Top 11 Zendesk Alternatives for Top-Notch Customer Support

Zendesk is the most popular helpdesk solution for customer service; however, it is not suitable for every company. It could either be above your budget or not integrate with your existing software tools. Before you pay a premium for a software solution, you should see which Zendesk alternative is available in the market.

A good customer service tool is key to your ability to manage client interactions across channels. Unfortunately, for startup companies operating on a budget, Zendesk can be a bit too much for them to handle.

This article will outline some of the best Zendesk alternatives for your customer support journey.

Why Zendesk Alternatives?

Zendesk has a 4.2 rating with a reliable and feature-rich ticketing system. However, there are some complaints. The suitable Zendesk alternative for you will depend on the features that fit your needs and into your budget. There are a number of reasons to look for Zendesk alternatives for your business.

• High Cost: Prices are high for this software. Nowadays, good cloud-based helpdesk software comes cheaply. Package charges are determined per agent; therefore, if you add an agent to your store, costs will be high.
• Outdated Interface: Its interface looks outdated when compared to some of its alternatives.
• No Email Marketing Functionalities: With Zendesk, you cannot send automated or one-off emails to your customers as they do not offer email marketing functionalities.
• Poor Customer Service: Zendesk’s customer service support is poor compared to other great software available. Also, it separates chats and email tickets, so customer requests are not answered in one queue.
• Data Export: There is no easy way to export data from Zendesk as there are no options to export data into a CSV file directly.
• Integration: To implement some automation features, Zendesk has to integrate seamlessly with WordPress. However, WordPress integration is not so smooth.

Best Zendesk Alternatives for Customer Support Teams

1. Intercom

A Customer Support Software with Two Core Products and Four Add-ons

Intercom is a customer support software that utilizes behavioral targeting to help businesses better understand and benefit from customer communication. Its varieties of features allow you to interact with your customers in different ways. In addition, you can interact and support your customers in a personal and scalable manner through a highly customizable inbox.

With outbound messages, you can onboard and help customers on the web and in your mobile application. You can share articles in the messenger automatically to provide customers with self-service support. Its highly demanded feature is live chat, and it has a Chatbot that can be placed on the company’s website to communicate with visitors with automated messages.

Using the product tours, you can onboard and support customers and highlight new features with adoption-driving tools. It also enables you to send in-app messages to encourage customers to take action. Capturing leads with this software is easy because it routes the right one to the right salesperson.

This software has an intuitive user interface similar to other messaging apps and integrates with a wide variety of applications. Its customer data feature allows marketers to track and segment their target audiences. They can view customer profiles and purchase activities and group the profile into live segments based on their attributes.

Marketers can measure their lead performance with built-in reports. Managers can also measure team performance.

Pricing

Pricing varies for regular businesses and small businesses. It offers a 14-day free trial period, after which you will pay for a subscription starting from $79 for small businesses. After that, it offers three pricing plans for regular businesses, which you can contact its sales expert for a custom quote.

The first plan is the Conversational Marketing Plan that turns website visitors into paying customers. Next, conversational Customer Engagement onboard, activate, and re-engage customers. The final plan is Conversational Support.

2. Freshdesk

A Free Customer Support Platform that Uses the Power of Collaborative Ticketing and AI to Deliver the Best Customer Experience

Freshdesk is a customer support platform built to propel agent productivity. Customer complaints from any channel can be converted into tickets so that you never lose track of them. In addition, this software has tools called Freshservice, which is designed to help your IT department deliver better services.

Its ticketing system is made for team collaboration and agent productivity which means that you can prioritize every ticket based on keywords. Then you can assign every ticket to a specific agent and group so that there is no confusion.

With its team inbox feature, you can track and monitor incoming tickets from multiple channels with one inbox. Finally, its agent collision detection feature ensures that multiple agents don’t get wind up working on the same ticket unknowingly.

You can set expectations for customer response time and measure how agents can meet these time frames with Service Level Agreement (SLAs). Then, using its AI-powered CX automation suite, you can deliver exceptional customer experiences.

