17 Best Zendesk Alternatives and Competitors for Better Customer Support in 2023

When we talk about customer service software, chances are that you must have heard about Zendesk. Big corporate brands such as Siemens, Mailchimp, and Tesco have used Zendesk to take their customer service to the next level. But, let’s be honest, the tool has some serious limitations that make people search for the best Zendesk alternatives.

Right from complicated features to expensive plans that will make you think twice before going ahead with the tool, Zendesk falls short in more areas than one. 

In this blog, we have analyzed data from different help desk software and compiled a list of top Zendesk alternatives for you. We will discuss the top 17 alternatives to Zendesk, along with their features, pros, and pricing.

What Is Zendesk? 

Zendesk is one of the leading help desk software in the market that helps you deliver meaningful customer experiences. This robust ticketing system helps you gain 360-degree visibility into all customer interactions for an efficient, seamless process. Support agents can bring in customer issues or requests from almost any channel and use interaction history to respond faster with the right context. 

Zendesk provides a complete customer service solution that’s easy to use and scales with your business. You can build an integrated help center as well as a community forum to help customers resolve issues at their own pace and reduce agent workload. 

Why Look for Zendesk Alternatives? 

“Products similar to Zendesk” has become a popular search query among many leading businesses. Although Zendesk has been a market leader for years, it fails to hit the sweet spot in certain crucial areas. Let’s discuss them right away. 

1. Expensive Plans

Zendesk offers one of the most expensive plans that can burn a big hole in your pocket, especially if you are a business on a budget. Zendesk pricing plans start at $49/agent/month and go up to as high as $215/agent/month. Now, not every business can afford to use this tool, given the number of cheaper Zendesk alternatives available in the market that offer more or less the same features. 

2. Complicated Features

The tool offers an overwhelming amount of features and, therefore, can make your customer service operations complicated. Moreover, Zendesk separates chats and email tickets, so you cannot manage all customer requests in one queue.

3. Outdated Interface

If you check other modern help desk tools, Zendesk’s interface looks outdated and dull. You will instantly feel there is massive scope for improvement. 

4. Basic Plan Lacks Important Features 

Important help desk features, such as self-service customer portal, knowledge management, SLA management, multilingual support, private notes, etc., are not included in Zendesk’s basic plan (Suite Team). 

What Are the Top Features that Zendesk Alternatives Should Have?

In your journey to find the best or free Zendesk alternatives, different tools with their different features can grab your attention and leave you more confused than sorted. 

To make your life easier, we have compiled a list of important features that the top alternatives should have. 

• Easy-to-use and user-friendly help desk interface that can be set up in minutes without the need for extensive training programs.

• Shared inbox to allow multiple agents to access your support email accounts. 

• Internal collaboration features for addressing customer concerns faster together. For example, internal notes to discuss tickets before sharing a response.

• Anytime, anywhere access to easily support your customers from any part of the world.

• Smart reports and analytics to track individual and team performance, customer satisfaction, and monitor the overall progress.

• Help desk automation features to get more done in a limited time. For example, the Round-robin ticket assignment feature to automatically route tickets to your available agents.

What Are the Selection Criteria for Zendesk Alternatives?

Finding the perfect product alternative might seem like finding a needle in a haystack. You have to visit dozens of websites, dig out product features, compare prices, check for hidden terms and conditions, and scan through hundreds of online reviews. 

But don’t worry just yet, as we are here to help you. All the product alternatives mentioned in this blog have been carefully chosen to help you make the right decision. In order to make it to our list, all help desk tools like Zendesk should meet the following criteria: 

Core Help Desk Features: All the Zendesk alternatives should have core help desk features such as ticket management, multichannel support, automation capabilities, customer service reports, etc. 

Listed on Top Review Platforms: The products should be listed on the leading online software review platforms such as Capterra, Getapp, and SoftwareWorld. 

Minimum 10 User Reviews: All Zendesk competitors should have a minimum of 10 genuine user reviews on the leading software comparison platforms mentioned above. Online reviews posted by genuine users offer insights into the various pros of the product and make comparison easier. 

