Freshdesk vs Help Scout Comparison 2024: Which Is Better?

Your team’s ability to provide a top-tier customer experience heavily revolves around customer service software. 

In this article, we do a side-by-side Freshdesk vs Help Scout comparison, as these are two leading platforms for help desk, ticketing, self-service, and support analytics. Because not every business or user will be ready to shell out for a dedicated account manager, it is key to leverage great online tools to still provide the best customer support you can.

What is the difference between Freshdesk and Help Scout?

The main difference between Help Scout and Freshdesk is that Help Scout is a platform that emphasizes tools like a customer support shared inbox, a help center, and live chat, while Freshdesk, from Freshworks, positions itself as a more comprehensive customer service software solution, though they have overlapping features.

Of course, many other Freshdesk review and  Help Scout review articles are already circulating the web, and you might find reading those helpful. But the value this article aims to bring to you, dear reader, is the side-by-side comparison of their pricing, ease of use, customer service, and major tools.

Freshdesk vs Help Scout comparison chart

Check out this table for a quick overview.

Freshdesk vs Help Scout: Pricing

Freshdesk offers three pricing tiers for their customer support platform. The Growth plan is $18 per user per month, or $15 when billed annually. The Pro plan is $59 per user per month, or $49 billed annually. The Enterprise plan is $95 per user per month, or $79 billed annually. 

Now let's compare Freshdesk to Help Scout. Help Scout offers three pricing packages for their help desk software. The Standard plan costs $25 per use per month, or $20 when billed annually. 

The Plus plan costs $50 per user per month, or $40 paid annually. Finally, the Pro plan costs $65 per user per month billed annually, because you cannot get this plan on a monthly-payment basis. 

Winner: Freshdesk

The main reason why Freshdesk wins this category is because their lowest pricing tier is more affordable than that of Help Scout's, and their most premium is more expensive than Help Scout's, thereby offering more range. Plus, with Help Scout, you don't have the option for monthly payments on their most premium package.
 

Help Scout or Freshdesk: Free versions

Freshdesk offers users a free plan. It is good for up to ten agents. The free plan offers some basic tools like an email ticketing system, shared canned responses, a knowledge base builder, contact forms, as well as 24/7 email support from Freshdesk's customer service.

If we want to compare Help Scout to Freshdesk regarding free versions, there is nothing to compare, as Help Scout does not offer any free plan for their support system.

Winner: Freshdesk

Doing a software comparison between Help Scout or Freshdesk based on a free version is easy, as Freshdesk has one, Help Scout does not, which does not bode well for them regarding customer satisfaction. 
 

Freshdesk vs Help Scout: Support and knowledge base

Help Scout has an extensive resource of docs to help you use the platform, with categories like getting started, account management and productivity. You can also sign up for free training seminars. As for customer service, there is a support toolkit that you can subscribe to.

Freshdesk offers its users a community forum and knowledge base on all the plans, as well as 24/7 email customer support. All paid plans also get phone support, which is 24/5. The Pro and Enterprise plans get 24/5 chat support too. 

Winner: Freshdesk

This Help Scout vs Freshdesk comparison has determined that Freshdesk has more resources and services for its users who either want to help themselves or get support from a real agent.
 

Help Scout and Freshdesk: Ease of use

Help Scout scores very good points for being user-friendly. It has an intuitive interface, and easy-to-learn tools, and requires minimal hands-on experience to become very adept at all the different features.

Freshdesk also keeps it simple to help your team onboard and master the features, along with other things like customization options. Freshdesk agents can easily become help center pros in no time.

Winner: Help Scout

Different teams will have a customer experience on both the Help Scout and Freshdesk platform when it comes to ease of use. In the end, Help Scout allows your support team to get started slightly quicker than those using Freshdesk.

Help Scout vs Freshdesk features & functionality

These are the main tools and features we are going to compare:

• Help desk

• Self-service

• Desktop and online versions

• Reporting and analytics

• Workflows and automation

• Integrations
   

Help Scout vs Freshdesk: Help desk

Help Scout's help desk features revolve around their mailbox tools. Incoming conversation routing automatically delegates conversations to the right rep, as well as easily merge conversations. You can attach files to conversations in the inbox. There is an automated reply option. You can get browser notifications on Chrome, Safari or Firefox. 

Help Scout also offers live chat through their AI-powered assistance tool called Beacon, which can be embedded on your website. Reps will be kept in their lane by collision detection. Other useful tools include tags, notes, searching and webhooks that agents can access.

Moving on to Freshdesk's basic ticketing and help desk system. Support channels and their tools begin with email ticketing, which includes automatic email notifications, ticket merging, ticket splitting and ticket exporting, as well as good ticket activity tracking. You can customize ticket data like status or priority. 

