Freshdesk vs Salesforce comparison

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Freshdesk

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 2025

Freshdesk and Salesforce compete in the customer service and CRM sector. Freshdesk stands out for its flexibility and cost-effectiveness, whereas Salesforce offers robust CRM capabilities and scalability, though at a higher price point.

Features: Freshdesk offers ticket automation, a versatile knowledge base, and cloud-based storage for seamless data handling. Salesforce provides CRM capabilities, customer journey tracking, and campaign analytics, with strong integration options and high flexibility.

Room for Improvement: Freshdesk struggles with solutions center customization, technical support responsiveness, and UI complexity. Salesforce has challenges with integration capabilities, user interface limitations, and a steep learning curve for customization. Both systems face issues with reporting features; Freshdesk lacks multilingual support while Salesforce lacks depth in analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Freshdesk is primarily deployed on the public cloud, with easy migration and setup. Salesforce offers multiple deployment options but has a complex integration process. Freshdesk’s technical support is generally responsive, whereas Salesforce support varies and can benefit from more empowered technical advisors.

Pricing and ROI: Freshdesk is praised for being cost-effective and offers competitive pricing with noticeable ROI benefits in customer service enhancement. Salesforce is more expensive, suitable for enterprises, providing extensive functionalities and customization options, resulting in a notable but pricey ROI relative to alternatives.

To learn more, read our detailed Freshdesk vs. Salesforce Report (Updated: January 2025).

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Freshdesk vs. Salesforce

January 2025

Helped 838,640 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in Customer Experience Management

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (8th), Knowledge Management Software (5th)

Salesforce

Ranking in Customer Experience Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Customer Experience Management category, the mindshare of Freshdesk is 4.7%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce is 6.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Customer Experience Management

Featured Reviews

Alexey Timchenko

Senior Vice President Information Technology at TASC Towers

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.

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Chandan-Kumar

Director for the End-User Performance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The order form they use is quite easy to use but has room for business sector maturity

For a common business, I would recommend Salesforce if they face any challenges, especially because the cloud version is quite handy. However, for manufacturing-type companies, I would not recommend Salesforce as it is too simple and might not cover all their requirements. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."

"I like that it's very user-friendly. The way they designed this application, any layperson can just do some drag and drop actions and use it. It's not that difficult. It's also easy to implement. The most important thing is, you don't need to go to this application to create a ticket. You just send out an email, and the ticket is created automatically. I have never seen a feature like this before."

"We have made use of the training academy and the technical support team from Freshdesk. Both have been very good resources."

"It's free of charge for us. For our scale of business, it's very important. We don't have a lot of tickets."

"The UI is easy to use."

"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 is very easy to make reports."

More Freshdesk pros

"The tool helps us take over accounts to review past opportunities and notes. One of its main advantages is associating stakeholders and activity with customer contacts, providing an overview for team members. Its most valuable feature is sharing information with team members. The tool's ability to associate a company contact with an opportunity is a good feature."

"The parameters or the different fields needed are quite good and easy for the customers to understand."

"We use the solution to map the sales pipeline and see how it is going and where it is pending."

"The tool's most valuable feature is user-friendliness."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the user interface, which is very simple to use."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a user-friendly tool."

"The solution enables you not to have to micro-manage your sales team. You could step back and see what's going on at a higher level without having a million meetings and ask people via email and Slack."

"As a platform, Salesforce is very flexible and scalable."

More Salesforce pros

Cons

"It should enhance its service and its reporting capabilities."

"There aren't any features that we want to enhance, but we need to mature in our usage of some of them. I can't say any feature is missing or needs improvement, but a tool's built-in features need to evolve customer feedback. We have a dialogue set up for that kind of feedback."

"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."

"We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice."

"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."

"Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming."

"Sometimes our requirements are not matched with Freshdesk's free version as most of the advanced features are not available to us."

"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."

More Freshdesk cons

"Though Salesforce's customer support is good, something is amiss with it. We faced some challenges in the ticket generation system, and I had to directly connect with our third-party vendor from whom we purchased the product."

"Salesforce's UI design is old and slow."

"The most valuable feature for me in Salesforce is the reporting functionality."

"Creating new reports more easily within Salesforce and improving the ability to associate common names of companies, especially after acquisitions, would be beneficial. I would also like to understand the administrator who has control over the data. It would be helpful when you want to implement changes or escalate issues."

"The solution’s performance could be improved."

"The tool must provide better reporting and dashboard capabilities."

"The product is not integrated with WhatsApp."

"The UI could be improved."

More Salesforce cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."

"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."

"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."

"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."

"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."

"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."

"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."

"It is costly."

More Freshdesk pricing and cost advice

"My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There is a need to pay extra charges apart from the licensing costs attached to the solution."

"It's medium-priced. It is cheaper than Tosca."

"The modules are too expensive."

"The solution's pricing is competitive."

"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely cheap, and ten is very expensive."

