The 14 best Freshdesk alternatives for 2027

Comparing the top Freshdesk alternatives for 2027: 1. Computer, by DevRev, 2. Zendesk, 3. Intercom (now Fin), 4. Help Scout, 5. Zoho Desk, 6. HubSpot Service Hub, 7. Kayako, 8. Hiver, 9. Front, 10. Tidio, 11. LiveAgent, 12. Gladly, 13. HappyFox, 14. Gorgias.

Freshdesk has a 4.4 rating out of 5 across 3,794 reviews on G2. But Freddy AI’s billing, plan tiers, and the link to engineering are prompting some teams to compare options. If the goal is AI that resolves customer issues, beyond assisting agents, which Freshdesk alternative fits?

This guide compares 14 Freshdesk alternatives and competitors on AI resolution, AI billing, seat price, and G2 rating. It also sets out seven criteria to weigh in 2027: AI resolution versus assist, unified support and product data, and how tightly a platform connects support, product, and engineering.

TL;DR

• The 14 alternatives: Computer, by DevRev; Zendesk; Intercom (now Fin); Help Scout; Zoho Desk; HubSpot Service Hub; Kayako; Hiver; Front; Tidio; LiveAgent; Gladly; HappyFox; and Gorgias.
• Freshdesk adds Freddy AI Copilot for agents and Freddy AI Agent for customers, and its Jira sync covers status, priority, comments, and attachments, with up to five Jira issues per ticket.
• Gartner found that customers’ use of third-party GenAI in service interactions has nearly doubled in a year, so what the AI resolves is what to judge.
• Our top pick is Computer, by DevRev, which bridges support, product, and engineering in one platform.
• The migration path deserves as much weight as the tool. Freshdesk exports tickets, contacts, and companies as CSV or Excel, and what imports into a new platform varies.

Why do teams look for Freshdesk alternatives?

Freshdesk lists Growth, Pro, and Enterprise plans at $19, $55, and $89 per agent per month on annual billing, with a 14-day trial and no permanent free plan. Four reasons come up most often: AI costs, plan tiers, the free plan, and the link to engineering.

• AI is billed on top of seats: Freshworks lists Freddy AI Copilot at $29 per agent per month and Freddy AI Agent at $49 per 100 sessions after the first 500, which Freshworks limits to once per account. An email AI session is a 72-hour window from the customer’s first email. Teams comparing customer service automation software should model both units against their own volume.
• Advanced features sit in higher tiers: One G2 reviewer, a quality assurance engineer at a mid-market health care company, writes that some advanced features “are limited to higher-tier plans, which can drive up costs for growing teams” (G2, July 27, 2026).
• There is no permanent free plan: Freshdesk lists a 14-day trial of its Enterprise plan and 500 free AI Agent sessions, once per account.
• Support, product, and engineering stay in separate systems: Freshdesk documents a Jira sync of status, priority, comments, and attachments, with up to five Jira issues per ticket, and account data usually lives in a CRM. Zendesk’s CX Trends 2026 report found that 74% of consumers get frustrated when asked to repeat themselves.

G2 reviewers rate Freshdesk highly, so a switch usually comes down to three things: how Freddy AI is billed, how plan tiers gate features, and how far the desk connects to engineering.

Freshdesk alternatives comparison for 2027

Data from vendor pages and G2. Terms change, so confirm before you buy.

How should you evaluate these Freshdesk alternatives?

Moving off a help desk is a big job, so compare the options on the same few points. The table lines up all 14 tools on AI resolution, AI billing, seat price, and G2 rating. The seven criteria below are what to weigh when you check each vendor, listed from most to least important for a team moving beyond agent assist.

• AI resolution versus AI assist: Does the AI suggest replies to agents, or resolve questions end to end? Ask vendors to demonstrate resolution on a real ticket from your queue. Canned demos don’t count.
• Unified support and product data: Can the AI see product usage, customer history, and engineering state, or only a knowledge base? Look for customer support software that links what customers report to what the product team builds.
• Knowledge base and self-service quality: Can the AI reason over your articles, or only match keywords? A strong knowledge base cuts ticket volume before the AI is involved.
• Omnichannel coverage: Can you handle email, chat, social, phone, and in-app from one workspace? Check for per-channel fees.
• Pricing and scalability: Can you predict your bill if volume triples? For teams evaluating automated ticketing systems, per-session and per-resolution AI fees and tier changes all move the bill.
• Migration and onboarding: Can you export tickets, map custom fields, and move knowledge base articles, and can you run both platforms in parallel?
• Reporting and analytics: Does reporting track resolution rate and AI performance, or will you export to a BI tool anyway?

