Zendesk Alternatives: 13 Best Choices on the Market in 2025

“A frequent and ironic complaint is that for a company that sells customer support software, its own support can be slow and difficult to access.” 

“Unless you want to pay extra, you don’t get any training on how to properly use the platform.”

“Over time pricing became more and more complex and expensive. Multiple plans, sometimes with even the same names like “Enterprise” or “Pro” would only get you part of what you needed.”  

“System is too complicated to use. Different redirects to different portals and pages. Seems like a ‘barrel of monkeys’ from a history of acquisitions of other systems.”

“I find the setup quite tricky. As a non technical person, all of the email connection tools (while powerful) are quite hard to get working.” 

These are real reviews pulled in from Zendesk users on G2. In fact, you’ll find comments about how expensive, complex, and overwhelming Zendesk is, littered all over the internet. 

Most teams are drawn in by the allure of Zendesk’s extensive feature set and reputation for robustness. But often, there’s a mismatch because the same things that make Zendesk powerful, also make it expensive and difficult to learn and navigate. 

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of Zendesk alternatives available on the market that might be a better fit for you. Scroll down to find a list of the 13 best alternatives to Zendesk along with their top features, pricing, pros and cons so you can find one that works for you. 

Table of Contents

• The main issues users have with Zendesk 
  • Complex setup process and steep learning curve
  • High costs hidden in a confusing pricing model
  • Poor customer support 
• 13 best alternatives to Zendesk available today
  • 1. Hiver
  • 2. Help Scout
  • 3. Freshdesk
  • 4. Zoho Desk
  • 5. Intercom
  • 6. HubSpot Service Hub
  • 7. Front
  • 8. Jira Service Management
  • 9. Gorgias
  • 10. HappyFox
  • 11. Tidio
  • 12. Helpjuice
  • 13. Spiceworks
• How to evaluate the right Zendesk alternative for your business
• Elevate your support quality with the right Zendesk alternative

The main issues users have with Zendesk

Getting Zendesk up and running and using it effectively demands a significant amount of time, effort, and resources. Instead of the tool fitting into your workflows, you’ll often find yourself adapting your processes to fit the tool. Let’s look at some of the issues in more detail. 

Complex setup process and steep learning curve

Getting started with Zendesk can be daunting. Depending on your team size and the level of customization you need, the onboarding process can stretch into weeks or even months. 

You can work through the setup guides Zendesk provides and rely on your own admin/engineering team to handle the configuration. Or you can purchase Zendesk Professional Services – a paid consulting offering where Zendesk experts help you with setup and launch. 

This support, however, comes at an additional cost on top of your regular Zendesk subscription. Third-party sources suggest that Zendesk Professional Services pricing starts at around $8,000 per channel, with the price climbing higher depending on the number of instances being launched. 

Within Zendesk Professional Services, there’s also Zendesk Assist – a program where you’re paired with a designated consultant who works directly with your team to configure your system and apply best practices.

Unless you have sufficient resources, technical know-how, and bandwidth, setting up Zendesk can be overwhelming and you’ll have to employ their experts to help you – which can be expensive. 

Onboarding the tool is only the first step however. Given how lush Zendesk is with features and customizations, it comes with a steep learning curve. Your team will require dedicated training to get comfortable with the platform. And Zendesk’s structured training programs (that you’ll also have to pay for separately) can run north of $2000. 

High costs hidden in a confusing pricing model

Zendesk’s Suite pricing plans (starting at $55 per user per month) on their own are too expensive for most businesses. But when you add in training costs, add-on fees, and other hidden expenses, the total quickly balloons. 

Further, the way the plans are structured can be very confusing. With so many tiers and optional add-ons, it’s often hard to know exactly what’s included and what you’ll end up paying. As a result, many teams end up on a plan with features they don’t really need, paying far more than they initially budgeted. 

Zendesk also has beginner Support plans (starting at $19 per user per month) but they’re stripped down to the bare essentials. Key features like Zendesk Guide (for help articles and knowledge management) aren’t included; you’ll need to upgrade to a higher plan or purchase it as an add-on.

Poor customer support

Another recurring theme that comes up when users talk about their experience with Zendesk is how hard it is to get timely, helpful support. This becomes a real source of frustration, especially when you’re dealing with a platform that has so many moving parts.

Zendesk doesn’t include 24×7 support in any of its regular pricing tiers. If your team needs help outside business hours, you’ll need to purchase their Premier Support add-on.

The add-on doesn’t have a flat fee. Premier Support is usually priced as a percentage of your annual Zendesk license cost: typically 20–35%. And there’s a minimum spend requirement, which means smaller teams can end up paying significantly more than expected just for timely support.