Comparison Table for Zendesk Alternatives

The List of Top Zendesk Alternatives in 2023

Now that we have gained some deep insights into the various pros of Zendesk, it’s time to move forward and evaluate the top alternatives to Zendesk. 

1. Zendesk vs. ProProfs Help Desk

ProProfs Help Desk is the best among other Zendesk alternatives that is built for productive teams and delightful customers. So what makes this tool take the top position? Well, features such as AI-powered chatbots, shared inbox, insightful reports, team collaboration features, and automated ticket routing make this tool a favorite among businesses of all sizes. 

In addition to its effective ticket management functionality, ProProfs offers multiple customer service tools, such as Knowledge Base, Live Chat, Survey Maker, etc., that help you offer 360-degree assistance to your global customers. Moreover, the tool makes it super easy for support teams to capture customer feedback with the help of automated surveys and improve performance. 

Top Features of ProProfs Help Desk: 

• Capture customer queries from email, live chat, help center, and web forms
• Prioritize urgent customer issues that demand immediate attention
• Collaborate using Internal Notes and organize tickets better using Labels, Status, and Filters
• Use custom signatures to give your emails a professional appearance
• Monitor CSAT, NPS, and other important metrics to improve the customer experience

Why We Picked It: 

• An easy-to-use interface can help your team get started in no time.
• ProProfs makes it easier to offer omnichannel customer service to your audience.

Choose it for: Shared inbox, chatbots, knowledge base, customer satisfaction surveys

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small to mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: 

Horse Saddle Shop is a popular American saddler that sells western saddles and boots. Since its inception in 1986, the company has assisted over 40,000 customers and sold over 37,000 saddles. 

Most of their customers had questions related to saddle fitting and used phone support for the same. To save time and increase efficiency, the company used ProProfs Help Desk’s live chat feature to connect with customers and communicate in real-time. 

ProProfs Help Desk Pricing: 

FREE for a single user. Plans start at $19.99/user/month for 2 or more users. No hidden fees. A 15-day money-back guarantee.

2. Zendesk vs. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is another popular and open-source Zendesk alternative that enables you to provide hassle-free support to your customers. Whether you own a small business, a big enterprise, or a startup, you can easily use Freshdesk to connect with customers across multiple touchpoints, automate workflows, and resolve customer issues faster. 

Freshdesk offers extensive team collaboration features, powerful integrations, and customization options to help you deliver a stellar support experience to your customers. You can unify multiple channels on a single dashboard and delight customers with an omnichannel support experience. 

Top Features of Freshdesk: 

• Track all tickets from multiple channels using the Team Inbox
• Automatically suggest ticket fields to prioritize and assign incoming tickets
• Prevent multiple agents from working on the same ticket with agent collision detection
• Link related tickets together to share consistent responses with customers
• Interact with your customers instantly through WhatsApp and resolve their queries faster

Why We Picked It: 

• You can share different ticket forms with customers depending on their issue.
• Share relevant knowledge base articles with customers automatically.

Choose it for: Team inbox, mobile field service, time tracking, email notifications

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small to mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: 

Felix Mobile is a SIM-only telecommunications company based in Australia. The telecom company offers a simple plan with no lock-in contract. Flexi Mobile aims to provide easy-to-use digital services to people while taking an environmental-friendly approach in its progress. 

With Freshdesk on board, the team at Felix integrated a live chat function on their mobile app. Moreover, the company is able to provide a seamless omnichannel experience to customers from around the world. 

Freshdesk Pricing: 

Starts at $15/agent/month

3. Zendesk vs. LiveAgent 

With LiveAgent’s help desk platform, you can easily reach your customers on the channels they use the most- including email, chat, voice calls, and social media. Moreover, you can manage all leading social media platforms, such as Whatsapp, Twitter, Viber, and Instagram, from a single dashboard. 

Agents can resolve customer queries faster using a suite of powerful productivity tools and build loyalty through personalized customer interactions. Automatic ticket or call routing, workflow automation, and SLA reports are some of the key features of this Zendesk alternative.

