Looking to move away from Freshdesk?

There is no denying that it is a great solution for most small businesses, considering it offers a free plan and affordable tiers with exceptional customer service tools. 

However, it may not meet all your business demands.

Freshdesk, with its huge list of features, may be confusing and complex to some teams who use only a few features. Additionally, advanced features such as analytics, which could be better, are offered only in the beta version.

In fact, according to a report by Pendo, 80 percent of features in the average software product are rarely or never used, indicating how so many features can be overwhelming.

But not to worry.

The customer support industry has several leading players with myriad tools and features that can upscale your business.

Are you looking for a Freshdesk alternative? Be sure to check out my previous roundup post where I reviewed the best Freshdesk alternatives to learn about more suitable competitors that are equally robust, and affordable, for your small business.

In this article, we will discuss the best Freshdesk alternatives to help you revolutionize your communication in 2024, and create better customer relationships.

Let’s get started.

Quick summary

1. Glassix - Best user-friendly alternative solution

2. Brevo - Best alternative for marketing teams

3. Happy Scout - Best alternative for growing teams

4. Gorgias - Best alternative for E-commerce businesses

5. LiveChat - Best alternative for customer communication

3 Reasons to Consider a Freshdesk Alternative

a) Long list of features

Freshdesk has a long list of detailed features, but don’t be fooled. While some of them may help you enhance customer satisfaction, they can be overwhelming and create a complicated experience, especially those that you do not use.

Your team may experience challenges navigating a load of unknown functionality, which may intimidate them, rather than empowering them to serve your customers and create better experiences for them.

b) Not exclusively CX-focused

Freshdesk may be a great solution for customer relationship management and ticketing management, but it certainly lacks as a customer support software. Without a strong CX orientation, Freshdesk risks alienating users seeking modern, customer-centric solutions, resulting in a subpar customer experience.

The compromise of having products across marketing, sales, and customer service may result in not getting the same quality of customer service capabilities you get with a vertical solution. 

c) Pricing isn’t very affordable

Freshdesk pricing may be high for some businesses in 2024, especially those with larger teams or a high volume of tickets. Although it offers a free plan ideal for small businesses, it only provides limited features.

It is also worth noting that essential customer support features such as dashboards and analytics are available in higher tiers that are not cost-friendly for small businesses. Oftentimes, this might be a deal breaker.

1. Glassix

Glassix is an all-around AI customer support platform and considered as a top choice for small businesses and startups looking for an economic solution to manage their support tickets using advanced AI technology.

Our software offers a popular Freshdesk alternative option that prioritizes user experience by providing an easy-to-use interface and easily navigable menus.

Without compromising on comprehensiveness, Glassix boasts incredible inbox tools that support collaborations, messaging solutions, and an industry-leading conversational AI that significantly cuts down your workload.

How does a unified inbox sound?

Our one-of-a-kind inbox provides a central platform for managing all customer interactions while supercharging your team’s productivity through tools such as smart tagging and canned replies.

Glassix also allows you to focus on enhancing customer experience and not getting distracted by jumping from one tab to another. This is owed to our integration capabilities supporting third-party systems such as Salesforce, Jira, and Slack.

Key features:

• You get a one-of-a-kind conversational AI tool powered by GPT-4 that enables you to stay on top of your customer support game with automated and accurate responses that help you save time.
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• Our visual chatbot builder empowers anyone in your team to create appealing chatbots without any code, enabling you to provide your users with omnichannel 24-7 customer support.
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• Glassix has a unified inbox that consolidates all communication and platforms into one solution with collaboration tools that enhance teamwork, which directly impacts team productivity.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 30-day free trial
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• Starting plan: $49 per user/month
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Verdict:

We offer businesses of all sizes and industries a complete customer support software with essential tools including a unified inbox to redefine customer support and enhance customer satisfaction. Our pricing may be higher compared to Freshdesk, but we ensure you are getting nothing but the best to make your customers happy.

2. Brevo 

Brevo is the most approachable CRM suite that combine automation features helping support teams to stay on top of their game.

If you are looking for a solution that is easy to use and helps you create lasting relationships with your customers, then Brevo is the software for you.

You can leverage Brevo’s offerings including, marketing, conversation, and sales platforms to elevate your sales strategies and sharpen customer service.

Its conversation platform hosts customer support tools, such as live chat to help you interact with your customers in real-time and create meaningful relationships. You can also deflect routine queries to chatbots that provide instant answers, saving your team time while improving customer satisfaction. 

It also enables you to customize widgets to reflect your brand by using your brand colors and setting up a custom profile picture.

Another feature that makes Brevo a worthy competitor to Freshdesk is its universal inbox empowering collaborations and streamlining multichannel communication. 

