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Freshdesk vs Kayako 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
Ranking in Help Desk Software
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (4th), Field Service Management (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (4th)
Kayako
Ranking in Help Desk Software
51st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Shared Inbox (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Freshdesk is 3.0%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kayako is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Freshdesk3.0%
Kayako0.4%
Other96.6%
Help Desk Software
 

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.
reviewer1712472 - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, straightforward implementation, and helpful support
We are in the process of switching from Kayako to ManageEngine Desktop Central. We went through a full review of our service desk processing and one of the solutions we purchased was a ManageEngine Desktop Central. When we were looking at the integrations into the Kayako system and how it works, we found that ManageEngine Desktop Central did very similar things. It had better layers of classification, other templating, and additional features that we did not have with Kayako. Our service manager made the decision to switch at that time. My advice to others wanting to implement Kayako would be for them to plan out their service processes first, prior to trying to implement them in the tool. We made the mistake of jumping in too soon back 10 years ago. I started using it in a way that we could have tooled it in a different way to make it better. We could have had more implementation process information to make sure we received what we wanted to out of the solution. I rate Kayako an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We have made use of the training academy and the technical support team from Freshdesk. Both have been very good resources."
"The UI is easy to use."
"It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."
"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."
"Omnichannel is one of the most valuable features of the solution."
"Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost."
"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 feature of Kayako is its flexibility. We can do anything we want with it, which is nice."
 

Cons

"I would like to see a little bit more color in the solution."
"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."
"Having so many tags makes everyday work a lot more complicated, and a lot more time-consuming."
"It would be helpful to pull reports or schedule them based on agents, users, ticket numbers, or responses."
"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."
"An area for improvement in Freshdesk would be enabling all features regardless of company or user size."
"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."
"Some of the reporting in Kayako could be improved. It only has two levels of classification and if there were additional levels added for reporting purposes it would be awesome for our environment."
 

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."
"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."
"It is costly."
"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Educational Organization
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...
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Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
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