Top 4 Zoho Desk Alternatives in 2025

85% of US consumers recommend a business to others if they receive superior service.¹ Companies should implement a help desk software platform to manage internal IT requests and deliver strong service.

Customer service managers commonly search for live call monitoring features in help desk software to:

• track agents’ performance on calls,
• join calls without the agent or customer being aware of a manager’s presence.

Here are the top 4 Zoho Desk alternatives and their user reviews:

Top Zoho Desk 4 alternatives

*Review counts are based on the total number of reviews on peer review sites including G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius as of 10/02/2023. Sponsored and placed at the top of the lists.

**The average rating is based on the average rating data G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius as of 10/02/2023.

*PAYG: Pay-as-you-go. See explanation of features.

Vendor selection criteria:

• Number of reviews: 4,000+ total reviews
• Average rating: Above 4.0/5
• Employee size: 20+ employees on LinkedIn

Insights come from our experience with these solutions as well as other users’ experiences shared in Capterra ² , G2³ , and TrustRadius⁴ .

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based and contextual AI-equipped help desk platform that serves 50,000+ businesses worldwide. The platform offers key help desk services, including customer ticket management and contact management through multiple channels (phone, chat, email, social media, and self-service portal) in a unified workspace.

Pricing (per seat/month)

• Express: $7.00
• Standard: $14.00
• Professional: $23.00
• Enterprise: $40.00⁵
• A 15-day free trial is available for up to 3 seats.

Cons

• A steep learning curve: Some users have expressed concern about Zoho Desk’s steep learning curve.

Source: G2

• Low customization options: When users are deploying the chat widget on their help center, they find that it lacks customization capabilities.

• Insufficient software/app integrations: Zoho Desk’s third-party integrations are criticized for lacking some premium marketplace apps, users would like to have SAP integration to connect their operation and monitoring capabilities.

• Inefficient workflow: Users think that the data migration process can be improved since there is no straight migration path for a business that is switching from emails to a dedicated ticketing system.

• Short trial period (14 days): Zoho Desk offers a shorter trial period than its competitors; early adaptors state that they require a longer time to test the platform’s features.

What to look for while choosing Zoho Desk alternatives?

While searching for the most appropriate alternative for your organization, it is critical to understand which features can meet the downsides of Zoho Desk. Concerning the cons of Zoho Desk, here is a compiled list of features that you should pay attention to while looking for Zoho Desk alternatives.

• Easy-to-learn
• Customizable features
• Powerful software and app integrations
• Long free trial period

Top 4 alternatives of Zoho Desk

1- Freshdesk 

Freshdesk is cloud-based help desk software from Freshworks which offers unified customer service procedures to oversee your clients. Freshdesk can track and handle incoming tickets from various channels in one place, automate repetitive processes such as agent allocation, and use analytics to collect insights on customer experience.

Pricing (per seat/month)

• Growth: $15.00
• Omni-channel growth: $29.00
• Pro: $48.99
• Omni-channel pro: $59.00
• Enterprise: $69.00
• Omni-channel enterprise: $99.00⁶

Pros

• Users appreciate the fact that Freshdesk offers a wide range of basic communication services, on a cloud-based and simple-to-use platform, leading to a streamlined customer experience for them.

• The reporting and analytics capabilities are said to be extensive by the users, letting them constantly track customer service trends.
• Freshdesk is a robust ticket management system that is well appreciated by users, helping them to automate everyday tasks, and prioritize support requests.
• Users find it quite functional to automate routine tasks like ticket routing, canned responses, and follow-up messages, saving time for support agents.

Cons

• Freshdesk’s platform is considered complex by some early adopters.

Source: Capterra

• The platform is occasionally slow.
• Some Freshdesk features are less configurable to tailor to specific business needs.

2- Zendesk Support Suite 

Zendesk Support Suite is an AI/ML-powered software-as-a-service product from Zendesk, Inc., allowing businesses to provide customized client support across multiple channels, including emails, voice, messaging, and social media. 

Pricing (per seat/month, billed annually)

• Suite team: $55
• Suite growth: $89
• Suite professional: $115⁷
• Suite enterprise: Contact with the vendor

Pros

• Zendesk Support Suite integrates seamlessly with a wide range of common order management platforms, websites, and logistics services, assisting users in managing complex operations.

Source: Capterra

• The platform’s powerful and efficient capabilities for providing comprehensive data-driven reports and insights enable organizations to monitor key customer service metrics.

• The API and app structures are quite useful while developing customized services for automation and integrating with third parties.

Cons

• Some users have faced lagged social media integrations (on Twitter or Meta), resulting in duplicate communications from different platforms.

Source: G2

• Some users indicate that there are unprofessional employees in the customer support team.

• Zendesk Support Suite can be expensive for limited-budget or smaller-sized businesses.

3- Salesforce Service Cloud 

Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer support and help desk platform that seamlessly integrates 2,500+ software or applications. Salesforce assists small, medium, and enterprise businesses during their digital transformation in customer relationship management through leveraging real-time analytics, automated workflows.⁸

Pricing (per seat/month)

• Starter: $25
• Professional: $80
• Enterprise: $165
• Unlimited: $330⁹
• A 30-day free trial is available.