Your team can receive customer communication in real-time from multiple channels in one unified inbox thanks to Brevo’s integration capabilities.

Key features:

• Brevo offers a cloud-based call platform that provides you with a phone number, allowing you to communicate with your customers from anywhere in the world via phone. 
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• The shared inbox enables you to integrate unified communication allowing you to receive and respond to customer communication in one place, enhancing efficiency and collaboration.
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• Chatbots provide instant answers to your customers and enable you to automate mundane tasks, saving you time and allowing you to focus on complex support queries.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 30-day free trial
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• Starting plan: $15 per user/month
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Verdict:

This is a great CRM software with customer support tools that facilitate communications. You can increase sales while enhancing customer experience. However, free plan users get limited support with priority given to higher-tier paid users.

3. Help Scout

Help Scout provides useful features for startups that are looking to cut costs when it comes to their operations and support.

While Freshdesk offers a range of features that can be helpful, not all of them are valuable for startups and growing businesses.

Help Scout instead provides meaningful tools, just enough to elevate your customer service productivity and grow your small business.

Like Glassix, it has a pretty impressive shared inbox that increases visibility into customer requests while enhancing collaborations through features such as @mentions and internal notes, collision detection, and light users.

Additionally, you can know what your customers are feeling through a thumbs-up and thumbs-down rating system and analytics that track customer behavior. This can help you identify areas that require improvement and to make data-based decisions.

You can also integrate Help Scout with tools that you love to improve efficiency and productivity.

Key features:

• Comes with pre-build reporting dashboards that visualize information on your team’s performance down to individual performance to help you in training and making improvements.
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• Docs enable you to create a rich knowledge base of articles to help your customers find answers without contacting customer support, saving your agents time and reducing their workload.
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• Help Scout’s shared inbox has powerful collaboration tools from @mentions and internal notes to light users and collision detection, enabling you to provide superior customer service.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 15-day free trial
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• Starting plan: $25 per user/month
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Verdict:

If collaboration is a priority for you, Help Scout’s shared inbox will not only help you manage customer communication but also effectively work with other team members to increase customer satisfaction. However, unlike Glassix, it only offers a 15-day free trial which may not be enough to explore all its reporting and inbox features.

4. Gorgias

Gorgias provides powerful e-commerce tools that helps both support and sales teams to provide excellent service while growing their revenues.

It is ideal if you run a Shopify store in 2024 and need customer support software enhanced with AI capabilities that enable you to manage support tickets on autopilot.

Gorgias’s AI tool is designed to scan every incoming message to identify the contact reason and provide an instant and personalized response allowing you to focus on growing your e-commerce business. 

Besides that, the AI tool can automatically assign tickets to qualified agents to expedite the resolution process.

Gorgias also has a great inbox from which you can manage all tickets and enhance customer experience armed with information like previous orders, reviews, or subscription details.

Additionally, you can create canned replies to save more time.

What’s more, when your customers want to communicate directly, the chat widget will enable them to interact with you in real-time.

Key features:

• Gorgias provides AI capabilities that can automate everyday important tasks such as assigning tickets, tagging, and prioritizing them for simpler management.
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• The voice feature enables you to provide personalized and efficient phone support that reduces resolution time and creates better customer experiences.
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• Offers integration capabilities that enable you to link your software to multiple e-commerce tools such as WooCommerce and Magento to increase efficiency.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 14-day free trial
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• Starting plan: $10 per month
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Verdict:

Your e-commerce business can leverage Gorgias integration capabilities to streamline your sales operations and create better customer experiences. While it offers a 14-day free trial, some users have experienced frustration with spam marketing emails asking them to upgrade to a paid plan.

5. LiveChat

LiveChat is a great customer communication tool and vastly used by small businesses and startups looking to streamline their customer support and operations.

If you are looking for impressive chat widgets to facilitate seamless communication with your customers in 2024, then LiveChat is the best Freshdesk alternative to consider.

Thanks to great analytics tools, you can know how your team is performing and what your customers think about your services. 

With information such as chat engagement and satisfaction, you can easily identify areas of improvement.

Additionally, you can create custom reports that are saved in exportable CSV files. If you like, you can also schedule reports to get all your customer service data right to your email daily, weekly, or monthly.

It is worth mentioning LiveChat’s comprehensive chat features that guarantee its place on this list including message sneak peek that allows you to see what your customers are typing before they send it, canned responses, and conversation history.

