Zendesk alternatives

1. Groove (Best Overall Zendesk Alternative)

Out of all the customer service software we’ve tested, Groove is the best Zendesk alternative by far. We’ve been using Groove to manage both support and marketing emails across our projects, and it’s been a smooth experience from day one.

What truly sets Groove apart is its easy-to-use interface. Even if you are a small business owner with no prior experience with help desk software, you’ll be up and running in no time. The design is clean and clutter-free, with straightforward language that makes every button and tool clear.

Here’s the best part: Groove offers a powerful omnichannel customer support platform for a fraction of the price of Zendesk’s basic plan. With Groove, you can create a shared inbox, add live chat functionality, manage social media messaging, and build a knowledge base – all under one roof.

Groove also has exceptional customer support. They offer onboarding assistance to get you started quickly, and their 24/7 support is available to all users, regardless of their plan.

Pros of Groove:

Cons of Groove:

Pricing: Starts at $16/user per month, with a 7-day free trial. Their highest plan costs $56/user per month and unlocks advanced features like advanced rule automation, team-specific reporting, and load balancing for optimized conversation assignments.

Why we chose Groove: It’s simply the best Zendesk alternative for anyone seeking a user-friendly and affordable customer software solution. The user-friendly interface, powerful features, and exceptional customer support make Groove a strong competitor.

For more details, you can read our full Groove review.

2. Heroic Inbox (Best for Ticket Management in WordPress)

If you use WordPress to manage your website, then Heroic Inbox is a great alternative to Zendesk for handling customer support emails. We’ve talked extensively about this help desk plugin in other reviews, and that’s for a good reason.

With Heroix Inbox, you can manage all your emails from Gmail or Outlook in one place, right within your WordPress dashboard. Plus, you can have unlimited inboxes for not just your customer support teams but also other departments like marketing or sales.

Heroic Inbox integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, so you can see the customer’s purchase history directly within the ticketing system. This lets you provide more targeted and helpful support. Plus, you have access to a complete history of all your support tickets for easy reference.

Another benefit of Heroic Inbox is that it supports multiple languages right out of the box, which is helpful if you have customers around the world. This is a major advantage over Zendesk, where you need a higher-tier plan to offer multilingual support.

Pros of Heroic Inbox:

Cons of Heroix Inbox:

Pricing: Heroic Inbox’s pricing structure is based on website licensing. It starts from $199.50 per year for a single website.

For the best value, consider the Heroic Bundle Essential for $299.50 per year. This bundle includes both Heroic Inbox and Heroic KB, so you can create a knowledge base for customers to help themselves and reduce your support tickets.

Why we chose Heroic Inbox: This help desk solution stands out as a Zendesk competitor for WordPress. While it doesn’t include a built-in live chat feature, you can easily add that functionality with another plugin if needed.

You can learn more about Heroic Inbox in our HeroThemes review.

3. Nextiva (Best for Call Centers)

While chat and knowledge bases are popular, some customers still prefer talking directly to agents. That’s why we wanted to show you a Zendesk alternative that can fulfill this need.

Meet Nextiva, the top-rated business phone service. This platform offers comprehensive customer service tools, including call center, voicemail, SMS, live chat, video, and social media support.

Fun fact: we use Nextiva at WPBeginner for our call center. It lets our teams easily handle customer calls from anywhere in the world without using their own personal cell phone numbers.

Nextiva makes call handling a breeze. You can direct calls based on priority and skills, with easy transfers between agents. Plus, you can offer callback request options, letting customers choose when to receive a call for better convenience.

Pros of Nextiva:

Cons of Nextiva:

Pricing: The Business Communication plans start from $23.95/user per month for a team of 1-4 people. Besides phone support features, these plans include team communication tools like video conferencing. Prices can get lower as your team grows.

If you just want to use the phone service to support your customers, then you can contact the Nextiva team to get a quote on their Contact Center plans.

You can also use our Nextiva coupon to get 21% off of your first purchase.

Why we chose Nextiva: It’s a great Zendesk alternative if phone support is important to your business. Its comprehensive call center features let you assist customers easily over the phone.

You can learn more about the service in our full Nextiva review.

4. HubSpot (Best for Support + CRM)

Do you want to manage customer support and customer relationship management (CRM) on the same platform? If you use Zendesk and want a simpler solution, then consider HubSpot. It’s known for its CRM and offers a customer support solution called HubSpot Service Hub.

HubSpot combines support and CRM in one platform, so you don’t need separate tools. To access both, you can get the Customer Platform plan, which includes Service Hub, Sales Hub, Content Hub, Operations Hub, and Commerce Hub.

Service Hub offers more than just ticketing. It has features like conversational bots to answer simple queries, email health reporting to track the effectiveness of your email outreach and a mobile app for managing customer interactions on the go.

Pros of HubSpot:

Cons of HubSpot:

Pricing: A free plan is available for businesses with up to 5 agents. Paid Customer Platform plans start at $15/user per month.

Why we chose HubSpot: It’s a great all-in-one solution for businesses. It covers support, CRM, marketing, and more. If you like things simple and want all your customer communications in one place, HubSpot is a solid choice instead of Zendesk.

For more information, check out our full HubSpot review.

5. HelpDesk (Advanced Ticketing System)

HelpDesk is an excellent Zendesk alternative if you are looking for a powerful ticketing software solution.

