Comparing Zendesk Alternatives: The 9 Best Options for 2025

If you're looking to replace Zendesk, this list of the best Zendesk alternatives will help you find the perfect fit. We dig deep into the options, sharing what types of teams and businesses they're best for, looking at how their features and pricing compare to Zendesk, reviewing what current customers have to say about them, and sharing the options each provides for migrating your data.

Whether you're a small business looking for a less expensive option, an enterprise looking for a customer service platform that's even more customizable than Zendesk, or a mid-sized ecommerce company looking for something that's highly catered to the needs of your specific industry, we have you covered.

Why look for a Zendesk alternative?

Zendesk is a powerful help desk with every feature a support team could ever need, but with that power comes complexity:

• Taking advantage of many of the platform's features requires technical support from development or engineering teams. Since many customer service teams have a hard time getting this type of support from other departments, it means there are a lot of Zendesk features you probably won't be able to use.

• The platform isn't very intuitive, making it difficult to train new agents to use it. In addition to having to train new agents on your product and support style/processes, you'll have to spend a lot of time training them on how to use Zendesk itself.

• When you need support, you probably won't get it. Social media and review sites are full of complaints from Zendesk customers about the lack of support provided, particularly to their small and mid-sized customers.

• If you're considering buying Zendesk (not a current customer), you should keep in mind that it can take months to set up the platform. Zendesk's partners estimate that implementation takes a minimum of four weeks, plus an additional week for every 10 agents on your team.

Beyond that, Zendesk is one of the highest-priced support tools on the market. While its pricing page makes the platform look comparable to other tools on the market, customers report having to consistently upgrade to higher-priced plans and pay for add-ons to get access to the basic features they need.

Things to consider when looking for a Zendesk alternative

Migrating to a new support platform requires a lot of work and entails a lot of risk. It's not an exercise you want to do more than once, so it's crucial to make the right decision about which platform to switch to the first time.

Here are some things to consider as you're evaluating options so you can make sure you find the perfect alternative for your team:

• Does it have the essential features your team needs? Before you start shopping, make a list of all of the features your team depends on in their day-to-day work, and determine which are must-haves. When you know exactly what you need, it's a lot easier to remove platforms that don't offer those features from your consideration list.

• Does it support all of the channels that you support? Make sure it provides phone support if you support customers over the phone, customer portals if you want private spaces to share support statuses with specific customers, and social support for all of the social media sites from which you receive and respond to requests.

• Can it be customized to fit some of your more unique needs? Make sure it integrates with any business-critical tools you use for delivering support and that it either comes with the reports you need out of the box or allows you to build custom reports that let you analyze your data and performance in the way you need to.

• Will it scale alongside your team and business? Since one of your goals should be to switch support platforms as infrequently as possible, it's important to consider not only how the platform will work for your team right now but also how it might work for you three years from now. Does it offer features and channels you might need in the future?

• What’s your timeline? Some tools are easy to set up; others take more time to implement. Make sure you consider how long the initial setup and training will take. If you choose a tool that takes months to onboard, will you be able to afford to pay for both it and your existing support platform in the interim?

• Can you afford it? You likely have a budget to stick to when choosing your Zendesk replacement, making pricing another quick way to remove options from your consideration list. Just make sure you fully understand what you're getting at the price you believe you'll pay — pricing is not always fully transparent. More on that below.

The absolute best way to figure out if a platform has all of the features you need is to look at its pricing page. Most platforms provide more detail on this page in a side-by-side plan comparison table than any other page of their sites. Generally, this table will list every single feature available in the platform, so it's a good place to start when doing your research.

The bonus of identifying available features in this way is that you'll start to get a good understanding of the platform's pricing, too. Lots of tools look like they're a lot cheaper than they are at a glance, but by reviewing the plan comparison chart, you can start to understand which plan actually has all of the features you need and how much you're going to have to pay to get them.

The 9 best Zendesk alternatives

If you're looking for a new customer support platform that has all of the features you need without the overhead, complexity, and opaque pricing, consider these nine Zendesk alternatives.

1. Help Scout – Best overall Zendesk alternative

Help Scout has all of the power of Zendesk without the complexity. Its intuitive, user-friendly interface means the learning curve for using Help Scout is minimal: You’ll be up and running in a matter of hours and an expert user by the end of week one. 

When you sign up for Help Scout, you get access to a feature-rich platform with a variety of powerful customer support tools.