What the AI meter counts: vendors bill AI per resolution, per session, per outcome, or per credit, so check what each one counts before you compare seat prices. Freddy AI Agent counts sessions, at $49 per 100 after 500 free.

These criteria also apply if you’re comparing customer service software more broadly. Feature comparisons date quickly, but these seven criteria cover decisions that last.

What are the 14 best Freshdesk alternatives?

1. Computer, by DevRev

Best for: Teams ready to move from agent assist to resolution at scale.

DevRev is a Palo Alto company founded in 2020 by Dheeraj Pandey and Manoj Agarwal, formerly of Nutanix, and backed by Khosla Ventures and Mayfield. Its product, Computer, by DevRev, is an AI teammate for enterprise teams. Computer, by DevRev, is rated 4.3 out of 5 on G2 from 210 reviews.

Computer, by DevRev, is an AI teammate that connects company data, resolves customer issues, and takes action across support and CRM tools. Teams can set it up for customer self-service with Customer Agent and Voice AI, for employee support with service desk automation, or for enterprise search across company systems.

Key features

• On harder tickets it goes past FAQs: it checks Datadog error logs, pulls the Shopify order, replays the customer’s session, and reads the console output, then, in a configured deployment, resolves.
• DevRev’s Trust Center lists SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, plus an AI penetration testing assessment.
• Customer Agent can handle chat, email, WhatsApp, and Voice AI conversations when the deployment is configured for them.
• One-click connectors include Slack and Jira.
• Teams build agents in Agent Studio.
• Every action runs inside the person’s permissions, waits for approval on sensitive steps, is logged, and can be rolled back.
• Agents can be tested in a sandbox on real data before they go live.
• When a case needs a person, Customer Agent summarizes the conversation and escalates it to a person.

Pricing: Check DevRev’s pricing page, then contact DevRev for a quote scoped to your deployment.

Pros

• Harder tickets get resolved along with first-line questions.
• Customer Agent can sit alongside Freshdesk, so a team can try resolution on one queue.

Cons

• Pricing is scoped per deployment, including Customer Agent and Voice AI.
• 210 reviews on G2, against 3,794 for Freshdesk.
• If all you need is basic ticketing, the platform may be more than you need.

Computer, by DevRev, vs. Freshdesk: Freshworks describes Freddy AI Agent as delivering answers backed by a verified knowledge base, where the Customer Agent in Computer, by DevRev, also acts across your stack, and it draws on Computer Memory, a permission-aware knowledge layer built from your tickets, docs, product specs, and customer history. Customer Agent can sit alongside Freshdesk, and the Computer+ Support App is the route for teams that want to replace it.

What reviewers say

• Love: Support operations in one place. A reviewer at a small business writes, “I like that DevRev keeps customer support operations organized in one place” (G2, August 14, 2026; incentivized review).
• Complain: Search and navigation. The same reviewer writes, “I struggle with the search and navigation, which I believe could be improved to make it faster to find specific tickets and customer information” (same review, August 14, 2026).

2. Zendesk

Best for: Large support operations that want deep omnichannel ticketing, SLAs, and reporting.

Zendesk is a customer service platform with ticketing and AI agents across channels. Zendesk is rated 4.3 out of 5 on G2 from 7,100 reviews.

Zendesk reports that its AI agents resolve multi-step, multi-intent requests and act across systems. Plans run $19, $55, and $115 per agent per month on annual billing, with a 14-day trial and no free plan. Our Zendesk alternatives guide covers the vendor in more detail.

Key features

• Multi-step requests go to AI agents, and call flows go to voice agents.
• Five automated resolutions per agent per month come with Support Team and Suite Team, and 10 with Suite Professional.
• Copilot and Workforce Engagement each cost $50 per agent per month as add-ons.
• Jira comments sync in both directions, with status-change notifications.

Pricing: $19, $55, and $115 per agent per month on annual billing, with automated resolutions beyond the allowance at $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay as you go.

Pros

• A mature platform with a large base of G2 reviews.
• Zendesk prices AI per resolution at a published rate.

Cons

• Zendesk bills AI resolutions beyond the allowance, and add-ons cost extra.
• No free plan.

Zendesk vs. Freshdesk: Zendesk’s Jira integration shares comments both ways and sends status-change notifications, where Freshdesk’s Jira sync covers status, priority, comments, and attachments, with up to five Jira issues per ticket.

