Freshdesk Review

All-in-one Platform for Streamlining, Collaboration, and Automation

With Freshdesk, all conversations are made more accessible. Many Freshdesk customer reviews confirm this. Regardless of the communication method you use, you can respond to all your customers from a single platform. Streamlining all your support channels has never been easier. 

Freshdesk is also built for better collaboration within the company as it includes everyone – agents, colleagues, or even external business partners. Automatic support? Yes, please! Not worrying about most of the repetitive tasks means you can focus on more critical issues and make sure that the customers who need your help the most will be the first to get it. 

There is a lighter version available, known as Freshdesk Mint, that comes in the form of a modern, faster, and more responsive platform. It was built specifically to help you communicate and work with your customers with ease. 

Feature-Rich Customer Support Software Solution

Our Freshdesk review shows that this is one of the most comprehensive customer support solutions on the market. It is best known for its variety of features, especially for the more advanced that are not usually offered by the biggest Freshdesk competitors. 

Ticketing

Ticketing can be quite complicated depending on the software, but with Freshdesk, that’s not the case. The Freshdesk ticketing system is much more advanced compared to most of its alternatives. This is achieved through the Team Inbox. You can help your teams collaborate effectively to provide better support experiences by assigning the tasks to whoever you deem most suited. 

The research for our Freshdesk review showed that the most popular features available for ticketing are agent collision detection, SLA management, ticket field suggester, thank you detector, custom ticket status, scenario automation, and canned responses. 

Collaboration

The collaboration-related Freshdesk features are among the industry’s best and include team huddle, linked tickets, shared ownership, and parent-child ticketing. The software further allows your agents to collaborate contextually with agents from other teams, external stakeholders, and other people to resolve tickets faster. 

Omnichannel Support

Using different communication methods along with keeping track of everything said and done on each of them can be challenging. Freshdesk eliminates this problem with its unique Omnichannel. The platform was built to unify all support-related communication such as email, phone, chat, social media, website, and WhatsApp in a single location. There are tons of positive Freshdesk user reviews regarding this feature, since it helps users respond faster and be much more efficient. 

This feature is partly why the software is rated higher than some of its biggest competitors. For example, if we compare Zendesk vs Freshdesk, the latter offers a unified customer experience view for a significantly lower price. 

Field Service Management

As one of the most popular field service management software, Freshdesk offers a bundle of advanced features that can help you manage your end-end-field service operations without breaking a sweat. Unlike many Freshdesk alternatives, this feature-rich software includes easy to use service tasks, service groups, scheduling dashboard, mobile field service, customer signature, and time tracking. 

Automations

Freshdesk’s built-in capabilities to automate mundane and repetitive tasks can be a real life-saver, as confirmed by many Freshdesk reviews out there. You will be a step ahead of the competition with the ability to automatically assign tickets to agents and groups based on keywords, requests, or properties, their current workload or skill, or using the round-robin method. The software also supports time- or event-triggered automation, automatic email notification, and Omniroute – auto-assignment of emails, calls, and chats to your agents based on their available bandwidth for a faster response. 

Self Service

Good customer service is another area where Freshdesk excels. For example, the Freshdesk knowledge base is so extensive, the chances are that you will be able to find the answer to any question you might have in a matter of minutes. Freddy, the AI-powered Chatbot is another notable feature, built to deliver fast and precise answers. The Freshdesk Help Widget is also here to supply helpful location-based solutions to your customers. Other available Self Service features include automatically suggested solutions, email to Kbase, feedback mechanism, solution article analytics, forum moderation, and link forum topic to a ticket. And lastly, an integrated Freshdesk Live Chat system can help you get in touch with your customers faster than ever. 

Analytics

Freshdesk customer reviews also praise the platform’s detailed analytics that will help you identify problems and improve the helpdesk performance. With curated reports, customer satisfaction ratings, dashboards, custom reports, scheduled reports, and widget customization, you will have more than enough information to make better decisions in the future and steer your company in the right direction. Most Freshdesk alternatives offer analytics, but not many are as in-depth and detailed. 

Customization

With Freshdesk, customization is as seamless as it gets. There is portal customization, agent roles customizations, custom ticket forms, URL, apps, customer segments, and much more. Regardless of your business, you will be able to custom-tailor the software to feel like it was designed specifically for your company. Not a lot of Freshdesk competitors can achieve this, and those who can are in a much higher price range than Freshdesk. 

