.


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Finally, teams can use either tool to develop community forums on their company websites. Here, both users and support staff can engage with one another to answer questions, share tips, and empower one another to get the absolute most out of the brand’s products and services.


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Automation
We’ve already touched on some of the ways Zendesk and Freshdesk use automation, but let’s dig a bit deeper.

Zendesk’s automations revolve heavily around internal and customer-facing messaging. With Zendesk, customer service teams can set up automatic notifications regarding:

Service ticket receipt
Assignment reminders
Service updates
Resolutions and ticket closures

Teams can also develop chatbot sequences for specific scenarios in order to facilitate engagement, provide tailored support, and offer additional resources to the customer.


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Freshdesk offers similar automation features, along with a few extras.

Intelligent ticket assignments, for example, ensure service requests are routed to the best possible agent(s) for the given moment. Internally, Freshdesk provides automatic agent status monitoring, keeping team leads in-sync with who’s working on what at all times.


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Reporting & Analytics
Zendesk and Freshdesk offer myriad features to ensure your users are getting the support they need — and to ensure your service team continues to develop in all areas of operation.

Zendesk’s reports provide visibility into every action your service team takes — and into every interaction they have with your customers. Teams can decide which metrics to track on certain channels, and can in turn set specific performance goals for each channel they use.


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Performance data is tracked and presented in real-time to help teams identify current happenings, ongoing trends, and potential future events.

Freshdesk offers similar reporting and analytics features, such as real-time productivity monitoring and performance outcome analysis. Teams can also easily track changes in customer satisfaction, tracing these changes to specific customer service engagements.


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Freshdesk also uses gamification to further track team performance — and to allow individual team members to track their own performance with ease. Service agents can earn points, “level up”, and earn rewards based on their efforts and outcomes — while team leads have just one more way to keep tabs on their employees.


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Freshdesk’s reporting and analytics features can also be supercharged via integration with GoodData. This additional tool provides more laser-focused insight into individual performance, allowing teams to truly optimize their customer service workflows over time.
Customization
Customer service is never a one-size-fits-all deal, so it just makes sense that Zendesk and Freshdesk allow teams to customize their approach in numerous ways.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk allow for aesthetic customization of customer-facing content, engagements, and events. Your messages, forum posts, and knowledge base can all be branded to varying degrees based on your needs and your customers’ expectations.


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Functionally, Zendesk and Freshdesk allow customization in many areas.

Zendesk, for one, lets service teams customize their workflows, automated messaging, and internal reports. Freshdesk offers these customization options too, along with the ability to create customized service assignments, define rules for internal access, and place other such restrictions on internal processes.


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Both solutions offer multilingual support to ensure users from all over the world can engage effectively with your customer service team and on-demand content.
Integrations
Customer service teams can squeeze even more value out of Zendesk and Freshdesk by integrating them with many other tools in their tech stack, and/or by adopting additional third-party tools within their software of choice.

For one, both tools integrate seamlessly with the other parts of their respective suites:

Zendesk with the provider’s CRM tool and Sunshine software
Freshdesk with Freshworks’ sales, marketing, and IT software

Both tools also provide their own respective marketplaces housing hundreds of free and premium apps and integrations. There’s a pretty heavy overlap here, with both marketplaces offering integrations with popular tools such as Slack, Mailchimp, and Google’s various business tools.



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Each marketplace also offers a number of proprietary and otherwise dedicated apps, such as Adelante’s Thank You app for Zendesk and Freshworks’ Ticket Reminder.
Security
Data security and customer privacy are major focuses for both Zendesk and Freshdesk.

To this end, they both offer a number of safeguards and guarantees to their customers and their end-users. This includes everything from industry-standard certificates and protocols (e.g., SOC 2 and ISO compliance), to jurisdictional security measures (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR).

Both tools also offer a number of features allowing teams to take more control over their important data. This includes role-based access controls, IP whitelisting and blacklisting, spam filtering, and click-jacking prevention.