This software caters to both small and large businesses. Its integrated multi-channel support ensures that you do not need too many tools to navigate. Freshdesk integrates with CRM tools that come in handy when you need to get customers’ information. It also has integrated live chat and phone support.

Pricing

Freshdesk offers a 21-day trial period with no credit card required that allows you to test all the critical features before committing. It combines a best-in-class ticketing system, self-service, and reporting.

Paid plans are available in four tiers. For businesses just starting up, the Sprout Plan, the free plan, is suitable. This plan comes with unlimited agents. The Blossom Plan is ideal for standard support and costs $15 per agent per month if billed annually.

Efficiency is sure with the Garden Plan, which costs $35 per agent per month if billed annually. For businesses who seek stellar performance, the Estate Plan that costs $49 per agent per month if billed annually is suitable. Finally, the Forest Plan, which costs $99 per agent per month if billed annually, is perfect for enterprises.

You will be charged extra for additional bot sessions. For example, one thousand bot sessions per month cost $100.

3. HelpCrunch

An All-in-one Customer Communication Platform

HelpCrunch is a knowledge base software for customer service. Its live chat plans allow you to chat with your website visitors in real-time. You can customize your live chat widget with its customization options and custom CSS styling. Website visitors use this chat widget to interact with customer support agents.

Integration of HelpCrunch User Authentication Mode with your login system can help you track user behavior. It has an intuitive user interface with all the necessary features supported, and it also includes website popups. In addition, its message builder is easy to use and detailed.

It is used by businesses of all sizes and is available on mobile devices and iOS. This software has an inbox that is programmed to run both emails and chat conversations. The inbox houses chat conversations, emails, and visitors’ information. It is full-featured compared with other live chat tools and can be used for customer service and marketing.

This software combines modern live chat, in-app messenger, auto messaging, email automation, and ticketing. It also shows you a more comprehensive and more precise picture of your customers to help you understand each of their activities better and connect with the right customer at the right time.

Auto-messages allow you to easily up-sell and cross-sell, thereby maximizing revenue for each customer converted. You can also use automated and email follow-ups to close deals quickly.

Pricing

HelpCrunch offers a 14-day free trial period. Users can migrate their contacts, email templates, site automation, and more from other platforms for free. Pricing is based on the number of team members. Annual plans are offered at a 20% discount.

It offers three pricing plans. The Standard Plan costs $12 per month per team member if billed annually. The most popular plan is the Premium Plan, which costs $20 per month per team member and is billed annually. For the Enterprise Plan, you can contact a sales expert for a custom quote.

4. LiveAgent

An Omnichannel Helpdesk Software with Advanced Automation

LiveAgent has live chat features that allow customers to interact with customer representatives in real-time. You are not required to download any software to start chatting as it is browser-based. In addition, its unique ticketing system allows you to handle all your customers’ inquiries from one interface.

Its universal inbox phone calls, emails, social media messages, and live chat messages into a single shared inbox. Users can answer all incoming messages directly from the inbox or log in to each respective platform.

With its hybrid ticket streams feature, agents can follow a customer’s ticket resolution journey in the same ticket thread across various channels. It has a built-in CRM that allows users to create custom CRM fields. In addition, you can store your customers’ information, which includes past purchases and tickets, inside your ticketing dashboard.

Agents can create private notes inside ticket threads that only agents can see. These notes can serve as reminders for agents to speed up on a ticket or customer’s request. It applies ticket-splitting and merging. If there are multiple tickets about the same issue from the same person, you can merge the tickets into one. However, if there is one ticket that requires the attention of two departments, you can split the ticket into two for efficiency.

Pricing

It offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required for all plans. You are not obligated to its plans as you can cancel anytime. It offers a free forever plan. Paid plans are available in three tiers. The Ticket Plan has features that are a must-have for email ticketing. It costs $15 per agent per month.

The Ticket+ Chat Plan costs $29 per agent per month. With this plan, you get a robust multi-channel live chat and ticketing solution. Finally, the most popular plan is the All-inclusive Plan, which costs $39 per agent per month. With this plan, you get a powerful omnichannel help desk with a wide range of unique features.