All of your channels, all in one place

Create one or more team inboxes to manage your customer conversations across all channels — email, chat, and social. Features like private notes let your team exchange information about the conversation before replying to customers, and real-time collision detection prevents multiple team members from working on or replying to the same request.

Create a database of saved replies to make answering routine customer requests a breeze, or set up workflows to increase productivity and efficiency by automating things like assigning conversations to specific teams or agents.

Customer profiles provide your team with the context they need to deliver personalized support experiences, and tags, custom fields, and views help you keep everything organized. You can even stay focused by snoozing conversations that don't need a reply yet, or you can always send a reply at the perfect time with scheduled replies.

Help customers help themselves

With Docs — Help Scout's knowledge base builder — you can create a customized help center that makes it easy for customers to find the information they need when they need it.

Use Docs to create help center articles for your customers, or create private collections that are only accessible to your team. All of your external-facing articles are optimized for search in both your help center and on major search engines so customers can easily find what they're looking for.

You can also serve your help center articles through Beacon — Help Scout's live chat and self-service widget. Beacon can be embedded on your website and in your app, and customers can use it to search your knowledge base; get instant, AI-generated answers; or request live or email support from your team.

Supported by humans, enhanced by AI

Help Scout’s customer-first approach to AI features gives your team the tools to help customers more efficiently, freeing up their time for more complex and valuable tasks.

AI Summarize helps your team get up to speed quickly by providing summaries of the key points of long conversation threads. 

AI Assist acts as a partner and provides writing assistance. Use it in replies or when creating knowledge base articles to clean up spelling and grammar issues, make length or tone changes, or translate your text if you support customers in more than one country.

AI Drafts gives your team a head start on every reply by using generative AI, past conversations, and the content of your Docs site to help draft responses to incoming emails. Simply read the AI draft, edit as necessary, and hit send.

Connect with customers in the right place at the right time

Help Scout’s Beacon makes it easy to deliver instant support to your customers through live chat. You can set up office hours for when live chat is available, and the widget won't show live chat as an option unless someone on your team is available to provide instant support.

But communication isn’t just a one-way street — Beacon also lets your business reach out to customers proactively. 

Launch a chat window or surface a help doc during tricky places in the customer journey, place a banner on your site to announce a new feature, or even send out a survey to capture customer feedback. It’s all possible using Beacon’s targeting features, which allow you to dial in on your audience using events like URL visited, time on page, and more.

Make data-driven decisions with reports

Help Scout comes loaded with pre-built dashboards so you can see how your team performs from day one. See what times of day are busiest, common reasons for customer queries, CSAT results, and which communication channels are most popular with your customers.

You can also create custom views to refine reports in order to assess performance and focus on the metrics you care about most. If you want to do even more with your data, you can use Help Scout's API or Fivetran integration to connect to the business intelligence tool of your choosing.

Get exceptional support so you can deliver exceptional support

Help Scout has one of the highest ratings for customer support of all of the help desks on the market. Here's what some of its customers have to say about the support they've received:

• "The customer support is over-the-top, amazing, above-and-beyond helpful. These are not clichés, they should be taken literally." (Read the full review.)

• "This is an incredible help desk UI, and absolutely NO ONE beats Help Scout's own customer care approach and attention to detail….Help Scout is a care desk that has been made by amazing professionals already in the customer care space — a service BY support teams FOR support teams." (Read the full review.)

• "I love Help Scout's product; using it has been an excellent experience. Moreover, their own support team, blog, and support content have been incredibly useful and valuable, both personally and professionally. You can tell these people care about people!" (Read the full review.)

Help Scout offers 24/6 support, along with a detailed help center, free resources and guides, and live classes hosted by Help Scout experts, so you'll have everything you need to support your customers day in and day out.

Pros

• Help Scout is known for its intuitive interface and user-friendly design, which can lead to faster onboarding for new agents and better agent productivity.

• Help Scout's features prioritize providing a personalized and human-centric customer experience. Its focus is on helping you build strong customer relationships.

• Help Scout generally offers more transparent and affordable pricing plans than Zendesk.

• Help Scout is highly regarded for its responsive and helpful customer support, which can be a significant advantage when transitioning to a new platform.

Cons

• Compared to Zendesk, Help Scout offers a more limited set of integrations. This may be a drawback if you rely heavily on third-party tools to deliver support.