These issues are why so many teams are now looking beyond Zendesk. So what can you use instead of Zendesk? 

13 best alternatives to Zendesk available today

Here’s a list of 13 Zendesk alternatives which could better fit your team’s requirements and help you deliver exceptional customer support.

1. Hiver

Hiver is a modern AI-powered customer service platform that works for you, not the other way around. It rejects the false trade-off that power must come with complexity or that an intuitive experience must mean limitation.

Hiver brings powerful features like multichannel ticketing, AI-powered live chat, knowledge base, AI capabilities, and out-of-the-box analytics – all into a familiar interface that resembles your inbox.

You can easily access all your support channels – email, chat, voice, WhatsApp, and social – from a left-side panel. In fact, you can even manage both personal and team emails from a single interface, making it easier to stay organized and never miss a customer message.

Key features of Hiver

• Streamline your customer service workflows by assigning emails and chats to your teammates in just a few clicks. You can also keep track of the status of every query with filters and tags, so nothing slips through the cracks. 

• Free your team from repetitive tasks with rule-based automations. For example, you can apply “if‑then” rules to tag, prioritize, assign, or even auto-close tickets based on keywords or email content. You can also auto-assign incoming requests evenly among active agents using round-robin distribution.

• Your team members don’t need to rely on external tools like Slack to collaborate. They can add private internal notes to ask questions or make suggestions when solving a customer problem, right next to that conversation thread. While working on replies, agents can even share drafts and edit them together in real-time.
  
• Help customers find answers on their own with an easy-to-access knowledge base full of FAQs and help articles. You can also set up a customer portal, giving your customers an easy way to submit and track their support tickets without having to constantly follow up.
  
• With Hiver’s live chat, you can engage customers in real time and deliver instant, personalized support. You can also customize the chat widget to match your brand, making the experience feel seamless and on-brand.
  
• Get a bird’s-eye view of key metrics such as team workload, response times, SLA compliance, and CSAT trends. Build custom reports by filtering individual agents, tags, or time periods. 

• Hiver’s AI Copilot helps your team respond faster and more accurately. It suggests reply drafts using the context of the conversation and your knowledge base, so agents don’t have to start from scratch. They can also ask Copilot questions and get instant answers from help docs or past tickets.
  
  Hiver’s AI Agents analyzes incoming conversations to classify them and predict sentiment, helping your team prioritize what needs attention first. They can also auto-assign, escalate, or trigger workflows based on factors like category, sentiment, or customer tier.  

What Hiver does better than Zendesk

• Where Zendesk requires weeks and months to set up, you only need a few minutes to get started with Hiver. There’s no need for extensive training or technical know-how. Because Hiver’s interface is familiar and intuitive, teams can start using it right away without any confusion or delays.
  
• A problem that occurs when you use Zendesk is, the conversations can feel very robotic and impersonal. There’s the annoying “//Please reply above this line//” message that appears in emails sent from Zendesk, making communication very robotic. With Hiver, all replies go out from your support staff’s email ID. Not from the generic support@ or help@ email. Customers know there’s an actual caring human who’s helping them out with their query.

• Hiver’s customer support is the gold standard in the industry. You get to connect to trained agents immediately, round the clock, for no additional cost. That’s right, irrespective of what pricing plan you’re on (including the forever free one), you get access to 24×7 email and chat support.
  
• Hiver is also a lot more cost-effective than Zendesk. If you look at one of Zendesk’s most popular plans – the Suite Growth plan, which is also the one that offers most of the essential features, you’ll see it’s priced at $89 per user per month. Compare that to a similar product like Hiver’s Pro plan which costs $49 per user per month and it’s clear there’s a significant difference. . We’re talking close to a 45% difference  in price and this is without factoring in any of Zendesk’s pricey add-ons.
  
  Here’s a rough comparison chart of what you can expect to pay for Zendesk vs Hiver, while excluding hidden costs for training, implementation, add-ons and such.

Software	Small+Medium Teams(10 users)	Large Teams(50 users)
Zendesk	$10,680 per year	$54,400 per year
Hiver	$5880 per year	$29,400 per year
Annual Savings	45% per year

Hiver pricing

Hiver has a forever free plan. Hiver has four other plans – the Lite plan which costs $19 per user/month, the Growth plan priced at $29 per user/month, the Pro plan priced at $49 per user/month, and finally the Elite plan for which you can contact the sales team.

User reviews

What users like about Hiver	What users dislike about Hiver
“Hiver makes it much easier to stay organized and collaborate as a team. The ability to assign emails, leave internal notes, and track ownership has streamlined our operations and reduced miscommunication.”	“The only downside I have found to Hiver is it takes a little longer to find emails that have been previously closed.”
“I’ve contacted support several times, and they’ve always been very responsive and have fixed the issue quickly.”	“There are some features that are only available for a higher subscription, those should be basic.”