Top Features of LiveAgent: 

• Automatically distribute tickets and create optimal workloads for your agents
• Differentiate between customer and tickets using Ticket Tags
• Avoid spam emails with automatic spam filtering in your help desk
• Automate your workflow through time, action, and SLA rules
• Add private notes to tickets that are visible only to team members 

Why We Picked It: 

• Users can customize web forms to capture important details.
• Get a sneak-peak of what customers are typing before they hit send.

Choose it for: Internal ticketing, spam filters, private notes, ticket export

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small to mid-sized businesses

Case Study: 

Post Affiliate Pro is a leading marketing platform that helps businesses manage multiple affiliate programs, track affiliate partner performance, issue payouts, and assign commissions on one platform.

As demand for the software grew, their team looked to partner with a quality help desk vendor like LiveAgent. Post Affiliate Pro’s customer service team is able to respond to Facebook comments, Tweets, emails, or live chat requests made by customers. 

LiveAgent Pricing: 

Starts at $15/agent/month

Read More: Best Live Agent Alternatives for 2023

4. Zendesk vs. Zoho Desk 

Zoho Desk is a context-aware help desk tool that allows businesses to use the power of customer context to improve agent productivity, promote self-service, manage cross-functional service processes, and monitor customer happiness.

Agents can automatically capture tickets from multiple channels – emails, social media, live chat, and web forms, and consolidate them on a single platform. You can easily cater to your global audience and support them 24/7. Simply build a robust self-service knowledge base and empower your customers to find solutions on their own.

Top Features of Zoho Desk:  

• Resolve tickets faster with the help of multiple departments
• Streamline your social media presence through your help desk
• Automate your process and master sentiment analysis with Artificial Intelligence named Zia
• Share relevant knowledge base articles or guides in ticket responses
• Develop and grow a community of prospects, existing customers, and visitors 

Why We Picked It: 

• You can integrate Zoho Desk with Zoho CRM to access complete customer information.
• Map your help center to your own domain and improve search rankings.

Choose it for: Live chat, multi-brand help center, sentiment analysis, CRM integration

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Small to mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: 

Cartika is a business that provides managed services for technology and app infrastructure. The brand is best known for its industry-leading LaaS platform that helps companies manage their applications across multiple operating systems. 

Cartika partnered with Zoho Desk for its multichannel customer service features. The company is present for its clients on multiple support channels such as email, live chat, and phone. and self-service portal. 

Zoho Desk Pricing: 

Starts at $12/agent/month

Read More: Zoho Desk Alternatives

5. Zendesk vs. Kayako

Kayako is another popular Zendesk help desk alternative that equips your team to deliver exceptional customer service in multiple languages across live chat, email, Facebook, and Twitter. The tool can work great for SMBs looking for relevant ticketing features to immediately start supporting customers. 

Trusted by businesses across the globe, Kayako makes customer service simple for your team. Support agents can easily collaborate across departments, distribute customer issues, and provide personalized experiences to every customer. 

Top Features of Kayako: 

• Gain visibility into a customer’s complete interaction history for a personalized experience
• Connect your help desk with popular business apps such as Salesforce and Slack
• Convert visitors into customers with live chat
• Easily automate support workflows such as ticket routing, ticket updates, and more
• Stay on track and measure performance with robust SLA management

Why We Picked It: 

• Users can view product walkthrough and tour videos to understand the tool better. 
• The tool offers a 14-day free trial to new users. 

Choose it for: help center analytics, mobile support, proactive engagement

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: 

Texas Tech University is a leading public research university based in Lubbock, Texas. The institution offers undergraduate programs in B.B.A., accounting, civil engineering, journalism, and many other fields. 

For a campus that large, managing student requests and inquiries were never easy. With Kayako’s out-of-the-box features, Texas Tech was able to reduce its ticket volume, speed up internal collaboration, enhance customer satisfaction, and improve self-service capability. 