Like Zendesk, HelpDesk lets you create multiple custom forms for different purposes, such as technical support requests or sales inquiries. There’s no limit to the number of forms you can create, giving you the flexibility to tailor the intake process to your specific needs.

HelpDesk also simplifies the process of managing complex issues. If a customer submits multiple tickets related to the same problem, then you can easily merge them into a single thread for a clearer overview.

Additionally, HelpDesk offers a shared ticket view feature similar to Zendesk’s ticket-sharing functionality. This lets multiple team members collaborate on the same ticket simultaneously, allowing them to resolve a complicated issue together.

Pros of HelpDesk:

Cons of HelpDesk:

Pricing: The Team plan costs $29/agent per month and includes unlimited contact forms, multiple mailboxes, unlimited workflows to automate tasks, and 5 email templates to respond to customer inquiries. A 14-day free trial is available.

Why we chose HelpDesk: This help desk platform can be a great option if you want a Zendesk alternative with a robust ticketing system. The single plan’s key features are enough for most small businesses, so long as you don’t create more than 5 email templates.

6. LiveChat (Best for Live Chat Support)

LiveChat is a handy tool made by the same folks who created HelpDesk. We’ve used it for many of our eCommerce projects to answer pre-sales questions.

Getting started with LiveChat is super simple. When we did it, all we had to do was just sign up, add the LiveChat plugin to the WordPress website, and log in via the plugin page. The chat widget would then pop up on the site, ready to connect with customers.

But LiveChat isn’t just a basic chat tool. It’s also packed with cool features like real-time chat monitoring, automatic prompts to collect visitor emails when no agents are around, and routing chats to the right experts for tricky questions.

Pros of LiveChat:

Cons of LiveChat:

Pricing: Starts from $20/agent per month. With the Starter plan, you can monitor up to 100 visitors and get access to your chat history from the past 60 days. A 14-day free trial is available, and you can use our LiveChat coupon to get 30% off your first purchase.

Why we chose LiveChat: We use LiveChat frequently on our websites, and we think it’s a top choice for businesses looking for an easy-to-use live chat solution.

Just remember, LiveChat focuses solely on live chat. If you also need a ticketing system and a knowledge base, then you will have to pay for HelpDesk, too.

You can learn more about the software in our LiveChat review.

7. ChatBot (Best for AI Chatbot Support)

Managing customer support for a small business can be tough, especially if you can’t afford a big team. If that’s the case, ChatBot can be a great Zendesk alternative.

ChatBot is a cloud-based AI assistant for your website. It can handle customer questions in real time like live chat, but you don’t need a human agent to run it. Even if you already have a support team, ChatBot can take care of basic questions to free up your team’s time for more complex issues.

Before launching your ChatBot, you can train it using various resources like FAQs, website content, articles, or even your existing knowledge base. ChatBot can also learn from unanswered questions to improve its response accuracy over time.

We use ChatBot in our SaaS businesses to handle questions before a sale and pass on the tough queries to our live support team.

Pros of ChatBot:

Cons of ChatBot:

Pricing: Starts at $52 per month billed annually, which includes up to 1,000 monthly chats. They also offer a 14-day free trial.

Why we chose ChatBot: For small businesses, ChatBot is a budget-friendly way to handle customer questions without hiring any staff. Plus, it integrates with LiveChat and HelpDesk, so you can build a full support system that covers all your bases.

To learn more, you can read our comprehensive ChatBot review.

8. Help Scout (Simple Zendesk Competitor)

Zendesk offers a powerful suite of customer support tools. But for small business owners, it can feel overwhelming. If that sounds like you, then Help Scout might be a perfect fit.

Help Scout is a popular customer support software known for its user-friendly interface. While it’s slightly more expensive than Groove at $20/user per month, Help Scout provides all the essential functionality you need to manage customer conversations effectively.

Another key advantage we discovered is that their Business Hours feature is available in all plans, unlike Zendesk where it’s restricted to higher tiers. This feature lets you activate auto-replies based on your operating hours.

Pros of Help Scout:

Cons of Help Scout:

Pricing: Starts from $20/user per month with a 15-day free trial. The lowest plan has a cap of 25 users. You will need to upgrade to the $40/user per month plan for unlimited users.

Why we chose Help Scout: This customer service platform prioritizes its core functionality and user-friendliness over having a lot of features. Because of that, Help Scout is a great Zendesk alternative for small businesses and startups.

9. Freshdesk (Freemium Zendesk Alternative)

Starting a new business can be expensive, and every penny counts. If you are looking for a cost-effective way to manage customer support, Freshdesk is a great option to consider.

We found Freshdesk’s free plan to have a surprising amount of functionality for small businesses just getting started. It allows you to manage customer inquiries from email and social media with a team of up to 10 agents.

You can also create rules to automatically route tickets to the most qualified team member. As a result, your customers receive the best possible care.

Freshdesk also provides valuable insights into your support performance with built-in ticket trend reports. This allows you to stay on top of your workload and identify areas for improvement.

Pros of Freshdesk:

Cons of Freshdesk:

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start from $15/agent per month. Upgrading unlocks additional features like SLA management, which helps ensure your team consistently meets your company’s service level agreements.

Why we chose Freshdesk: If you run a new business, Freshdesk’s free plan can be a lifesaver. You can focus on growth while offering your customer support without breaking the bank.

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