How switching from Zendesk to Hiver turned out for Travelist

Travelist, a travel management company handling 5,000+ customer emails a month, was struggling with visibility and coordination. The agents used to work out of their personal inboxes to manage incoming emails. 

The issue however, was that there was no visibility into who was assigned which email. Team members had to email each other internally to cross-check and review daily tasks. Even when an agent started working on an email and corresponding with the client, other agents in the group had no way of knowing that. It was also impossible for the manager to track who was attending to which client and who needed a push. 

The team tried Zendesk but found it too complex – “it turned every email into a ticket.” They wanted something simpler and easier to adopt. That’s when they discovered Hiver. Setup was effortless, and the team quickly gained the visibility they lacked. Emails now arrive in a shared inbox, with clear ownership assigned to each agent.

The results:

If you’d like to read about another instance where moving from Zendesk to Hiver turning things around for a business, check out itGenius’s story. 

2. Help Scout

Compared to Zendesk, Help Scout is much more streamlined and focused in the features it offers. It is also refreshingly simple and easy to work with. It usually works great for small to mid-sized SaaS and e-commerce businesses. 

Key features of Help Scout

• Support customers across major channels like email, live chat, self-service, and social media support from one platform. All channels are included in every plan (including the free plan). Phone, SMS, and community support are also available through integrations with other tools.
  
• Create and organize articles for the help center into collections. You also have the functionality to – view revision histories, customize the design, and optimize everything for search engines. Every Help Scout plan including the free one lets you create a knowledge base.
  
• AI capabilities include – AI Answers, which is a chatbot that automatically replies to customer questions over chat by using information from your knowledge base. And AI Summarize, which condenses long back and forth customer conversations into quick summaries to bring agents up to speed. 

What Help Scout does better than Zendesk

• Help Scout is the clear winner when it comes to ease of set-up and use. The tool is very intuitive and requires very little training. You can become a power user in just a week.
   
• Every Help Scout plan comes with email and chat support, with the team available 24 hours, six days a week to help you. Additionally, there are free, live training classes offered every week to help you get comfortable with the tool.
  
• All four AI features – AI Answers, Drafts, Assist, and Summarize are available on all of the plans, including the free one, with no additional usage fees. Zendesk requires you to be on higher-tier plans and charges extra for advanced AI capabilities. 

Help Scout pricing

Help Scout has a forever free plan. The Standard plan starts at $25 per month for 100 contacts.

Note that in Help Scout, pricing is based on contacts i.e. the number of customers helped (not the number of users of the software). Multiple conversations with the same person during a billing period only count as one contact. 

User reviews

What users like about Help Scout	What users dislike about Help Scout
“Clean, well-organized interface keeps distractions to a minimum, making it easy to focus on each task efficiently.”	“The reporting isn’t as advanced as some tools out there.”
“When my customers get an email response, it looks good, like something they’d get from a friend. (Unlike most other help desk software that spits out email that looks like a corporation produced it.)”	“Integration with some channels not available (like WhatsApp) as well as round robins and more complex adjustments not available.”

3. Freshdesk

Often one of the first names that come up in any discussion about Zendesk alternatives, you can think of Freshdesk as a less complex and more affordable version of it. It works well for both – small teams looking for a simple, intuitive tool as well as larger organizations that need advanced workflows and scalability.

Key features of Freshdesk

• Break complex issues into smaller, linked tickets so different teams or departments can work on them in parallel. This is called parent-child ticketing. You can also assign shared ownership, making it easy to involve other internal teams or even external vendors without losing visibility.
  
• View every customer interaction – including past tickets and contact details – in one unified workspace. No need to hop between different tabs to hunt down customer data.

• Freddy, Freshdesk’s AI assistant, boosts agent productivity by understanding customer intent and offering relevant article suggestions or canned responses. Freddy also includes a “Thank You Detector” that recognizes when a customer’s message is just appreciation – not a new issue – and avoids reopening resolved tickets unnecessarily. 

What Freshdesk does better than Zendesk

• Every Freshdesk customer gets guaranteed 24/7 support over email, along with 24/5 support via phone and chat. On top of that, the company offers complimentary onboarding and migration assistance, so you can get started without extra costs. 

• With Freshdesk, agents get the flexibility to customize their inbox to fit their own preferences. This allows them to respond to customers faster. Zendesk does not let agents personalize their workspace. 

