Freshservice vs Kayako comparison

Freshworks and Kayako are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. Freshworks is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while Kayako is ranked #62. Freshworks holds a 3.9% mindshare in HDS, compared to Kayako’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Freshworks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Kayako users who would recommend it.

Freshservice

Read 40 Freshservice reviews

4,141 Views
2,236 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Kayako

Read 1 Kayako review

261 Views
251 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Freshservice

Kayako

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Freshservice and Kayako based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in Help Desk Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Help Desk Software Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

March 2026

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Helped 885,444 peers since 2012

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

Freshservice

Ranking in Help Desk Software

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Project Management Software (10th), Cloud Management (12th), IT Asset Management (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (4th), Configuration Management Databases (5th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (8th), AI IT Support (3rd)

Kayako

Ranking in Help Desk Software

62nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Shared Inbox (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of Freshservice is 3.9%, up from 3.6% 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 Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Freshservice	3.9%
Kayako	0.4%
Other	95.7%

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Raja Farrar

IT Service Delivery Manager at Symposiam

Automation and AI have transformed our service delivery and have made IT support faster and more efficient

I always keep up with Freshservice's roadmaps and new features. Freshservice has been very good at listening to feedback and adding those feature requests into their next iterations. I wish they would offer more granular data export options for utilizing in Power BI, along with predictive analytics for capacity planning and SLA breaches to enable more proactive support management and reduce firefighting. While the dashboards are effective, some users find custom reporting limited compared to ServiceNow or Jira. I would also appreciate deeper integrations, especially for niche apps requiring development coding work to enable advanced orchestration. Native integrations for DevOps pipelines such as GitHub Actions and Jenkins, along with stronger API flexibility for complex workflows, would enhance functionality. Although the CMDB and asset management are solid, they do lack advanced dependency mapping compared to other enterprise tools. My wishlist includes automated impact analysis for changes and improved visualization of asset relationships, enabling quicker resolutions from an agent's perspective when alerts come in. I acknowledge that Device42 may enhance this, but it is an extra cost beyond what we already pay. While Freddy AI is excellent for triage and suggestions, some users desire more proactive automation, such as predictive ticket routing based on historical patterns and AI-driven capacity forecasting. Lastly, the pricing tiers might seem rigid for mid-sized teams, so a more granular add-on option for features such as Device42 or pay-per-use for orchestration workflows could be beneficial.

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reviewer1712472

Operations and Support Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The portal is straightforward for the end-user, but that's not the best part of Freshservice; integration is the part that's interesting because it's easy to set up a process, it's extremely simple to integrate, and in one week, you can add change management, which is incredible."

"The solution has been very helpful engineering insights into the client's environment. We have been able to manage calls and incidence very efficiently which provides us with a clear understanding of the system warranty and the actions that we might need to take in terms of insights. The system is very dynamic and prevents any kind of over sides which is yours that there is smooth contract management. Also we can easily uphold SLAs and deliver enhanced services without breaching any agreements."

"One of the key benefits of Freshservice is license management."

"There is a nice user interface."

"It allows for customization and offers a broad feature set."

"Its ease of use is fantastic. It is just above and beyond, especially when you compare it to something like Cherwell, Salesforce, or anything like that. It is on its own level. It is so easy to administer. The way everything is organized and the way it builds its own documentation is very good."

"We found the initial setup to be very simple."

"The overall functionality of the product is excellent."

More Freshservice pros

"The most valuable feature of Kayako is its flexibility, as we can do anything we want with it, which is nice."

"The most valuable feature of Kayako is its flexibility. We can do anything we want with it, which is nice."

Cons

"There is a need for improvement in terms of automatic escalation to the next level if an issue is not resolved."

"The ability to customize the user interface is a bit lacking, and the reporting is a bit lacking because they're very stringent upon what you can pull reporting-wise within Freshservice. They have a lot of built-in reports that are very nice, but when it comes to customizing these, they just provide you with certain data. When you try to build your own report wizard, you aren't able to go and select some of the data that is shown in some of the reports that come with Freshservice. This is something that we have brought up with our account representative, and we have suggested these as feature updates in the future. We're still waiting on them to go and implement something like that."

"I experienced some delay in response time for non-function critical queries."

"There are some limitations in reporting. For example, I would like to have a report of conversations or replies."

"Currently, we can have only one plan per subscription. All users have to be on the same plan."

"The product should look at BCM or ServiceNow and see if there are features that would make nice additions. It would help them stay competitive."

"There is room for improvement in reporting for project management."

"We'd like to see a CMDB, a Configuration Management Database, in the future."

More Freshservice cons

"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

"Freshservice is a fairly cheap solution. Though monthly payments can be made towards the licensing costs of the solution, my company prefers to make annual payments."

"It was a middle tier. It wasn't an expensive one. It was a tier model usage. Licensing costs varied between admin users and regular users."

"The solution has an annual licensing model."