What reviewers say

• Love: Easy for new hires. An IT support tech at a small business writes, “What I like most about Zendesk for customer service is its ease of use” (G2, August 21, 2026; incentivized review).
• Complain: Tagging teammates in a ticket. The same reviewer writes that “tagging or directly notifying other team members within a ticket feels somewhat limited” (same review, August 21, 2026).

3. Intercom (now Fin)

Best for: Product-led SaaS companies with chat-heavy support.

Fin, formerly Intercom, is a customer service platform built around the Fin AI agent, with its own helpdesk seats. Fin is rated 4.5 out of 5 on G2 from 3,922 reviews, under G2’s Fin listing.

Intercom’s AI agent is Fin, and the company is now called Fin as well. Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin, formerly Intercom, on September 10, 2026. For teams using Fin with an existing helpdesk, there are no seat costs and no setup, integration, or platform fees. Teams with heavy email or phone volume should check channel coverage against their own mix. Our intercom alternatives guide covers the vendor in more detail.

Key features

• Train, test, deploy, and analyze in one workspace.
• More than 45 languages.
• Email, voice, live chat, and social channels.
• A 14-day trial is available without a credit card.

Pricing: Fin costs $0.99 per outcome. Helpdesk seats are $29 (Essential), $85 (Advanced), and $132 (Expert) per seat per month, with a minimum monthly commitment.

Pros

• A published per-outcome rate, and no seat cost alongside an existing helpdesk.
• Hands off to a person when its safety parameters aren’t met.

Cons

• An “outcome” counts customer-confirmed resolutions, customers who don’t ask for more help, and completed workflows, including handoffs, so it’s a broader unit than a strict resolution.
• Cost grows with outcome volume, and a minimum commitment applies.

Intercom (now Fin) vs. Freshdesk: Fin is $0.99 per outcome, where Freshdesk lists $49 per 100 Freddy AI Agent sessions after 500 free, so compare the units on your own volume. Fin can also run on top of Freshdesk, which lets a team change the AI agent without migrating the helpdesk.

What reviewers say

• Love: Fast to train and configure. A director of customer success at a mid-market computer software company writes, “I really like the ease with which we were able to train, configure, and get Fin up and running” (G2, September 23, 2026; incentivized review).
• Complain: Limited reporting on standalone Fin. The same reviewer writes, “Since we use Fin Standalone and not the full Intercom Suite, the reporting and customization capabilities are somewhat limited” (same review, September 23, 2026).

4. Help Scout

Best for: Small teams that support customers mainly by email.

Help Scout is a customer support platform for small, email-centered teams, with an AI feature called AI Answers. Help Scout is rated 4.4 out of 5 on G2 from 431 reviews.

Help Scout’s AI Answers resolves customer questions on its own at $0.75 per resolution, while AI Assist drafts and summarizes replies. A free plan for five seats starts the lineup. Our Help Scout alternatives guide covers the vendor in more detail.

Key features

• The free plan covers five seats, one inbox, and a single Docs site.
• Standard adds multiple inboxes, live chat and SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, multiple knowledge bases, one basic SLA policy, and an AI Inbox assistant.
• Plus brings advanced workflows, two advanced SLA policies, a secure customer portal, and unlimited AI Drafts.

Pricing: Standard $25, Plus $45, and Pro $75 per user per month, with no billing cycle stated beside the prices, and AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution.

Pros

• A free plan, plus a published per-resolution AI rate.
• Live chat, SMS, and messaging come with Standard.

Cons

• AI Answers adds a per-resolution charge on top of seats.
• One inbox and one Docs site is the limit on the free plan.

Help Scout vs. Freshdesk: Help Scout lists a free plan for five seats, where Freshdesk lists a 14-day trial of Enterprise and no permanent free plan.

What reviewers say

• Love: Clean interface and shared inbox. A junior software engineer at a mid-market company writes about its “clean and effective interface” and says its “shared inbox keeps entire team organized” (G2, August 4, 2026).
• Complain: Advanced features and cost as teams grow. The same reviewer says some advanced features are limited compared with larger enterprise help desk platforms and that it “become expensive as team grow” (same review, August 4, 2026).

5. Zoho Desk

Best for: Budget-minded teams already using the Zoho suite.

Zoho Desk is the help desk product in the Zoho suite, with the Zia AI assistant. Zoho Desk is rated 4.4 out of 5 on G2 from 7,996 reviews.