• Freshdesk includes built-in marketing automation that lets you proactively reach customers during issues like downtimes, payment failures, or shipment delays. You can send bulk updates via email, WhatsApp, or SMS, which reduces sudden ticket spikes and keeps agents from getting overwhelmed. With Zendesk, this kind of proactive outreach is harder to set up without additional modules.

Freshdesk pricing

Freshdesk has a forever free plan. Its paid plans start from $15 per user per month. 

User reviews

What users like about Freshdesk	What users dislike about Freshdesk
“The self-service options, such as the knowledge base and chatbot integration, have empowered our customers to resolve their issues independently.”	“The mobile app feels limited compared to the desktop version, especially for admins.”
“If there is any confusion on how to do a certain set up in Freshdesk, their support team has been very prompt in helping to get us to where we need to be.”	“The current analytics service feels overly complex, obtaining raw data exports is extremely inconvenient, and it was much easier to obtain key data about groups or agents using the previous reporting tool.”

4. Zoho Desk

One of Zoho Desk’s biggest advantages as a customer support software is how affordable it is compared to others in the market. Despite its low price, it packs a punch when it comes to the features it offers. It’s a solid choice for small and mid-sized businesses looking for an all-in-one help desk that won’t strain the budget. And if you’re already using Zoho’s suite of sales, marketing, or productivity tools, the built-in integrations make it even more valuable.

Key features of Zoho Desk

• You can set workflow rules, auto-assign tickets, trigger alerts, and manage SLAs – all of which will improve your team’s efficiency. 

• Zoho Desk integrates tightly with Zoho CRM, letting support agents view full customer profiles, purchase history, ongoing deals, and past tickets – all within the same window. It makes it easier for agents to provide personalized support since they have all the information they need right at their fingertips.

• Zia, the built-in AI assistant can conduct a whole host of small actions and make life easier for your team. It can – analyze tickets for tone, intent, and context, summarize conversations, suggest responses, and automatically tag tickets by topic. 

What Zoho Desk does better than Zendesk

• Zoho Desk is significantly cheaper than Zendesk. For context, if you compare Zoho Desk’s Enterprise plan ($40/per user/month) and Zendesk Support Enterprise ($115/per user/month), you’re looking at nearly 65% lower costs. For a 25-member team, that’s $1,000 a month on Zoho Desk versus $2,875 on Zendesk – a savings of $1,875 every single month.

• If you’re stuck in a Zendesk contract but want to switch, Zoho Desk offers to cover the remainder of your Zendesk term (up to 6 months) for free. This way you can make the transition without double-paying.

• In Zendesk, tools like sentiment analysis and auto-tagging are paid add-ons. With Zoho Desk, they’re built-in and available to everyone on the Enterprise plan. 

• Zendesk requires you to be on a higher Support plan and also pay separately for its Explore analytics tool to unlock customizable dashboards and detailed reporting. With Zoho Desk, a wide range of reports and dashboards are built in, and you can even create your own without any add-on costs.

Zoho Desk pricing

Zoho Desk has a forever free plan. Its paid plans start from $7 per user per month. 

User reviews

What users like about Zoho Desk	What users dislike about Zoho Desk
“Most of its features are great, the most useful and effective one for us was the automation – it helped us cut down manual work a lot and improve response times based on customer needs.”	“While the day-to-day use is very straightforward, some of the more advanced features and automation settings can have a bit of a learning curve.”
“What I appreciate most about Zoho Desk is its contextual AI assistant, Zia. Zia proactively suggests responses, identifies sentiment, and flags tickets that may need escalation.”	“I wish there were more integrations available directly in the Zoho Marketplace. While the core tools are solid, having more ready-to-use apps for third-party platforms (like project management tools, shipping platforms, or chatbots) would make the setup even faster.”

5. Intercom

Intercom likes to call itself a ‘human-powered and AI-enhanced’ help desk. They’re one of Zendesk’s biggest competitors and boldly claim that – “Customer service has evolved. Zendesk hasn’t.”

The fully integrated, omnichannel support tool is especially well-suited for fast-growing SaaS and tech companies that rely heavily on real-time conversations with customers.

Key features of Intercom

• The standout feature is Fin – Intercom’s advanced AI chatbot. It can resolve a large portion of customer queries independently and instantly using your knowledge base and past interactions, and smoothly hand off to human agents when the issue requires a personal touch.

• Get deep insights with customizable reporting. You can design dashboards the way you want, apply advanced filters to slice data, and control who sees what. This makes it easier to track team performance and spot areas for improvement. 

