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16 Affordable Intercom Alternatives for 2025
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by
Ludovic Armand
November 29, 2024
· Updated on
While Intercom is probably the most well-known customer support platform, it comes with a major drawback for any small to medium-sized business (SMB)—the price!
Intercom pricing is somewhat like the Coke recipe, it's a well-kept secret. They only advertise their Starter plan priced at $89 per month for 2 seats or $74 per month if you opt for a 1-year contract.
To get the other pricing options for the Pro and Premium plans which include team inbox, rules, ticketing, role-based permissions, and analytics you need to sign up for a demo to get a custom quote depending on the number of seats and the number of people reached per month.
While most Intercom alternatives may not have all the features of Intercom, they are in general much more affordable.
In this guide, we narrowed down the top Intercom alternatives, from Zoho Desk to Hubspot, that are worth considering and will keep your budget intact.
Let's get started!
As a small business owner or decision-maker, you are likely facing the difficult reality of having a limited budget. You may have realized that as great as Intercom is, its hefty monthly price tag is likely too expensive for the features you really need.
In your search for an alternative, you have likely come across Drift, a great and close Intercom competitor. The problem is that, at a whopping $2,500 per month, you were probably looking at a more expensive alternative.
Here's a curated list of the best Intercom alternatives for small businesses that want to provide exceptional support and improve customer engagement without going bankrupt.
Missive is a communication tool that offers a variety of features for businesses, including a shared inbox, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, social media DMs, calls, and more communication channels.
Pricing starts at $0 per user per month. More advanced plans start at $18 per user per month. You can view all pricing details here.
Missive's shared inbox feature allows you to share shared aliases or shared accounts with multiple team members so they can access and manage them directly from their accounts. It allows you and your support team to be more efficient when communicating and collaborating.
With a chat available in each conversation, you can discuss with colleagues for help and send files privately. You can also add anyone to a conversation by tagging them in the chat.
Collaboration goes a step further with real-time draft collaboration with team members. Best of all, you can also manage your personal account directly inside the Missive app and benefit from the same features.
Additionally, Missive offers shared contact, shared labels, and shared canned responses to help manage customer interactions. Another feature is the auto follow-up, which allows team members to schedule follow-up messages to customers.
Missive's live chat feature allows your business to connect with your customers in real-time through your website or mobile app. The chat can be customized to fit your brand and translate into any language you’d like.
Additionally, you can set a schedule to display an online/offline status based on your support team's presence. And best of all, they can be easily received in a Team Inbox to benefit from all the advantages of a shared inbox.
Missive offers integrations with OpenAI, Hubspot, Shopify, Zapier, and more. You can also build custom integrations from scratch or by using Retool.
This lets you connect Missive with other apps like Pipedrive, a CRM, to make your work easier. It can be really useful if you are already using software and don’t want all of the hassles of migrating to a new solution.
It's integration with OpenAI lets you use AI to reply to your customers using quickly by generating a customized reply based on your canned responses. This feature allows your team to alsways send accurate replies.
Missive's team and assignment feature allows you or any team member to assign specific people to specific conversations, so it’s easy to know who is responsible for handling them.
The feature also makes it easy to ping someone from the sales team, for example, to get some help. Missive also offers rules to automate workflow, such as round-robin assignments to only online members, SLA rules, auto follow-up, and more.
Missive has lots of the same features as Intercom, but it costs less money.
Zendesk is a customer service and support platform that offers a variety of features, including live chat, help desk ticketing, and knowledge management. Its pricing starts at $25 per agent per month for its basic support plan. They also offer various more expensive pricing plans to fit the needs of different businesses.
It sounds pretty similar to Intercom. But is Intercom like Zendesk?
First of all, Zendesk is built with customer service and ticket management in mind while Intercom is built more around sales with a built-in CRM. Zendesk is a better solution for strictly customer support, with self-service features like help desks, but it lacks some of the sales and automated marketing features of Intercom.
Zendesk provides a wide range of customer support features, and its pricing is more affordable compared to Intercom. However, it may not have all the advanced marketing features offered by Intercom.
Help Scout is another customer service platform that offers features such as email and live chat support, shared inboxes, a knowledge base, and reporting.