Zoho Desk offers ticketing with Zia AI, and its Express edition adds pre-built AI agents with up to 30M free tokens a month. A free edition covers three licenses.

Key features

• A free edition for three licenses.
• Four paid editions, Express through Enterprise, all billed annually.
• Express supports AI agents on your own LLM key or Zoho’s LLM, plus pre-built agents.
• Professional includes Zia AI with generative, predictive, and analytical capabilities.

Pricing: Express is $7, Standard $14, Professional $23, and Enterprise $40 per user per month, billed annually. A free edition covers three licenses.

Pros

• A free edition gives small teams a start.
• Express AI agents come with a free token allowance.

Cons

• Three licenses is the ceiling on the free edition.

Zoho Desk vs. Freshdesk: Zoho Desk lets teams build AI agents on their own LLM key or Zoho’s, where Freshdesk sells Freddy AI Copilot at $29 per agent per month and AI Agent sessions at $49 per 100.

What reviewers say

• Love: Easy setup, clean interface. A technology director at a small information technology and services company writes, “What I like most about Zoho Desk is how easy it is to set up, along with its clean, intuitive interface” (G2, October 14, 2026).
• Complain: Missing translations. The same reviewer writes, “The only minor issue we’ve run into is the Turkish localization, where a few translations are missing or a bit imprecise” (same review, October 14, 2026).

6. HubSpot Service Hub

Best for: Teams that want CRM and service in one platform and already use HubSpot for sales and marketing.

HubSpot Service Hub is the customer service product on HubSpot’s CRM platform. HubSpot Service Hub is rated 4.4 out of 5 on G2 from 3,018 reviews.

HubSpot Service Hub runs alongside HubSpot’s CRM, marketing, and sales products. HubSpot lists a Customer Agent on Professional and Enterprise seats, free for 14 days with a seat purchase, with agent assist alongside. Our HubSpot alternatives guide covers the vendor in more detail.

Key features

• The Customer Agent answers across chat, email, forms, and calling and escalates to your team.
• Up to two seats are free.
• Starter, Professional, and Enterprise tiers include 500, 3,000, and 5,000 HubSpot Credits.

Pricing: Free for up to two seats. Starter is $20 per seat per month, Professional $100 ($90 on annual billing), and Enterprise $150.

Pros

• A free tier plus a 14-day Customer Agent trial.
• Service and CRM share one platform.

Cons

• HubSpot limits the Customer Agent to Professional and Enterprise seats.
• Two seats is the limit on the free tier.

HubSpot vs. Freshdesk: HubSpot lists a 14-day trial of its Customer Agent with a seat purchase, where Freshdesk lists a 14-day trial of its Enterprise plan.

What reviewers say

• Love: Customization without outside help. A practice manager at a small business writes, “With HubSpot Service Hub, we can handle customizations in-house without a lot of external assistance” (G2, May 14, 2026).
• Complain: Hard-bounce flags. The same reviewer writes, “We’ve had issues with hard bounces where their system flags a contact as bouncing previously” (same review, May 14, 2026).

7. Kayako

Best for: Teams that want a per-resolution AI agent they can run on top of an existing helpdesk.

Kayako is a help desk company whose Kay AI agent resolves tickets and can run on top of an existing helpdesk. Kayako is rated 4.0 out of 5 on G2 from 226 reviews.

Kayako sells Kayako One, a full helpdesk with a unified inbox, ticketing, a knowledge base, a live chat widget, automation rules, and reporting, with its Kay AI agent included. It also offers Kay as an add-on for teams that want the agent on a helpdesk they already run.

Key features

• Kay costs $1 per resolved ticket, with no seat or setup fees.
• A resolution counts only when Kay solves the issue without a human agent; escalations and simple deflections don’t count.
• Customers can reach Kay through chat, email, or voice.
• Kayako One includes onboarding and setup.

Pricing: Kay costs $1 per resolved ticket, with no seat or setup fees. Kayako doesn’t list helpdesk seat prices or a free trial on its pricing page, and it points buyers to a strategy session or a demo.

Pros

• A published per-resolution rate with no seat fees for Kay.
• Kay can sit on an existing helpdesk.

Cons

• Helpdesk seat prices aren’t listed.
• 226 reviews on G2, against 3,794 for Freshdesk.

Kayako vs. Freshdesk: Kayako lists Kay at $1 per resolved ticket with no seat fees, where Freshdesk lists $49 per 100 Freddy AI Agent sessions after 500 free, so the billing units differ.