• Intercom’s Copilot is the AI assistant for agents. It lives inside the Intercom inbox and helps agents by drafting replies, summarizing conversations, pulling in relevant resources, or rephrasing messages

What Intercom does better than Zendesk

• Intercom’s AI chatbot, Fin, outperforms Zendesk’s Answer Bot by a wide margin. It’s often considered the benchmark for AI in customer support, capable of resolving up to 50% of customer queries on its own and significantly reducing ticket volume. Fin’s responses are not only more detailed – averaging around 120 words compared to Answer Bot’s 50 – but also easier for customers to read, thanks to clean formatting with bullet points and line breaks.

• Zendesk lacks built-in proactive support tools. Intercom, on the other hand, gives teams targeting and automation to engage customers at the right moment – whether that’s guiding a stuck user, sending onboarding tips, or sharing timely updates. This shifts support from being purely reactive to preventing issues before they escalate.

Intercom pricing

Intercom’s help desk pricing starts at $29 per user per month. Fin is billed separately and is priced at $0.99 per resolution i.e. you only pay when it resolves an issue. 

User reviews

What users like about Intercom	What users dislike about Intercom
“It’s been a game changer to have Fin tackle a bulk of those easy, repetitive customer needs so our team can put more time/energy into the more difficult questions”	“The biggest downside is pricing – it can scale up quickly as your user base or contact volume grows.”
“All major communications methods are covered from email/sms to widgets and social accounts.”	“There is so much to the system, and that involves a learning curve. If you don’t have any experience with Intercom, you can’t just dive in right away.”

6. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub is a great choice for those already using HubSpot for sales, marketing, operations etc. By keeping support in the same system, your team gets a single, unified view of customer data – making it easier to deliver more personalized and consistent experiences.

Key features of HubSpot Service Hub

• With the Customer Portal, customers can get complete visibility into their tickets. They can log in to see progress, reply to updates, and access your knowledge base for instant answers.
  
• Conversation AI automatically captures and analyzes customer calls inside HubSpot CRM. Instead of manually digging through recordings, you get insights on team performance, common objections, and customer sentiment.

• Another interesting feature is the Customer Success Workspace which gives your team a clear view of how customers are doing. You can track product usage, see how satisfied they are, and get overall health scores that help you spot churn risks early. This way you know which customers require some extra attention. 

What HubSpot Service Hub does better than Zendesk

• While Zendesk helps you manage support cases, HubSpot Service Hub goes a step further with a dedicated Customer Success Workspace. Your success teams can track health scores, monitor usage, and get alerts when customers need attention. This lets you actively manage retention, not just react to support issues.

• Since HubSpot brings your support team into the same ecosystem as sales and marketing, everyone works from the same data – there are no silos or disconnected systems. You can also set up cross-department automations and pull business-wide reports from a single platform.

HubSpot Service Hub pricing

HubSpot Service Hub offers a forever free plan. Paid plans start at $15/user/month. 

User reviews

What users like about HubSpot Service Hub	What users dislike about HubSpot Service Hub
“The knowledge base follows much the same format as publishing pages, blog articles, etc., so there’s not much you’ll need to learn if you’re already running Hubspot.”	“My only real frustration is with the integration capabilities. I wish it worked more seamlessly with other systems we use. Some third-party connections require workarounds or don’t sync as smoothly as expected.”
“I like the ability to have a birds eye view of my customer’s journey from start to finish.”	“​​Reporting functionality could be better. Find it difficult to look at large data sets.”

7. Front

Front is designed to look and feel like a familiar email client but possesses the functionality of a full-fledged help desk. The team over at Front believes that the key to providing exceptional customer service is teamwork and to that end, Front is loaded with features to make team collaboration as smooth as possible. 

Key features of Front

• Provide customers with the option to solve their queries on their own by setting up a help center where they can find FAQs and helpful articles. You can also connect it to Front Chat. 

• AI features like Copilot, which suggests draft responses for agents, and Smart QA, which reviews conversations to give you a complete view of agent performance, can be very helpful. These are available as add-ons at $20 per user per month on all plans (included for free on the Enterprise plan).

• The platform allows team members to work in a collaborative way from their inboxes, sharing drafts, leaving comments, and assigning tasks to ensure that every customer query is handled promptly and accurately.

What Front does better than Zendesk

• In Front, you can manage all your communication channels in a single inbox, without constant clicking around. Navigation is straightforward, and everything happens in one window. And because of its familiarity, teams can get comfortable with it almost instantly.

• Front is built to serve multiple customer-facing teams (like Sales, Success, and Support) working together in one platform. That’s why most integrations sync data both ways – so teams can work inside Front without needing to constantly switch tools. With Zendesk, many integrations (like Salesforce) are one-way or read-only, forcing some teammates to leave Zendesk and work elsewhere.

Front pricing

Front’s plans start at $25 per user per month. 