Its pricing starts at $25 per user per month and scales based on the number of users and features you need. Much like Missive, Help Scout uses shared inboxes to help your team work together. It also offers assignments, private notes (which act like chats), saved replies, and tagging.
Help Scout provides a more affordable option compared to Intercom, but it doesn’t have all the advanced sales and marketing features offered by Intercom.
Freshdesk is a helpdesk platform that offers features such as a support desk, contact center, and customer feedback management. It offers a free option with basic features. The paid plan starts at $18 per person per month and increases rapidly based on the number of agents and features needed.
However, if you want to get access to a live chat software, you’ll also need to subscribe to their Freshchat tool.
Freshdesk works similarly to Intercom. Unlike Missive and Help Scout, the platform uses a ticketing system for every customer inquiry to help your team prioritize, categorize, and assign tickets.
While Freshdesk’s pricing is more affordable than Intercom, to access all the features that are offered in the latter you’ll need to subscribe to their different platforms tools which can rapidly add up and eat up your budget.
Helpwise is a shared inbox platform that allows teams to manage customer service, emails, knowledge base, and live chat in one place. Its pricing starts at $15 per user per month.
Much like Missive and Help Scout, Helpwise is organized like an email client and organizes customer inquiries in inboxes.
It is more affordable than Intercom and is designed specifically for managing shared inboxes. While Intercom also has shared inbox features, it is a more comprehensive platform that includes sales and marketing tools.
Helpwise focuses on shared inbox management can be attractive for your startup. However, you should also consider that Helpwise may not have all the advanced sales and marketing features offered by Intercom.
Crisp is a messaging platform that offers a range of features, including shared inbox, live chat, CRM, and email marketing campaigns. While they offer a free plan, its features are really limited and don’t support emails or social media.
The paid plans start at $25 per month per workspace for up to 4 users, with additional pricing options available.
If you're familiar with Intercom, you'll notice that Crisp provides many of the same features, but at a more budget-friendly price point. However, it's important to keep in mind that it may not have all the advanced features of Intercom.
LiveChat is a customer service platform mainly focused on live chat. in addition to its chat widget, it provides features like a ticketing system, teams, and analytics.
Its pricing starts at $24 per agent per month and scales based on the number of team members and features you need. LiveChat also supports emails, SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger so you can easily connect with your customers. They also offer integrations with Salesforce, Shopify, HubSpot, and Pipedrive.
LiveChat offers a more affordable option compared to Intercom, but not all the sales and marketing features offered by Intercom.
Groove describes itself as a Zendesk alternative. The helpdesk software offers features for customer service with features like shared inbox, live chat, and analytic reporting. Its pricing starts at $25 per user per month.
Groove is similar to Missive, Help Scout, and Helpwise in the sense that it presents itself as an email client and works in the same fashion. You can also assign the conversation to a team member, leave notes in a conversation and mention someone in the conversation just like Missive. However, it doesn’t offer features for sales and marketing that are offered by Intercom.
Groove is more affordable than Intercom, however, you should also consider that Groove may not have all the features offered by Intercom. Additionally, you should verify the ease of use, integrations with other tools, and customer support when comparing Groove and Intercom.
HelpCrunch is a customer communication platform that combines live chat, email marketing, shared inbox, mobile app support, and other tools for support, marketing, and customer experience. It offers a free trial and its pricing starts at $29 per user per month with 1 000 emails.
HelpCrunch is an affordable alternative to Intercom that offers similar features for support, marketing, and sales. It provides a knowledge base, transparent pricing, and a shared inbox for multi-channel.
The live chat feature allows you to send files, knowledge base articles, or canned responses to website visitors offering a self-service option.
HelpCrunch is organized like an email client and organizes customer inquiries in inboxes, much like Helpwise and Missive. However, HelpCrunch doesn't yet offers AI to reply to email and chatbot.
To sum up, HelpCrunch is a more affordable alternative to Intercom that offers a wide range of features for customer support, marketing, and sales.