5. Kayako

A Unified Customer Service Platform and Good Zendesk Alternative

Kayako’s live chat software is the best way to provide live customer support because it makes it easy to give your customers the personalized helpdesk service they deserve. In addition, you can easily customize this live chat software and integrate it into your website, iOS, and Android apps.

It is offered either as an on-premise or web-based software that puts all your support channels in one location to help you track customer queries. Small businesses and large enterprises use this customer service software.

Using this software, you can expand your helpdesk across various platforms, including live chat, phone, web, email, tickets, and self-service support. In addition, you can automate your help desk to perform repetitive tasks to allow agents to focus on more critical tasks. These processes are automated with auto-ticketing, macros, notifications, and easy sorting. The software also enables you to route emails faster and more accurately.

You can access Kayako’s mobile app on iPhone, Android, Windows Phones and tablets, and Blackberry. It offers reliable 24/7 customer service support. Its automated ticket routing feature ensures that customers are routed to the right agent so that their query is taken care of before it escalates.

After tracking your performance, you can use Kayako Query Language to create custom fields to measure relevant metrics.

Pricing

Kayako offers three paid plans. You can start with its risk-free 14-day trial period with no credit card required before committing. If you are looking for an omnichannel inbox for small teams, the Inbox Plan, which costs $15 per agent per month, is ideal. Finally, the Growth Plan contains customer service software tools for growing teams, and it costs $30 per agent per month.

The Scale Plan is a customer service solution for larger teams and businesses. It costs $60 per agent per month. These plans are suitable for all businesses of every stage, shape, and size. Collaborators can only be added to the Growth and Scale Plans.

6. HelpScout

An All-in-one Customer Service Platform for the World’s Most Customer-centric Businesses

HelpScout helps you manage all your requests in a shared inbox while you get all the collaborative features that your team needs to remain productive. In addition, you can set up powerful automation to take care of repetitive tasks with workflows.

It offers multi-channel support as you can manage your email, phone conversations, and live chat, all from a single mailbox. You can integrate HelpScout with your systems with custom apps and the mailbox API. It is easy to use this software on the go as it is compatible with Native iOS and Android devices.

Embedding articles on your website will help visitors find the answers that they seek. It also integrates with a variety of applications to make work more efficient. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to use.

With its real-time reporting, managers can see what is happening on the support front, no matter the time of day. These reports are categorized into four- conversations, productivity, team, and happiness. The conversation metrics show the busiest time of the day. Productivity shows the help desk’s efficiency metrics.

Team allows insights into the metrics of each team member. Happiness scores are obtained from customers’ feedback to gauge the overall customer experience.

Pricing

HelpScout offers a 15-day free trial period with no credit card required to try out its features before committing. Its plans include 2-factor authentication, while the Company Plan includes SSO/SAML and many more. It offers three pricing tiers.

The Standard Plan for automation, reporting, and integration for support teams costs $20 per user per month. With this plan, you get three mailboxes, 1 Doc site, Beacon with live chat, and many other unique features. For advanced features and reporting for teams at scale, the Plus Plan is ideal. It costs $35 per user per month. You get ten mailboxes and 1 Doc site.

The Company Plan was designed to grow with teams of 25+. It offers personalized services and enterprise security for large teams. In addition, you get unlimited mailboxes with this plan. Pricing is determined by contacting their sales expert for a custom quote.

For startups, the Basic Plan includes all the essential features with teams of up to 5 users. You get one mailbox, 1 Doc, and Beacon for $10 per user per month.

7. Bitrix24

A Help Desk Software with All the Services and Apps that You Need for your Business

Bitrix24 is a united workspace that handles many aspects of tasks such as Project Management, CRM, and Collaboration platforms for your business management. It is available in the cloud and on-premise. In addition, you can make HD video calls and conferences for up to 24 participants.

It has a built-in online time clock that allows your team to keep track of time while working. You can use Bitrix24 on the go with their free mobile app. Its activity streams provide users with real-time updates, notification settings, and company-wide announcements. You can attach files, schedule events, and receive feedback from your colleagues inside your personalized activity stream.

