Are you looking for a support desk alternative to Zendesk? The top 17 Zendesk alternatives listed below will assist your company’s customer experience.
Zendesk is well-known for its customizable UI as well as its extensive library of applications and connections. This extremely functional customer care platform can undoubtedly suit a variety of corporate requirements.
Nonetheless, even with their most basic options, Zendesk is rather expensive.
While Zendesk positions itself as the best solution for virtually any support team and organization, that ‘fit-all’ approach causes feature bloat and complexity for many teams that don’t require it. Zendesk is complicated, and you can wind up paying for stuff you don’t need or will never use.
Zendesk may require third-party technologies and assistance to function properly. Because it caters to various sectors, you may have to pay for add-ons to get it to connect to your systems. Extra assistance during setup may be necessary, and this might take months to accomplish.
Support for Zendesk may be quite sluggish. The firm is massive, and it must have a lot of support to deal with at any one moment. Nevertheless, when you want really rapid support and assistance, it might paradoxically fail to offer it.
Zendesk Pricing
Suite Team is $49 per user per month, payable yearly.
- Suite Growth is $79 per user per month, payable yearly.
- Suite Professional: $99 per user per month, payable annually.
- Suite Enterprise costs $150 per user each month, payable annually.
- Each of the aforementioned options offers a 30-day free trial, allowing you to test them out before committing to an annual membership.
Why is a Zendesk alternative needed?
You are reading this article for the following reasons:
Add-ons are required
Although many fundamental functionalities are included in Zendesk’s plans, there may be occasions when there are additional fees since the software lacks some key functionality that should have been included from the start. A chance to design chatbots, a more complete customer satisfaction survey and product tours for chat software are just a few of the effective chat capabilities.
Human customer service is atrocious
Although it’s no secret that Zendesk provides some excellent support articles that you may go to if you run into an issue, some scenarios may necessitate more than just articles. In such cases, you may find it difficult to depend on their customer care professionals because they merely advocate upgrading to a more expensive plan while pointing you to an unending search through their article database.
Too difficult to use
Although Zendesk’s core system is stable, its overburdened user interface prevents it from having user-friendly mechanics for newcomers. You may quickly find yourself navigating between pages of the self-service portal without even realizing you were redirected there.
#1. eDesk
eDesk is a comprehensive customer care helpdesk designed specifically for eCommerce businesses. It alleviates the difficulty of attempting to provide consistent customer care across numerous channels by centralizing all tickets, order/shipping data, customer data, and KPIs. eDesk is unique in that it can integrate with:
- Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce are popular eCommerce systems.
- Market leaders like Amazon and eBay
- Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all popular social media platforms.
- It even has live chat and reviews soliciting.
When you sign up for a free trial of eDesk, you have access to an eCommerce-focused platform that blends AI, native eCommerce connections, automation, and KPIs to help eCommerce support staff respond quickly and improve sales.
#2. Rocket.Chat
The open-source customer care solution provided by Rocket Chat enables you to handle all client contact from a single location. This self-hosted Zendesk alternative enables a whole ecosystem for charging your customer service, including channels such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter, Email, Telegram, Live Chat, and SMS.
On the one hand, customers adore Rocket. Chat because it allows them to be more customer-centric. Managers, on the other hand, are delighted to be given tools to respond quicker and become more data-driven. Rocket. Chat is one of the most secure collaboration platforms on the market today since it can be implemented on-premises.
#3. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is one of the most popular Zendesk competitors, with over 40,000 users, including Panasonic, HP, and American Express. Its customer support software provides many of the same capabilities as Zendesk, but with more flexible and cheaper plan options.
Freshdesk’s mission is to assist businesses of all sizes in easily scaling their customer experience without the expense or complexity of old technologies. They accomplish this by enabling businesses to build up automation to automatically route help desk tickets to the appropriate support agents. This program also contains collision detection, which ensures that numerous agents are not working on the same issue or query at the same time.
#4. Help Scout
Since it offers a wide range of services to its users, Help Scout, a help desk and customer care software solution, is a popular Zendesk alternative.
First and foremost, Help Scout is concerned with “customers, not tickets.” In other words, Help Scout simply lets a company’s consumers engage with the support team via email in a genuine and spontaneous manner. While messages are internally logged as tickets, the consumer is never treated as “just a number.”
Help Scout also enables enterprises to track interactions with particular consumers from the time an internal ticket is opened until the issue is handled. This helps all internal teams to remain on the same page while resolving a single customer’s issue.
Lastly, Help Scout allows businesses to construct customer-facing self-service portals. These portals may incorporate knowledge bases and other similar information to assist clients in finding the answers they want without having to contact customer service.
#5. Tidio
Tidio is a live chat application that businesses use on their websites to communicate with their customers in real time. The service is noted for its simplicity, yet it offers much more than just an online chat function. Tidio is a full-fledged customer care platform that includes self-service chatbots, a shared inbox, and customer metrics analytics.
Its characteristics make it perfect for handling consumer inquiries and gathering customer data. This can help you enhance customer communication and boost customer satisfaction. Tidio finally provides a less expensive alternative to Zendesk and other rivals. If you’re wondering how Tidio can benefit your business, you can put it on your website for free in a matter of minutes.
#6. Zoho Desk
Zoho is most known for its CRM (customer relationship management) software, but its Suite includes a wide range of additional tools, including a help desk called Soho Desk. The highest an an a
Zoho Desk’s connectors make it an appealing alternative to Zendesk for teams that handle customer care using various solutions. It interfaces with a variety of third-party programs, including CRM, project management, and social networking platforms, allowing teams to consolidate client interactions and improve support procedures.
