If you stumbled upon this blog, chances are you're on the lookout for a better alternative to Zoho Desk. Perhaps you're facing challenges with its functionality, or maybe you're seeking a more seamless, efficient help desk experience. Either way, you’ve come to the right place. While Zoho Desk has been a popular choice for many organizations, its complexities, and occasional delays have prompted some to seek alternative solutions. If you're one of the many looking for a more streamlined, user-friendly platform to manage your customer support, you're in the right place.

In this blog post, I’ll guide you through the top 9 alternatives to Zoho Desk that you should consider in 2024. These alternatives offer innovative features, intuitive interfaces, and reliable support to help you deliver exceptional service to your customers.

But just in case,

What is Zoho Desk?

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based customer service help desk software that assists businesses in monitoring customer support interactions, addressing customer concerns, and enhancing customer satisfaction. As an omnichannel solution that focuses on improving service desk agent productivity while creating customer happiness, it is well and truly capable of gathering support tickets from web forms, emails, live chat, social media, and telephone calls to your inbound call center, and storing it all in one central place, all you have to do is simply set up assignment rules to route tickets to the correct department for resolution, or sort using a filter like customer type, urgency, or ticket status.

However, because Zoho is a full-suite CRM and supports products for many use cases, you may not get the level of depth and expertise you would with a best-in-breed CX solution. Also, users have mentioned that its interface is not the most intuitive, making navigation a bit tricky. Setting up might require some assistance from their support team, which may not be readily available. Overall, Zoho Desk is a powerful and affordable customer service help desk software that can be a good option for businesses of all sizes.

Why might Zoho Desk be the right fit for your customer service help desk needs?

• Zoho Desk can be scaled to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises.
• Helps reduce your call center costs by having the Zoho chatbot deal with routine questions and requests
• Use built-in AI to analyze customer sentiment so you can deal with recurring problems early on
• Create service level agreements (SLAs) for different types of customers, for example, specifying priority and resolution time

Why may you need to look for an alternative?

• Artificial intelligence is only available on the Enterprise plan.
• Although the user interface is quite user-friendly, it can take some time to get to grips with some of the more advanced features.
• There have been reports of technical glitches, especially when integrating with sales and marketing tools.

What are the Top 9 Customer Service Help Desk Alternatives to Zoho Desk in 2024

1. Distrobird
2. Zendesk
3. Bold Desk
4. Freshdesk
5. Kayako
6. Front
7. HappyFox
8. LiveAgent
9. Gorgias

1. Distrobird

Distrobird is a cloud-based customer and sales engagement platform, designed to streamline sales and manage customer interactions. It is an all-in-one platform managing phone calls, SMS communications, and emails, along with product features like web chats, shared team inbox, and automated campaigns.

It also integrates seamlessly with various popular CRM and business tools, notably HubSpot, Gmail, Stripe, Microsoft Outlook, Twilio, Zapier, Clearbit, Zoho, Telnyx, Salesforce and NGP VAN.

Distrobird best features

• Distrobird’s free plan encompasses all of its features.
• An intuitive interface that facilitates seamless team onboarding and rapid deployment in minutes, not days.
• Effortlessly integrates with your current software setup, providing unmatched flexibility.
• It arranges your website activities in a chronological timeline, enabling your team to deliver the top-notch service that customers deserve.
• Contacts' data is automatically enriched, ensuring your team is well-informed about who they're communicating with and how to keep them satisfied.
• Utilizing Distrobird's rule engine, you can craft automated sequences tailored to customers at every stage of your pipeline.

Distrobird limitations

• Its free plan supports a maximum of 3 users and 4 teams.
• Currently, Distrobird does not have a mobile app.

Distrobird pricing

• Free plan for the Voice, Sequences, and Shared Inbox products.
• Startup plan for Shared Inbox: $8/month.
• Startup, Growth & Enterprise plans for both the Sequences and Voice products: $25, $50, & $75 respectively.

2. Zendesk

Zendesk is a well-known helpdesk that caters to large corporations. It combines various support channels, such as email, live chat, and knowledge base, under one roof. This means agents don’t have to keep switching between dashboards to track different interactions with the same customer. It offers two options: Zendesk Support, a simple helpdesk ticketing system, and Zendesk Support Suite enhanced with omnichannel functionality. Remarkably, the Zendesk Support Suite stands as one of the foremost contenders within its market niche.

However, while Zendesk offers powerful features and customizability, it comes at a higher cost, particularly for advanced automation and personalized training.

Zendesk best features

• Allows for customization of widgets/interface to suit corporate brand.
• Advanced reporting and analytics.
• Integrations that extend the functionality and capabilities of your systems and toolsets.
• Its AI-powered tools enhance self-service, agent productivity, and customer satisfaction.