Key features:

• Its 200+ native B2B integrations and open APIs allow you to integrate your software with retail and e-commerce tools that can help you skyrocket your sales.
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• The live editor allows you to customize your chat widgets with themes, and colors, and decide how you want them displayed across all your platforms.
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• You also get impressive file-sharing capabilities allowing your agents to share videos and photos, to improve customers' shopping experience.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 14-day trial
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• Starting plan: $24 per month
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Verdict:

LiveChat easily tops Freshdesk as a customer support solution with its straightforward features that guarantee to help you increase sales. While it offers e-commerce tools, they are not very comprehensive. It also doesn’t have a robust inbox like the one Glassix provides, making it challenging to manage customer communications.

6. Ada

Ada is a complete customer support automation platform mainly used by enterprises across the globe, but now we can also see small businesses starting to adopt it.

If you are struggling to manage a huge volume of requests, this software acts as a partner helping your agents deliver instant and effective customer support through AI-powered chatbots.

Being an AI powered platform, it’s able to learn everything about your knowledge sources, policies, and products to craft appropriate responses that expedite issue resolution.

You can constantly refine your AI using natural language to enable it to work in line with your business policies.

Additionally, Ada saves you money on custom development with its no-code chatbot builder that empowers anyone in your team to create custom chatbots without having any technical expertise. 

Similarly, the AI tool helps you create engaging content as you focus on growing your business.

Your customers can also enjoy multichannel communication and quick agent handoffs to ensure speedy resolution of issues.

Key features:

• It provides a generative AI tool that leverages your knowledge sources to generate human-like and accurate responses that cut your team’s workload.
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• You can easily create chatbots with no code and deploy them to multiple channels to enhance customer experience through instant support.
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• Supports out-of-the-box integrations with your existing systems including CRM to enable you to provide a personalized customer experience.
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Pricing:

• No free trial
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• Contact Ada for pricing
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Verdict:

Ada’s AI capabilities are impressive enabling you to automatically generate engaging content to enhance self-service. Its AI is always learning from your knowledge source to refine its capabilities in line with your business. However, Ada bills itself more as a chatbot and AI solution than a complete customer support platform like Glassix.

7. BoldDesk

BoldDesk features a user-friendly interface.

It will equip your customer support agents with ticketing, task management, and support platforms that give them the boldness they need to create better customer experiences. 

Managing tickets can be challenging but not with this software. It automatically turns incoming emails and social media communications into tickets and assigns them to qualified agents.

Your agents will receive real-time ticket assignment notifications to ensure speedy resolution.

BoldDesk also offers shared inbox tools, such as private notes and private tickets, which facilitate collaborations. 

This inbox also provides a repository for all customer information and communications to ensure no tickets fall between the cracks.

Its multi-brand help desk is worth a mention because it integrates all your brands and products under one help desk account.

Key features:

• It provides in-built dashboards and reports that track performance and gather insightful customer data to help you make informed decisions and gain a competitive edge.
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• You can create workflows using triggers and rules to automate mundane tasks and save you time so that you can focus on complex issues like serving your customers.
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• BoldDesk has a knowledge-based solution that allows you to create unlimited articles that enhance self-service with powerful search functions and tags that organize your article library.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 15-day free trial
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• Starting plan: $15 per agent/month
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Verdict:

It offers a budget-friendly help desk and customer support tools suitable for small businesses in 2024. BoldDesk also provides AI capabilities that can auto-generate ticket responses, summarize tickets, and shorten knowledge base articles. However, these capabilities are only available in the beta version and are free for a limited period.

8. Hiver

Are you a Gmail user?

If you heavily rely on your Gmail application for customer communication, then Hiver offers a top-rated alternative to Freshdesk.

Unlike its complex contender, Hiver is designed to live in Gmail, delivering industry-leading tools that enable you to handle all communications within your Gmail application. 

This means that it is easy to use and your new agents will be ready to go in no time, saving you time and training costs.

In order to enhance team performance, your agents can mention their colleagues who will receive a link via email to join a ‘Collaboration Space’ where they can collaborate on improving customer satisfaction.

In addition to that, you can track customer service metrics such as first response time and average resolution time and create reports that provide actionable insight to help you make data-driven decisions.

Key features:

• Out-of-the-box collaborative tools such as @mentions and read-only access to collaborators enable efficient teamwork while ensuring information security.
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• The knowledge base enables agents to deflect queries and empower customers to independently find the answers they seek without contacting support.
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• You can connect Hiver to your favorite tools to eliminate the need to jump from one software to another and to ensure efficiency.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 7-day free trial
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• Starting plan: $19 per user/month
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Verdict:

If you prioritize teamwork and user-friendliness, consider Hiver for its comprehensive collaboration tools like collaboration spaces, read-only access, and cross-department collaboration. While it is a relatively affordable solution in 2024, its basic plan lacks advanced features such as analytics which are essential.

9. Front

Front is a customer operations platform vastly used by small and mid-sized businesses.

