Freshdesk

"Very solid help desk software"

Comments: I started as a free user and found it extremely versatile. My first hiccup was that, as a free user, when the advanced features that were included expired, they disabled my account. Instead of scaling it back it just went offline without warning. Once that was fixed we found an excellent way to continue with the free account until they implemented a "spam" update that invalidated all tickets sent to any email address except our main address. Again, this was done without warning and we were offline for 3 days. We have subscribed but it was done more out of necessity rather than being able to upgrade for full features.

Pros: I like the fact that it has a dedicated APP for mobile use, that I can use Email to respond to tickets, great search functionality as well

Cons: Interface could use an update to be more compact and show more information in a single screen. right now a ticket takes up pretty much every part of the display. Also, IOS app is slow on startup and refreshing

"Good Software, Bad Marketing. Bait-and-Switch (beware)"

Comments: While Freshdesk has a great UI, and is a feature-rich service, the truth behind the advertising leaves much to be desired. While their software is good, the pricing model isn't, and their marketing is intentional bait-and-switch. The features listed on each pricing tier are expanded upon here: freshdesk.com/features. Once you buy, and ask what's up, the support will tell you to upgrade for that feature, and link you to a page that isn't linked to from anywhere on their site: freshdesk.com/helpdesk-features, as justification. As an example, $15/agent/month includes, "SLA Management," which is described from their features page as including every SLA feature, including basic things like SLA email notifications, reminders, escalation policies. You know, what anyone would think of as "SLA Management." However, none of those features are actually included in that price plan. To even get email notifications of SLA violations, or have your SLA respect office hours, you'll have to pay $50/agent/month. Worse, there is no way to discover this until after you've paid and spent time getting everything set up.

Pros: Wonderful tracking and organization of emails and support issues, with a nice and clean UI, and simple tools to automate many support tasks.

Cons: Features listed as included in lower tiers on their pricing page, are not actually included until much higher tiers. See: https://freshdesk.com/helpdesk-features for the real breakdown. Freshdesk has no links to that page, and you'll only get it if you ask about a missing feature in their support portal.

"You're on your own"

Pros: The platform is relatively user friendly and has a sufficient number of features to work well.

Cons: Service is highly unreliable, and if something significant happens - don't expect Freshdesk to be available to help you. It can take 2-4 days to get a hold of someone EVEN IF YOU ARE FUNCTIONALLY SHUT DOWN. Here was our experience: We had been using Freshdesk for 3-4 years and were relative experts on our plan. We arranged to make a change to our Freshdesk plan to switch to a multi-product platform. We upgraded to a plan costing 7x our current cost per user and requested to speak with a Success Manager to plan to the changes. It took persistence and some time to get on the phone with someone. The person we got has had relatively low product knowledge, but escalated to a very competent product engineer fairly promptly. We confirmed our plan and attempted to implement independently after business hours. We were forced to initiate a backout plan when errors and unpredictable behaviour blocked our completion. Our backout plan partially failed and customers were impacted for 3 days before we were able to get anyone to help us. We heard a myriad of responses via email as to why a phone call was not possible from, "I am not working today" to "I will give you a call next week at your convenience" and "I will have XX get a hold of you to help" - but no call, no chat, no email Q&A -- radio silence. We got the message loud and clear 'you are not that important'. Be warned - if something go wrong, the documentation is very modest and don't necessarily expect help.

"Always there for me when I need them..."

Comments: The interface makes sense to use, and when I needed guidance, the Customer Support Team was SUPER QUICK to help me get to where I needed/wanted to be.

Pros: I did not come from a technical background, but setting up and deploying this software for all team members was a breeze!

Cons: It might actually have TOO many options, but that isn't really a bad thing.

"TMI-SSP (PTY) LTD"

Comments: Wonderful, I really like their 24hrs support system

Pros: With 5 years in business, we started seeing change in our revenues and employee behaviour in the last 2,5 years of using FRESHDESK. We stopped for sometime thinking maybe we could continue without these tools and a huge gap opened up thus we had to go back to the tried & tested.

Cons: Ease of business
Friendly Interface
Work Anywhere (App or Web)