With its ticketing system, you can systemize and organize your helpdesk, which is crucial for customer service. It is suitable for businesses of all sizes. You can handle customer requests from any channel, including live chat, email, web forms, social networks, and messengers in your Bitrix24 account.

This software allows you to configure queuing and routing options and set separate queues for every communication channel. In addition, it provides various kinds of reports to evaluate support team efficiency. You can customize each report and receive an evaluation of work efficiency for each employee.

Tickets use the CRM contact information to set responsible people and connect information. Tasks reports can be used to supplement the reporting included in the ticketing system. It supports unlimited agents.

Bitrix24 integrates with MS Outlook tasks, contacts, and calendars.

Pricing

Bitrix24 offers a free plan, and paid plans are available in five pricing tiers. The Start+ Plan provides you with sites and CRM to grow your business. It allows two users and costs $19 per month. The CRM+ Plan provides you with a rock-solid CRM and allows six users. It costs $55 per month. For rock-solid project management, the Project+ Plan is suitable. It costs $55 per month and allows 24 users.

The Standard Plan gives you an advanced business tool suite and costs $79 per month. This plan allows 50 users. For a complete business tool suite, the Professional Plan is ideal. It costs $159 per month and allows an unlimited number of users.

8. EngageBay

A Free All-in-one CRM Software for Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support

EngageBay is ideal for small businesses and offers free CRM tools like workflow automation, targeted marketing, and pipeline visualization. This CRM software stores every interaction that you have had with a customer. The information is then presented on your timeline each time you require it. These details include the first to the last time the customer visited your website and satisfied with your service.

You can integrate your phone calls with EngageBay’s CRM so that your team can have a context-rich conversation on every call. In addition, the software streamlines and accelerates your workflow addition, and it has an intuitive interface that allows users to navigate easily.

It allows businesses to use Zapier and Xero integration to connect it to various third-party applications. Through KPI tracking, performance-based insights, and timely reports, companies can maintain expected SLAs to support good experience.

With automated responses such as pre-recorded answers, standard responses, and reply templates for real-time conversations, users can reduce response times to boost customer satisfaction.

This platform provides users with graphs and automated reports that aids business growth and helps them identify trends. You can build an unlimited number of groups to organize your tickets more efficiently. EngageBay also allows you to view open, closed, and new tickets to track the status of every support ticket in one environment.

Pricing

EngageBay offers a free forever plan. It also provides a free onboarding session to help users navigate. With the free plan, you get 500 contacts and 1,000 branded emails. The Basic Plan costs $8.99 per user per month and offers 1,000 contacts and 3,000 branded emails.

For the Growth Plan, you get 50,000 contacts and 25,000 branded emails. It costs $29.99 per user per month. The Pro Plan offers 50,000 contacts and 50,000 branded images. This plan costs $47.99 per user per month. These plans provide excellent conversations and unique features for a successful marketing campaign and customer service support.

9. Kommunicate

A Human and Bot Hybrid Customer Communication Software for Growing Businesses

Kommunicate is a one-stop for all customer support problems. It aims to empower your business and build long-lasting relationships with customers to drive growth. With its fully customizable chat widget, you can provide live chat support to your customers.

You can automatically send customized messages to website visitors when agents are not available. With its push notifications features, you don’t get to miss customer messages. Its in-chat lead collection feature will help you to collect valuable lead contact information. This software integrates with various third-party applications and also supports several bot builder platforms. It integrates with any bot platform.

It carries out automation with the aid of AI-powered bots that can easily be integrated into your support to ensure that customers get assistance as soon as they need it. Automation can also help you to reduce your response time and reduce your agents’ workload. For example, a conversation can be transferred to a human agent if the chatbot cannot answer a user’s question.

Kommunicate comes with reporting dashboards that can be downloaded and edited. You can also track essential support metrics like response and resolution time to get an insight into your support performance and find ways to optimize it. Small, medium and large enterprises use this software.

Pricing

Kommunicate offers a 30-day free trial period with no credit card required. You are not obligated and can cancel at any time. It offers four paid plans. The Growth Plan is billed annually at $24 per month with two teammates and unlimited Bots.