HubSpot is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform that offers sales, customer service, marketing, and content management software to help businesses grow better. Its pricing starts at $30 per month for its CRM Suite. It also offers a free plan with basic features
HubSpot’s CRM is a powerful tool that provides businesses with a complete view of their customer interactions and data using their analytics.
They also offer AI-powered Smart CRM, to use generative AI to reply to customer issues more easily. HubSpot also offers tools that sync between service, sales, and marketing teams.
In conclusion, HubSpot is a powerful and complete CRM platform that offers a wide range of features for customer service, but also sales, marketing, and even a CMS. Its pricing is more expensive than other solution on the list, but it provides a complete view of your customers.
Customerly is a customer communication platform that offers a live chat tool, email marketing, and other features for customer support and marketing experience. Its pricing starts at $9 per month for the most basic plan.
It's another affordable alternative to Intercom that offers similar features for support, marketing, and sales at a reasonable price. However, pricing depends on your usage unlike other solutions.
Their live chat features AI with customizable workflows to automate discussions with your website's visitors. With the Premium Plan, you can also have up to five separate widgets, which is helpful if you need to have separate inboxes.
Customerly’s outbound email messages can be created with rules, which will allow you to target certain segments of customers. They also offer analytics to help you understand your messages performance.
Customerly is organized like an email client and organizes customer inquiries in inboxes, much like Helpwise and Missive.
Tidio is a live chathelp desk software. It offers a free plan with basic features and its pricing starts at $25 per month.
It's main features are:- Live chat that allows you to communicate with your customers in real-time.- Chatbots to automate your conversations, sales, and processes- Lyro AI to provides personalized support without training.- Ticketing system to manage customer inquiries in an inbox.
Tidio is organized like an email client and organizes customer inquiries in inboxes, much like Helpwise and Missive.
Tidio is easier to use, has a better rating for support, is easier to setup, and more affordable than Intercom. However, Intercom provides more advanced features and is more customizable.
ClickDesk is a live chat platform that offers voice, and video support. It offers a free plan and paid plans start at $14.99 per user per month.
While it's a fairly simple solution compared to Intercom and only offers a live chat you can still integrate in with other helpdesk.
Olark is a cloud-based chatbot and live chat solution that lets you interact with your customers through your website.
While tt's not as features packed as Intercom, it's a great alternative if you're looking for a live chat solution to connect with your customers.
And with its pricing starts at $29 per user per month, it's also more affordable than the Intercom.
Olark provides you with analytics, team management features and searchable scripts.
Zoho Desk is an omnichannel help desk software. It's a comprhensive solution that can compete with Intercom on many level.
It offers feature like ticket management, instant messaging, multi-brand help center, shared inbox, a call center, social media integrations, live chat, and knowledge base.
It also offers an AI feature called Zia, that can help you team pick the best knowlegde base entry for an inquiry or send it directly to a customer. It can also auto-tag conversations.
Its pricing starts at $20 per month per user.
LiveAgent is a help desk software that includes live chat, ticketing, and customer service features.
It has features like live chat with AI chatbots, a service hub for customer interactions, and help desk tools for managing support tickets.
The platform includes chat monitoring, ticket distribution, and reporting features for support teams.
Its pricing starts at $15 per agent per month.
Aside from the price, it's important to consider various factors when choosing a cheaper alternative to Intercom for your needs. Here are some key aspects to keep in mind:
Make a list of the features and functionalities you need in a customer support tool. This can include things like live chat, shared inbox, auto follow-ups, and more. Ensure that the alternative you choose provides all the necessary features that you need to effectively support your customers.
Consider the integration options available with other tools and software you use in your business. A good customer service software should easily integrate with your existing tools and workflows, allowing you to streamline your processes.
Choose a customer support tool that is user-friendly and easy to navigate. The tool should be intuitive, so your team can start using it quickly without having to spend too much time on training or adaptation.
The level of customer support offered by the alternative should be considered. Choose a tool that provides excellent customer support and resources to help you resolve any issues that may arise.
For example, Intercom rates 8.7 for the quality of their support on G2, while Missive rates 9.7.
As your business grows, so will your customer support needs. Choose a customer support tool that is scalable, so you can continue to use it as your business expands.