• Help Scout's focus on simplicity can sometimes translate to less flexibility in creating highly detailed custom workflows.

Migrating from Zendesk to Help Scout

Help Scout offers automatic migration from Zendesk to Help Scout using Import2, and the service is completely free for most customers. 

Import2 will migrate all of your tickets/emails, tags, and customer profiles from Zendesk to Help Scout, and Help Scout also has a separate tool you can use to migrate your help center articles.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Help Scout have to say about the platform:

• "Having worked with Zendesk before, the difference was night and day. Our team enjoys Help Scout because of the ease of use, user-friendly platform, reporting, and more! Support is always quick to respond and helpful when we need guidance." Read the full review.

• "We don't need a major solution like Zendesk, and Help Scout is the happy medium of exactly the features we need for our support efforts. I am able to quickly train new team members on how to use Help Scout, and that helps us scale quickly while spending smartly! Read the full review.

• "Help Scout delivered on its promises. It is straightforward to set up and use. The UX is excellent, with helpful keyboard shortcuts and workflows to make our team more efficient. Help Scout emails are also a step up for the customer experience, who appreciate the seamless support." Read the full review.

Pricing

Help Scout's pricing is completely transparent. No gotchas will pop up after you pick a plan and subscribe to the service: Everything you'll get on each plan is specified on its pricing page.

The platform offers a robust free plan that comes with everything you need to get started: one inbox, one knowledge base, 10 views, 10 saved replies, 10 workflows, one Beacon, 10 messages (excluding surveys and NPS), 100 tags, 30 days of reporting data, 50 included contacts* per month, unlimited users, and full access to all AI features without any additional usage fees.

For those who need more functionality, Help Scout has three paid plans. Each comes with all of the above, plus additional features and included contacts. Paid plans start at $50 per month.

*A contact is someone who received a reply from your team or had their question resolved by AI Answers in a given month. Multiple conversations with the same person count as one contact.

2. Intercom – Best Zendesk alternative for automated support

Some of the customer support tools on the market, like Help Scout, have added AI to their offerings to enable human support agents to work faster and more efficiently. Others have focused more on using AI to replace the need for human support agents. Intercom falls into the latter category, having pivoted recently to an AI-first model with Fin, its AI bot.

Fin is available through Intercom's live chat widget and via email and will answer customer questions on your behalf. You train it by adding content to its library, which can include your website, knowledge base, and support tickets as well as one-off information you want to provide like text snippets, PDF documents, and individual URLs.

Once you've fed Fin all of your knowledge sources, you can specify how you want it to reply to customers. Choose a tone that matches your brand voice, and specify how long its answers should be. It can also translate any of its knowledge into 45 different languages.

Intercom also recently released a feature that lets you connect Fin to other relevant data sources — like Shopify, Stripe, and Statuspage — so it can provide more personalized support to customers by accessing relevant customer and company data.

Workflows give you more control over how Fin handles specific types of queries so you can do things like automatically send billing questions to human support agents. Finally, you can see exactly how Fin is performing and how much time it's saving your support team in Intercom's detailed reports.

Pros

• Intercom's focus on conversational engagement can lead to improved customer relationships and satisfaction.

• Intercom's UI is more modern and user-friendly, which can lead to increased agent productivity and a smoother onboarding experience.

• Intercom's chatbot functionality is more robust and customizable than Zendesk's, allowing for better automation of customer interactions.

Cons

• Intercom's pricing structure can be confusing and potentially more expensive than Zendesk, especially as your business scales and requires more features.

• Intercom is less flexible than Zendesk when it comes to customizing workflows and processes.

Migrating from Zendesk to Intercom

Intercom has built-in tools to help you migrate your users, knowledge base articles, and conversation history (with a caveat) from Zendesk. 

To migrate users, you download a CSV from Zendesk and upload it to Intercom. To migrate your help center, you simply enter its URL into Intercom, and Intercom imports the articles.

It's important to note that importing your Zendesk conversation history (tickets) into Intercom does not give you access to those conversations in Intercom. Instead, it just uses that data to train Fin.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Intercom have to say about the platform:

• "Enables rapid conversations rather than long-running tickets. AI is promising and maybe the best in the field. Workflows are really easy to manage and improve your support process. Plugins and integrations are working great. Having used Zendesk and Salesforce before, I can definitely suggest Intercom." Read the full review.