Pros

• Service Cloud is intuitive and customizable, and it integrates seamlessly with other Salesforce products.¹⁰

• It is simple to deploy and use. Users appreciate Service Cloud’s intuitive, user-friendly, well-organized, and quick interface, helping them to track the status of their inquiries.

• Users emphasized Service Cloud’s powerful integration capabilities, such as checking SLAs, setting up Escalation rules, or viewing real-time data, enabling them to optimize their workflow.
• It has a longer (30 days) free trial period than other products.

Cons

• Users who moved to Service Cloud remarked on the high implementation, deployment, and licensing costs.
• The email functionality features can be enhanced, users would like Gmail account integration capabilities to merge duplicate emails.
• Users point out that customization can be more convenient with a service workbench.

4- Intercom 

Intercom combines an AI chatbot, help desk, and customer communication in one platform. Intercom specializes in end-to-end business messaging for businesses through multiple communication channels. 

Pricing (per seat/month, billed annually)

• Starter: $74
• Pro: $153
• Premium: Custom pricing based on the number of users, people reached, and resolution.
• A 14-day free trial is available, then costs you $0.99 per resolution.¹¹

Pros

• Users think that the interface is straightforward, seamless, and fair.

Source: G2

• Users believe add-on tools and capabilities, such as WhatsApp integration, were useful in allowing them to customize the platform according to their business needs.

Cons

• Intercom can be difficult to adapt, and the learning curve can be steep for some users.
• Intercom’s price plan is complex and can be expensive for small businesses.
• Users who had a high volume of conversations stated that they had lagging issues with the UI.

For more information about Intercom and its alternatives please check out our data-driven and transparent Intercom Alternatives Article.

Top 6 help desk software features

1- Customer feedback surveys

Customer feedback and survey tools assist organizations in their customer success journey by collecting and analyzing survey feedback data to give customer-centric insights. Customer feedback and survey tools can help organizations to:

• Enhance the customer experience
• Minimize churn and boost retention
• Increase the number of leads generated

2- Lowe code – no code development

Low-code can decrease application development time by up to 60%.¹²

• Low-code: Low-code is a functionality to eliminate some of the need for traditional coding.
• No-code: No-code is a similar technique that provides low-code features, enabling non-technical people to build applications without writing a single line of code.  

3- Self-service options

Self-service was favored by 67% of users over dealing with a support team representative.¹³ Self-service options allow customers to do activities or tasks on their own rather than contacting an agent. Some self-service resources include:

• Knowledge base
• Community forums
• Chatbots 
• FAQs, help portals
• Guidelines, tutorials

4- Real-time monitoring

Real-time monitoring is the availability of constantly updated data with near-zero latency. Organizations that leverage real-time monitoring can achieve:

• Real-time feedback 
• Automatic notifications and alerts  
• Real-Time performance monitoring

5- Social media integrations

Social media in customer service is essential since it is an ‘always on’ medium where organizations manage customer communication through various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Organizations that use social media integration in their help desk software can:

• Reach a broader audience
• Tap into new markets
• Provide timely responses in customer service
• Build convenience and accessibility of resolving customer queries in real-time
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty

Note: All vendors support Facebook social media integration.

6- Supported languages

Multilingual help desk software with extending language coverage can potentially increase the accessibility of information for a wider range of people which may lead to more favorable encounters between service teams and customers. Help desk software with multilingual features can assist businesses with:

• Increasing positive feedback
• Increasing customer loyalty and retention 
• Facilitating customers communication

For more on customer service software

Check out our other articles on customer relationship management and help desk software to learn about other popular options like Salesforce Service Cloud, Zendesk,  Freshdesk, or Intercom.

• Top 10 Customer Service Software
• Top 7 Contact Center Software
• Top 10 Tools For Contact Center Automation
• Top 8 Customer Feedback Tools

Here is the complete data-driven software list of our CRM vendors.

Transparency Statement

AIMultiple works with numerous tech vendors such as Salesforce and Zendesk.

External links

• 1. ”Global Study: ROI of Customer Experience, 2023“. (PDF). Qualtrics XM Institute. May 2023, Retrieved October 2, 2023.
• 2. Capterra: Find The Right Software and Services. Capterra
• 3. Bewertungen von Geschäftssoftware und -diensten | G2. G2
• 4. TrustRadius: Software Reviews, Software Comparisons and More. TrustRadius
• 5. ”Zoho Desk Pricing 2023“. Zoho Desk. Retrieved October 2, 2023.
• 6. ”Freshdesk Pricing“. Freshdesk. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
• 7. ”Zendesk Pricing“. Zendesk. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
• 8. ”Salesforce”.  LinkedIn. Retrieved October 2, 2023.
• 9. ”Salesforce Editions & Pricing – Service Cloud Lightning 2023“. Salesforce. Retrieved Oct 2, 2023.
• 10. ”Salesforce Service Cloud Reviews 2023“. Capterra. March 16, 2023.  Retrieved October 2, 2023.
• 11. ”Intercom Pricing“. Intercom. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
• 12. ”Global low-code development speed compared to traditional development 2021.” Statista. (2023, March 24). Retrieved October 2, 2023.
• 13. Self-Service: Do Customers Want to Help Themselves? (infographic).