By considering these factors, you can find a more affordable alternative to Intercom that meets your business needs and helps you effectively support your customers.
In conclusion, when it comes to finding a more affordable alternative to Intercom, there are many great options available for small businesses. These options offer similar features and functionality to Intercom, at a more budget-friendly price.
When considering which alternative is right for your business, it's important to think about factors such as the features and functionality you need, the ease of use and user interface, the level of customer support, and the potential for scalability.
Each of these alternatives has its strengths and weaknesses, and by taking the time to consider your specific needs and goals, you can find the perfect solution for your business.
In the end, it's all about finding the right balance between cost and value. With the right tool in place, you can improve customer satisfaction, increase efficiency, and grow your business more effectively. So why not give one of these alternatives a try today?
November 28, 2024
9 Best Help Scout Alternatives for 2024
Explore the best Help Scout alternatives (with features & prices) and improve your customer service email management.
Help Scout is a powerful help desk software designed to streamline customer communication and support. But as with most software, it has downsides that lead people to look for alternative solutions.
Here are the most common reasons users look for a Help Scout competitor:
In this article, we narrowed down the best alternatives to Help Scout ensure customer satisfaction. Some are traditional customer service software options, and others are more flexible tools. Keep reading to discover their key features and pricing.
The Best Help Scout Alternatives
Missive and Help Scout are customer support tools with shared inboxes, live chat, reply templates, and integrations with tools like CRMs. It also offers analytics to get an insight into your team’s performance metrics.
While Help Scout has a help center, it is limited in custom domains support, language support, and customization options. Missive offers more integrations, like with Grammarly, CMS, and can even be AI-powered with OpenAI, and is a more versatile platform for businesses. Missive is the better alternative to Help Scout for teams who value collaboration.
Missive and Help Scout both offer email and communication management with label/tag options to create a organized ticketing system. Missive offers more advanced search and filtering options and a traditional email client interface, making it easy to manage conversations and find what you're looking for. Missive also allows you to add labels to the sidebar to quickly access communications depending on their status.
Missive is a robust email management tool compared to Help Scout, offering a variety of features such as collaboration on email replies, email delegation, and management of multiple email addresses from one Gmail account. It is ideal for startups needing to efficiently manage their email communications. Help Scout, on the other hand, only offers shared inboxes for collaborative service emails, lacking advanced email management capabilities.
Missive offers more flexibility in communication management than Help Scout, with the ability to assign conversations to a whole team, a specific person, or multiple people. Missive also has a Team Inbox feature for team collaboration that is not available in Help Scout.
Help Scout is limited to a web app and a mobile app for iOS and Android with limited features. Missive, on the other hand, offers a native app on multiple platforms with a unified experience for all communications, allowing you to efficiently manage conversations in one place. With Missive, you won’t have to switch between different apps to handle different types of communications.
Missive offers broader support for communication channels, including email, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and more, while Help Scout almost only supports emails and live chat. With Missive, you can connect through integrations with your phone app, so you can handle all your communications in one place without having to switch between apps.
Missive offers Rules to automate your workflows and routing for incoming/outgoing messages and user actions. Rules can also be a great way to respect your SLAs. This feature allows for a more personalized and customizable automation experience compared to Help Scout, which applies rules to all emails equally and does not work on other channels of communication.
Help Scout does not support multiple aliases per inbox, while Missive allows the management of aliases in a traditional email client fashion and supports multiple domain addresses from a single Gmail account.
Missive offers live draft editing for collaboration with team members, while Help Scout does not have the option for collaborative replies.
Missive offers a direct chat feature within any conversation for collaboration and communication between team members, whereas Help Scout only offers the ability to add notes to support emails.
Missive pricing is a lot more affordable, with its top-tier yearly plan being 45% more affordable than Help Scout's Pro yearly plan.
Zendesk is another alternative to Help Scout for small to medium businesses looking for a support and customer service platform.
Here's why Zendesk is worth considering:
Overall, Zendesk is a good omnichannel support platform that offers businesses everything they need to provide customer service.
Pricing starts at $25 per user, per month for their basic plan. For more features their other plan starts at $69 per user, per month.
HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and service software that offers a complete help desk solution. It's a great tool for companies looking for one software to do it all. It's cloud-based solution offers features like a ticketing system, a live chat, a chat bot builder, a customer portal so customers can access and search help articles, submit tickets, check statuses, through self-service customer portals.
It also offers analytics, an integration with their CRM, and email support. Compared to Help Scout, HubSpot may be a better alternative for companies already using their sales and marketing software who want to add a customer support software.
Pricing starts at $30 per user, per month for the starter plan. They also offer a free plan for basic functionnalities.
Zoho Desk is a help desk and customer support platform offered by Zoho, a suite of web-based tools for businesses. Like Help Scout, it provides functionalities for customer support, knowledge bases, help desk ticketing, and live chat support.
It offers integrations with their other tools like thir sales, marketing, and project management software.
Using their ticket management tool, support agents can view, manage, assign, and resolve support tickets using a simple UI. Tickets can be tagged, prioritized, and automatically routed based on rules.
Zoho Desk provides a full-featured help desk and customer support solution comparable to Help Scout at competitive pricing plan. However, its high level of configurability makes it a good alternative for companies looking for a more customizable support software.
Pricing for Zoho Desk starts at $20 per agent/month for their standard plan.
Freshdesk is a help desk software for small businesses that offers a range of tools to manage their customer support needs. It’s a cloud-based platform that provides a seamless experience for businesses to handle customer queries via various channels, like email, phone, chat, and social media.
Here are some of the key features of Freshdesk that make it a good alternative to Help Scout:
Freshdesk provides small businesses with a user-friendly, self-service knowledge base solution.
Pricing starts at $18 per user, per month for the Growth plan. They also offer a free plan for basic functionnalities.
Front is a customer communication platform that offers an alternative to Help Scout. It combines all of your company's communication channels into one place, making it easier to manage customer interactions. Being a less traditional option, it does lack a few customer support features like an out-of-the-box knowledge base.
Here are some key features:
Front offers a modern platform for customer communication and support.
Pricing starts at $19 per user, per month for up to 10 users with a contact of one year.
Helpwise is a helpdesk solution that is a good alternative to Help Scout. Here are the key features:
Overall, Helpwise is a helpdesk solution that offers a set of tools to manage support effectively.
Pricing starts at $15 per user, per month for up to 10 users.
Hiver is one of the more lightweight alternatives to Help Scout.
If you're looking to stay in your Gmail interface, and you don't need a lot of customization or automation, Hiver might be a good option.
Pricing
They have a free plan and their paid plans start at $19 per user, per month.
LiveAgent is the last alternative to Help Scout on the list. It offers a help desk solution for businesses. Here's what you need to know:
Overall, if you're looking for a flexible help desk solution, LiveAgent is worth considering.
Pricing starts at $15 per user, per month.
In conclusion, Help Scout is a well-established customer support software for support teams. However, there are alternative solutions like Missive, Hiver, Freshdesk, Front, Helpwise, and LiveAgent that offer similar or even better capabilities at a lower cost.
In the end, the best customer support software is the one that fits your business's needs and goals to help you deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Help Scout isn't a CRM tool, but it offers plugins with many CRM tools so you can manage your customer directly into their help desk solution.
Help Scout is a customer service software made for support teams looking to manage customer interactions in one platform while enabling collaboration between team members.
Help Scout isn't free. Its pricing options start at $25/month per user. However, they do offer a free trial for 15 days.
December 19, 2023
The 11 Best Zendesk Alternatives Worth Trying in 2024
Ready to explore beyond Zendesk? Let’s talk about the top customer service tools, compare features, and...
Zendesk is a great product that offers extensive customer service features. But it has a caveat, it’s expensive and complex.
If you’re not a large enterprise, chances are you’ll find Zendesk to be overkill. Especially since there are more user-friendly and affordable Zendesk alternatives that offer a great feature set.
If you’ve faced challenges using Zendesk and need to switch to an alternative, this guide is for you. We did some leg work for you and found the 11 best Zendesk alternatives based on factors like ease of use, feature set, and pricing.
While it’s hard to argue that Zendesk isn’t a great customer service platform, it does come with disadvantages: High costs and a complex interface.
