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Freshdesk vs Intercom Customer Communications Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (4th), Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (7th), Knowledge Management Software (5th)
Intercom Customer Communica...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (12th), CRM (29th), Social CRM (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Customer Relationship Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Freshdesk is designed for Customer Experience Management and holds a mindshare of 5.4%, up 4.6% compared to last year.
Intercom Customer Communications Platform, on the other hand, focuses on CRM Customer Engagement Centers, holds 0.5% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.
Customer Experience Management
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

Alexey Timchenko - PeerSpot reviewer
Incredibly user-friendly, flexible, and affordable
Automation and ticket routing rules in Freshdesk save us daily by streamlining routine tasks. We use reports to identify issues, allocate resources, and continuously improve our processes. It is a vital part of our daily operations, helping us stay proactive and efficient in handling various types of tickets. The reporting and analytics tools in Freshdesk are effective for measuring customer service performance. While our current subscription level has some limitations in terms of reporting, the next level provides more options. Budget constraints currently prevent us from upgrading, but the available reporting features still meet our basic needs. I highly recommend Freshdesk, especially for companies in their early stages. It is user-friendly, easy to configure, and great for those with a moderate volume of customer requests. The cost is reasonable, making it a quick and efficient solution to implement. Overall, I would rate Freshdesk as an eight out of ten.
Karan-Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
A good tool that can be used to capture inbound leads and manage all customer interactions
Sometimes, the solution lags and takes time to update something. If I put a specific tag on an inbound lead, it would take around five minutes for that tag to reflect throughout the solution for all the users. If my colleague and I are using the solution simultaneously and I create a tag for a specific lead, then that tag would not be visible to my colleague for about three to four minutes. Since the solution is great at capturing leads and giving me an overview of all the people interacting with our platform, I would love to see a CRM structure created. We can create a pipeline in the solution itself, and then it can give us that CRM experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is the option to create different roles for specific users. We make use of groups for each customer service team which has been very effective. We are able to apply different sets of rules for each group which determines how they interact with customers and escalate issues."
"Freshdesk's requirement for appending resolution details before allowing ticket closure ensures the automatic creation of a knowledge base."
"Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost."
"The UI is easy to use."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the way that it connects to various folders especially because we use it as a CRM tool. We can connect it with our phones and our chat, and also with the API and have it as an email service. Freshdesk just makes our life easier."
"Freshdesk provides a plain vanilla solution, making it user-friendly and less complex."
"Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour."
"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 live chat is pretty good because you can create a macro, which is a predefined input we can give customers."
 

Cons

"I would like a better integration towards Azure DevOps. The current integration is more complicated and doesn’t work as well."
"I would like to see a little bit more color in the solution."
"I would like to be able to change the subject in emails for ourselves. If we could have the option to do that, it would improve our speed and the overall cleanliness of the CRM."
"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."
"I would like on-the-go translation,"
"The reporting, analysis modules and insights capabilities for this solution could be improved."
"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."
"While it's good for a small number of tickets, definitely in the future, we will require something more powerful."
"Sometimes, the solution lags and takes time to update something."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."
"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."
"It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."
"It is costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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?
I would like a better integration towards Azure DevOps. The current integration is more complicated and doesn’t work as well. There's not a really good one for Jira, which we are also using.
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
I mainly use Freshdesk as a support system for our customers.
What do you like most about Intercom Customer Communications Platform?
The live chat is pretty good because you can create a macro, which is a predefined input we can give customers.
What needs improvement with Intercom Customer Communications Platform?
Sometimes, the solution lags and takes time to update something. If I put a specific tag on an inbound lead, it would take around five minutes for that tag to reflect throughout the solution for al...
What is your primary use case for Intercom Customer Communications Platform?
We use the solution to capture leads and interact with them. Our company manages all the customer interactions through the solution.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
Intercom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
Expensift, Moz, Invision, Salesforce, Droplr, Vend, BugHerd, Ghost, Put.io, Codeship
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