Zendesk vs Freshdesk

Zendesk has only just started to expand into Sales and CRM features. Zendesk Sunshine - the Zendesk CRM platform - is a new offering first announced in late 2018. Their offerings outside of customer service and support are improving, but some buyers may lack confidence in this relatively unproven technology. Most buyers are expected to maintain a 3rd party CRM alongside Zendesk. 

Freshdesk is part of the Freshworks family of solutions and can easily integrate with Freshcaller, Freshchat, Freshsales, Freshmarketer, and Freshdesk CRM. When using multiple of this family of products, you will benefit from a unified dashboard. However, customization options are limited across all solutions and the robustness of each solution varies relative to leaders in their space.

Zendesk allows for robust customization to fit your business’s data needs. Zendesk Explore, their analytics product, provides access to omnichannel analytics to measure customer engagement across channels. Additional Zendesk dashboards allow service leaders to easily view, analyze, and optimize team performance and throughput.  Zendesk also offers additional alignment functionality through their Collaboration add-on which provides the ability to share with team members across departments. If advanced functionality is needed, Zendesk is a strong Freshdesk alternative.

Freshdesk is known as a relatively easy and intuitive to use tool. However as more robust use cases emerge certain features are less intuitive. Likewise, bugs and other usability issues have been mentioned in customer reviews. Customization is expected to be less common and therefore more difficult for Freshdesk users.

Zendesk offers four paid pricing tiers to help prospects find the solution best fit for their business (Essential, Team, Professional, Enterprise). One important note across all Zendesk plans is that customers will need to pay for every user - regardless of their level of access. However, Zendesk does not rely on paid add-ons to fill out their product with one notable exception: Zendesk Collaboration. This add-on requires a paid subscription to provide Zendesk access to limited-access users. 

Freshdesk offers an economical solution with four paid pricing tiers for businesses with varying sizes and needs (Blossom, Garden, Estate, Forest). Freshdesk is focused on leaner and more compact solutions that may or may not be optimized for scaling - but do present favorably to a smaller and leaner customer base. However, given that a change in Zendesk pricing gave rise to this competitor, it is expected that the Freshdesk pricing plans tend to be more cost effective and value-driven than that of Zendesk.

The Zendesk Marketplace offers a somewhat robust directory of compatible apps,  with 1000+ Zendesk integrations spanning 15+ categories. Users can easily sort, filter, and search to find and connect their most utilized apps. 

Freshdesk has a more modest integrations directory that offers 500+ apps spanning 15+ categories. Similarly to Zendesk, Freshdesk’s app marketplace allows users to sort, filter, and search to discover integrations important to their business.

Self-service functionality is a key component of Zendesk offerings. Zendesk provides these options, called Guide Lite, within its support plans which can be enhanced with a sliding scale of add-on Guide purchases. These Guide add-ons include powerful features and how-to’s on customization of service, permissioning for customer service management teams, reporting and analytics, customer portal setup and maintenance, and multilingual content. 

Freshdesk helps you create a seamless self-service experience as a standard part of their product offering. The two primary mechanisms for this are their Knowledge Base and Forums, both of which allow customers to easily self-service.

Both products are popular across a wide range of businesses, but Zendesk is favored by larger enterprises. Freshdesk is touted as the simpler, less expensive choice but Zendesk challenges prospective buyers to consider the total cost of ownership - and not just licensing costs (Freshdesk is generally much cheaper than Zendesk in this area). Freshdesk may be used on its own or alongside Freshworks’ other products, while Zendesk is just getting started with tools for sales teams and lacks a marketing product. Zendesk customers enjoy customization, extensibility, and a large community of users. Customers choose Freshdesk for usability (for both agents and admins), low price, and team collaboration. 

Zendesk does not offer a free plan. Freshdesk offers the Sprout plan for free, with unlimited agents. 

It depends on who you ask. According to G2, Zendesk is the top ranked Help Desk solution while Freshdesk is a close 3rd place. Gartner lists Zendesk as a leader (among several others) in its Magic Quadrant, while Freshdesk was the lone visionary. SoftwareReviews recognized HubSpot as a gold star medalist in their 2021 report. 

Ultimately, it depends on which product is the best fit for your team.

The monthly cost per user for Zendesk’s Support Suite ranges from $49 - $215 (source), while Freshdesk’s paid plans start at $15 and reach as high as $99 per user per month (source). Freshdesk also offers a free plan. While both products include a similar set of standard features, each company claims higher value and ROI that offsets any additional costs.