Here’s a quick overview of Zendesk’s disadvantages as a customer service platform.
Zendesk can get quite expensive even if you use its most basic plan. The base plan doesn’t include features like service level agreements (SLA), custom and live analytics, or AI features.
Advanced features are locked behind a paywall. Even essential features like customized support forms are not available on the base plan.
Sure, you can buy add-ons to get advanced features on a lower-tier plan. But there is a caveat: Not all add-ons are available on all plans.
If you’re on the base plan (Suite Team) or the next tier (Suite Growth plan), you aren’t eligible for the advanced AI add-on. If you’re eligible, you’ll have to shell out quite a bit for add-ons.
The advanced AI agent, for instance, costs $50 per agent per month.
Zendesk’s extensive onboarding process and complex configurations present a steep learning curve. This can translate to cumbersome onboarding, low employee buy-in, and investments in training.
Even once you’ve dealt with these problems, you might not achieve the same level of efficiency as you would with a more user-friendly platform.
Ironically, Zendesk has a reputation for being non-responsive. Don’t take our word for it—here’s a review from a Zendesk user on Capterra:
“If you need support for this software, they take a long, long time to get back to you. You better know what you're doing, because if you need to get a hold of them, I wish you the best of luck.”
Zendesk can be difficult to navigate. The lack of support only exacerbates the problem and leaves teams without dedicated experts on their own.
We’ve compiled the best Zendesk alternatives for customer service below. From basic communication to AI-powered tools, these solutions offer a wide range of features for customer service.
Look for an option that meets your business needs and offers value for money.
Missive is the perfect customer service solution for startups and small businesses. It’s not a full-fledged help desk software, which means you won’t have to spend time navigating through a lot of clutter.
It focuses on features like shared inboxes, live chat, shared labels, flexible email setup, and canned responses.
The platform allows assigning customer conversations to a specific team, person, or multiple people. To automate this process, you can create rules to route conversations to the appropriate location.
Missive integrates with all popular tools like Salesforce, OpenAI, Grammarly, and Aircall. This means you can easily migrate data between Missive and these tools to streamline your workflow.
Missive offers a comprehensive range of email management capabilities. You can collaborate on customer emails, delegate them to team members, and manage multiple email addresses at once.
Missive helps you automate various workflows for incoming and outgoing messages, as well as user actions. There is also an OpenAI integration that acts as an email assistant, helping you be more productive.
Missive helps small businesses deliver great customer service without spending a fortune.
Try Missive today—it’s free. If you want to learn more about how Missive can help your customer service team, you can also book a demo.
HubSpot Service Hub is a help desk platform that helps manage customer inquiries from its feature-loaded interface. It might be a good fit if you’re an enterprise user and require features like video recordings, the option to create a knowledge base, customer satisfaction surveys, and automation.
HubSpot saves plenty of time by helping you automatically assign incoming messages via chat and email to the right person on the team.
Support agents can use one of the 5,000+ email templates available on HubSpot to quickly respond to inquiries—you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you receive a query about your refund policy.
While HubSpot is almost as complex as Zendesk, it does offer a limited free version and better support quality than Zendesk.
Salesforce’s customer service help desk solution is called Salesforce Service Cloud. It offers features like case management and omnichannel routing.
If you’re already using Salesforce products, Service Cloud would naturally be an ideal Zendesk alternative.
However, Salesforce will leave many of the Zendesk problems unresolved. For example, Salesforce also has a complex pricing structure and expensive add-ons. It’s also one of the more expensive options on the list.
While Salesforce does offer omnichannel routing, users report that case routing often doesn’t work. Users also cite the complex integration and implementation as a concern.
Like Salesforce, Zoho Desk is a comprehensive customer support software solution. The ticketing tool enables you to handle customer requests across multiple communication channels, departments, and products.
Zoho Desk offers omnichannel support, so you can handle these customer requests via live chat, phone, email, web forms, and self-service portals.
Speaking of live chat—Zoho Desk’s AI-powered chatbot (called Zia) elevates the customer experience and simplifies processes for agents.
