Freshdesk alternatives for small support teams

The best Freshdesk alternatives for a small team are Zendesk, Help Scout, Zoho Desk, HubSpot Service Hub, Intercom, Front and Crisp, and Deacon if you’d rather not run a helpdesk at all. We read every price on the vendors’ own pages on 25 September 2026, in US dollars, and each one links to where we read it.

Three things in Freshdesk’s pricing matter most to a small team. Its free offer lasts six months and stops at two agents. Its AI agent comes with 500 sessions once per account, not once a month, and then costs $49 per 100. And the AI agent that answers chat on your website lives in Freshdesk Omni, a separate product at a higher price per agent.

Deacon is ours, and it’s the one on this list that isn’t a helpdesk. It’s an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. It answers your customers from your own docs in seconds, and it shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. There’s a free plan with no card and no end date.

Freshdesk alternatives side by side

Freshdesk is in the last row, so you can hold each one up against it. The price is for the cheapest paid plan, per agent unless the row says otherwise.

What Freshdesk charges, and what costs extra

Freshworks sells two helpdesks under the Freshdesk name, and its own guide to the plans calls Freshdesk the email-first one and Freshdesk Omni the multichannel one, with email, chat, social media and more in one inbox. Both are priced per agent. Freshdesk’s Growth is $19 an agent a month billed yearly, or $23 monthly, Pro is $55 or $66 and Enterprise $89 or $107. Omni’s plans have the same names, at $29, $79 and $119 an agent a month billed yearly, or $35, $95 and $143 monthly.

Every new account starts with a 14-day trial of the Enterprise plan. After it, a Freshdesk account can move to the Free Program, which Freshworks describes as free for 6 months for up to 2 agents, with email and social ticketing and a knowledge base. It isn’t offered on Omni. Past six months, or past two agents, you have to move to a paid plan, and once you’ve paid you can’t go back to it.

The AI is Freddy AI Agent. Growth, Pro and Enterprise each come with 500 sessions, once per account, and more cost $49 per 100. On Freshdesk it answers email, and a session is the 72 hours after a customer’s first email, however many replies it sends. The chat AI agent is only in Omni, where a session is 24 hours. When the sessions run out, Freshworks’ AI Agent Studio guide says the AI agent stops responding and chats go to your agents (in the self-service widget it just stops), unless you’ve switched on auto-recharge, which adds a pack when fewer than 50 sessions are left. Packs you buy expire with the billing cycle, but they’re added again for the next one until you reduce them.

Freddy AI Copilot, which drafts, summarises and translates for your agents, is an add-on on Pro and Enterprise at $29 an agent a month billed yearly, or $35 monthly. Day passes for occasional agents are $2 on Growth, $7 on Pro and $12 on Enterprise. Freshdesk pricing works through the full bill, and Zendesk vs Freshdesk sets it against its closest rival.

Deacon, for a founder who doesn’t need ticketing

Deacon isn’t a helpdesk, and that’s the point. It’s an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves and don’t want to run a support team’s software to do it. It goes on your site with one script tag, learns from your help pages, files and text you paste in, and answers your customers in seconds, at any hour, in the language they write in. There are no sessions to count and no packs to top up.

When your docs don’t cover a question, Deacon says it doesn’t know rather than guessing, and asks for the visitor’s email. You get an email when a visitor leaves an address or asks for a person, so nobody has to watch a queue. Reply from the dashboard, and your words appear in their chat under your name while it’s still open.

Then answer that question once. Your answer becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next visitor who asks, and the more you answer, the less Deacon needs you. Save & check shows you the reply Deacon now gives and how many other open questions your answer covers.

Deacon also shows you what customers need. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Topics group their questions, count the people who asked and label most of them, for example as a feature ask, a bug report or a how-to, so you know what to fix and what to build next. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels.

Every feature is on every plan, and the plans differ only in answers, knowledge, crawled pages and seats. Free gives you 50 answers a month and 1 seat, with no card and no end date, and nothing on it is deleted for inactivity. Starter is $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers a month and 3 seats. Growth is $150 a month, or $120 a month billed yearly, for 4,000 answers a month and 10 seats. Nothing is billed past your plan’s answers, no plan upgrades itself, and there’s no “powered by” line to pay to remove.

What a helpdesk does that Deacon doesn’t

A helpdesk is software for a support team, and Freshdesk’s cheapest plan already does a lot that Deacon was never built for.

• It turns every email into a ticket with an owner and a status, in a shared inbox the whole team works from.
• It dispatches and assigns tickets by your rules, and Freshdesk’s Pro plan adds round-robin and load-balanced assignment.
• It holds the team to reply deadlines with service level policies, and Freshdesk’s Pro plan allows several.
• It brings chat, messaging apps and phone into the same queue, which at Freshworks means Omni.
• It hosts a customer portal where people raise tickets and follow them.
• It connects to your other tools through apps and connectors.