Kayako Pricing: 

Get in touch with the company for a quote. 

6. Zendesk vs. TeamSupport 

TeamSupport offers a robust customer support tool that is designed to meet the unique needs of B2B (business-to-business) software and IT companies. Some of the top features of this tool include- screen recordings, live chat, customer self-service portals, ticket management, and ticket automation capabilities. 

TeamSupport offers all the features your team needs to work as a single unit and address customer concerns on multiple channels. For example, your support staff can work collaboratively with sales, technical, or finance departments for seamless operations. 

Top Features of TeamSupport: 

• Easily track customer details and build a customer database
• Group related tickets together for better organization
• Set up groups for assigning, routing, and collaborating on tickets
• Leverage internal chat to hold quick discussions
• Create custom reports, track relevant metrics, and improve your support process

Why We Picked It: 

• TeamSupport can be easily integrated with CRM tools such as Salesforce and MS Dynamics.
• You can send automated reminders to customers when a reply is pending at their end.

Choose it for: Omnichannel support, ticket automation, self-service portal

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: 

Panamplify is a software and technology company that helps marketing teams improve their reporting process. As a B2B company, its report management system is an industry leader and helps business teams get rich insights into their performance. 

As the customer base was increasing rapidly, Panamplify’s customer service needed massive improvements. With the help of TeamSupport, the company was able to convert ticket replies into knowledge-base articles. As more customers chose self-service, agents could easily focus on more pressing issues. 

TeamSupport Pricing:

Starts at $49/agent/month 

7. Zendesk vs. HappyFox 

HappyFox is one of the leading Zendesk competitors that acts as a one-stop platform for all your omnichannel customer requests. You can easily convert email, phone, chat, social media, and web requests into tickets and keep them organized in a single place. Moreover, you can build a robust contact portal for customers to log in and track their tickets. 

HappyFox is known for its multilingual capabilities that allow you to support your customers from across the globe. Users can easily create knowledge base articles in multiple languages and offer round-the-clock assistance. 

Top Features of HappyFox: 

• Organize tickets better with pre-defined ticket categories
• Create canned responses to reply to customers with a single click
• Share knowledge seamlessly with an internal knowledge base and ensure rapid training
• Leverage AI-powered chatbots to deflect support tickets
• Keep every team member notified with automated notifications

Why We Picked It: 

• Leverage multiple auto-assignment algorithms to never miss a ticket again.
• The tool enables you to share real-time ticket updates with agents.

Choose it for: Canned responses, knowledge base, collision detection, ticket attachments 

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Small to mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: 

Accelerate Education offers different online courses to students from across the globe. The company aims to increase educational opportunities for students in grades K-12 and offer robust training to schools and other educational institutions. 

With a user-friendly tool like HappyFox, all incoming emails were automatically sent to appropriate mailboxes and converted into tickets. Moreover, automated ticket assignments helped the company organize, track, and monitor its support process. 

HappyFox Pricing: 

Starts at $29/agent/month

8. Zendesk vs. Groove

Groove’s all-in-one help desk platform empowers customer support teams to deliver faster customer service, reduce costs, retain customers, and generate more sales. Agents can collaborate to resolve tickets together, see who is working on what, and respond to customers without stepping on anybody’s toes.

With the reporting features of this tool, you can quickly understand your team’s workload and identify trends. As software cheaper than Zendesk, Groove allows you to monitor key metrics such as the total number of conversations and resolutions per day, the total number of customers assisted, trend insights, and more.  

Top Features of Groove: 

• Access step-by-step training guides and get started in minutes
• Collaborate with internal notes that only your team can see
• Respond faster to common customer questions with canned responses 
• View the complete customer interaction history at a glance
• Gain better visibility with reports and see where your team can improve 

Why We Picked It: 

• With unlimited reporting history, you can compare your current, and past performances.
• Users can enjoy 50+ third-party tool integrations. 

Choose it for: Shared inbox, knowledge base, ticket assignments, email templates

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small to mid-sized businesses

Case Study: 

The Hoxton Mix offers virtual office addresses to businesses that cannot afford office space in a prime London location. Even small businesses can get their dream office addresses and gain credibility. 