Other inbound communication channels are more limiting here, with live chat being called Freshchat, made by the parent company, Freshworks. With Freddy AI, Freshdesk's AI-powered tool, you can get some basic functionality for chatbots. 

Winner: Help Scout

Most people understand that the best help desk system should offer multi-channel or omnichannel options like chat and phone support that allows your team to be reachable in as many ways as possible. Help Scout is slightly superior here with things like email and live chat, as well as for the ability to assign tickets to agents automatically.
 

Freshdesk or Help Scout: Self-service portal

Once we move beyond help desk ticketing support tools, we need to talk about self-service, whether as a way for users to get their own answers or to allow users to track and manage tickets through a portal. 

Freshdesk gives you a knowledge base builder where you categorize articles, automated solution suggestions, advanced article filtering and community forums. The Freshdesk customer portal toolkit is also great. You can customize it for the public or do complete portal customization.

Help Scout also caters to users who want good self-service and portal access. You can get a custom domain for their knowledge base, and it is mobile-friendly too. You can set up multi-language translations for your articles. 

The system also suggests related articles to users, and there is article versioning. For even better access, you get unlimited data, SEO optimization and highly advanced searching.

Winner: Freshdesk

This category is a close call. In the end, we give the award to Freshdesk. Their self-service tool helps you make a knowledge base and other self-service features to let users find answers to easier issues and other information you need.
 

Help Scout vs Freshdesk: Desktop and online versions

A lot of help desk support platforms offer web versions and fewer offer desktop versions. Help Scout, to begin, is purely a web-based app, meaning all your data is stored in their cloud, and you don't have to take care of things like updates, or managing your own servers. There are pros and cons to this, but most small businesses and medium-sized ones too prefer web-based SaaS.

Freshdesk is similar to Help Scout in this regard. There is no Freshdesk desktop version for you to download. Everything is in the cloud, and you can access the platform only via your web browser. But no worries, as both of these systems allow you to work offline if you ever need to, with all your changes synced up to the main system as soon as you are back online.

Winner: Tie

Both of these have web-based versions, but neither have desktop apps. Therefore, it's a draw. It should be noted, however, that both have good mobile apps.
 

Freshdesk and Help Scout: Reporting and analytics

Freshdesk analytics has a decent default reporting dashboard. It gives you good analytics on things like ticket volume trends, timesheet summaries, customer satisfaction, and agent and group performance. You can of course create custom reports, schedule reports automatically, save them and share them. 

With Help Scout, the API is public for you to create custom reports. You can set up advanced filtering on your data for more accurate analytics. There are also user-specific reports for more detailed information. Reports are easily exported to CSV or XLSX.

Winner: Freshdesk

Once again, Freshdesk wins, but Help Scout is very close behind when it comes to analytics and reporting.
 

Help Scout vs Freshdesk: Workflows and automation

Regarding automation, Help Scout has solid workflow tools. You can use workflows to filter emails, create custom folders, and automate other repetitive actions. Tags can also trigger workflow automations.

Freshdesk's workflow automation toolkit is very impressive. Ticket creation can trigger automations, You can also set up workflow triggers by time, or by event, or by custom status. Other great automations include a ticket load balance tool and skills-based ticket assignment. 

Winner: Freshdesk

You just get that much more customization and flexibility using Freshdesk's workflows and automations than you do with Help Scout.
 

Help Scout or Freshdesk: Integrations

Help Scout offers over 90 tools to integrate to their platform, with some examples coming from great names like Hubspot, Jira, and Salesforce if you need CRM functionality. You also have Slack, Pipedrive, and Shopify, to name a few. These are in-app integrations, so you don't need Zapier.

Freshdesk's featured native integrations include WhatsApp, Slack, Shopify, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams, to list some of them. Of course, if you want third-party integrations, there are always connecting tools like Zapier.

Winner: Tie

When you compare Freshdesk vs Help Scout for integrations, you will inevitably get a tie, although some may end up preferring one over the other. 

A note on Freshdesk Help Scout integration 

If you are looking for a Help Scout Freshdesk integration, you will need a third-party connector tool like Zapier or Workato.   

Is Freshdesk better than Help Scout? Our final takeaways

Surprise or not, Freshdesk takes the lead here. However, we must confess that many users will stick by their guns and swear Help Scout should have won. This was no easy race. 

Of course, Help Scout and Freshdesk are not the only options if you want a CRM ticketing system. Maybe you stand by a third option? But if not, we hope one of these two top help desk and self-service platforms will do the trick.