Deacon does none of that. It has no ticketing, no support inbox for email, no routing, assignment or rota, no phone, WhatsApp, Instagram or SMS channel, and no helpdesk integrations. If several people share a busy inbox, buy a helpdesk, and helpdesk automation shows which plan unlocks routing and deadlines. If you’re a founder answering support between everything else, a helpdesk mostly divides work you don’t have, and Deacon answers the questions your docs already cover.

Zendesk

Zendesk is the helpdesk with Freshdesk’s breadth, and more channels in one plan. Support Team, for email and tickets, is $19 an agent a month billed yearly, or $25 monthly. Suite Team, at $55 or $69, adds messaging and live chat on your site, and phone. Suite Professional is $115 or $149, and Suite Enterprise + Copilot shows only a Talk to Sales button. There’s no free plan, just a 14-day trial of Suite Professional, and Zendesk for Startups offers early-stage companies a six-month trial of the Suite for up to 50 agents.

AI agents are on every plan and billed by the automated resolution, a request settled without a person stepping in. Each plan includes an allowance that grows with your agents, and the page’s plan comparison prices more at $1.50 each if you commit in advance, or $2.00 pay as you go. Copilot, for your agents, is $50 an agent a month billed yearly, from Professional. Zendesk pricing works through the allowance, and Zendesk alternatives turns the question round. It suits a team that wants what Freshdesk does, with chat and phone in the same plan rather than a second product.

Help Scout

Help Scout is a shared inbox that a small team can start on for free, and it’s priced per user. The free plan gives up to 5 users one inbox, one Docs site for your help articles and 100 contacts a month, with no payment method. A contact is anyone your team replied to or AI Answers resolved, counted once however many conversations they start. Standard is $25 a user a month billed yearly, or $30 monthly, for up to 25 users, and adds live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger with no contact limit. Plus is $45 or $54, and Pro is $75 or $90, with 10 users at least. Standard and Plus have a 15-day trial with no card.

AI Answers replies from your Docs and other sources at $0.75 a resolution on the paid plans, charged once per conversation. It counts only when the customer doesn’t escalate, search your help articles, ask more or say they still need help. New accounts get three months of it free, and you can set a monthly cap, at which AI Answers switches off until the next cycle. It suits a small team that answers from one shared inbox and wants to start without paying. Help Scout pricing works out what one, three and five people pay.

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk starts low, and its free plan doesn’t end. Its free edition gives 3 users email ticketing, marked Free Forever. The page picked a currency for us, so we read US dollars from the price data its currency switch uses. Express is $7 a user a month billed yearly, or $9 monthly, Standard is $14 or $20, Professional $23 or $35 and Enterprise $40 or $50. The 15-day trial needs no card, and when it ends the account drops to the free edition.

Express includes AI agents, which run on Zoho’s own model or your own key, with up to 30 million tokens a month free. Standard adds an answer bot that replies from your knowledge base, and live chat for signed-in customers. Zia, Zoho’s built-in AI, comes with Professional, and Zoho SalesIQ’s live chat with Enterprise. Its pricing page also offers to move you from another helpdesk for free. Zendesk vs Zoho Desk compares the two in more depth. It suits a team on a tight budget that wants ticketing without a trial clock.

HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot’s Service Hub sits on the same platform as its marketing and sales tools, and the free plan includes their free versions too. The free tools cover up to 2 users with no card, including live chat that carries HubSpot’s branding. Starter is $7 a seat a month billed yearly, or $10 monthly, both shown against a struck-through $20. It adds ticketing and takes the branding off the chat.

Its AI agent, customer agent, starts on Professional, at $90 a seat a month billed yearly or $100 paid monthly on a yearly commitment, plus a one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. Professional includes 3,000 HubSpot Credits, and the customer agent uses 50 credits, or $0.50, each time it resolves a conversation without help from a person. Buying a Professional seat also lets you use it free, with no limits, for 14 days. HubSpot’s AI chatbot covers what its bots and agent do. It suits a company whose sales and marketing already run on HubSpot’s CRM.

Intercom

Intercom is a helpdesk built around chat, with Fin as its AI agent on every plan. There’s no free plan, just a 14-day trial with no card that includes Fin and the add-ons. Essential is $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, depending on which side of a price test you land on, and we were shown both in fetches minutes apart. Monthly it’s $29 or $39. Advanced is $85 a seat billed yearly, or $99 monthly, and Expert $132 billed yearly, since Intercom offers monthly billing on Essential and Advanced only.

Fin costs $0.99 an outcome, charged once per conversation. An outcome counts when a customer confirms their issue is resolved, doesn’t ask for more help after Fin replies, or when Fin completes a procedure you’ve set up, including one that ends in a handoff. Fin also runs on an existing helpdesk, Freshdesk among them, at $0.99 an outcome with no seats and a minimum monthly commitment, which the page gives as 50 outcomes for example. Copilot, for your agents, is $29 an agent a month billed yearly, or $35 monthly. Startups can apply to its Early Stage programme for up to 93% off and a year of Fin free. There’s more in Intercom pricing, Fin AI pricing and Intercom alternatives for startups. It suits a team whose customers reach it through chat in the product, and who want Fin to answer first.

