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Freshdesk vs HootSuite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (4th), Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (6th), Knowledge Management Software (5th)
HootSuite
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (4th), Social Media Management Solutions (4th), Social Media Analytics Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Customer Relationship Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Freshdesk is designed for Customer Experience Management and holds a mindshare of 5.0%, up 5.0% compared to last year.
HootSuite, on the other hand, focuses on Social CRM, holds 9.2% mindshare, down 10.6% since last year.
Customer Experience Management
Social CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Alexey Timchenko - PeerSpot reviewer
Incredibly user-friendly, flexible, and affordable
Automation and ticket routing rules in Freshdesk save us daily by streamlining routine tasks. We use reports to identify issues, allocate resources, and continuously improve our processes. It is a vital part of our daily operations, helping us stay proactive and efficient in handling various types of tickets. The reporting and analytics tools in Freshdesk are effective for measuring customer service performance. While our current subscription level has some limitations in terms of reporting, the next level provides more options. Budget constraints currently prevent us from upgrading, but the available reporting features still meet our basic needs. I highly recommend Freshdesk, especially for companies in their early stages. It is user-friendly, easy to configure, and great for those with a moderate volume of customer requests. The cost is reasonable, making it a quick and efficient solution to implement. Overall, I would rate Freshdesk as an eight out of ten.
Kapil Rampal - PeerSpot reviewer
Good customization and social media management with helpful AI capabilities
It has made access control very easy. We don't need to share the actual account credentials with any employee. They can work through HootSuite. We can also manage all our social media in one interface with personalization. It has improved efficiency and security and has delivered significant cost savings. In the enterprise edition, there is also an option to manage user access, and you can limit or grant access, depending on the business needs. For example, marketing can be given access to analytics, customer support to messages, and social teams to the postings. Also, you can have levels for approvals.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost."
"There is the option to create different roles for specific users. We make use of groups for each customer service team which has been very effective. We are able to apply different sets of rules for each group which determines how they interact with customers and escalate issues."
"It's easy to use and integrates with other tools. We can embed Jira into it, link Jira tickets with Freshdesk tickets, and use it for our knowledge base."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier."
"It is very easy to make reports."
"It generated reports for us, which helped us identify the status of requests and the aging of requests."
"The most valuable features of Freshdesk are the automation of tickets to assign them to different agents, and the managing of documents is easy."
"Freshdesk's requirement for appending resolution details before allowing ticket closure ensures the automatic creation of a knowledge base."
"HootSuite has an AI engine to suggest trending topics related to our business. The engine works really well and comes up with excellent suggestions for more posts."
"The main improvement HootSuite offers is allowing my organization to run social media campaigns."
"It has a social media presence outside of the hours people are able to devote to an organization."
 

Cons

"If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form."
"I would like to see improvements in the account management aspect, having a customer portal for better visibility into my subscription, invoices, and trouble tickets."
"The reporting, analysis modules and insights capabilities for this solution could be improved."
"I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. If we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM."
"I would like on-the-go translation,"
"There are some restrictions where you need automation and sometimes there is just no way to achieve what you need."
"For integrations, we need to write code that communicates with their system in order to enable certain functionality in the system. This is a lot of work for their customers."
"Sometimes our requirements are not matched with Freshdesk's free version as most of the advanced features are not available to us."
"Last I checked, you can't schedule Twitter threads where each tweet is a reply to a previous tweet."
"The company should reduce the pricing to make it easier for companies to deploy to larger social teams."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $70 per agent to use Freshdesk. We have 10 agents, which is approximately $700 or $800 per month. It is a fixed license, there are not any additional fees."
"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
"It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."
"We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."
"It is costly."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."
"The best system plan is enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly."
"​I have only used the free versions.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
University
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Freshdesk?
Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.
What needs improvement with Freshdesk?
An area for improvement in Freshdesk would be enabling all features regardless of company or user size. Currently, some features like SMS or WhatsApp integration are only available to larger user g...
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
We utilize Freshdesk ( /products/freshdesk-reviews ) primarily for handling incoming tickets. The system auto-assigns these tickets to the available engineer, who then troubleshoots the issue, upda...
What do you like most about HootSuite?
HootSuite has an AI engine to suggest trending topics related to our business. The engine works really well and comes up with excellent suggestions for more posts.
What needs improvement with HootSuite?
Hootsuite has a lot to improve, particularly the user interface, which feels dated and like an old product. I am not quite happy with the service and am looking to replace it.
What is your primary use case for HootSuite?
I am using Hootsuite to manage my customers' LinkedIn pages. I manage about ten customers.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
Vega, TicketLeap, Radio Italia, The PureMatter Agency, Kiva, The Vancouver Canucks
Find out what your peers are saying about Qualtrics, ServiceNow, Salesforce and others in Customer Experience Management. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.