Integrations

With a plethora of available integrations and many more on the way, Freshdesk can overwhelm you. There are Freshdesk integrations in 16 different categories — from bots, CRM, and file sharing solutions, all the way to social media, CRM, and billing software

Who Is Freshdesk For? 

Freshdesk offers a variety of features and services that can be used by both SMBs and enterprises. Use cases and Freshdesk reviews show that the platform is best for Omnichannel, AI, self-service, field service, remote customer service, and proactive customer support. 

It’s also an award-winning field service software used by big brands such as Panasonic, HP, NYUm Henkel, Decathlon, American Express. The solution can help you build customer trust and loyalty by improving your field service operations’ speed, efficiency, and consistency.

Lastly, by having the option for remote support, you can quickly adapt to the “new normal” and collaborate effectively even when your team is spread across the world. Our Freshdesk review shows that the proactive support capability lets you reduce resolution time, protect brand reputation, improve CSAT, increase customer LTV, drive customer advocacy, and boost productivity. 

Freshdesk can be used in almost all industries, but it’s most popular in the retail and ecommerce, travel and hospitality, software and IT, online-first, manufacturing, healthcare, and education sectors. 

Freshdesk Pricing: Affordable Plans for SMBs and Enterprises

Unlike most rivals, famous for their confusing pricing, all Freshdesk plans are pretty straightforward and completely transparent. It will take only one glance at their pricing page for you to know exactly what you want. The Freshdesk cost can get even lower if you opt for the yearly instead of the monthly plans. This is the best way to save money in the long run. There's also a 14-day Freshdesk demo where you can experience the software's full potential. While this might not be enough time to explore every aspect, you’ll still get a good idea about what it can do for you. 

Freshdesk Helpdesk

Starting with a free plan for an unlimited number of agents (which can rarely be seen in its competitors' plans), Freshdesk seems to be on the right path for reaching the top of the online cloud-based customer service software industry. Our Freshdesk ticketing system review shows that the free plan, called Sprout, is the best way to start working with the Freshdesk software and discover what it can offer. With features such as email and social ticketing, ticket dispatch, knowledge base, ticket trend report, and data center location, you will have everything you need to start with your business. This plan is recommended for startups, new and small companies, and cost-conscious businesses with limited budgets.

Once you get to know the software, you can upgrade to the Blossom plan. Priced at $15/agent/month when billed annually (or $19/agent/month when billed monthly), it's recommended for standard support. The plan offers everything available in Sprout and adds automations, collision detection, marketing apps, helpdesk report, SLA management, and business hours. According to many Freshdesk customer reviews, the plan is very affordable compared to its alternatives. That said, its number of features makes it most suited for small to midsize businesses.

Next up is the Garden plan, priced at $35/agent/month billed annually (or $45/agent/month billed monthly). This is the plan that's most often recommended for teams that want to be more efficient. It offers all features from Blossom, in addition to time tracking, CSAT surveys, performance reports, multilingual knowledge base, and custom Freshdesk apps. Given its number of features, it’s much more affordable than most alternatives, and therefore, a more popular choice.

Next on the list is the Estate plan, priced at $49/agent/month, billed annually (or $69/agent/month, billed monthly). According to Freshdesk, this is the best plan for stellar performance. It ups the Garden plan with round-robin routing, custom roles, portal rebrand, custom reports and dashboard, customer segments, versioning in a knowledge base, multiple products, and dynamic ticket forms. Our Freshdesk review showed us that this plan is pricier than some of its alternatives and caters best to midsize to large companies. Smaller outfits that need these features or similar usually go for a Freshdesk alternative such as Cayzu or Zoho Desk because of their limited budgets.

The last tier and the most popular choice among large companies and enterprises is the Forest plan. Priced at $99/agent/month when billed annually (or $125/agent/month when billed monthly), it opens the road to a plethora of advanced and some pretty unique features. It offers all the features from Estate, and adds skill-based routing, sandbox, audit log, knowledge base approval workflow, agents shift, IP whitelisting, agent scripts, email bot, auto-triage, article suggester, and the most crucial feature, HIPAA compliance. The plan is expensive, especially for large teams, but if your budget allows it and you can commit to a full year, it’s good value for money.