Front

Front is a shared inbox for teams that live in email, priced per seat with a cap on its two cheaper plans. There’s no free plan, and the 14-day trial, with Professional’s features, needs no card. Starter is $25 a seat a month billed yearly, or $35 monthly, for up to 10 seats and one channel type. Professional is $65 or $85, for up to 50 seats and every channel, and Enterprise is $105, billed yearly only.

Its AI agent, Autopilot, is an add-on on every plan, and the pricing page gives its price only as starting at $0.05 a conversation. Copilot is $20 a seat a month as an add-on, and Smart QA the same, while Smart CSAT is $10, and Enterprise includes all three. It suits a team whose support arrives as email and gets handed between colleagues.

Crisp

Crisp prices each workspace rather than each seat, which suits a small team. The free plan gives 2 seats, a chat widget for your site and a shared inbox, with no AI credits. Mini is $45 a month for the whole workspace, with 4 seats, a shared email inbox and $5 of AI credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations. Essentials is $95, with 10 seats, $25 of credits, a knowledge base, an AI chatbot and WhatsApp, Instagram and SMS in the inbox. Plus is $295, with 20+ seats, $75 of credits, ticketing, and removal of the “We run on Crisp” mark.

The page lists monthly prices only, and says yearly billing is switched on in the app once you’ve subscribed. Every plan can be tried free for 14 days, and Crisp doesn’t limit the number of conversations. Hugo is its AI agent, and the included credits pay for the AI. Crisp alternatives looks at Crisp from the other side. It suits a small team that fits inside a plan’s seats and wants one flat monthly price.

Which Freshdesk alternative fits you

It depends on whether you’re replacing a helpdesk or trying not to need one.

If you want Freshdesk’s kind of helpdesk with chat and phone in the same plan, Zendesk is the closest match. If the budget is tight, Zoho Desk starts lower and has a free edition with no end date. If your team works from email, Help Scout and Front are built around a shared inbox, and Help Scout lets a small team start free. If your company already runs on HubSpot, Service Hub keeps support in the same CRM. If your customers reach you by chat in the product, Intercom leads with it, and Fin can even run on top of Freshdesk if you stay. If you want one flat price for a small team, Crisp charges by the workspace. If you’re choosing a first tool rather than leaving Freshdesk, the best customer service software for startups ranks eleven for a small team. If you’re leaving Freshchat, Freshworks’ live chat, rather than Freshdesk, Freshchat alternatives compares eight tools that replace it.

If you’re a founder answering support yourself, you may not need a helpdesk at all. Deacon answers your customers from your docs in seconds, emails you when a visitor asks for a person or leaves an address, and shows you what customers are stuck on and what they want next. It’s free to start, with no card.

Questions about Freshdesk alternatives

Is there a free alternative to Freshdesk?

Yes. Zoho Desk and Crisp both mark their free plans Free Forever, unlike Freshdesk’s six-month Free Program. Zoho Desk’s free edition gives 3 users email ticketing, Help Scout’s free plan covers up to 5 users and 100 contacts a month, HubSpot’s free tools cover 2 users, and Crisp’s free plan gives 2 seats and a chat widget. Their AI agents start on paid plans. Deacon’s free plan includes its AI agent, with 50 answers a month and every feature, but it isn’t a helpdesk. Free ticketing systems compares the free helpdesks in more detail.

What’s the cheapest Freshdesk alternative?

On a paid plan, Zoho Desk’s Express is $7 a user a month billed yearly, or $9 monthly, and HubSpot’s Service Hub Starter is $7 a seat billed yearly, or $10 monthly. Both are below Freshdesk’s Growth at $19. Crisp’s Mini is $45 a month for 4 seats, so about $11 a seat once all four are used. Their AI works differently on each. Zoho includes up to 30 million free tokens a month on Express, Crisp includes $5 of credits on Mini, and HubSpot’s customer agent starts on Professional.

Can I move my tickets from Freshdesk?

Of the pricing pages we read, only Zoho Desk’s offers help with the move, with its own experts guiding the data migration for free. For the others, try an import during the trial before you commit. Deacon doesn’t import tickets, because it has no ticketing. It learns from your pages, files and text instead, so a public Freshdesk help centre can be added like any other website, or article by article as links.

Is Deacon a helpdesk?

No. Deacon is an AI customer support agent that answers on your website. It has no ticketing, email inbox, routing, service levels, phone or social channels, and no helpdesk integrations. You can run it beside Freshdesk as a separate tool, but there’s no connection between them, so a visitor Deacon can’t help doesn’t become a Freshdesk ticket. Instead you get an email if they leave an address or ask for a person, and you reply from Deacon’s dashboard.