Freshdesk vs Zoho Desk comparison

Freshworks and Zoho are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. Freshworks is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4, while Zoho is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. Freshworks holds a 3.5% mindshare in HDS, compared to Zoho’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Freshworks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Zoho users who would recommend it.

Freshdesk

Read 29 Freshdesk reviews

1,902 Views
1,314 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Zoho Desk

Read 20 Zoho Desk reviews

1,436 Views
804 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Freshdesk

Zoho Desk

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Freshdesk and Zoho Desk compete in the customer service and support software category. Based on the feature comparison, Zoho Desk appears to have the upper hand with its strong integration capabilities and flexibility.

Features: Freshdesk offers customizable solutions, ticket automation, and comprehensive reporting. It is known for its accessible cloud version, along with easy integration of social media and email. Zoho Desk stands out with strong integration features, parent-child task management, and consolidates customer contacts while providing a robust knowledge base.

Room for Improvement: Freshdesk users face customization issues in its solutions center, limitations in social media post handling, and integration challenges. Users of Zoho Desk suggest needing better social media integration, improvements in night mode display, and enhanced IT service management features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Freshdesk primarily offers deployment via the public cloud, with some on-premises options, and receives mixed reviews for customer support. Zoho Desk provides flexibility with public, hybrid, and private cloud deployment. Customer service is generally responsive, though technical support could be enhanced for IT service management.

Pricing and ROI: Freshdesk offers competitive pricing based on features, showing significant ROI, especially in ticket handling efficiency. Costs vary per agent and can increase for additional functionalities. Zoho Desk is seen as more economical with a subscription model that includes access to multiple Zoho products, offering flexible pricing options suitable for various business sizes.

To learn more, read our detailed Freshdesk vs. Zoho Desk Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Freshdesk vs. Zoho Desk

March 2025

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Helped 839,422 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 Help Desk Software

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Customer Experience Management (6th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (5th)

Zoho Desk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.5%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho Desk is 2.7%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

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.

Read full review

Babatunde-Olugbode

Technical presales engineer at Avetium Consult Ltd

End-to-end solution to manage customer support tickets and consolidate all communication channels into one platform

For me, the valuable features are related to customer engagement because I want to ensure I don't miss any customer inquiries, no matter the channel. For example, I haven't seen any other platform that consolidates all channels into one console. That's a valuable feature to me. Then there's the pricing, which is better than Zendesk. Zendesk charges in USD per user, per month, whereas Zoho let us pay in Naira (Nigerian currency). Zoho can also identify user locations, letting you leverage existing reviews. These are valuable features that many organizations have adopted Zoho Desk for. We can download the mobile app to see requests and respond from anywhere. It is one of the most improved applications and widely integrated systems I've worked with. You can virtually integrate it with almost anything, like Microsoft Teams and other data applications. The marketplace lets you find native integrations. For example, we have an organization that uses multiple systems and wants to ensure agents don't log in to multiple platforms to see emails. They have a native integration system that takes care of that and works seamlessly.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is outstanding."

"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."

"The organization that is possible with other departments is the solution's most valuable aspect."

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

"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."

"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."

"It is very easy to make reports."

More Freshdesk pros

"The deployment process is swift, typically taking just one day, and includes customization and automation setup."

"The product provides communication features like chats and calls."

"The most valuable feature of Zoho Desk is the parent and child task management feature."

"The most valuable features are that it's user-friendly, you can customize it the way you want it, and it is very easy to use. You don't need anybody else to configure it."

"The tool has made support very flexible and strong. We can use chat boxes and auto-responses. If someone creates a ticket, it will be created in Zoho Desk's ticket module. We can get emails and respond to them within the product. We don't need a support email product to manage emails. We can easily manage it within Zoho Desk. The tool's interface is good since it updated the layout three months ago and the current interface is more effective."

"The ticketing feature is very easy to use, compared to other systems."

"The solution doesn't have any bugs."

"Good at capturing online inquiries has portal functionality, and is very good at managing inbound customer inquiries."

More Zoho Desk pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"While it's good for a small number of tickets, definitely in the future, we will require something more powerful."

"There are a few things we have asked for, like a forward button. When a ticket comes in, we forward it, but it doesn't sync up with the forward. That is the one they have to rework. The other is when we forward the ticket, it doesn't go all, or certain things don't go with it. We have told them about it, and they are working on it. It would be better if they gave us a more standard reporting template. Although they already have some, many aren't usable. It would be easier if we had more templates to work with."

"Technical support is not the best. It could be much, much better and offer better support to users."

"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 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

"I would like to have integrated support, and integration between the ticketing tool and the project management tool."

"Zoho Desk should provide more integrations and improve the Zoho project integration."

"Zoho Desk lacks lookup fields for the layouts."

"The customization of modules and some blueprint in the solution are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."

"Sometimes support is available according to their time slots and they can't fulfill everything I need them to. They give us a time slot but it's not always enough."

"Could have slightly better integration between additional functionalities in the Zoho desk."

"As per customer requirements, it may have some limitations."

"I would want Zoho Desk to integrate Zoho CRM, Zoho SalesIQ , and Zoho Campaigns."

More Zoho Desk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."

"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."

"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 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."

More Freshdesk pricing and cost advice

"The solution is relatively cheap. However, there are additional licensing fees involved."

"Zoho Desk's pricing is more flexible."

"The solution costs INR 8400 per user."

"Zoho Desk's cost is pretty much okay."

"The product costs $10 to $25 per user per month."

"The gap is limited, but it should limit the price back bracket so that most start-ups can use it most effectively."

"Price-wise, Zoho Desk is about 35 USD a month per user."

"For what it does, it's quite cheap."

More Zoho Desk pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

24%

Financial Services Firm

Real Estate/Law Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

59%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Zoho Desk?

The most valuable features of Zoho Desk are archiving queries and analytics.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho Desk?

Zoho Desk is a cost-effective solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zoho Desk?

Sometimes, the solution has some email issues in a new data center.

See all answers

Comparisons

ServiceNow vs Freshdesk

Compared 23% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs Freshdesk

Compared 21% of the time

Maven AGI vs Freshdesk

Compared 8% of the time

Spiceworks vs Freshdesk

Compared 8% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs Freshdesk

Compared 4% of the time

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ServiceNow vs Zoho Desk

Compared 57% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs Zoho Desk

Compared 10% of the time

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs Zoho Desk

Compared 10% of the time

ManageEngine SupportCenter Plus vs Zoho Desk

Compared 9% of the time

ConnectWise PSA vs Zoho Desk

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Freshdesk

March 2025

Download Freshdesk product report

Buyer's Guide

Zoho Desk

February 2025

Download Zoho Desk product report

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

With Zoho Desk, agents become more productive, managers become more impactful, and customers become more empowered. It's customizable, convenient to use, and it doesn't cost you a fortune. Part of Zoho's 30-strong suite of business software, Zoho Desk brings you the power to put customer service at the heart of your company.

Zoho

Sample Customers

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

Intel, Sears, Daimler, Essilor, Aon Hewitt, Shop Your Way, CoffeeRocket

Buyer's Guide

Freshdesk vs. Zoho Desk

March 2025

Free Report: Freshdesk vs. Zoho Desk

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