Zendesk limitations

• You pay an extra €50 per month per agent for Advanced AI assistance and data privacy/protection.
• Zendesk’s UI has been reported by verified to be too complicated to set up and navigate.
• Like Zoho Desk, most of the features offered by Zendesk are only available in its top-tier plans — which are expensive and not the best pick for small to medium-sized businesses.
• Zendesk lacks a centralized location for organizing tickets and documenting issues, making it difficult to track and identify patterns in client inquiries or problems.
• The absence of individual IDs for comments within tickets complicates referencing specific feedback or issues, thereby hindering efficient communication and issue resolution.

Zendesk pricing

• Team - $25 per agent per month
• Professional - $69 per agent per month
• Enterprise – $149 per agent per month.

3. Bold Desk

Bold Desk is a contemporary help desk software that streamlines customer service processes. With its powerful features, customization options, and cost-effective pricing, it helps businesses optimize their support operations and improve customer satisfaction. Developed by Syncfusion, known for its reliable software components and frameworks, Bold Desk combines product excellence with top-notch support services.

The platform is crafted to manage customer interactions seamlessly across various channels, boosting overall satisfaction. Its budget-friendly nature makes it an excellent choice for small and growing businesses, enabling them to provide exceptional support experiences without over-extending their budgets.

Bold Desk best features

• Bold Desk’s robust ticketing software allows for efficient customer issue tracking, agent assignment, and progress monitoring.
• Presence of help desk automation features which help to eliminate repetitive tasks.
• Multilingual support lets companies assist a diverse customer base by offering resources in multiple languages.
• Mobile compatibility.

Bold Desk Limitations

• Mobile app compatibility isn’t seamless or free-flowing.
• Other languages are often primarily machine-translated, and the translations can be rough.
• The platform's complexity can make it easy to lose track of all the features available.
• Verified users have reported that the multilingual service desk can be cumbersome, often requiring duplicate efforts for tasks.

Bold Desk Pricing

• Starter: $15 (3 users included)
• Growth: $25 per agent per month
• Enterprise: $50 per agent per month
• Standard: $624 per agent per month

4. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a popular alternative to Zoho Desk, known for its user-friendly approach and versatile features. It provides a forever-free plan, making it an attractive option for small businesses working within a budget, even though it offers limited customer support features. This free plan centralizes customer inquiries from channels such as email, social media, and phone, allowing agents to efficiently manage and resolve issues.

One standout feature of Freshdesk is its ability to split a main query (parent ticket) into smaller, more manageable tasks (child tickets). This approach allows different agents to work on different aspects of a query simultaneously, accelerating the resolution process. Additionally, Freshdesk integrates with a variety of third-party tools, expanding its capabilities and allowing you to tailor the platform to suit your specific business requirements.

Freshdesk best features

• Freshdesk supports various communication channels such as email, phone, and chat, and also includes self-service software to empower customers to find answers on their own.
• It enables businesses to effectively manage customer requests and resolve issues using its comprehensive ticketing system.
• The platform offers automation features that streamline workflows, including automated ticket assignments and automatic email notifications.
• These notifications keep customers informed about updates or changes to their requests, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Freshdesk limitations

• Much like Zoho Desk, Freshdesk’s advanced features require a deeper understanding of their functionalities and configurations - which means delays in getting started.
• Businesses with complex data analysis needs may encounter limitations that hinder their ability to extract valuable insights from their support data.
• If your team uses Google Workspace, Freshdesk might not be a great option for you. Users have reported issues with integrating Freshdesk with Google Workspace products like Gmail.
• Notifications for customer queries also don’t sync well with Gmail, which can lead to missed queries.

Freshdesk pricing

• Free: $0 (up to 10 agents)
• Growth: $18 per agent per month
• Pro: $59 per agent per month
• Enterprise: $95 per agent per month

5. Kayako

Kayako is another alternative to Zoho Desk that enables companies to centralize support communications across email, social media, and live chat. It provides essential help desk tools, such as reporting and automation, making it a strong competitor to Zoho Desk. Kayako serves as a customer service platform that allows businesses to consolidate various support channels, including email and live chat. Like other alternatives to Zoho Desk, it offers essential help desk features such as reporting and automation.

Perhaps the most standout feature of Kayako is the 'Expert Collaboration' option, which allows support agents from outside your company to work alongside your in-house team. This feature proves valuable when dealing with complex queries and can enhance the overall customer support process.

Kayako best features

• Integrates many customer support channels, including online chat, email, and social media, into a single dashboard
• Automate workflows, routine tasks, and replies
• Assists businesses in monitoring and evaluating key performance metrics related to client satisfaction

Kayako limitations

• Some users experience a difficult learning curve
• Uses a proprietary language for configuring and running reports
• The platform regularly encounters technical problems that require assistance from the customer support team to resolve.
• Users frequently mention delays in response from the Kayako customer service team.
• Utilizing the reporting feature demands understanding Kayako’s unique query language for configuring and running reports - making the feature hard to use.

Kayako pricing

• Kayako pricing plans are only available upon requesting a demo.