Check out these pages from Zendesk and Freshdesk for a more complete description of the security measures offered by each.
Zendesk vs. Freshdesk Pricing
Now, let’s take a look at the different pricing tiers offered by Zendesk and Freshdesk, along with some of the key features offered at each of these tiers.
Zendesk Pricing
Zendesk offers three core pricing tiers tailored to small- and mid-sized businesses.

The Suite Team tier is priced at $49/month per agent, billed annually. This basic service tier includes Zendesk’s ticketing system, omnichannel messaging and support, simple workflow automations, and a unified agent workspace. New adopters also have access to Zendesk’s onboarding experience, along with ongoing online support.

The Suite Growth tier, at $79/month per agent, offers all of the above, along with AI-powered knowledge management and the option to create a self-service portal. At this tier, teams can also create unique Service Level Agreements and customizable ticket layouts — and can deliver multilingual/localized support to their audience members.

Finally, Zendesk’s Suite Professional tier is offered at $99/month per agent. At this tier, teams can create integrated community forums and customizable user dashboards, and can monitor agent activity in real-time. Zendesk Suite Professional also offers HIPAA compliance and other advanced security measures.

Zendesk offers two tiers of service to enterprise teams, each of which offer more in-depth and advanced versions of the above features and additional options for customization.

Check out Zendesk’s pricing page for a more in-depth look at each service tier.
Freshdesk Pricing
Freshdesk offers four tiers of service, with each of course building on the previous one.

Those brand new to using customer support tools may want to start with Freshdesk’s free service offering. Supporting teams of up to ten agents, this tier provides an integrated ticketing system, knowledge base capabilities, and out-of-the-box reporting and analytics. New users can also receive 24/7 support via email.

Freshdesk’s Growth tier is offered at $15/month per agent. This tier offers automated messaging and tasks, collision detection and other collaborative features, in-depth customization options, SLA management, and basic time-tracking capabilities.

At $49/month per agent, Freshdesk Pro is the provider’s most popular option. This tier builds on the functionality of all previous features, while offering even more customizability and performance reporting. Freshdesk Pro allows teams to create more tailored customer journeys, along with more advanced options for outreach and engagement.

Freshdesk Enterprise ($79/month per agent) offers the most in terms of automation and AI-powered functionality. This includes internal and customer-facing chatbots, workflow triggers, and access controls. Enterprise teams can also create customized performance reports for various purposes.

Freshdesk’s pricing page provides even more information for each service tier.
Where Does Helpjuice Fit In?
As we’ve discussed, both Zendesk and Freshdesk allow service and support teams to develop both internal and customer-facing knowledge bases, and to further develop their overarching knowledge management initiatives.

At a glance, then, it may seem like these tools will have your knowledge management needs covered in full.

Unfortunately, this isn’t exactly the case.

First of all, both services offer piecemeal knowledge management features based on your chosen pricing tier.

For example, support teams can create a basic knowledge base for their customers using the free version of Freshdesk — but they must subscribe to higher-priced tiers for more advanced functionality (e.g., versioning, workflow automations, and multilingual support). Similarly, Zendesk only offers knowledge management capabilities at the Growth and Professional service tiers — with nothing of the sort offered at their introductory pricing.

Secondly, the fact is that knowledge management is only a part of Zendesk’s and Freshdesk’s comprehensive customer support suites. In other words, neither provider is completely dedicated to supercharging your knowledge management capabilities — but instead leverages these features as a part of their overarching services.

That said, if knowledge management is a key focus for your team, you don’t want to completely rely on either of these tools to make it happen. Even if you’ll be subscribing to their services to fulfill your other customer service-related needs, you’ll still want to consider adopting a more dedicated knowledge base software as well.

Which is where Helpjuice comes in.

With Helpjuice’s knowledge base software, you’ll have complete control over your knowledge management initiatives which is why it is considered as one of the best alternative to Zendesk. 

Our tool offers:

Limitless and collaborative content authoring, structuring, and management
Customizable content templates and brandability
Intelligent reporting and analytics for both internal performance and customer engagements

Best of all, you get all of Helpjuice’s features regardless of which pricing tier you purchase.

Want to see Helpjuice’s knowledge base software in action?

Book a demo with our team to get started!