• "While using Zendesk, we were at an average CSAT score of 64%, and after just three months with Intercom, we've been reporting between 85% to 100% CSAT. This is a major improvement that we know couldn't have been possible without Intercom." Read the full review.

• "My favorite thing about Intercom is how user-friendly the entire platform is. We've used Zendesk in the past, and when it came to onboarding a new employee, Zendesk always was our biggest learning curve. Intercom eliminates a lot of the hassle because things are just super easy to use!" Read the full review.

Pricing

Ticket resolutions by Fin are $0.99 per resolution regardless of which plan you're on. So if you're using Fin, you'll have a base per seat per month cost for access to Intercom's platform in addition to the total cost of any resolutions Fin provides. The upside is that you get access to all of Fin's features in all plans.

On Intercom's base plan, which starts at $29/seat per month, you get access to one shared inbox, one knowledge base, live chat, and reports. For workflows, social support, and lite users, you'll need to be on the Advanced plan ($85/seat per month). To get multiple help centers, custom permissions, and SSO, you'll need to be on the Enterprise plan ($132/user per month).

3. Freshdesk – Best Zendesk alternative for variety of integrations

One of the big advantages of Zendesk is that it integrates with nearly 2,000 other tools. The only other product on the market that comes close is Freshdesk, which offers nearly 700 integrations through its app marketplace. So if integrating your support software with other niche tools your company uses is a must-have, Freshdesk is likely the right choice for your team.

Freshdesk is also one of the few help desks that, like Zendesk, offers native phone support capabilities through its Freshcaller product — most of the other platforms only offer phone support via integration. In addition to regular phone support, Freshdesk offers an AI voicebot called Freddy AI that automatically answers customer questions over the phone.

Beyond these unique features, you'll get access to the same channels and tools you'll find in any help desk: a shared inbox, live chat, social support, a knowledge base, workflow automation, round-robin ticket routing, and mobile apps. Freshdesk also offers a free forever plan that gives up to two agents access to its basic features at no monthly cost.

Pros

• Freshdesk has more competitive pricing plans than Zendesk, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious businesses.

• Freshdesk incorporates gamification elements to motivate agents and foster a sense of friendly competition, which can boost morale and performance.

• After Zendesk, Freshdesk offers the highest number of third-party integrations of all customer service platforms.

Cons

• While Freshdesk offers a wide range of features, it's not as comprehensive as Zendesk in certain areas, particularly for enterprise-level needs.

• For very large organizations with complex requirements, Zendesk might offer better scalability and enterprise-grade features.

Migrating from Zendesk to Freshdesk

Freshdesk does not offer any native migration tools for importing your Zendesk data into its system. However, it does integrate with the third-party service Help Desk Migration, which can do the data transfer for you for a fee.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Freshdesk have to say about the platform:

• "It's easy to use and in some ways more intuitive than Zendesk. The support we receive is great, and the Freshdesk team is always available via chat. The platform is pretty quick and looks nicer than Zendesk to me personally." Read the full review.

• "The APIs available are robust and well documented. Everything worked without a hitch! The automation engine in Freshdesk is super easy to work with and powerful. Zendesk is the only competitor I had used previously, and when comparing Freshdesk to Zendesk, I was satisfied with the parity." Read the full review.

• "Several integrations. Allows me to provide customer service for different products and companies. Easy setup and integrations. Lets me create different signatures, canned responses, etc. I've used Zendesk as well and can confidently say that Freshdesk is more robust and far easier to use!" Read the full review.

Pricing

Freshdesk's free plan can be used by up to two agents and includes a shared inbox, ticketing, reports, and a knowledge base. Its Growth plan gets you all of those features plus custom reports, a customer portal, and automations for $15/agent per month.

To get access to Freddy AI, you'll need to be on either the Pro ($49/agent per month) or Enterprise ($79/agent per month) plans. Those plans also include SLAs, round-robin, forums, and business hours. Up to 500 sessions with Freddy AI are included in those plans, and additional sessions are $100 for every additional 1,000.

To add phone support, you'll need to subscribe separately to Freshcaller. It has a free plan, but it's not technically free — you just pay for minutes used instead of a monthly per-user rate. To get access to Freddy AI, you'll need to be on the Enterprise plan which starts at $69/agent per month and includes 5,000 phone minutes.