What reviewers say

• Love: AI suggested responses. A head of customer success at a small business writes, “The AI Suggested Responses are incredibly helpful” (G2, July 18, 2025).
• Complain: Analytics. The same reviewer writes, “Some of the analytics could be a bit more intuitive” (same review, July 18, 2025).

8. Hiver

Best for: Teams that run shared support from inside Gmail.

Hiver is a support tool that runs inside Gmail, with AI agents for triage and resolution. Hiver in Gmail is rated 4.6 out of 5 on G2 from 1,296 reviews. G2 lists Hiver Omni separately.

Hiver sells two products at the same prices: Hiver in Gmail, which works inside Gmail, and Hiver Omni, a standalone omnichannel platform. AI Agents, an AI Copilot, and an AI Knowledge Builder come on every plan, and there is a 7-day free trial.

Key features

• AI agents triage and resolve requests, act across your systems, and pause for approval on actions you mark sensitive.
• Pro adds a customer portal, SLAs, CSAT surveys, advanced analytics, and API access.
• Elite adds AI QA, AI Insights, skill-based routing, custom objects, SSO, and HIPAA.
• Omni adds omnichannel and a Voice add-on at $30 per voice seat per month, with 1,000 minutes included.

Pricing: Growth $25, Pro $55, and Elite $85 per user per month. Hiver doesn’t state a billing cycle beside the prices, and it doesn’t list a separate AI price.

Pros

• AI agents on every plan, with approval steps for sensitive actions.
• A shared inbox that lives inside Gmail.

Cons

• Hiver lists no AI price.
• Hiver in Gmail and Hiver Omni are separate products, so check which one you’re pricing.

Hiver vs. Freshdesk: Hiver lists $25, $55, and $85 per user per month, where Freshdesk lists $19, $55, and $89 per agent. Hiver includes AI agents on every plan, where Freshdesk sells Copilot at $29 per agent and AI Agent sessions at $49 per 100 separately.

What reviewers say

• Love: Sorting and assigning email. A compliance associate at a mid-market investment management company writes, “I love using Hiver for sorting emails and assigning tasks within the team” (G2, April 14, 2026).
• Complain: Mobile app. The same reviewer writes, “The same user interface and features could be launched on the mobile app” (same review, April 14, 2026).

9. Front

Best for: Teams of any size that work from collaborative shared inboxes across email, SMS, social, and chat.

Front is a customer communication platform built on shared inboxes across email, SMS, social, and chat. Front is rated 4.6 out of 5 on G2 from 2,518 reviews.

Front’s Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans are $25, $65, and $105 per seat per month on annual billing, with a 14-day free trial of Professional features and no credit card. Front sells AI as add-ons: Autopilot is an AI agent, and Copilot is an assistant.

Key features

• Autopilot is an AI agent that gathers context, acts in your systems, and moves handoffs along, within rules you set for when it acts and when it escalates to a human.
• Copilot flags account signals, suggests next steps, and drafts replies; Enterprise includes it.
• The Jira connector creates and links Jira issues from a conversation, syncs comments both ways, and shows Jira status in real time.
• Professional adds omnichannel email, SMS, and social.
• Front is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified.

Pricing: Seats are $25 for Starter (up to 10 seats), $65 for Professional (up to 50 seats), and $105 for Enterprise per month on annual billing. Autopilot starts at $0.05 per conversation, and Copilot is $20 per seat per month on Starter and Professional, included in Enterprise.

Pros

• Seat prices and the per-conversation AI rate are both listed.
• A Jira connector that acts from inside the conversation.

Cons

• Starter and Professional treat AI as an add-on.
• Starter is single-channel with a 10-seat cap, and Professional caps at 50 seats.

Front vs. Freshdesk: Front’s Jira connector creates and links issues from a conversation, sends and receives comments, and shows real-time Jira status, where Freshdesk’s Jira sync covers status, priority, comments, and attachments.

What reviewers say

• Love: Team collaboration on one email. A finance team lead at a mid-market company writes, “The internal collaboration with the team is an amazing option because we can work on a single email and send notifications to every team member involved” (G2, June 18, 2026).
• Complain: Pricing. The same reviewer writes, “Pricing is a bit high, which makes me think twice” (same review, June 18, 2026).

10. Tidio

Best for: Small teams that want live chat and an AI agent in one tool.

Tidio is a live chat and customer service platform for small teams, with the Lyro AI agent. Tidio is rated 4.6 out of 5 on G2 from 1,962 reviews.