It automatically fields customer queries from customers by generating responses using information in your knowledge base and other sources. This reduces support desk traffic and earns your agents some time. The AI chatbot also helps support agents find information faster during calls.
You can integrate Zoho Desk with various Zoho products, including Zoho CRM, Analytics (business intelligence software), and Cliq (UCaaS platform), as well as third-party tools like Slack, Mailchimp, and Asana.
Zoho Desk is a lot more intuitive than Zendesk and offers better support. However, the base plan doesn’t offer much. You’re compelled to opt for the second tier to increase limits across features.
Help Scout gets many things right. It has a clean and intuitive user interface, helps create customer portals for self-service, and offers features like shared inboxes and in-app messages.
The platform brings various AI features to the table, including AI summarize, which translates email threads into bullet points, and AI assist, which checks the text for grammar, tone of voice, and fragmented thoughts.
The setup is simple and quick, and the pricing structure is easy to understand. But it’s still an expensive solution. If you’re looking to switch to a more affordable Zendesk alternative, Help Scout is not it.
It’s also not the most customizable solution out there, though. If you need extensive reports, you might find Help Scout’s reporting features lackluster.
If you’re looking for a general customer service and ticket management platform with automation features, Help Scout is a great pick.
HappyFox allows you to deliver support via channels like email, live chat, social media, and phone. The platform helps create a knowledge base, which integrates with its self-service portal.
HappyFox’s knowledge base and self-service portal functionalities are a great way to reduce support desk traffic—they help your customers find answers by themselves and track ticket status, previous engagements, and other details without having to contact support.
It’s great that Happy Fox doesn’t limit itself to help desk features like a ticketing system, canned replies, and automated workflows. You also get detailed reports, satisfaction surveys, and built-in task management functionalities.
However, HappyFox does make you pay for these features, so only go for HappyFox if you plan to use the majority of its features.In fact, it’s even more expensive than Zendesk. While you won’t save anything by switching to HappyFox, you might want to consider it if you’re a large business that needs an extensive feature set combined with an intuitive interface.
LiveAgent is a multi-channel support platform that helps you build a call center, interact with customers via live chat on your website or social media, and build a knowledge base.
LiveAgent takes a gamified approach to customer service. Agents can earn badges for completing specific customer service tasks. This gamification can instill a competitive spirit that encourages agents and helps you identify areas where training may be necessary.
The live chat widget is fast and easy to implement. It includes access to unlimited chat and ticket history, chat analytics and tracking, and chat invitations with custom design options.
The platform integrates with over 200 tools, including Zapier, WordPress, Mailchimp, and more. Their extensive integration library is a plus since it helps you connect the customer service platform with your entire tech stack.
Gorgias is best suited for ecommerce brands, but you might consider Gorgias if you want access to features like social media sentiment analysis—a feature not commonly found in customer service platforms.
Because Gorgias targets ecommerce businesses, it integrates with all the popular ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Their integration with Shopify is especially advanced—it allows agents to edit orders and handle refunds using its own interface.
While Gorgias is a great help desk software solution for ecommerce brands, it’s mostly ideal for small and medium-sized businesses.Large ecommerce businesses that also sell on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay might be better off with a different platform that integrates with these marketplaces.
Freshdesk is a natural alternative to Zendesk since it offers a similar feature set that prioritizes support via multiple channels, AI features, and scalability.
The platform allows you to configure automated workflows to field customer inquiries. The workflows can deliver tickets to the right person on the team and prioritize critical tickets.
The collision detection feature in Freshdesk ensures two agents don’t simultaneously work on the same customer inquiry.Freshdesk is loaded with collaboration features, too. You can use features like team huddle and shared inbox for more effective customer support.
You’re essentially switching to a more affordable version of Zendesk when choosing Freshdesk. It’s also less complex than Zendesk and offers additional features like collision detection.However, Freshdesk lacks customizability. If you’re looking for flexibility, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables you to provide multi-channel support via live chat, email, in-app messaging, and push notifications.
At the same time, Intercom helps you build an external knowledge base that allows customers to find answers without speaking to an agent.
Intercom Inbox is a great feature that brings all customer communications to a single interface. It helps you build workflows to automate tasks like routing customers to the right knowledge base content or agent.