User reviews

What users like about Front	What users dislike about Front
“Fantastic email collaboration that makes your life easy.”	“I could get no useful assistance (at my level, they offer no setup assistance or live help). I attended webinars, watched the online videos, and read the case studies so that I could try to understand what the software could do. Unfortunately, none of this training really explains what level of access you need for the features you want.”
“I love the labeling feature and the fact that you can add colors and emojis to coordinate emails easily. I’m also a huge fan of the snooze feature and the ease of ability to see archived emails.”	“The onboarding process delivered by Front was a waste of time, we ended up taking it over internally. Setup/configuration and training of staff is much more involved than anticipated. Front has taken a lot of internal resources in administration and training.”

8. Jira Service Management

The first thing people think of when they hear Jira is project management. But it also offers a full-fledged customer support solution in Jira Service Management. It’s well-suited for IT, DevOps, and support teams that want to manage incidents, requests, changes, and customer tickets all in one place, especially if they’re already using Atlassian products like Jira Software or Confluence.

Key features of Jira Service Management

• Create a self-service knowledge base by integrating with Confluence. Customers and employees can search for answers themselves.
  
• There’s a rich context sidebar where you get to see a customer’s previous requests and any relevant assets or configuration items (especially useful in IT environments where you might want to see which server or device is affected).
  
• Connect with Jira Software and Confluence to bring IT, DevOps, and support teams together.
  Developers can see customer-reported bugs directly, while agents can link tickets to ongoing projects without switching tools.

What Jira Service Management does better than Zendesk

• Jira Service Management makes it easy to collaborate on requests, incidents, and changes in one place, so issues get resolved faster and with less back-and-forth. Unlike Zendesk, which is mostly built for customer-facing teams, Jira naturally ties into dev and ops workflows.
  
• Jira Service Management’s SLA engine is more configurable. You can set multiple SLA metrics (first response, time to resolution, etc.), apply different SLAs to different ticket types, and track them visually. 

Jira Service Management pricing

Jira Service Management has a free forever plan. Paid plans start from $19.04 per agent per month. 

User reviews

What users like about Jira Service Management	What users dislike about Jira Service Management
“I especially like how well it integrates with other Atlassian tools – linking tickets to Confluence articles or development issues in Jira Software is seamless.”	“Complex setup and configuration – The initial setup can be intimidating particularly for teams with no prior Jira expertise.The UI and features may be more difficult for non-technical users to understand.”
“The ability to configure workflows, automation, and SLAs based on our internal processes is a huge plus. It’s very customizable.”	“Performance can lag when handling a large volume of tickets or custom fields.”

9. Gorgias

Gorgias is a help desk built specifically for eCommerce businesses that want their customer service to tie directly into orders, refunds, and shipping. 

It integrates seamlessly with major platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Adobe Commerce, so support teams can view and manage customer interactions alongside store data without switching tools.

Key features of Gorgias

• Build tailored dashboards to track the KPIs that matter most to your team. You can evaluate performance across agents, drill down into specific tickets for coaching, and use CSAT surveys to identify trends, measure satisfaction, and uncover areas for improvement.

• Create and use pre-written responses (macros) and templates to quickly address common customer inquiries, improving efficiency and consistency in communication.
  
• Integration with e-commerce platforms means your agents can view customer data, order histories, and other relevant information directly within the helpdesk, and provide personalized support.

What Gorgias does better than Zendesk

• Resolve support questions with AI that actually feels human. Gorgias’s AI Agent can handle up to 60% of incoming emails by carrying out full conversations instead of sending robotic, unhelpful links. Zendesk’s AI, on the other hand, often falls back on pointing people to Help Center articles.

• Turn support into a sales channel. Beyond answering questions, Gorgias’s AI Agent for Sales engages shoppers in real time – recommending products, applying discounts, and removing roadblocks before checkout. Zendesk doesn’t offer anything similar, which means missed opportunities to turn conversations into revenue.

• Gorgias’ integrations are built for ecommerce brands. So, although Zendesk has a larger marketplace overall, Gorgias focuses on the tools online stores actually rely on. It offers deep, easy-to-set-up integrations with platforms like Shopify, Klaviyo, Attentive, Loop Returns, Recharge, and 100+ more apps designed specifically for eCommerce.

Gorgias pricing

Gorgias’s pricing plan starts at $50 per month and includes up to 300 tickets. It supports up to 3 users.