Tidio prices Starter at $24.17 and Growth from $49.17 a month on annual billing, with Plus from $300 plus usage and Premium by contact. Its Lyro AI Agent is an add-on from $32.50 a month for 50 Lyro conversations, and Tidio says it can be added to Zendesk, Salesforce, or another help desk.

Key features

• Lyro starts at $32.50 a month for 50 conversations, and the first 50 are free for the lifetime of an account.
• Lyro can sit on another help desk, so a team can try it without migrating.
• Plus adds usage-based charges on top of the plan price.
• Tidio prices Premium by contact.

Pricing: On annual billing, Starter is $24.17, Growth is from $49.17, and Plus is from $300 plus usage a month. Premium is by contact.

Pros

• A low entry price, and a free allowance for the AI agent.
• The AI agent can run on a helpdesk you already use.

Cons

• Plus carries usage charges on top of the plan price.
• Higher plans are “from” prices or by contact.

Tidio vs. Freshdesk: Tidio’s Lyro starts at $32.50 a month for 50 conversations with the first 50 free, where Freshdesk charges $49 per 100 AI Agent sessions after 500 free, so the two meters differ.

What reviewers say

• Love: Fast setup. A growth marketer at a small business writes, “I had the widget live and a basic bot flow running in under an hour, without touching code” (G2, July 28, 2026).
• Complain: Separate Lyro billing. The same reviewer writes, “Lyro conversations are billed separately, so costs get unpredictable on higher-traffic sites” (same review, July 28, 2026).

11. LiveAgent

Best for: Budget-conscious mid-size teams that need multichannel coverage, including phone.

LiveAgent is a multichannel help desk, including phone, with AI Agents and an AI Answer Assistant. LiveAgent is rated 4.5 out of 5 on G2 from 1,537 reviews.

LiveAgent lists Starter, Team, Business, and Enterprise plans, with Starter, Team, and Business at $15, $29, and $49 per agent per month on annual billing, a 30-day trial, and no permanent free plan. AI is on every plan, with 1 AI agent on Starter, 5 on Team, and 50 on Business, and LiveAgent says no plan carries an AI fee: teams connect their own AI provider, which bills them directly. It lists AI features such as an AI Answer Assistant, AI Chatbot, and ticket summaries.

Key features

• Email ticketing and live chat on every plan, with a call center from the Team plan.
• Facebook, Instagram, X, Viber, Telegram, and WhatsApp from the Team plan.
• AI on every plan, with 1, 5, and 50 AI agents on Starter, Team, and Business.
• A 30-day trial with no credit card.

Pricing: Starter, Team, and Business are $15, $29, and $49 per agent per month on annual billing, or $19, $35, and $59 billed monthly. Enterprise is $3,199 a month on annual billing with 80 agents included. LiveAgent says no plan carries an AI fee: teams connect their own AI provider, which bills them directly.

Pros

• Published seat prices from $15 and a 30-day trial.
• Phone, chat, email, and social channels in one help desk.

Cons

• Social channels and the call center need the Team plan or higher.
• No permanent free plan.

LiveAgent vs. Freshdesk: LiveAgent lists plans from $15 per agent per month on annual billing, where Freshdesk lists $19, $55, and $89.

What reviewers say

• Love: Everything about messages in one place. A marketing supervisor at a small business writes, “Managing emails or social media messages as support tickets through LiveAgent and making everything easily accessible for teams to review interactions has supported our ability to ensure consistent service quality” (G2, October 21, 2025).
• Complain: Reply box and auto-complete. The same reviewer writes, “I would like to select the reply box that covers part of the original ticket and improve the auto-complete text” (same review, October 21, 2025).

12. Gladly

Best for: Teams that want one running customer record across chat, call, email, and SMS.

Gladly is a customer service platform that keeps one running customer record across chat, call, email, and SMS. Gladly is rated 4.7 out of 5 on G2 from 1,114 reviews.

Gladly describes a “Lifelong Customer Memory” that threads every past chat, call, and email into one customer profile, along with smart routing, a Voice AI product, and a conversational commerce assistant for a brand’s own site.

Key features

• A customer profile that spans chat, call, and email history.
• Smart routing.
• A Voice AI product.
• A conversational commerce assistant on your own website, and SMS follow-up.

Pricing: Gladly doesn’t list plans or prices on its pricing page, and it directs buyers to a demo.

Pros

• One customer record across channels.
• A voice product and a shopping assistant alongside the helpdesk.

Cons

• Gladly publishes no plan prices or AI rates.
• Buying starts with a demo.