With a robust knowledge base, live chat, and omnichannel, this is one of the most popular alternatives to Freshdesk.

Its comprehensive features do not compromise on user-friendliness. This software delivers an email-like inbox experience ensuring that your agents have an easy time serving your customers.

Its unified inbox consolidates all communication channels into one platform ensuring efficiency with less context switching.

Your agents have access to conversation history that provides quick context, personalized responses that allow them to loop their colleagues in, and response drafts that allow them to create responses behind the scenes.

Additionally, like most Freshdesk alternatives in 2024, this software also offers AI capabilities that can easily summarize conversations to save your agents time and draft the best responses that empower human agents and enhance customer support.

Key features:

• Create customizable chatbots that automate mundane and repetitive tasks, saving you time while enhancing customer experience.
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• Measure and optimize individual and team performance through analytics that provide you with key information such as team members' productivity.
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• Its collaboration tools enable you to know who is working on what, eliminate collisions, and provide context to facilitate seamless customer communications.
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Pricing:

• Offers a 7-day free trial
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• Starting plan: $19 per seat/month
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Verdict:

Front is easy to use with straightforward features that include collaboration tools, chatbots, and an email-like inbox that can help your business upscale. It offers an affordable option, but its trial period is short compared to Glassix’s extended trial period of 30 days, enough to give you an idea of how it can transform your customer support.

10. Dixa

Dixa provides everything you need in one platform, support, marketing, sales, and more.

It secures a spot on our list of top-rated Freshdesk alternatives for all-round communication platforms.

Unlike most customer support software, this one does not require plugins to integrate communication channels. It has all channels built-in, including voice, chat, and social messaging under one platform.

Moreover, Dixa’s centralized workspace provides an effective platform where your team has everything they need to deliver superior customer service from customer information, context, and past conversations.

This allows your team to save time and focus on enhancing productivity.

With the help of a conversational AI, your agents are empowered to deliver personalized services at scale enhancing customer experience. All you need is to create efficient workflows with the drag-and-drop flow builder.

Key features:

• To enhance collaboration, Dixa provides a side conversation feature—linked to the original customer conversation—that allows agents to pull in colleagues for expertise.
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• Its analytics tools allow you to track your team and agents’ performance across all platforms enabling you to identify areas that need improvement and make data-driven decisions.
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• It provides next-gen generative chatbots, powered by OpenAI constantly learning from your knowledge sources, enabling you to resolve most of your customer requests.
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Pricing:

• No free trial
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• Starting plan: $49 per month
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Verdict:

Dixa has an intuitive user interface that is easy to use and makes it easy to learn how the platform works, ensuring your agents are ready to go in no time. Although the platform is expensive for startups, requiring a 7-seat minimum, you can reach out to the vendor for seats less than 7.

Conclusion

The customer support industry is growing.

If Freshdesk does not provide the solution you want, you can always find an alternative with similar or better features to help you gain a competitive edge in your field.

Actually, according to a study by Khoros, 65% of customers said they have changed to a different brand because of a poor experience, highlighting the impact a good customer support solution can have on your business.

If you are frustrated with Freshdesk, I hope this list of the best easy-to-use alternatives to Freshdesk, including Glassix, Brevo, and Help Scout can help you achieve your customer support objectives thanks to their user-friendly approach.

Our software is easily the best Freshdesk alternative that integrates both ease of use and advanced features that can enhance customer experience.

Start a free Glassix’s 30-day free trial today and learn how our generative AI can solve most of your customer requests.

3 Reasons to Consider Glassix for Your Customer Support Software Needs

a) Industry-leading AI

Our software has one of the best generative AI capabilities in the industry powered by GPT-4 that uses Natural Language Processing to deliver personalized and accurate responses to your customers. 

Besides its ability to build a FAQ bot generated from your knowledge base, our AI can identify customer intent and analyze customer requests, streamlining agent productivity. Consequently, you can focus on growing your business and not on mundane tasks.

b) Intuitive interface

We aim to provide a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for your team to deliver quality customer support. In line with this, our software has an intuitive interface that does not compromise on robust features.

Your new agents will be set to go within no time thanks to our straightforward features that will save you training costs that could have otherwise hiked your initial investment.

c) Top-rated shared inbox

We provide a top-grade unified inbox that lines up with your collaborative efforts ensuring that your team can efficiently work together to sharpen your customer service and enhance customer satisfaction.

Our inbox consolidates all your communication in one place providing omnichannel customer service, cross-channel continuity, and enabling media sharing. You can also link Glassix to your favorite apps for enhanced productivity.

Start Glassix’s 30-day free trial today and explore firsthand our unified inbox and collaboration tools to learn how they can streamline customer support.