User reviews

What users like about Gorgias	What users dislike about Gorgias
“Its integration with our existing tools was seamless, and the customization options mean we can tailor the platform to meet our specific needs.”	“Sometimes it can be slow to load, especially when managing a high volume of tickets.” [G2]
“The best thing is the easy to use macro responses, my entire team loves to use them.”	“The only way to delete a customer if they submit a privacy request: scroll through ALL customers (cant even sort alphabetically) to check a box next to them. This is virtually impossible if you have lots of customers. Shocked that we cannot delete a customer on their profile page.”

10. HappyFox

HappyFox was founded in 2011. However, despite the fact that it’s been around for a decade and a half now, the team has done a good job of preserving the simplicity of the tool. It’s easy to set up and use. And it has a blend of ITSM features (like asset tracking and change management) alongside customer support, all in one platform. 

Key features of HappyFox

• Cut down repetitive, manual work with automation for every step of ticket resolution. For example, you can auto-assign tickets to the right agent, set up SLA rules that trigger escalations or reassignments. 

• Break down complex tickets into smaller tasks with clear due dates and ownership. Agents can see all their pending tasks in one place, get notified of deadlines, and use reusable templates to save time.

• Build internal knowledge bases for your agents, external FAQs for your customers, and even multilingual articles for global teams.

What HappyFox does better than Zendesk

• HappyFox issays – “Why pay extra to learn when it should have been simple, to begin with?” They’re alluding to the complicated setup and dedicated training Zendesk users have to go through. In contrast to that, setting up HappyFox takes less than an hour and there isn’t much of a learning curve. If needed, there’s a free in-app training module. 

• HappyFox provides round-the-clock support via email, live chat, and phone – on the Enterprise plan. The lower plans get round-the-clock email support instead. You also get dedicated engineering support during setup and on-boarding.
  
• Not only can you handle requests from email, chat, phone, social media, and web forms in one place, HappyFox also offers ITSM capabilities – like asset tracking and change management. 

HappyFox pricing

HappyFox’s paid plans start from $24 per user per month. 

User reviews

What users like about HappyFox	What users dislike about HappyFox
“I love how easy and intuitive their software is to set up and configure, including customizing the knowledge base.”	“Does not support daylight savings time. In order for your time/date stamps to look right when viewing tickets, every user has to adjust their personal time zone.”
“Customer support was there for us at implementation when we had all our questions regarding setup, and they were patient and took the time so we had a successful launch.”	“The tool to build out knowledge Base articles is a little lackluster. It can be tedious to build out the KBs.”

11. Tidio

Tidio brings live chat, chatbots, and multichannel support capabilities together in one place. With a quick setup process and a generous free plan, it is especially attractive for startups and early-stage businesses. Its standout feature – AI chatbot, Lyro, can automate conversations and handle common questions instantly. 

Key features of Tidio

• Manage all conversations from one inbox. You can respond to emails, live chats, support forms, and even DMs from Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger without switching tabs.

• Get clear insights into key support metrics and customer behavior. On Plus or Premium plans, you can even request custom dashboards tailored to your business goals.

• Tidio’s AI chatbot Lyro resolves up to 70% of customer questions on its own. When Lyro can’t handle a query, it smoothly hands the conversation off to a human agent with full context, so customers never feel stranded.

What Tidio does better than Zendesk

• Tidio is quick and painless to set up. You can be live in under 10 minutes without needing technical expertise. The interface is simple and streamlined. All customer conversations are visible in one place, making it easy to jump between chats, emails, and social messages. 

• Lyro, Tidio’s AI chatbot, is far more advanced than Zendesk’s Answer Bot. It handles up to 70% of customer questions with natural, conversational responses and hands off to humans when needed.

Tidio pricing

Tidio has a forever free plan. Paid plans start from $24.17 per month for up to 100 conversations. The Lyro AI chatbot is billed separately and is usage based. For 50 conversations per month, it’ll cost you $32.50 and it scales up from that based on the number of conversations. 

User reviews

What users like about Tidio	What users dislike about Tidio
“What I value most is how intuitive the platform is and how quickly it can be set up on a website without the need for advanced technical knowledge.”	“The email marketing tools, while present, aren’t as robust as dedicated platforms – making Tidio more of a chat-first solution.”
“I appreciate how the chatbot features can handle common customer questions 24/7, freeing up time for the team to focus on more complex inquiries.”	“The add-ons can accumulate costs quickly, and it’s unclear how much usage will contribute to the final cost, making budgeting difficult.”

12. Helpjuice

Helpjuice is primarily a knowledge base platform built for teams that want to centralize and share knowledge – whether with customers or internally. If your primary goal is to provide customers with a strong self-service option, Helpjuice is far better equipped for the job than Zendesk.

Key features of Helpjuice

• Use Helpjuice’s built-in planner with AI assistance to create detailed outlines before you start writing. This makes it easier for teams to organize ideas, stay consistent, and publish articles faster.