You can integrate Intercom with almost any popular app, including WhatsApp, Salesforce, and Facebook.The only downside to Intercom is its steep pricing. If Zendesk’s price is a problem for you, Intercom isn’t the best Zendesk alternative.
Kustomer is known for its ability to tackle a high-traffic support inquiries with ease. It combines robust customer support features with automation to deliver a great customer experience.
While most solutions on the list are standalone solutions, Kustomer is both a CRM (customer relationship management) and a customer support platform. Kustomer’s duality helps you see a complete picture of every customer as well as execute tasks across both systems at once, saving you time.
The AI-powered support platform supports various channels, including email, chat, SMS, social media, and phone.
While Kustomer is a feature-rich Zendesk alternative, it’s far from cheap. It’s significantly more expensive than Zendesk. There are only two pricing plans, so you can’t select a lean basic plan. If you want to use Kustomer, first verify if all the features it offers have value for your customer service processes.
When selecting a customer service platform, here’s what you should consider:
Identify your business’s needs—what features do you need in a customer service solution? Do you just need basic ticketing, a chatbot, and social media integration? Or do you need advanced AI features to automate customer support?
This allows you to filter out tools loaded with features you don’t need. When comparing tools, use the features you’ll use regularly as a basis to find the perfect tool.
Complexity discourages employees from using your software regularly. Ease of use is vital to getting employee buy-in.
When you use complex software, you lose on multiple fronts. You pay a premium for the extensive feature set, and you spend more on training staff.
If a support agent can’t use your customer service solution confidently, they’re more likely to make mistakes. The cost to your reputation in such cases can be rather expensive.
Transferring data is easier between integrated software. When your customer service software integrates with CRM like HubSpot, it’s easy for support agents to access customer data and register support tickets and other interactions in the CRM.
Integrations also make automation easier. For example, you could integrate a third-party tool like Asana to automatically create support-related tasks for agents whenever a customer opens a support ticket.
A customer service platform’s own customer support team says a lot about the company’s commitment to customer service.
How fast does help come when you need it? Look for answers in user reviews. You can either ask around in your network or explore reviews on websites like Capterra and G2.
There are other ways to assess support quality as well. For example, you can reach out to support yourself to see how quickly they respond.
Read through the SLA to see if the service provider guarantees a resolution or response time.
Customizability helps tweak the platform to suit your needs.
For example, not every business has the same escalation procedures for support inquiries. The customer service platform must allow you to configure your process to match your workflow.
Look for industry-standard encryption protocols like SSL/TLS. Encryption ensures your data remains secure. See if the platform offers role-based access control (RBAC) to limit access to specific functionalities and data based on user roles.
Certifications with regulations and industry standards are a great indicator of a platform’s commitment to data security and compliance.
Look for certifications that confirm compliance with regulations and standards like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), or ISO (International Organization for Standardization).
Reporting and analytics are critical features. It tells you how your current customer service strategy is performing and what you need to change to improve it.
When evaluating a platform’s reporting analytics features, consider the following:
You might even consider looking for AI features that allow automated reporting and trigger alerts when a specific threshold is met.
For example, when you receive more than 1,000 support tickets per month, the platform could automatically notify the support manager so they can make arrangements to tackle the high volume of queries.
Even if a platform checks all the right boxes, you have a budget to stick to. Steer clear of platforms with a complex pricing structure like Zendesk’s.
Look for a simple pricing structure. Factor in the cost of overages (for exceeding usage limits such as the number of tickets or API calls) and add-ons, if any.
Speak to support to learn about any hidden charges, like data storage fees or charges for accessing historical data.Sum up all the costs to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) and compare that with the value the customer service platform offers.
Zendesk is a great customer service platform. But its broad feature set, complex user interface, and expensive and confusing pricing can be major problems for small and medium-sized businesses.
The best customer service tool is a combination of three things:
If you’re thinking about moving away from Zendesk, give Missive a try. It’s a team inbox and chat app that allows your team to help customers across all popular channels.
Try Missive for free today, or book a demo to learn how Missive can help you improve customer service.