"Though Salesforce is more expensive than the other products on the market, it does provide you with more functionalities."

"The tool is quite pricey compared to other products."

"The product is neither expensive nor cheap."

More Salesforce pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Customer Experience Management solutions are best for your needs.

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838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

Real Estate/Law Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Educational Organization

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs. Despite having third-part...

What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?

The customer's primary use case for Freshdesk is handling emails and social media queries. It is mostly used for managing transactional queries such as deposits and withdrawals. Our support team is...

What do you like most about Salesforce?

The solution's analytics reporting features are quite good.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce?

Pricing is something I'm not directly involved with, as I'm just looking at the data competencies and how exactly things are running.

What needs improvement with Salesforce?

More understanding from the business standpoint will help Salesforce. It needs more maturity towards different business sectors such as retail, manufacturing, and semiconductors. It's very good for...

JIRA Service Management vs Freshdesk

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Compared 47% of the time

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Compared 31% of the time

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Compared 22% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Freshdesk product report

Freshdesk

February 2025

Download Salesforce product report

January 2025

Overview

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support solution that provides organizations with the features necessary to effectively streamline their support processes. This includes powerful multichannel capability, integrated game mechanics, smart automations, and more.

The solution is designed to automate agent workflows and resolve routine questions using AI and bots. Freshdesk allows managers to prioritize, categorize, and assign tickets to their agents, making it easy for them to collaborate and quickly respond to customers.

Freshdesk Features and Benefits

Some of the solution's top features and benefits include:

Simplified ticketing: With Freshdesk, you can easily prioritize, manage, and assign trackable tickets. The management system ensures that multiple agents don’t work on the same ticket by accident. You can easily set deadlines for ticket resolution based on specific categories and create custom statuses that suit your workflow to identify what stage a ticket is in.

Automation: Automatically assign tickets to agents and groups based on keywords and requests and set up automated repeated actions and provide quick, consistent responses to common questions using pre-formatted replies. In addition, you can choose to prevent the reopening of tickets when customers reply with a thank you.

Improved collaboration: Share tickets with other teams while retaining full visibility into the progress being made on the issue. Related tickets can be linked together to better keep track of the big picture. Tickets can also be split into smaller child tickets and assigned to multiple agents to help resolve complex, multi-stage issues.

Build up your knowledge base: Create effective support documentation by enabling agents to convert their ticket replies into knowledge base articles, while they reply.

Metrics and reporting: See how different agents and groups are performing by viewing various help desk metrics and improve performance by identifying problems based on insights.

With Freshdesk’s reporting tools, you can schedule the periodic delivery of out-of-the-box and custom reports to your inbox. The solution’s customer satisfaction reports provide you with feedback on how your customers rate your support.

Forum moderation: Set up moderation workflows to ensure that forum posts that violate your guidelines are not immediately published. Critical issues raised in the community are automatically converted into tickets to ensure they get the required response.
Integration: Freshdesk’s open API can be used to integrate the solution with multiple third-party systems.

Comprehensive security: Freshdesk’s security features allow you to:
- Set custom access permissions for agents.
- Perform comprehensive audits of networks and systems.
- Secure your own support domain or vanity URL with custom SSL certificates.
- Whitelist IP ranges and restrict login access outside of work, or link IP whitelisting to a VPN.
- Set up SSO scripts for credential authentication.

Reviews from Real Users

Freshdesk stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its effective ticketing system and its intuitive interface.

Deepak B., an application manager, writes, “Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour. This information is valuable for board meetings.”

Freshworks

Salesforce excels at CRM, offering analytics integration for ROI reporting and user-friendly customization. Automated ticket generation and intuitive features make it ideal for opportunity tracking, customer interaction management, and sales journey enhancement.

Salesforce is renowned for its comprehensive CRM functionalities, aiding businesses with dashboards, email campaigns, and seamless third-party integrations. It enhances sales processes by offering tools for opportunity management, customer interaction tracking, and efficient order booking. Flexibility and scalability make it suitable for promotional campaigns and improved business operations.

What are Salesforce's most important features?

Analytics Integration: Connects with analytics for ROI reporting.
User Customization: Offers user-friendly customization options.
Automated Ticketing: Provides automated ticket generation.
Intuitive Interface: Ensures ease of use for customers.
Opportunity Management: Helps in tracking and managing opportunities.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Data Flow: Seamless third-party integrations improve data flow.
Sales Process Efficiency: Automates and enhances sales journey management.
Customization Flexibility: Adapts to changing business operations.
Campaign Management: Supports marketing functions with campaign analysis.
Order Management: Simplifies order booking and tracking.

Salesforce is implemented in industries for CRM, marketing activities, and customer information management. It supports sales pipeline tracking, business development, customer experience management, lead management, and sales process automation. Marketing is facilitated through campaign analysis and email campaigns, alongside customer interaction insights. Businesses use it for order management, prospecting, project management, and sales forecasting.

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember

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