4. Zoho Desk – Best Zendesk alternative for creating community forums

Another Zendesk feature you won't find in all help desks is its community forums. Freshdesk has them, but only on its higher-tier plans ($49+/agent per month). Zoho Desk offers forums at a much lower cost, starting at $14/agent per month.

With Zoho's community forums, your customers can ask their own questions and answer those asked by other customers. Community members can upvote conversations to show support for things like feature requests. Agents can answer questions and bump their replies to the top. And everything can be indexed by search engines to provide another way for customers to find the answers they're looking for quickly.

Zoho also offers its own entire ecosystem of business apps, so it can be a good choice if you're looking to replace several of the tools in your tech stack. It has a CRM, business intelligence tool, project management platform, and HR software among many, many other features. A complete Zoho migration can get all of your business systems under one integrated platform.

Pros

• Zoho Desk generally offers more competitive pricing plans compared to Zendesk.

• If you're already using other Zoho applications like CRM (or plan to), Zoho Desk pulls relevant customer information from those apps, enabling personalized support.

• Zoho Desk offers a wide range of automation features, including workflow automation, intelligent routing, and self-service options.

Cons

• Zoho Desk has a similar learning curve as Zendesk. It can take new agents a while to learn the interface and find what they need.

• Compared to Zendesk's extensive marketplace, Zoho Desk offers fewer integrations with third-party applications.

• Depending on your specific needs, you might find some features missing in Zoho Desk that you had in Zendesk, especially if you require highly specialized functionalities.

Migrating from Zendesk to Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk has its own platform, Zwitch, that can be used to migrate your data from Zendesk. It will transfer your agents, tickets, conversations, threads, customers, contacts, and knowledge base articles. Unfortunately, if you have an existing community forum on Zendesk, that data cannot be migrated to Zoho Desk using Zight.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Zoho Desk have to say about the platform:

• "One of the standout positives is the responsive customer service — they reply relatively quickly, addressing issues more efficiently than what we experienced with Zendesk. Additionally, the user interface feels significantly better. It's intuitive and streamlined, making it easier for our team to manage tickets and navigate the platform." Read the full review.

• "Our specific requirements were: bi-directional GitHub integration, multi-language and localization support, APIs for custom data integrations, support for SSO/SAML, and reasonable pricing. Across these requirements, Zoho Desk beat Zendesk, Freshworks, Front, HappyFox, and Bold Desk." Read the full review.

• "The guide to migrate data from Zendesk to Zoho Desk is user-friendly and quick to follow. Fast response to queries from customer support. Easy to navigate platform." Read the full review.

Pricing

Zoho Desk has an Express plan that gives you ticketing, social support, and reports for up to five agents for $7/user per month. Its Standard plan ($14/user per month) includes community forums, email support, and a help center. The Professional plan ($23/user per month) adds in phone support, and live chat is only available on its Enterprise plan ($40/user per month).

5. Kustomer – Best Zendesk alternative for ecommerce support

Kustomer stands out due to its variety of integrations with the tools that ecommerce support teams use. Kustomer integrates with systems like Shopify, BigCommerce, LoyaltyLion, Adobe Commerce (Magento), Recharge, and more to make it easy for you to access the customer and transaction data you need to deliver quick and personalized support.

Its Shopify integration, as an example, can be set up in one click. Once activated, it shows all of your Shopify data in a sidebar — transactions, tracking numbers, order numbers, and shipping addresses. Additionally, you can do things like process refunds and cancel orders without leaving the Kustomer interface.

The data from your integrated systems is also used to power AI answers by KIQ Customer Assist, enabling the bot to do more sophisticated things like process refunds, update orders, and provide details on when shipped products will arrive. KIQ also answers more general questions for customers using information from your knowledge base.

Pros

• Kustomer offers seamless omnichannel support, allowing agents to easily switch between channels (email, chat, social media, etc.) within a single conversation.

• Because it's built for ecommerce teams, Kustomer is a bit more focused on providing the features and integrations those teams need than Zendesk.

Cons

• Kustomer's pricing plans tend to be higher than Zendesk's and may be too costly for small ecommerce brands.

• While Kustomer offers reporting functionalities, they're not as comprehensive or customizable as Zendesk's.

