Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Freshdesk VS Flarum

Compare Freshdesk VS Flarum and see what are their differences

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Freshdesk logo Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software that lets you support customers through traditional channels like phone and email, social channels like Facebook and Twitter, and your own branded community

Flarum logo Flarum

Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.
  • Freshdesk Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-28
  • Flarum Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-27

Freshdesk features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Freshdesk features an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface, making it accessible for users of all technical skill levels. The streamlined design helps improve productivity and reduces the time needed for training.
  • Comprehensive Feature Set
    Freshdesk offers a wide range of features including ticketing, automation, analytics, and integrations. These tools help businesses manage their customer support operations efficiently.
  • Multi-Channel Support
    Freshdesk supports various communication channels such as email, phone, chat, social media, and more, enabling businesses to provide seamless customer service across multiple platforms.
  • Customizable
    The platform allows for a high degree of customization, enabling businesses to tailor the software to fit their specific needs with custom workflows, fields, and rules.
  • Scalability
    Freshdesk is suitable for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. Its scalable nature means you can add more features and functionalities as your business grows.
  • Reliable Support
    Freshdesk offers reliable customer support to its users. Support channels include live chat, email, and a comprehensive knowledge base, ensuring issues are resolved promptly.

Flarum features and specs

  • Modern Design
    Flarum features a sleek, user-friendly interface designed for modern web aesthetics and accessibility. This makes it appealing and easy to use for community members.
  • Extensibility
    Flarum is highly extensible with a robust plugin system, allowing users to customize and expand its functionalities via extensions created by the community or custom-developed.
  • Fast Performance
    Built with performance in mind, Flarum is lightweight and optimized for speed, ensuring a smooth user experience.
  • Mobile Friendly
    Flarum is fully responsive, allowing for seamless use across various devices, including tablets and smartphones.
  • Open Source
    Flarum is an open-source project, which means you can contribute to its development, audit its code, and use it without licensing fees.

Possible disadvantages of Flarum

  • Early Development Stage
    Flarum is still relatively new and in continuous development, which might mean encountering occasional bugs or missing features that are available in more mature platforms.
  • Limited Documentation
    Documentation is still growing, and there may be gaps that can make it challenging for new users or developers to fully utilize all features or develop new extensions.
  • Smaller Community
    Compared to more established forum software, Flarum has a smaller user and developer community, which can result in fewer available resources, themes, and extensions.
  • Hosting Requirements
    Flarum requires a modern hosting environment with PHP and Composer support, which might not be available with all web hosts and can complicate the setup process for non-technical users.
  • Learning Curve
    Due to its modern architecture and use of Composer for extensions, there is a steeper learning curve for users unfamiliar with these technologies.

Analysis of Freshdesk

Overall verdict

  • Freshdesk by Freshworks is considered a good customer support software by many users.

Why this product is good

  • User-Friendly Interface: Freshdesk offers an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface that simplifies customer support management.
  • Scalability: It provides solutions suitable for small businesses to larger enterprises, offering scalability as business needs grow.
  • Rich Features: The software comes with a wide array of features such as ticketing, automated workflow, self-service portals, and multi-channel communication.
  • Integration Capabilities: Freshdesk integrates seamlessly with a variety of third-party applications, enhancing its functionality and adaptability.
  • Affordability: Compared to other customer support platforms, Freshdesk offers competitive pricing with a range of plans to suit different budgets.
  • Positive Customer Reviews: Many users highlight Freshdesk’s customer support and consistent performance as strong points.

Recommended for

  • Small to Medium-sized Businesses: Due to its cost-effectiveness and scalability, Freshdesk is well-suited for SMEs.
  • Customer Support Teams: For teams aiming to streamline their support operations with a reliable ticketing system.
  • Businesses Requiring Multi-Channel Support: Companies that need to manage inquiries from multiple communication channels efficiently.
  • Startups: Offers the necessary tools without overwhelming complexity, making it ideal for growing teams.

Analysis of Flarum

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Flarum is considered a good forum software by many users.

Why this product is good

  • Flarum is praised for its simplicity, modern interface, and lightweight design. It offers a smooth and fast user experience, and its extensible architecture allows for easy customization through plugins. The open-source nature ensures that the community can contribute to its development, continually improving the platform.

Recommended for

  • Communities looking for a modern and sleek forum solution
  • Developers who want a customizable and extensible platform
  • Organizations seeking a community-driven, open-source solution
  • Users who prefer lightweight and fast-loading web applications

Freshdesk videos

Best Free Helpdesk Ticket System - Freshdesk Setup Tutorial, How I Use It, Why You Should....

More videos:

  • Demo - Freshdesk Mint Demo: Understanding the basics of the helpdesk
  • Review - Freshdesk Mint Overview
  • Review - Freshdesk Review: Is It Good?
  • Review - Freshdesk vs Zendesk: Choosing Between the Leaders on the Market
  • Review - Freshdesk Review: Client Friendly Ticketing System
  • Review - Freshdesk Review 2022 | Best Customer Service Software
  • Review - Freshdesk Review

Flarum videos

How to Install Flarum Extensions to Super-Charge Forum?

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Custom pages that open modals and discussion composer (Flarum beta7 extension tutorial)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Freshdesk and Flarum)
Customer Support
100 100%
0% 0
Forums And Forum Software
Help Desk
100 100%
0% 0
Forums
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Freshdesk and Flarum. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Freshdesk and Flarum

Freshdesk Reviews

  1. Brian Howard
    · Owner at BarSight ·
    Does what it says on the box

    Freshdesk provides a free helpdesk system so we can manage our support tickets. They have the feature that allows us to send emails through our own email address (vs using their own email address), and an app that works well to respond and organize tickets.