Gladly vs. Freshdesk: Gladly lists no prices, where Freshdesk lists $19, $55, and $89 per agent per month and a 14-day trial.

What reviewers say

• Love: A person-centered view. A customer service operations manager at a small business writes, “it truly puts the person at the center of every interaction” (G2, April 20, 2026).
• Complain: Reporting customization. The same reviewer writes, “reporting and analytics customization can be rather hard at times” (same review, April 20, 2026).

13. HappyFox

Best for: Mid-market support and IT teams that want ticketing with SLA management and a clean interface.

HappyFox is a ticketing and contact center platform for support and IT teams, with SLA management. HappyFox is rated 4.5 out of 5 on G2 from 138 reviews.

HappyFox lists Basic, Team, and Pro help desk plans at $24, $49, and $99 per agent per month on annual billing, with Enterprise by contact and a 14-day trial. HappyFox prices its AI products separately from the help desk.

Key features

• Unlimited tickets, omnichannel ticket creation, SLA management, a knowledge base, and SSO on Basic, which caps at five agents.
• Multi-brand help desks, custom email and domain, and custom roles on Team.
• Agent collision, task and asset management, scheduled tickets, and an uptime SLA on Pro.
• An AI Contact Center Suite with Autopilot agents, a Chatbot, and a Copilot, from $99 per agent per month on annual billing.

Pricing: Basic $24, Team $49, and Pro $99 per agent per month on annual billing. In the AI Contact Center, Chatbot resolutions are $0.33 each and Autopilot actions start at $0.02 each, billed separately.

Pros

• A published per-resolution rate for its chatbot and a per-action rate for Autopilot.
• SLA management and SSO on the entry plan.

Cons

• Basic allows five agents.
• AI products carry their own pricing on top of the help desk.

HappyFox vs. Freshdesk: HappyFox lists AI Chatbot resolutions at $0.33 each and Autopilot actions from $0.02 each, where Freshdesk lists $49 per 100 Freddy AI Agent sessions.

What reviewers say

• Love: Clean and flexible. A director of information technology at a mid-market company writes, “The UI is clean and easy to navigate, and the balance between customization and simplicity stands out” (G2, August 4, 2026).
• Complain: Outlook calendar. The same reviewer writes, “It doesn’t (yet) have a calendar integration with Microsoft Outlook” (same review, August 4, 2026).

14. Gorgias

Best for: E-commerce brands with a high volume of order-related support questions.

Gorgias is a customer support platform for e-commerce brands, mainly on Shopify, with an AI Agent on every plan. Gorgias is rated 4.6 out of 5 on G2 from 582 reviews.

Gorgias includes its AI Agent on every plan, billing only on resolution, and prices the helpdesk by ticket volume, never per agent.

Key features

• Every plan includes the AI Agent, billed per automated interaction.
• Ticket volume scales from 50 to 5,000 a month.
• Voice and SMS are add-ons, priced by call and text volume.

Pricing: By ticket volume, with no per-agent fee. On annual billing, Basic is $50 a month for 300 tickets, Pro is $300 for 2,000, and Advanced is $750 for 5,000. Starter costs $10 a month for 50 tickets and bills monthly only. The AI Agent costs $0.90 per automated interaction on annual contracts and $1.00 on monthly ones. With it added, annual billing comes to $77 for Basic, $471 for Pro, and $1,227 for Advanced a month, covering 30, 190, and 530 automated interactions.

Pros

• No per-agent pricing.
• An AI Agent on every plan, billed on resolution.

Cons

• Voice and SMS are extra.
• The AI Agent adds to the helpdesk price, and overage is $1.50 per interaction past the plan’s allowance.

Gorgias vs. Freshdesk: Gorgias bills its AI Agent only when it resolves a conversation, where Freshdesk bills Freddy AI Agent by session after 500 free.

What reviewers say

• Love: Centralized support with automation. An operations specialist at a mid-market company writes about “how seamlessly it centralizes customer support while allowing us to scale through automation” (G2, February 18, 2026).
• Complain: AI Agent setup is complex. The same reviewer writes, “The AI Agent is powerful, but the training and knowledge base configuration can be complex” (same review, February 18, 2026).

Larger platforms that sit outside the ranking

These three service platforms suit larger or more specialized teams, so they sit outside the ranking.

