The Most Comprehensive Comparison of Helpdesk Software for 2020

9 min readJan 29, 2020

It’s no secret that modern customers expect stellar and omnichannel support. In fact, 54% of all surveyed consumers say that they have higher customer service expectations than they did just one year ago.

Even though it can be challenging for businesses to meet those expectations, it’s definitely worth trying. Essentially, companies that excel at the customer experience are said to drive revenues 4% to 8% higher than those of their market — and it’s just one of the examples of how beneficial customer support can be. If done right, that is.

Fortunately, there are dedicated tools, such as helpdesk software, that make it possible to stay on track with customers’ requests across the channels, answer their queries, and resolve the issues encountered in a fast and effective manner. The question remains, though — how to choose the best helpdesk software for your needs?

Choosing the best helpdesk software for your needs

1. Take a closer look at the available features.

If you’ve been involved in customer service for a while now, you should already have a good grasp of specific needs and expectations that your customers have when it comes to the support offered. Make sure the software you choose can actually help you meet those needs and expectations — be it offering support via live chat, calls, or emails. If your tool doesn’t allow you to handle the channels that are popular among your customers, most likely it’s not the right one for you.

2. See whether it can be integrated with the tools you already have in place.

In order to provide outstanding support, you should always have all details and contact information updated and synchronised across systems. That’s precisely why system integration is important, and why you should choose the helpdesk software that can easily be integrated with other tools — especially if you’ve already been using them successfully.

3. Check how secure the tool is.

Nowadays, data security can’t be ignored. One way to ensure the security and privacy of your data is to use reliable, transparent tools. Make sure you can trust the software provider — after all, you will be managing a lot of customer data, and the way you handle it matters for everyone involved.

4. See the pricing and contract terms.

Every software provider has its own pricing model that’s likely to depend on the specific features and needs of your business. Make sure the chosen pricing package allows you to leverage all the features that you need and can be changed easily once your business grows.

5. Consider testing out at least a few alternatives.

Basically, no matter what features you wish to take advantage of — make sure you can test them all out during a free trial. Otherwise, you might end up with a helpdesk software that’s difficult to use.

To make it easier, we’ve gathered the most popular tools to help you make an informed choice.

Helpdesk software you might want to consider in 2020 (sorted alphabetically)

1. AzureDesk

AzureDesk is software suitable for any company. It offers all the “must-have” features: such as ticketing system to track support cases, sleek UI, as well as 3rd party integration with the most popular online tools. All these at affordable prices.

Customer type: Businesses of all shapes and sizes

Customer review: 4.5/5 * ( 48 reviews in Capterra)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $12/user/month

2. Dixa

Dixa is helpdesk software for customer-facing teams that unifies all communication channels and data in one platform. The platform employs smart routing and workflows powered by data and algorithms so the right conversations reach the right agents along with relevant customer data, insights, and sentiment to provide further context. Dixa’s user-friendly interface and a 360-degree view of the customer makes it easier for agents to deliver quicker, more personalized support for better customer experience. The browser-based software currently supports phone, live chat, email, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and SMS natively.

Customer type: Small Businesses, Mid-Market

Customer review: 4.2/5 * ( 230 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $99/user/month

3. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a full-service system that offers powerful solutions for customer service. It unifies all conversations from emails, phone calls, website, chats and social networks, and helps you resolve issues across channels effortlessly. Moreover, this software allows you to automate workflows, offer convenient self-service options, manage SLAs, and generate reports.

Customer type: Businesses of all shapes and sizes

Customer review: 4.5/5 * ( 2125 reviews in Capterra)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $15/user/month

4. Front

Front is an online tool that offers several useful features for handling your everyday communication. Thanks to Front, you can easily manage a high volume of email with shared inboxes for [email protected] and [email protected] addresses. This type of cloud-based app ensures that all your team members will have a better overview of what is happening across the team.

Customer type: Businesses of all shapes and sizes

Customer review: 4.6/5 * ( 197 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $9/user/month

5. HappyFox

HappyFox is a practical help desk solution that helps you provide multi-channel support for customer requests coming from your mailbox, website, phone and social media. It can be integrated with business applications for accounting, customer feedback, CRM, commerce, etc. Moreover, community forums and knowledge base help the customers provide instant support and connect with one another.

Customer type: Businesses of all shapes and sizes — especially IT, customer support, operations, facilities, HR, marketing, and finance teams.