• Find answers faster with AI-powered search. Customers don’t need to type exact keywords — Helpjuice’s smart search understands context and surfaces the most relevant articles to get them the help they need right away.

• Customize the look and feel of your knowledge base to match your brand. Tweak colors, layouts, and design elements so customers experience a seamless extension of your product or website.

What Helpjuice does better than Zendesk

• Helpjuice provides detailed analytics on how each article is used, where customers drop off, and what questions remain unanswered. Zendesk’s knowledge base reporting is more limited, while Helpjuice is purpose-built to help you identify gaps and continuously improve self-service content.

• Zendesk’s knowledge base search is functional but not AI-powered like Helpjuice. It won’t handle semantic matches as well, so customers may struggle if their wording doesn’t match titles.

Helpjuice pricing

Helpjuice’s plans start at $249 per month for up to 30 users. 

User reviews

What users like about Helpjuice	What users dislike about Helpjuice
“One of the biggest strengths is how well it supports AI-driven search, allowing our teams to quickly find accurate answers without having to dig through multiple sources.”	“The main downside that I encountered was that there weren’t enough diverse and unique starter templates, especially ones with more dynamic web elements.”
“The customer support team is truly outstanding – always responsive and helpful.”	“Occasionally, there are hiccups in the text and you have to go into the code to fix the errors – especially if you’re copying and pasting from another source.”

13. Spiceworks

Spiceworks is a no-frills, get-the-job-done kind of help desk tool. It’s on this list for teams that want the structure and organization of a customer support system without adding overhead costs. What makes it different is that it’s completely free to use, with costs covered through ads.

Key features of Spiceworks

• Automate and get rid of repetitive work like assigning tickets or triggering automated responses by setting simple rules. 

• Write and share how-to guides or help articles and choose whether to keep them private for the internal team or share them with end customers. 

• Customize reports to track open or pending tickets, apply filters to dig into trends, and connect with Power BI for deeper analysis and forecasting.

What Spiceworks does better than Zendesk

• Spiceworks is ad-supported, so you get a functional help desk without paying a cent. Zendesk, on the other hand, starts at $19/agent/month for a very limited plan that’ll inevitably nudge you to pay more for add-ons or move to higher-priced plans.
  
• Spiceworks is lightweight and easy to use, perfect for small teams that just want structure and organization in their support process without the steep learning curve. 

Spiceworks pricing

Spiceworks has a free forever plan. Its paid plan (ad-free) is priced at $5 per user per month. 

User reviews

What users like about Spiceworks	What users dislike about Spiceworks
“The UI is very intuitive and is very easy to pick up and start using, even if you don’t have a lot of experience with helpdesk apps.”	“Mobile app lacks some features which are on the desktop.”

How to evaluate the right Zendesk alternative for your business

After going through so many options, it’s natural to wonder: which of these Zendesk alternatives is the best fit for your team? The answer depends on your business goals, budget, and the kind of support experience you want to deliver. Here are the key criteria you should evaluate.

• Pricing: Start by figuring out how much you’re comfortable spending. Then compare plan costs across tools and see where you’ll get the most bang for your buck. Watch out for hidden fees like add-ons, training and onboarding charges and so on. 
• Reviews and ratings: Look at what real users say on platforms like G2, Capterra, or TrustRadius to see if the tool delivers on its promises and what sort of experience users have had. 
• Scalability: Make sure the platform can handle more users, tickets, and features as your business grows, without forcing you to switch tools later.
• Support and onboarding: Check what kind of training, migration help, and customer support the vendor provides. Fast, accessible support will save you a lot of headache and it’ll ensure your admin team is not overwhelmed. 
• Internal team needs: Think about how your team works. Do they need advanced ITSM features, tight integrations with CRM, or a tool that’s really simple to use? The tool should fit into your workflow, never the other way around. 

Elevate your support quality with the right Zendesk alternative

Zendesk has been around for a long time and was one of the earliest help desk platforms to gain traction. But in trying to keep pace with growing  customer needs and new technology, the product has become bloated. Over the years, Zendesk has stitched together acquisitions and add-ons, creating a patchwork of features that can feel clunky and fragmented.

Today, as you can see from the list above, there are modern, purpose-built tools that are sleeker, more intuitive, and better suited for the way teams work. 

If Zendesk feels too heavy for your team, Hiver offers a simpler alternative without cutting down on capability. It brings core help desk features into an interface that looks and feels just like your inbox, so there’s almost no learning curve. Teams can assign, track, and resolve customer queries faster – all while keeping costs predictable and far lower than most traditional platforms. Try Hiver for Free.