Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Freshdesk vs IBM Watson Customer Experience Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk
Ranking in Customer Experience Management
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (5th), Knowledge Management Software (5th)
IBM Watson Customer Experie...
Ranking in Customer Experience Management
13th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Customer Data Analysis (2nd), Web Analytics (32nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Customer Experience Management category, the mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.0%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Customer Experience Analytics is 1.9%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Customer Experience Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Freshdesk3.0%
IBM Watson Customer Experience Analytics1.9%
Other95.1%
Customer Experience Management
 

Featured Reviews

Bharanidharan K - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly interface but needs enhancement in ticket tracking and response times
There is no room for improvement in Freshdesk. We can set a time period for particular employees as something that could be better. For example, if some new employees are unfamiliar with Freshdesk, it should be more user-friendly. They need to give shortcut keys to use the ticketing portal. If some users don't know how to generate a ticket, providing them with a help desk or tutorial portal would be useful for the end-user.
MC
Great granular DOM level with excellent analytics and reporting
There are three valuable areas: One of them is the granular DOM level where it captures behaviors on the application. Another is the analytics, because you don't need to provide it with a rule to identify the issues, it will analyze the usage of all the customers accessing that site and see if there are any abnormalities and it will identify unexpected changes in the pattern and that there is something wrong that needs to be checked out. That is extremely useful. Finally, the ability to create meaningful reports and dashboards to tell stories. The reports enable you to re-target customers if they've had any problems.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like that it's very user-friendly. The way they designed this application, any layperson can just do some drag and drop actions and use it. It's not that difficult. It's also easy to implement. The most important thing is, you don't need to go to this application to create a ticket. You just send out an email, and the ticket is created automatically. I have never seen a feature like this before."
"The ticketing system is smooth, but since we use a free version, we do not have many facilities available."
"Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost."
"I used Freshdesk for communication with the clients, such as real-time chats."
"The user experience on the platform itself is fantastic. The UI is clean and uncluttered, so it's easy to find any information about your customer or the issue at hand. You can find out the person responsible for that particular issue, what the problem is, who the stakeholders are, and how to resolve it. There are lots of tools that will help you do that as well."
"It's free of charge for us. For our scale of business, it's very important. We don't have a lot of tickets."
"The most valuable features of Freshdesk that I have found useful are the quick and automated customer handling that uses AI and self-service options along with collaboration tools, which I plug into Slack, allowing my developer team to know directly what errors come from the main core of our website."
"It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."
"The ability to create meaningful reports and dashboards to tell stories."
 

Cons

"Sometimes our requirements are not matched with Freshdesk's free version as most of the advanced features are not available to us."
"While it's good for a small number of tickets, definitely in the future, we will require something more powerful."
"If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form."
"Freshdesk could improve its capabilities. It's missing the article formatting, and the overall look and feel make it not easy to use. The administration instructions on how to manage the automation, capability, and integration with third parties, such as chat or bots, are very important in these types of solutions."
"I would like a better integration towards Azure DevOps. The current integration is more complicated and doesn’t work as well."
"With the advancements in AI now, I will say Freshdesk should consider integrating more AI, but so far, I am satisfied with every single feature."
"I would like to see improvements in the account management aspect, having a customer portal for better visibility into my subscription, invoices, and trouble tickets."
"There aren't any features that we want to enhance, but we need to mature in our usage of some of them. I can't say any feature is missing or needs improvement, but a tool's built-in features need to evolve customer feedback. We have a dialogue set up for that kind of feedback."
"The technical side requires development skills during implementation. This could be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay approximately $70 per agent to use Freshdesk. We have 10 agents, which is approximately $700 or $800 per month. It is a fixed license, there are not any additional fees."
"It is costly."
"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
"The best system plan is enterprise. It costs basically 79 Euros per agent per month when it's billed annually and 95 Euros per agent per month when it's billed monthly."
"The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."
"We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Customer Experience Management solutions are best for your needs.
869,160 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Freshdesk?
Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.
What needs improvement with Freshdesk?
With the advancements in AI now, I will say Freshdesk should consider integrating more AI, but so far, I am satisfied with every single feature.
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
As a customer success manager for over six years, I can sum up the benefits I've seen from using Freshdesk: it has played a huge role in ensuring that my customers stay happy, and happiness means d...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Coremetrics Digital Marketing Optimization aSuite, IBM Tealeaf, IBM Coremetrics Web Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
IMM, Whogohost Ltd., Stonyfield, Grupo WTW, Big Scary Cranium, Brockenhurst College, SiteMinis, RCI Banque Espana
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qualtrics, Genesys and others in Customer Experience Management. Updated: September 2025.
869,160 professionals have used our research since 2012.