6. Front

Front is a customer service help desk software designed to help teams deliver exceptional service efficiently and effectively. It provides features that enhance communication, streamline workflow automation, and offer valuable analytics. Front's key advantage lies in its ability to simplify customer communication by merging the efficiency of a help desk with the familiarity of email. Automated workflows and real-time collaboration work seamlessly behind the scenes to boost productivity. Additionally, Front offers collision detection features that prevent teammates from accidentally sending duplicate responses.

By centralizing messages from multiple channels, Front allows teams to route them to the appropriate person and gain insights into their customer operations. Moreover, Front's integration with popular tools like Slack and Asana helps teams stay organized and on top of their tasks.

Front best features

• Front’s multi-channel messaging feature helps teams work together and be more responsive to customers.
• Its multi-channel messaging option allows teams to see who is working on what conversation and eliminates the need to search for context.
• Live chat feature.
• Supports integrations with 3rd-party tools

Front limitations

• Front is more expensive than Zoho Desk, which could be a problem for small to medium-sized businesses.
• The mobile application is not as comprehensive as the web application.
• A lot of users have complained that Front’s support is poor and that its Starter and Growth plans only offer support via email; this can lead to unwanted delays, hindering the productivity of teams using Front.

Front pricing

• Starter: $19 per (2-10 seats)
• Growth: $59 per seat per month (min. 2 seats)
• Scale: $99 per seat per month (min. 20 seats)
• Premier: $229 per seat per month (min. 50 seats).

7. Happy Fox

HappyFox is a cloud-based help desk alternative to Zoho Desk, providing businesses with enhanced productivity in their customer support operations. It is a dependable option for small businesses looking to streamline their support processes. HappyFox delivers crucial features such as automation, ticketing, reporting, SLA management, and knowledge base management.

A notable feature of HappyFox is its Agent Scripting, which provides agents with step-by-step guidance when troubleshooting customer inquiries. This tool helps agents resolve issues more efficiently and consistently, improving the overall customer experience.

HappyFox best features

• Robust ticketing system for efficient organization and prioritization of customer inquiries
• Automation and workflow management allow businesses to automate repetitive tasks and streamline processes
• Built-in support to create FAQs and guides as customer self-help resources

HappyFox limitations

• The platform is relatively hard to navigate and use (several verified users have complained of experiencing unexpected logouts, alongside other technical issues).
• Moving between tickets and initiating new ones isn’t intuitive on HappyFox.

HappyFox pricing

• Mighty: $39
• Fantastic: $59
• Enterprise: $79
• Enterprise plus: $99

8. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a comprehensive help desk solution that combines customer communication and organizational tools such as live chat and a ticket management system. It features a multichannel interface that supports voice, chat, social media, SMS, and email, providing a wide range of options for customer interactions. The platform's ticketing system automatically assigns tickets to agents based on predefined rules, streamlining the support process.

LiveAgent also offers a call center solution for customer service by phone, in addition to support through popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Viber. Furthermore, it integrates with social media channels such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, making it a versatile choice for managing customer support across multiple platforms.

LiveAgent best features

• Built-in call center with call details automatically recorded and automatic customer callbacks enabled
• Allows for customization of the user interface.
• Integrations with third-party applications.
• Knowledge base functionality.

LiveAgent limitations

• Fewer features compared to most other alternatives.
• Lacks reporting and analytics features needed to gather key insights.
• Some verified users have described LiveAgent’s customer support experience as difficult and negative.

LiveAgent pricing

• Small business: $9 per agent per month
• Medium business: $29 per agent per month
• Large business: $49 per agent per month
• Enterprise: $69 per agent per month.

9. Gorgias

Gorgias is a customer support help desk solution designed specifically for e-commerce businesses. As an alternative to Zoho Desk, it integrates seamlessly with a range of e-commerce platforms to optimize support operations.

The Gorgias dashboard enables businesses to consolidate all customer service communication channels in one central location, enhancing efficiency and making it a compelling alternative to Zoho Desk. This streamlined approach helps e-commerce companies manage customer interactions more effectively.

Gorgias best features

• AI-assisted ticket management
• Automation tools
• Omnichannel support

Gorgias limitations

• Monthly ticket limits may pose problems for larger e-commerce businesses
• Some e-commerce platforms are not supported in lower pricing plans

Gorgias pricing

• Starter: $10
• Basic: $60
• Pro: $360
• Advanced: $900

Which Customer Service Helpdesk Is Right For You?

If you need a help desk ticketing service that is user-friendly, budget-conscious, comprehensive, and customizable, while seamlessly integrating with third-party applications and providing reliable 24/7 support, Distrobird is the perfect choice.

It is a comprehensive and affordable solution with a free plan. It offers all the essential features you need to manage your sales & customer engagement tech stack in one place - multi-channel sequences and campaigns, web messenger, outbound dialer, inbound call center software, shared team inbox, and conversation analytics - in a single solution. Distrobird is also easy to use and integrates with a variety of popular apps.

Whether you're a startup or an established business, Distrobird's scalable pricing plans make it a cost-effective choice. Create your free Distrobird account and see how it can transform your customer interactions!