Customer review: 4.6/5 * ( 114 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $29/user/month

6. Help Scout

Help Scout is a cloud-based software suitable for companies of all sizes. Thanks to the advanced features like in-class-reporting, integrated knowledge base, robust API, tons of integrations, and free iOS & Android app, you can keep your team members on the same page and help them focus on the most important part of your business — customers.

Customer type: Businesses of all shapes and sizes

Customer review: 4.3/5 * ( 182 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $12/user/month

7. Hiver

Hiver is an online tool which helps you manage customer support and sales right from your Gmail. It gives you everything you need to do outstanding customer support. Thanks to this software, teams can collaborate on Shared email accounts like [email protected] or [email protected] without having to leave their Gmail accounts.

Customer type: Companies using Gmail/G suite for work

Customer review: 4.5/5 * ( 223 reviews in G2)

Pricing: Starts from $14/user/month

8. Insided

The inSided online community platform was built to help you scale your customer support effortlessly. It helps you with self-service, retention, product adoption and advocacy so your customer support team can provide better and more personalized support in the long run

Customer type: Built mainly for B2B-software companies and telecom providers

Customer review: 4.2/5 * ( 15 reviews in G2)

Pricing: Starts from $900

9. Intercom

Intercom is a modern business messaging at scale. It allows you to build customer relationships with scalable messaging and to provide a more personal experience for your customers throughout their lifecycle. Moreover, it enables behavioural targeting to help you better understand, improve, and benefit from customer communication.

Customer type: Businesses of all shapes and sizes

Customer review: 4.3/5 * ( 887 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $38/user/month

10. Kustomer

Kustomer is an omnichannel platform which helps mid-market companies and enterprise to deliver standout experiences. It helps you increase satisfaction and loyalty by empowering agents to engage with customers in personalized, efficient, and effortless conversations.

Customer type: For mid-market and enterprise clients (especially involved in retail, healthcare, tech, logistics, wholesale, and transportation services).

Customer review: 4.4/5 * ( 100 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $99/user/month

11. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is fully packed cloud-based help desk software, that is affordable for both SMBs and large enterprise companies. It focuses on the combination of all channels your customers can reach you — good ol’s emails, chats, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Viber and Instagram and also built-in call center. It comes with more than 175 features included and offers you a Fresh start to your customer support.

Customer type: Small, medium-sized businesses and enterprise companies

Customer review: 4.5/5 * ( 1135 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, 40+ integrations available at the moment.

Pricing: Starts from $15/user/month

12. Zendesk Support

Zendesk is a smart and user-friendly app that simplifies customer support through its intuitive and time-saving features such as task automation and notification. It consists of a help desk, customer support, chat, call centre solution and knowledgebase modules that you can upgrade separately.

Customer type: Businesses of all shapes and sizes

Customer review: 4.4/5 * ( 2323 reviews in G2)

Tool integration: Yes, find all integration partners in the Marketplace.

Pricing: Starts from $9/user/month

Once you pick the best helpdesk software, you can easily browse available integrations and make sure you offer outstanding support across the channels. Speaking of — did you know that most of these tools can be integrated with CloudTalk? Feel free to take advantage of it!

Helpdesk Software that integrates with CloudTalk

If you’d like to connect your Helpdesk with a business phone system to make it easier for your customer support team to receive calls. Here’s a list of Helpdesk software that integrates natively with CloudTalk (including quick integration overview):

Zendesk — CloudTalk + Zendesk integration will help you deliver the highest level of customer care. This integration reduces wasted employees’ time on unnecessary tasks, so they have more time to take care of your customers.
Freshdesk — All customer-related data from both systems can be automatically synchronized and always up-to-date. Caller’s details before picking up the call, click to call feature, sync is done for deals, 2-way sync, tickets and contacts, etc.
- Integration and synchronization with CloudTalk is a perfect solution for customer support management. Your data will always be up-to-date, which means your agents can provide callers with a better experience (Calls, Notes, Contacts, Recordings, Tags).
LiveAgent — CloudTalk + LiveAgent integration allows you to get information on caller tickets and see recent call history directly in LiveAgent.
Intercom — Seamless integration with CloudTalk Live allows you to switch from a chat to a call and back without ever leaving your Intercom Messenger interface.
Front — Integrate CloudTalk with your Front helpdesk software and streamline communication between you and your customers thanks to advanced call routing, IVR, click to call or many other features.
Kustomer — CloudTalk integration with your Kustomer helpdesk software will give your agents an easy way to communicate with customers and real-time synchronize information between the 2 apps (Calls, Notes, Contacts, Recordings, Tags).
or connect with other 1500+ thanks to CloudTalk + Zapier integration.