"Freshservice price is competitive, it is not more than other solutions on the market."

"One of the key benefits of Freshservice is license management. Asset management has the possibility to keep track of licenses and that's very useful. The price of the solution is very good."

"There are some additional costs but not that many. For example, we have unlimited assets, which is something for which we pay extra. We also paid for additional orchestration. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. They are right in the middle."

"The cost at the current timing is very reasonable but as the product gains popularity, I anticipate it might become expensive. Fortunately my customers have been offered a generous discount making it more affordable for me and satisfying both my needs and customers requirement."

"Compared to other tools, Freshservice is affordable."

More Freshservice pricing and cost advice

"Kayako is a highly affordable solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Educational Organization

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	15

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Freshservice?

I do not have any experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, as it was assigned to the infrastructure team.

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What needs improvement with Freshservice?

Freshservice has an AI agent that needs improvement for finding knowledge base articles. When issues or incidents are received in Freshservice, new users should be able to receive direct help from ...

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What is your primary use case for Freshservice?

Freshservice is used to redirect ticket handling and acknowledge tickets and incidents received. Tickets are redirected with their short description and subject line in Freshservice, which allows f...

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Comparisons

ServiceNow vs Freshservice

Compared 16% of the time

Zendesk vs Freshservice

Compared 9% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs Freshservice

Compared 7% of the time

Device42 vs Freshservice

Compared 5% of the time

Samanage vs Freshservice

Compared 4% of the time

More Freshservice Competitors

JIRA Service Management vs Kayako

Compared 52% of the time

ServiceNow vs Kayako

Compared 48% of the time

More Kayako Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Freshservice

March 2026

Download Freshservice product report

Buyer's Guide

Help Desk Software

March 2026

Download Kayako product report

Also Known As

Flint

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Overview

Freshservice is an intelligent, cloud-native service management solution. It provides efficiency and agility through AI to create a contextual and intelligent experience. The solution also empowers employees to work whenever and wherever they need to work. Freshservice powers integrations and workflows at the enterprise scale, building upon an open platform and marketplace with connectors and APIs that you can extend and customize.

Freshservice Features

Freshservice has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

ITIL-aligned processes
Intelligent AI/ML capabilities
Advanced CSAT
Extensible platform
Self-service portal
Smart automations
Service catalog
Effective monitoring and alerting
Out-of-box analytics
Mobile app
Marketplace apps

Freshservice Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Freshservice. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Intelligent service management and customized workflows: Freshservice offers powered bots, automation, and orchestration to help you make management more efficient and gives you the ability to customize all workflows.

Fast time-to-value: Freshservice’s out-of-the-box features help you quickly deploy it and enable easier adoption, at scale.

Minimizes downtime: Freshservice prevents critical issues by identifying the right alerts, collaborating with context, and delivering an enhanced end-user experience.

Extensible: The solution is extensible and allows organizations to access enterprise-scale tools to customize, integrate, and automate business workflows.

Support: Freshservice has 24/7 support so your issues can be addressed around-the-clock.

Boosts productivity: The Freshservice solution helps improve employee productivity. It helps you prioritize work better with real-time custom dashboards.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Freshservice solution.

A Senior Helpdesk at a non-profit says, “I like the workflow automation capabilities, where based upon certain actions, it will automatically go and route tickets to a particular person. It is fairly user-friendly.”

PeerSpot user Cesar Q., CIO at Grupo Kasto, mentions, “The analytics are very good. The solution offers very nice incident management. The overall functionality of the product is excellent. The change management is helpful. They have an agent that we installed in every single asset. We have the inventory for all assets automatically. Contract management is very valuable for us as an IT department, as we have the information for every single computer across the company. We are starting to use the project management aspects right now. We have different projects and we have all the information in the same solution, in the same place. It makes everything more centralized and easier to access. The user interface is very nice and the solution is easy to use. You don't need to be an expert in order to navigate around and use the product. You don't need to read a lot of manuals in order to figure everything out. It's pretty intuitive.”

A Network Analyst at a real estate/law firm shares, "We find its ability to track what's going on with each request very valuable. We are also able to merge ticket requests and assign them to different groups in the company. We have another department that uses the same system."

Freshworks

Kayako is a powerful customer service and support platform that gives your team the tools they need to communicate with customers across live chat, email, facebook and twitter.

Our approach brings every interaction your customer has with your business into Kayako and presents your agents with a comprehensive customer journey. This gives your team the context they need to immediately respond and support customers in a way that’s quick, accurate and personal.

Kayako is used by over 130,000 customer support pros in businesses of all sizes around the world, including Peugeot, NASA, Fedex, and GE.

Kayako

Sample Customers

Sinclair Broadcast Group, Western Carriers, Judson University, Golf Canada, Travix, Proxama, Paymentez, Ready Auto Transport

Toshiba Canada, Disney, Avast, Namecheap, Texas Tech University

Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, ManageEngine and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: March 2026.

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