#7. Helpjuice
Helpjuice is an excellent alternative to Zendesk since it provides users with a comprehensive value bundle. Helpjuice is a cloud-based knowledge base management system that focuses on the construction and maintenance of external and internal management bases that can be accessed by both customers and workers. The program is appropriate for enterprises of all sizes and sectors. Helpjuice supports concurrent internal editing of knowledge base documents, which implies that numerous agents can work together remotely to update a single document at a time.
#8. ServiceNow
Whilst Zendesk is commonly seen as a customer-facing platform, several organizations also utilize it for internal IT requests. ServiceNow, an IT ticketing system developed for internal ticket management, is another choice in this regard.
ServiceNow provides tools such as AI-assisted support ticket assignments to help enhance team members’ productivity. Employees may obtain answers fast thanks to self-service alternatives and virtual assistants, and reports allow you to analyze performance and identify areas for growth.
#9. HelpCrunch
With an emphasis on marketing and sales, HelpCrunch is another highly-rated Zendesk alternative. This help desk solution focuses on how you can use a CRM to address customer concerns and increase conversions. Yet, it also includes more traditional functions such as live chat and texting.
HelpCrunch distinguishes itself from many of its rivals by focusing on current web marketing strategies. In addition, the package contains features for automated messaging, email marketing, and consumer involvement.
#10. Front
Front promotes itself as a consumer communication center where clients are addressed as individuals rather than numbers. Its appeal is centered on its powerful collaboration capabilities and a shared inbox that ‘feels like email,’ with the ability to route and allocate both group and personal correspondence.
Like with many of the Zendesk alternatives discussed here, many of the time-saving rules and automation are only available with higher-level subscriptions. Overall, Front is an efficient and collaborative platform that is suited for organizations that value cooperation, collaboration, and simplified communication.
#11. AzureDesk
AzureDesk is online customer support and help desk ticket software designed for startups and small-to-medium-sized developing businesses. AzureDesk is one of the most powerful Zendesk alternatives, focusing mostly on email customer service via interaction with the company’s existing email system. The program assists users in managing customer support activities such as private notes, ticket assignments, and inline picture insertion into tickets. The ticket management module prioritizes tickets and allocates them to agents automatically. The reporting module enables users to run reports for a specified time period and view them in a dashboard.
#12. Pardot
Unlike the majority of the Zendesk alternatives we’ve discussed, Pardot focuses only on the demands of B2B enterprises. It has many of the same capabilities as Zendesk but is more user-friendly. But, as a B2B CRM, it is an especially extensive and pricey alternative.
#13. HappyFox
HappyFox is a help desk and project management software that promotes itself as a solution for customer service, IT operations, HR, and marketing. HappyFox offers reports, satisfaction surveys, and task management in addition to the anticipated functionality such as ticketing, scripted responses, automation, and a knowledge base.
HappyFox now provides both agent-based pricing (with unlimited tickets) and ticket-based pricing (with unlimited agents), so it will take some consideration to determine which plan structure is best for your business—both today and in the future if you intend to expand. Additional products in the HappyFox package (with a different price) include live chat, chatbots, and workflow automation.
#14. LiveAgent
Another good Zendesk alternative is LiveAgent, which is a help desk service for receiving and handling client concerns via a variety of channels, including email, phone calls, social media platforms, and live chat. Our top-rated customer support software assists businesses in streamlining the ticket intake and service offering processes. LiveAgent is an all-in-one solution for businesses that want to set up and run a contact center, provide live chat help via their website and social media channels, and construct a knowledge library for their clients to use at their leisure.
#15. Gorgias
Gorgias is an e-commerce help desk solution. When you sign up, you will have access to a shared email as well as live chat. The most notable distinctions are its Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce connectors (although the Magento integration is only offered on the higher-tier plan).
Using those integrations, you can view order information, alter orders, and even issue refunds right from your help desk, saving your support personnel a lot of time and effort. Gorgias also includes social media interfaces with networks such as Instagram and Facebook that allow you to measure conversions on those platforms.
Furthermore, all of their programs have ticket restrictions, which means your charges may change month to month based on demand. To give you an idea, their standard package offers 350 monthly tickets, which equates to around 12 tickets every day—a number that most teams would significantly surpass. After that, you’ll be charged an extra $25 per 100 tickets.
#16. Groove
Another Zendesk alternative is Groove, which automates the process of gathering client inquiries and offering help as required.
With Groove, workers may give customer care and assistance via email, Twitter, Facebook, live chat, phone, and even text messaging. Groove also enables several agents to interact in real-time on a single support instance via both customer-facing channels and confidential internal ways.
Businesses may also use Groove to build a knowledge base and a customer portal. Organizations can display information via text and/or video on these platforms to help their clients rapidly access the information they need.
Groove also allows customers to design a support widget that can be placed on their website. This simplifies the process of connecting with the knowledge base in the first place and allows clients to open help issues as needed.
#17. Jitbit
Jitbit is a help desk software and ticketing system that is available in both self-hosted “on-premise” and cloud-hosted SaaS versions.
The program has several advantages over Zendesk, most notably the number of tickets that clients may open, file attachment sizes, the minimum and a maximum number of agents you can assign, and API queries—all while remaining a significantly cheaper alternative to Zendesk.
Why should you explore self-hosted Zendesk alternatives?
In this post, we will discuss the finest open-source Zendesk alternatives that you can use to gain more secure and adaptable customer support software. A few of these systems can also be hosted on-premises. Why is that considered an added benefit?
It denotes total control over your data, often known as “data sovereignty.” On-premises Zendesk options allow you to further secure your solutions and thereby client data.
In several areas, such as government, banking, and healthcare, self-hosted solutions are becoming the new norm. These highly regulated sectors must protect consumer communication, necessitating additional security standards. Several on-premise Zendesk options, for example, support HIPAA-compliant messaging with patients in the healthcare business.