Migrating from Zendesk to Kustomer

Kustomer has its own custom-built tool that customers can use to transfer tickets, tags, users, and groups from Zendesk to Kustomer automatically.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Kustomer have to say about the platform:

• "It's the best full-boat CSM/CRM I've used. We migrated from Zendesk because their sales and support were terrible to us. The Kustomer team is responsive, helpful, and was there through the entire implementation and beyond. I couldn't be happier with Kustomer as a product and company." Read the full review.

• "If you want a platform so organized with functionality that allows your users to get the job done fast, this is the app for you. We come from using Zendesk and participated in many Salesforce demos. Kustomer has the best UI and is very easy to learn." Read the full review.

• "Kustomer has a great layout and is very user-friendly. I would say it has less of a learning curve than Zendesk. I have trained people how to use it in as little as a day or two. It is easy to find where to do certain functions, and the icons make sense!" Read the full review.

Pricing

Kustomer has two plans: an Enterprise plan that starts at $89/user per month, and an Ultimate plan for $139/user per month. Both plans include the bulk of Kustomer's features, but Ultimate has higher limits for some features and a guaranteed 99% uptime SLA.

To get access to KustomerIQ, you'll have to purchase the add-on, which costs an additional $39/user and $0.75/resolution.

6. HubSpot Service Hub – Best Zendesk alternative for small businesses

If you're a small business that ended up on Zendesk because someone recommended it but are finding that it's much more complex than what you need right now, HubSpot Service Hub could be a good alternative — particularly if you're already using its marketing or CRM products. 

HubSpot Service Hub includes most of the standard help desk features like a shared inbox, live chat, knowledge base builder, chatbots, customer satisfaction surveys, workflows, and reporting dashboards to track performance. These features are all pretty pared-down from what you'll get in other help desks, but if simplicity is what you're looking for, it's perfect.

It works especially well if you have marketing or sales team members doing the bulk of your support — such as in an early-stage, sales-led organization. Since these team members are already in HubSpot all day long doing their normal work, Service Hub's system will be familiar to them and easy to use without any training required.

The other big advantage of ServiceHub's integration with HubSpot's other platforms is that it gives you access to all customer interactions and details in one interface. You can see emails from both support and sales, upload customer contracts to access them quickly, and add customers to specific email lists — all from the customer or company profile in HubSpot.

Pros

• Service Hub integrates seamlessly with HubSpot's CRM, giving you a unified platform for managing all customer interactions and data.

• If your teams have already been using HubSpot's CRM or Marketing Hub, there won't be much of a learning curve when onboarding Service Hub.

Cons

• Most of Service Hub's most advanced features are in its $90/user per month plan, which can make the platform more expensive than Zendesk.

• HubSpot's customization options are not as flexible as Zendesk's at tailoring workflows and processes to highly specific needs.

Migrating from Zendesk to HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot does not offer any native migration tools for importing your Zendesk data into its system. However, it does integrate with the third-party service Help Desk Migration, which can do the data transfer for you for a fee.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to HubSpot Service Hub have to say about the platform:

• "The analytics sold me as they are so easy to use to quickly create new reports. I could never get things this easy in Zendesk." Read the full review.

• "Switched to HubSpot from Zendesk and never looked back! As a user, HubSpot is simple to use and easy to implement and customize. It has simplified our sales/renewals process, and the knowledge base has been a game changer!" Read the full review.

• "Compared to Zendesk, the interface is much more intuitive (which HubSpot is known for), and the customizable workflows are massive time savers. Only took a couple of weeks to set up, automate, and train my entire development team since we were already using HubSpot's CRM." Read the full review.

Pricing

HubSpot Service Hub has a free plan for up to two users that includes one shared inbox, up to three canned snippets, up to five knowledge base articles, and a live chat widget with HubSpot branding. 

Paid plans, which remove the HubSpot branding and significantly increase the limits of the different features (e.g., up to 5,000 canned snippets and knowledge base articles), start at $15/user per month.

Small businesses may also be able to take advantage of HubSpot's startup plan, which discounts the cost of the software by up to 75%.

7. Salesforce Service Cloud – Best Zendesk alternative for enterprise companies

If you found Zendesk's complexity to be a feature rather than a hurdle, Salesforce Service Cloud is probably the best alternative for you. It's built for enterprise teams that have highly complex processes and organizational structures, with features like incident detection, diagnostic tools, broadcast communications, asset tracking, and omnichannel routing.