Freshdesk Omnichannel

We are continuing our Freshdesk review with the vendor’s most prominent feature. The Omnichannel is an all-in-one platform where your customers can use various contact channels to reach out to you, such as email, phone, live chat, social media, self-service, screen sharing, and more. So, instead of jumping from one channel to another, you will be able to see them all in one location. There are two Omnichannel plans available.

Estate Omnichannel is the most popular choice among Freshdesk's users. It's priced at $79/agent/month billed annually (or $99/agent/month billed monthly) and includes everything in the Estate of Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, and more. It also adds features such as email, social, chat, and phone channels, messaging, Omnichannel customer timeline, roles and permissions, custom reports, co-browsing, multilingual support, and 3000 local incoming minutes per month.

Forest Omnichannel is priced at $139/agent/month, billed annually (or $169/agent/month, billed monthly). It offers all the features from Estate Omnichannel and adds agent scripts, email bot, auto-triage, Omniroute, chatbots, voicebot, speech-enabled IVR, abandoned call metrics, IP whitelisting, 5,000 Freddy sessions per month, and 5,000 local incoming minutes per month.

Freshdesk Add-ons

Many Freshdesk reviews show that the add-ons make a big difference. They are so well-built that they enhance the entire experience.

The Freddy Self-service add-on is available with all plans. It was designed to automate the resolution of issues with the help of highly customizable chatbots and superior API connectors from Freddy AI. Its most popular features are chatbot builder, API connectors, intent detection, rich media interactions, custom CSS and JS, custom params, WhatsApp Business integration, Facebook Messenger integration, multilingual bots, analytics, bot activities, and agent handover. It's priced at $100 for 1,000 Freddy sessions per month.

The Freddy Ultimate add-on was designed to improve your customer experience and agent productivity with advanced and unique features. The add-on is included in the Forest plan and Forest Omnichannel. It has everything the Freddy Self-Service offers with the addition of auto triage for custom fields, robo assist (RPA connectors), assist bot, canned response suggester, analytics. Freddy Ultimate is priced at $75 per agent per month + $500 for 5,000 Freddy sessions per month.

Last but not least, the Field Service Management (FSM) software is available with the Blossom plan. It's one of the best FSM software solutions currently available, according to many Freshdesk reviews. Priced at $29/field employee/month, it's also ranked as one of the most affordable solutions in the industry. Some of its most popular features include a scheduling dashboard, time tracking, a map view, offline availability, iOS, and Android apps, and analytics.

Freshdesk Support: Knowledgeable and Resourceful Team Ready to Help Anytime

Freshdesk offers comprehensive FAQs, a resource library, webinars, videos, free tools, and a blog for all its users. Their website also has a live chat option available 24/5 business days a week. The company also offers 24/7 Freshdesk customer support via email included in all plans and 24/5 phone support with all paid plans. According to many Freshdesk user reviews, the support team is knowledgeable, helpful, and responds quickly. 

Is Freshdesk Safe?

All Freshdesk accounts are automatically created with an SSL certificate, enabling you to encrypt communication between web browsers and web servers. You also can restrict login outside of the work by whitelisting only office network addresses for all your agents and employees. It also supports IP whitelisting to a virtual private network (VPN), which will allow your agents to log in from any outside location.

Another security feature of the Freshdesk project management is the single sign-on (SSO) script. It authenticates users by asking for credentials. This method is proven to lower the risk of unauthorized access significantly. 

Freshdesk also has GDPR compliance for privacy and security of personal data, as well as HIPAA compliance for the protection of all healthcare data, which is available only with the Forest plan.

For all security-conscious users, Freshdesk also offers click-jacking prevention, SHA 256 encoding, JWT authentication for APIs, granular app management, data encryption at rest, and cross-site scripting mitigation.

Final Verdict

We did extensive research for Freshdesk, created our account to test the software, thoroughly studied its website, and read many Freshdesk reviews to be able to rank it objectively. What we discovered is that the platform has a lot to offer, especially for those in the retail and ecommerce, travel and hospitality, software and IT, online-first, manufacturing, healthcare, and education businesses.

Freshdesk further has a functional free version that can help new users and cost-conscious businesses learn the software's basics. It is also feature-rich and comes with an affordable price for startups, small businesses, and midsize companies. That said, some of the crucial features are available only in the higher paid tiers. It also gets pricey for larger companies and enterprises because it's charged by the number of users.

So, is the software any good? Our Freshdesk review concludes that the pros heavily outweigh the cons and that the platform is an excellent value for the money.