    My biggest gripe with the service is that they are missing a feature that HelpScout has, where we can reply directly to the notification email and that reply gets sent to the customer. With freshdesk, we have to log into their portal or use the app in order to send a reply.

    🏁 Competitors: HelpScout, Zendesk
    👍 Pros:    Straightforward|Free basic plan
    👎 Cons:    Missing a feature

9 Best Tidio Alternatives Compared
Freshdesk, like Tidio, focuses on delivering efficient customer support solutions with a mix of automation and real-time interaction features. This platform provides a comprehensive help desk with multichannel support, including email, phone, chat, and social media, along with advanced ticketing systems and workflow automation.
Source: www.tidio.com
10 Best Freshdesk Alternatives for Businesses in 2024
Certainly, Freshdesk can prove beneficial for specific businesses, but it may not be suitable for everyone. The extensive list of features, while initially appealing, presents a major challenge, as most teams only utilize a handful of specialized capabilities, rendering the rest unnecessary.
Top 11 Freshdesk Alternatives for 2024 (Ranked & Rated)
If you’re in the market for help desk software, you’ve probably heard of Freshdesk — or maybe you’re already using it. Whatever the case, you might not be aware of how Freshdesk’s competitors compare.
Top 13 Freshdesk alternatives and competitors for 2024
Freshworks offers a suite of cloud-based tools that includes Freshdesk, its customer support software. Freshdesk allows businesses to manage customer requests and handle issues with its ticketing system. It supports multiple channels, like email, phone, and chat. Teams can automate ticket assignments and set automatic email notifications to notify customers of changes to...
Source: www.zendesk.com
alternatives to Tawk.to - Tiledesk Free Live Chat
Freshdesk is a powerful customer service software that offers Freshchat. It is among the best alternatives to Tawk.to, which provides other tools too, and indeed it is an all-inclusive tool in the customer service industry. Like Tawk.to, it doesn’t support on-premise and is not open-source, but it supports automation and many helpful integrations like WhatsApp and Facebook...
Source: tiledesk.com

Flarum Reviews

  1. GraceyMartin
    · employ at Digital Marketing ·
    BPM Counter

    BPM Counter analyzes the tempo of incoming audio in beats per minute (bpm). The detection circuit looks for any transients, also known as impulses, in the input signal. Transients are very fast, nonperiodic sound events in the attack portion of the signal. The more obvious this impulse is, the easier it is for BPM Counter to detect the tempo.


IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Flarum should be more popular than Freshdesk. It has been mentiond 37 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Freshdesk mentions (12)

  • Moog support?
    When I click on it and try to view my ticket it asks me to log in, but then tells me my email and password are incorrect, I can log into Moog music just fine....and NOT freshdesk.com. Source: over 1 year ago
  • CMS with ticketing support
    What I suggest is using freshdesk.com. It's free for some of the base needs such as automatically creating ticket when people email as support email, giving clients a portal to fill out what you want them to fill out which creates a ticket, automatically notifies people on your team (up to 10) and allows you to create departments and emails them when a ticket is assigned to that department, reply via email allows... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Need help picking a ticketing system
    Freshdesk (Free up to a certain number of users): Offers ticketing and knowledge base. Link. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Beware, read carefully and make conclusions
    Since Freewallet is a quite small company they outsource their "support" from this Indian startup the communication is quite complicated. If the company doesn't want to spend more money in order to hire a good support engineer, and instead prefers to save some money by going offshore. Then this companies' customers swill suffer. Source: over 2 years ago
  • What Ticket Systems do ya'll use?
    We use Freshdesk from Freshworks. Works great for us. No real complaints. Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

Flarum mentions (37)

  • Looking for the best forum software to start a new forum community in 2025
    Flarum is great [1]. Looks good, works on mobile, continuously updated. Try it out. Edit: Oh wow, downvoted for posting a good recommendation? 1: https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Ask HN: User communities that aren't Discord?
    Flarum is a really nice open source forum https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Stop Using Discord
    Load quicker than Discourse and feel snappy. [0]: https://flarum.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum
    From a user perspective I really like Flarum https://flarum.org/ Some example forums that use flarum: Flarum itself: https://discuss.flarum.org/ GrapheneOS: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/ Kagi and Orion: https://kagifeedback.org/ https://orionfeedback.org/ Mailcow: https://community.mailcow.email/ Many more can be found here: https://builtwithflarum.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Introducing the new Godot Forum
    Nice! I kinda wish they went with https://flarum.org/ instead of discourse, though. I think Flarum is the better forum software and it is also open source. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Freshdesk and Flarum, you can also consider the following products

Zendesk - Zendesk is a beautiful, lightweight help-desk solution.

Discourse - Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

LiveAgent - LiveAgent is a fully-featured web-based live chat and help desk software. It harnesses the power of a universal inbox, real-time live chat, built-in call center, and a robust customer service portal. Start your free 1 month trial today!

XenForo - Intuitive. Social. Engaging. Fast. XenForo brings a fresh outlook to forum software.

Intercom - Intercom is a customer relationship management and messaging tool for web businesses. Build relationships with users to create loyal customers.

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.