Before Groove, their team was using Gmail to address customer issues, and everything was a big mess. However, after partnering with Groove, The Hoxton Mix’s support team used email templates and auto-responses to save 80 hours each month. 

Groove Pricing: 

Starts at $20/user/month

9. Zendesk vs. HelpDesk

HelpDesk is another popular software like Zendesk that makes it easier for support teams to manage incoming customer emails, requests from web forms, and any other sources. Support agents and members from other departments can collaborate effortlessly using private notes, multiple mailboxes, and automated assignment rules.

With the ‘New tickets heatmap’ feature, you can spot peak times when your agents receive more customer requests than usual. This tremendously helps support managers in ensuring that an adequate number of staff members are available during peak hours. 

Top Features of HelpDesk: 

• Organize tickets using Filters and Tags
• Automatically assign tickets to the right agents or teams 
• Get notified whenever a new ticket arrives so that you don’t have to be online all the time
• Monitor your team’s first response time and other crucial metrics
• Assign agent roles and responsibilities to recreate company structure

Why We Picked It: 

• The tool helps you keep agents updated with new ticket notifications.
• You can easily create automated workflows to save time.

Choose it for: Multichannel support, agent roles and permissions, new ticket notifications

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small businesses

Case Study: Not Available 

HelpDesk Pricing: 

Starts at $29/agent/month

10. Zendesk vs. Intercom

Intercom helps you deliver the perfect blend of human, self-service, and proactive support to delight customers. Your agents can hold one-on-one interactions with customers, resolve repetitive questions automatically, and tackle upcoming problems before customers reach out. 

Intercom offers Custom Bots that can collect valuable up-front information, help prioritize urgent issues, and connect customers to the right people on your team. This way, you can not only deflect basic support tickets but also free up your agents to focus on more pressing customer issues. 

Top Features of Intercom: 

• Respond to all customer communications from the Team Inbox
• Share relevant help articles with customers through your website or mobile app
• Leverage Custom Bots to answer and resolve basic customer queries
• Customize your workflows based on customer spending, business type, and more
• Create intuitive product tours for the best onboarding experience

Why We Picked It: 

• You can easily deploy chatbots to assist customers.
• The tool is great for outbound messaging.

Choose it for: Product walkthroughs, automated follow-ups, live chat

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Small to mid-sized businesses

Case Study: 

Rigostat is a SaaS company that offers tools to help businesses analyze calls, ROI, and boost sales. With its headquarters in Odesa, Ukraine, the software company helps business leaders make the right decisions. 

The company uses Intercom to accelerate communications across the entire customer journey. Ringostat successfully reduced its first response time (FRT) to just one minute and achieved a 76% trial-to-paid conversion rate. 

Intercom Pricing: 

Get in touch with the company for a quote. 

11. Zendesk vs. Gorgias

If you run an e-commerce store, Gorgias can be used to meet all your customer service needs. You can empower your agents to edit orders, initiate refunds, and modify subscriptions without leaving your helpdesk. 

With this software like Zendesk, you can give website visitors a personalized shopping experience. You can increase your sales by engaging customers who show interest in your products through social media ads or posts. 

Top Features of Gorgias: 

• Track sales generated over text messages and social media
• Access order information right from your help desk
• Create email templates and respond faster to common customer issues
• Share proactive chat invitations with website visitors
• Allow customers to track their orders and reduce the ticket volume

Why We Picked It: 

• The tool helps you offer reliable assistance to customers via SMS.
• You can extend the shopping experience to social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc. 

Choose it for: Customer engagement, sales tracking, social media customer service

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Mid-sized businesses, Large enterprises

Case Study: Not Available

Gorgias Pricing: 

Starts at $50/month

Read More: Best Gorgias Alternatives for 2023

12. Zendesk vs. Hiver

Hiver is Gmail-based help desk software that equips your business with all the features you need to offer stellar email support. With the shared inbox feature, you can manage multiple shared email accounts like support@ and info@ in one place. 