Service Cloud is also a good option for companies that offer on-site product support. Its field service management features include dispatch and scheduling tools, work order management, and a mobile app to help your technicians in the field, even when Wi-Fi access isn’t available.

Finally, Salesforce offers a variety of AI tools to expedite support operations: 

• Use its chatbot to automatically reply to customer questions and requests. It can even understand and reply to pictures, videos, and audio files that customers send. 

• Turn support conversations into knowledge base articles automatically.

• Automatically summarize long support threads, and add the summary to the end of the conversation.

• Deliver instant answers in your self-service portal, on WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, and Facebook Messenger, and via text message.

Salesforce's AI tools also use its Einstein Trust Layer to make sure the AI never shares private data, and you can set up specific rules for the types of queries that should always be routed to a human support agent.

Pros

• Salesforce Service Cloud is designed to handle the complex needs of large enterprises with high support volumes and intricate workflows. It offers extensive customization options to tailor the platform to your specific requirements.

• Service Cloud offers robust automation features, including AI-powered chatbots, workflow automation, and intelligent routing.

• Salesforce offers powerful and highly customizable reporting and analytics tools.

Cons

• Salesforce Service Cloud typically comes with a higher price tag than Zendesk.

• Implementing and configuring Salesforce Service Cloud can be complex and time-consuming, often requiring dedicated resources or external consultants.

• With its vast capabilities, there's a risk of over-engineering solutions within Service Cloud, leading to unnecessary complexity and increased maintenance.

Migrating from Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce does not offer any native migration tools for importing your Zendesk data into Service Cloud. However, it does integrate with the third-party service Help Desk Migration, which can do the data transfer for you for a fee.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud have to say about the platform:

• "We migrated from Zendesk to Service Cloud and got a lot of value out of the platform. It was great in improving our user workflows and centralizing a full view of the customer in Salesforce." Read the full review.

• "Our biggest problem has been a lack of comprehensive data coming from Zendesk, but now we have so much data and a lot of dashboards that provide vital information that is required to implement process improvements." Read the full review.

• "It's all in Salesforce — no more janky connections from Zendesk, HubSpot, or other services that either don't work, barely work, or require so much customization that you wonder why you bothered in the first place." Read the full review.

Pricing

Salesforce Service Cloud's base plan starts at $25/user per month and includes ticketing, reports, and a knowledge base. To get access to its field service tools, you'll need to be on the Enterprise plan ($165/user per month). 

For all of its AI features, you'll need to be on the Einstein 1 Service plan, which starts at $500/user per month. It is worth noting that Service Cloud is one of the only help desks that doesn't charge additional per-session or per-resolution fees for its AI features.

8. Jira Service Management – Best Zendesk alternative for technical support

While Zendesk can be used by more technical engineering or IT support teams, it's not really built for that use case — it's primarily designed for customer service teams. For an alternative that is designed for technical support, Jira Service Management is probably your best bet.

For IT support teams, you can create a service desk, use AI to provide automated answers, configure SLAs, and manage your company assets. You can also code your own intake forms and automated workflows or access libraries of hundreds of pre-built, no-code templates.

For engineering support teams, you can link tickets to issues reported in Jira — Atlassian's bug-tracking tool — as well as manage incidents, aggregate product requests, and group similar incidents and bugs together as problems. You can also use its API to integrate with any programming or email tools you use.

IT operations teams can coordinate efforts across multiple teams to manage change requests, prevent incidents, monitor new releases, and create on-call schedules.

Pros

• Jira Service Management is built on ITIL best practices, making it well-suited for organizations that follow ITIL processes or aim to improve their IT service management.

• Jira Service Management excels in incident management, providing tools for tracking, prioritizing, and resolving incidents efficiently. It also includes features for problem management, helping you identify and address root causes.

• If your organization uses Jira for software development, the integration between the two tools can be invaluable for resolving issues, tracking bugs, and managing projects.

Cons

• Jira Service Management's strength lies in IT service management, and while it offers customer support features, it doesn't prioritize the customer experience.

• While Service Management integrates seamlessly with other Atlassian tools, it has far fewer integrations with other third-party applications than Zendesk.

Migrating from Zendesk to Jira Service Management

Atlassian does not offer any native migration tools for importing your Zendesk data into Jira Service Management. However, it does integrate with the third-party service Help Desk Migration, which can do the data transfer for you for a fee.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Jira Service Management have to say about the platform:

• "We are moving from Zendesk which is $99 per month per user to Jira which is looking to be about a $30 per month flat rate for us, saving us (as a small company) a huge amount." Read the full review.