The highly recommended plan is the Pro Plan, which costs $40 per month with two teammates. In addition, you get access to unlimited bots with this plan. The Enterprise Plan costs $64 per month and includes two teammates.

The Custom Plan is ideal for a full-fledged support platform with custom chatbots, reporting, integrations, and workflows. You can contact a sales representative for a custom quote.

10. Zoho Desk

A Perfect Solution for Growing Businesses with Customer Service Needs

Zoho Desk is a feature-complete helpdesk solution ideal for small to medium-sized businesses. It offers advanced functionalities like voice-over IP, social media integration, and data analysis for managers monitoring customer interactions.

Its ticket management UI provides simple ticket aggregation through any social media channel. On the customer satisfaction dashboard, you can see whether a group of tickets has been opened or resolved.

Agent collision helps to prevent Multiple Agents Viewing or replying to the same ticket by placing notifications in the menu and within the ticket. In addition, it allows you to view tickets in one unified interface from emails, web forms, and self-service portals.

You can automate repetitive manual actions and manage complex cross-functional service processes using its automation feature. With its live chat feature, you can be available for your customers in an instant. This software is multichannel as it supports all channels that are critical to startups and small businesses.

Using the Zoho Assist add-on, you can get a variety of applications to integrate with. Its free support desk system allows you to set up a customer self-service portal with FAQs and help articles. You can also set up the articles in multiple languages to get help in their native languages.

With its mobile app, you can stay on top of things even while on the go. Its built-in dashboard helps you to track and improve your service using the most common metrics. You can also use detailed reports to understand your team’s performance.

Pricing

Zoho Desk offers a free forever plan. With this plan, you get access to three free agents. It also provides a 15-day free trial period when you can try out its features before committing. Paid plans are available in three pricing tiers.

The Standard Plan costs $12 per agent per month if billed annually. However, 50% of users choose the Professional Plan, which costs $20 per agent per month. The Enterprise Plan costs $35 per agent per month.

11. SharePoint

An IT Help Desk for Office 365

SharePoint is a helpdesk system to manage user, customer requests, and issues effectively. Microsoft introduced this software tool. When combined with a designer, you can design forms for specific help requests. In addition, it has customizable workflows and forms. That is, you can customize the SharePoint platform to make it work the way you want.

With its help desk solution, you will enjoy automated ticket management. Users can create tickets from customers’ emails to help them save time. SharePoint’s ticketing system is implemented either as part of a corporate intranet or a standalone solution designed for customer service. In addition, you get notified at each stage of your ticket life cycle.

Its online list views allow you to create custom dashboards and follow up the submitter easily. The Office 365 ticket system works great with SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, and SharePoint Online. SharePoint’s desktop app offers the highest level of security so that all data entered into the software remains safe. You can also integrate this software tool with Power BI.

SharePoint Online HelpDesk will ensure that all tickets are processed and resolved efficiently, not leaving anyone unattended.

Pricing

Sharepoint does not offer a free plan. Instead, it offers three pricing plans. Prices do not include tax. The SharePoint Online Plan 1 costs $5 per user per month if billed annually. This plan provides features that are suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.

A full-featured plan with unique capabilities for the enterprise is the SharePoint Online Plan 2, which costs $10 per user per month. However, these two plans do not involve office applications. The final plan is Office 365 E3 which costs $20 per user per month.

With the Office 365 E3 plan, you get advanced services for messaging, document sharing, compliance, management features for IT, and a 30-day free trial period.

Zendesk Alternatives FAQ

Which Zendesk Alternative Should I Pick?

Choosing a Zendesk alternative depends on your business niche and needs. Not every customer service software tool is suitable for all businesses.

If you own a small business, Intercom, Kayako, EngageBay, and Zoho Desk are the ideal software tools for you. Freshdesk, LiveAgent, Bitrix24, EngageBay, and Zoho Desk are recommended for companies that seek free tools with unique features.

A Zendesk alternative with the most competitive price is SharePoint. Software tools that allow you to contact sales experts for a custom quote are Intercom, HelpCrunch, HelpScout, and Kommunicate.

You can start a profitable online business if you choose a customer support software tool that best suits your business.

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