• Kustomer has a G2 rating of 4.4 out of 5 from 566 reviews. Its Concierge AI agent resolves requests across channels using full customer context, its Envoy tools give human reps that context, and its AI agents mix deterministic and probabilistic modes. It doesn’t list plan prices.
• Salesforce Service Cloud has a G2 rating of 4.4 out of 5 from 8,439 reviews. Core adds case management and a self-service help center, and Max adds the full Agentforce for Service suite and digital channels. Five editions run $25 to $550 per user per month, most billed annually.
• Jira Service Management has a G2 rating of 4.3 out of 5 from 986 reviews. It covers request, incident, and change management, with AI teammates that triage requests and suggest resolution steps. Atlassian lists a free plan for three agents and a Customer Service AI Agent at $1 per resolution on paid plans.

How do you migrate from Freshdesk?

The migration is where a Freshdesk switch gets real, and what carries over differs from vendor to vendor.

What migrates cleanly

Freshdesk lets Admins and Supervisors export tickets as CSV or Excel files with the fields you choose, and contacts as a CSV file. Ask each alternative whether it offers a Freshdesk importer and which objects it brings across. If DevRev is the destination, its Freshdesk historical import brings in tickets, conversations, attachments, agents, contacts, and companies as a one-time import through Freshdesk’s Export Account Data API.

What needs manual attention

The ticket export doesn’t include full ticket conversations or archived tickets, so those need an account export. Automations, SLA policies, and canned responses also need recreating, so document your current rules before you start.

Agent training is the other variable. Budget time for the team to adapt to a new interface.

The migration decision test

Ask three questions before committing:

1. Can you export your full ticket history, conversations, and customer data from Freshdesk?
2. Will the new platform’s team support you through the transition with a dedicated migration path?
3. Can both platforms run in parallel for a few weeks before you switch?

Three yeses mean the migration risk is manageable.

How do you choose a Freshdesk alternative?

Three things narrow a long list quickly: team size, budget, and primary channels.Fourteen Freshdesk alternatives is a lot, so narrow the list on those three first, then on what you need the AI to do.

• By team size: Computer, by DevRev, works for support teams of any size that need resolution, small or large. Help Scout and Zoho Desk suit small teams, with free tiers for five seats and three licenses, Tidio suits small teams that want chat and an AI agent, and LiveAgent suits budget-conscious mid-size teams. Hiver suits teams that live in Gmail. HappyFox suits mid-market support and IT teams, and Zendesk suits larger support operations.
• By budget: Help Scout (five seats), Zoho Desk (three licenses), and HubSpot (two seats) list free tiers, and LiveAgent lists plans from $15 per agent per month on annual billing. For a published AI rate, Kayako lists $1 per resolved ticket, HappyFox $0.33 per chatbot resolution, Help Scout $0.75 per resolution, and Front’s Autopilot starts at $0.05 per conversation. Pricing for Computer, by DevRev, depends on the deployment, and it handles harder tickets as well as first-line answers, so ask DevRev for a quote scoped to your volume.
• By primary channel: Computer, by DevRev, can serve chat, email, WhatsApp, and voice where configured, drawing on the same support, product, and engineering context in each. Help Scout suits email-led teams, Front and Hiver suit shared inboxes, LiveAgent covers email, chat, phone, and social, Gladly threads chat, call, and email into one record, and Gorgias suits e-commerce support.
• If you need AI that resolves issues, beyond assisting agents: Computer, by DevRev; Intercom (now Fin); or Kayako, whose Kay agent charges per resolved ticket. Fin can also run on top of your current Freshdesk helpdesk, so a team can change the AI agent first.
• If your team is tied to a CRM suite: HubSpot Service Hub for HubSpot shops, or Zoho Desk for Zoho shops.

Size, budget, and channels narrow the choice, but one question settles it: do you want a ticketing system, or a resolution platform? Deflection versus resolution is the question to settle first.

Why is Computer, by DevRev, our pick?

Three things set Computer, by DevRev, apart from the help desks and AI add-ons on this list, and each one is checkable.

• It resolves from shared context. With Computer Memory, support, product, and engineering draw on the same record, so a recurring bug an agent flags reaches the product team as a linked signal.
• It has been tested at volume. In BILL’s pre-launch test on 200,000 real customer queries, the result was a 70% resolution rate against a 30% approval threshold.
• It acts inside guardrails. Computer works within the permissions you set, asks for approval before sensitive actions, logs each step, and supports undo.

Choose Computer, by DevRev, if you want AI that resolves tickets, beyond assisting agents, and your tickets cross support, product, and engineering.

Computer, by DevRev is built for resolution first. That’s Work Softer in practice: less repetitive handling, clearer outcomes.