• "Great replacement for Zendesk. Nice clean interface for users and the help desk team. Takes a little longer to configure than expected, but once set up, it's great." Read the full review.

Pricing

Jira Service Management has a free plan for up to three agents that includes multi-channel support, a knowledge base, and incident, problem, and change management. For access to its AI and asset management features, you'll need to be on the Premium plan ($44.27/agent per month).

9. Dixa – Best Zendesk alternative for multi-department collaboration

For larger companies with more complex organizational structures, Dixa is a good choice. It comes with several unique features that make cross-team collaboration easy.

Its side conversations expand on the private notes feature of other help desks by allowing you to not only tag internal colleagues but also send an email to individuals who aren't Dixa users in your organization (e.g., vendors, partners, or other third parties). The conversation and all replies can be created and viewed alongside the customer's original ticket.

Dixa also has sophisticated automatic routing rules. Instead of putting all of your requests into a single shared inbox for your team to cherry-pick, it automatically assigns new tickets to the person who's best equipped to respond to the request. It does this by evaluating priority, skill sets, and availability.

Finally, Dixa offers a drag-and-drop, no-code builder that lets you create your ideal workflows without any IT support. You can specify what types of requests are automatically routed, create smart rules to specify what's answered by AI and what goes into the queue, and even automatically close spam or irrelevant requests.

Beyond these features, Dixa has the same help desk features you'll find in all of the products on this list: email, live chat, phone, social, and self-service support. As far as AI, you can create a summary of previous support interactions for any customers, automatically translate replies, draft AI replies, and use its chatbot to provide instant answers.

Pros

• Dixa offers intelligent routing capabilities and automation features to ensure that conversations are directed to the right agents and handled efficiently.

• Dixa's pricing is similar to Zendesk's, so if you're not looking to reduce the costs of your customer support platform, it's a good one-to-one replacement.

Cons

• While Dixa offers a knowledge base, its primary focus is on agent-assisted interactions, which may not be ideal for businesses that heavily rely on self-service support.

• Compared to Zendesk's extensive marketplace, Dixa has a more limited range of integrations with third-party applications.

Migrating from Zendesk to Dixa

Dixa does not offer any native migration tools for importing your Zendesk data into its platform. However, it does integrate with the third-party service Help Desk Migration, which can do the data transfer for you for a fee.

Customer reviews

Here's what customers who switched from Zendesk to Dixa have to say about the platform:

• "I like that it is super simple to get started with. I like that it is user-friendly and easy to create changes in flow and other settings. I have used Zendesk before, and I actually feel that Dixa is easier to set up and use for agents." Read the full review.

• "I love how easy it is to customize the dashboards (especially compared to Zendesk Explore). The team at Dixa is constantly pushing improvements, and they're highly receptive to ideas for product developments." Read the full review.

• "The step away from Zendesk is much easier than expected. We had a feeling that we were very tied to Zendesk, but in reality, it was a very fast and smooth transition." Read the full review.

Pricing

Dixa's base plan starts at $39/agent per month. It includes its routing and side conversation features, but the only channel included in the plan is live chat. To get access to all of the other support channels, you'll need to be on the Growth plan ($89/agent per month).

Dixa's AI features are each sold as add-on products. Instant chatbot answers are $0.20/conversation, and Co-Pilot — which provides AI summaries, translations, and drafts — is an additional $29/agent per month.

Choosing the right Zendesk alternative for your business

At the beginning of this post, we provided some guidance on building a shortlist of tools to consider by looking at feature and channel availability and pricing. Hopefully, that helped you identify which of the tools on this list to consider more deeply, and by now, you've narrowed your list down to two or three final options.

From here, you'll want to get demos and/or start free trials of each. Demos let you get answers to the questions you couldn't find on your own, and hands-on experience in a free trial will help you learn what works best in a real-world environment.

Also, since multiple types of roles — agents, managers, etc. — will use the tool, it’s good to have people from each level of your support team test the final contenders. This ensures the option you choose will work well for everyone.

Finally, beyond the software's features and functionality, be sure to check out other aspects of each offering. Visit each tool’s help center, and send an email to their support team to evaluate how they handle customer interactions. Quality of support can be a big differentiator for service providers, especially if all other things are equal.