Hiver users can easily check the status of an email (open, pending, or closed) and take appropriate action. Moreover, customer service team members can collaborate with each other using private notes or comments. 

Top Features of Hiver: 

• Categorize email conversations with the help of Tags
• Prevent multiple users from responding to the same email with collision alerts
• Craft the best email response and save it as a template for future reference
• Manage support emails on the move with Andriod and iOS apps
• Track deleted conversations in one place

Why We Picked It: 

• Use auto-fill variables to personalize email templates.
• Automatically assign incoming emails to agents with the Round-Robin method.

Choose it for: Email delegation, collision alerts, SLA management, email templates

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small businesses

Case Study: 

Kiwi.com is an online travel booking platform that was founded in the year 2012. The company’s website helps customers book flight tickets, initiate refunds or cancellations, and learn about COVID-19 restrictions. 

The company primarily used email to connect with airline companies and other partner agencies. With more than 1500 emails every month, responding to emails became a cumbersome task. However, with the shared inbox feature of Hiver, the team at Kiwi.com is able to assign every incoming email to the right team member and delight customers.  

Hiver Pricing: 

Starts at $12/user/month

Read More – Hiver alternatives

13. Zendesk vs. Front 

Front is another leading Zendesk competitor that offers a simple, email-like interface. With robust team collaboration features, agents can work in sync without the need to forward long email threads. 

Front allows you to set roles or permissions for each team member so you can determine who can access what in your shared inbox. You can automate email assignments, share alerts with agents when an SLA breach is near, and organize all your shared inboxes in one place.

Top Features of Front: 

• Manage email and live chat conversations in one place
• Automatically route incoming emails to relevant team members
• Monitor team response time and other customer service metrics
• Create SLA rules and respond to customers on time
• Leverage ready-to-use email templates for consistent messaging

Why We Picked It: 

• The tool allows you to use time-time notifications to keep your agents updated.
• You can find relevant conversations with a powerful search box.

Choose it for: Multichannel support, automated workflows, multiple integration options

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small to mid-sized businesses

Case Study: 

Culture Amp is an employee experience platform that allows businesses to enhance employee engagement, performance, and experience. The platform aims to help businesses foster a culture of diversity and inclusion. 

Before implementing Front, Culture Amp used a combination of email, Slack, and its project management tool to manage customer communications. Front has allowed multiple team members to collaborate on a draft and share appropriate solutions with customers. 

Front Pricing: 

Starts at $19/user/month

Read More: Best Front Alternatives for 2023

14. Zendesk vs. AzureDesk 

AzureDesk is another powerful tool that can help you convert customer service emails into tickets. You can even create a 24×7 help center to answer customer questions even when your team is not available to interact with customers. 

When it comes to team collaboration, Azuredesk does a great job. For instance, you can use @mentions to grab your teammates’ attention and leave private notes for them to solve tickets together. 

Top Features of AzureDesk:  

• Customize agent signatures to share professional and consistent messages
• Allow customers to solve their issues 24×7 using a self-service portal
• Create custom fields to add more information about support tickets
• Make the most of your help desk with third-party integration options 
• Allow customers to track their issues independently

Why We Picked It: 

• The translate app can help you offer support in over 53 languages.
• Create reporting charts on tickets per agent, tickets per customer, etc. 

Choose it for: Ticket management, multilingual help desk, self-service portal

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Small to mid-sized businesses

Case Study: Not available

AzureDesk Pricing: 

Starts at $33/user/month

15. Zendesk vs. JitBit 

JitBit is another impressive Zendesk alternative that is available in SaaS and on-premise versions. You can break a ticket into multiple sub-tickets and choose to assign them to multiple agents for faster issue resolution. 

With the help of JitBit ticketing software, you can operate your help desk in multiple languages, such as English, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, and more. You can even create custom statuses for tickets, such as “on hold” or “refund,” for enhanced ticket management. 

