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Freshdesk vs ServiceNow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk
Ranking in Help Desk Software
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (6th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (4th)
ServiceNow
Ranking in Help Desk Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
214
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (2nd), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.9%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 25.5%, down from 26.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

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.
Fabio QUINTANILHA - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and scalable solution that has excellent features and is useful for collecting data and building KPIs
As much as possible, we use the out-of-the-box features. We do very few customizations. We follow the schedule to refresh the versions when they come up. As an end-user, I am not happy with the scalability. We have to wait a long time to buy more capacity. It is not an issue with the tool. Our team must manage it better. ServiceNow is a powerful tool. As long as we have enough users, it works. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."
"It generated reports for us, which helped us identify the status of requests and the aging of requests."
"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."
"Technical support is outstanding."
"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."
"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."
"It is very easy to make reports."
"We have made use of the training academy and the technical support team from Freshdesk. Both have been very good resources."
"I like the ease of use."
"You can have it installed and up and running within hours if you know what you're doing. Time to market would be one of the main things to consider."
"I really like what they've done with their common service data model because now I can make a connection between the business process and technology."
"ServiceNow provides quite good insights about what is happening in the organization."
"Discovery has reduced, on average, the time to build/deploy devices within our environment by one hour. This may not seem like much but it adds up over time. It also reaps additional time savings with its ability to capture changes through subsequent discoveries over the life of the device."
"Easy to integrate with third-party applications."
"I have found the workflows and integration the most valuable in this solution."
"I don't have to look through a whole bunch of other incidents that aren't relevant to me. It's very useful in that sense."
 

Cons

"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."
"It would be helpful to pull reports or schedule them based on agents, users, ticket numbers, or responses."
"Technical support is not the best. It could be much, much better and offer better support to users."
"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 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."
"The solution's inbound calls could be improved."
"The reporting, analysis modules and insights capabilities for this solution could be improved."
"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."
"Needs additional software titles and easier normalization."
"Local solutions have lower costs."
"There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement."
"The Software Asset Management feature can be improved. We would like to see more features for the Software Asset Management functionality. Its price can also be better. It is currently more expensive than other solutions."
"Their cloud management is also not that great compared to other products."
"The customer service of the product right now isn't very good. It's an aspect they really need to improve."
"The solution could improve by being more stable."
"The solution could be made cheaper. Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"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 pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
"It is costly."
"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."
"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."
"We are happy with the pricing."
"It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost."
"The price of the solution is comparable to industry standards. For the features that we received, it is reasonable."
"Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive."
"Certainly, from a product-platform perspective, the price is not too bad."
"It is an expensive platform."
"This is a pretty expensive product, so the licensing could be better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Retailer
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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...
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about Freshdesk vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.