Top Features of JitBit:

• View all messages, live chat history, and attachments in one place
• Leverage free mobile apps for Android and iOS
• Set the priority of support tickets to resolve urgent issues first
• Attach screenshots and PDFs to help desk tickets
• Divide a ticket into small sub-tickets for enhanced efficiency 

Why We Picked It: 

• You can track the time spent on tickets to calculate billable hours.
• Customize your email templates to share personalized responses.

Choose it for: Asset management, user permissions, automated ticket assignment

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Small to mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: Not available

JitBit Pricing: 

Starts at $29/agent/month

16. Zendesk vs. ThriveDesk 

ThriveDesk is an emerging Zendesk competitor that has recently caught the attention of many business owners and support managers. The tool offers a shared inbox feature that will help you manage high email volumes without any hassles. 

ThriveDesk makes it super easy for your team to create, edit, and publish knowledge base articles. For example, you can easily add text, images, tables, hyperlinks, and videos to articles in just a few clicks. In addition, you can even categorize your content and optimize them according to SEO best practices. 

Top Features of ThriveDesk: 

• Receive real-time notifications on Slack 
• Offer instant self-service to customers with an online knowledge base
• Share help articles directly from the live chat widget
• Keep conversations well organized with the help of ticket tags
• Integrate with leading e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Wix, etc. 

Why We Picked It: 

• ThriveDesk offers one of the most affordable pricing structures in the market. 
• The tool can help you reduce email overload with automation and team collaboration features. 

Choose it for: Community forums, e-commerce customer service, shared inbox 

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Startups, small to mid-sized businesses

Case Study: Not available 

ThriveDesk Pricing: 

Starts at $6.67/user/month

17. Zendesk vs. Kustomer 

Kustomer claims to be a CRM designed specifically to meet the needs of customer service teams. To automate your routine interactions and speed up support, you can deploy AI-powered chatbots on your website. It is indeed among the top emerging Zendesk alternatives.

The tool helps your customer service team understand your audience like never before. For instance, service representatives can get a complete view of every customer, irrespective of the channel they choose. 

Top Features of Kustomer: 

• Access complete customer data to offer hyper-personalized experiences
• Automatically route bot conversations to team members based on customer inputs
• Enhance agent productivity with conversation shortcuts
• Automatically translate over 70+ global languages
• Deploy smart chatbots without any prior coding knowledge

Why We Picked It: 

• The tool allows you to engage with customers across social channels like Facebook and Twitter.
• You can easily make your knowledge base articles search engine friendly. 

Choose it for: Multilingual knowledge base, CRM capabilities, chatbots

3rd party integrations allowed: Yes

Suited for: Small to mid-sized businesses, large enterprises

Case Study: 

Hopper is an online travel platform that aims to provide cost savings to travelers. Founded in 2007 in Montreal, Canada, the company has helped over 70 million people find and grab the best price on flights, hotels, and car rentals. 

Hopper’s customer service team settled for Kustomer due to its rich flexibility and customization features. The help desk helped Hopper overcome its pain points by intelligently routing conversations in the right priority to the right people. As a result, the company witnessed a reduction in the first response times by 50%. 

Kustomer Pricing: 

Starts at $29/user/month

Final Verdict: Which Zendesk Alternative Should You Go For?

Zendesk is a renowned help desk tool that allows you to:

• Meet your customers on multiple communication channels
• Build an integrated help center and community forum
• Offer self-service options to customers
• Increase efficiency with powerful integrations

Despite the appealing features, the demerits such as outdated interface, way-too expensive plans, etc. make people search for the right Zendesk alternatives. All alternatives shared in this Zendesk comparison blog are feature-rich, well-trusted, and have been a popular choice among businesses of all sizes. 

If you wish to give your team an all-in-one free help desk software that comes at less than 1/4th the cost of Zendesk, you must go for ProProfs Help Desk. If you are looking to cater to your global audience in multiple languages, HappyFox can be a good option. Similarly, if your focus is on assisting customers with the right context, Zoho Desk can give an edge to your support team.