Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Freshdesk VS Intercom

Compare Freshdesk VS Intercom and see what are their differences

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

Intercom logo Intercom

Intercom is a customer relationship management and messaging tool for web businesses. Build relationships with users to create loyal customers.
  • Freshdesk Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-28
  • Intercom Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-05

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.

Intercom features and specs

  • User-friendly Interface
    Intercom offers an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, making it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise.
  • Comprehensive Customer Communication Tools
    It provides a suite of tools for live chat, email marketing, in-app messaging, and customer support, all of which can be accessed in one place.
  • Customization and Integration
    Intercom allows for extensive customization and integrates with various third-party applications, enabling businesses to tailor the platform to meet their specific needs.
  • Automation Capabilities
    The platform supports automated workflows, which can save time and ensure consistent customer interactions.
  • Customer Data Management
    Intercom collects and analyzes customer data, providing valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences that can inform business strategies.

Possible disadvantages of Intercom

  • Cost
    Intercom can be expensive, particularly for small businesses or startups. The pricing model is based on the number of users and features, which can add up quickly.
  • Complexity for Advanced Features
    While basic features are user-friendly, some of the more advanced functionalities can be complex and may require a steeper learning curve.
  • Limited Reporting
    The reporting and analytics features, while useful, are sometimes considered less comprehensive compared to specialized analytics platforms.
  • Customer Support
    Some users have reported that Intercom's own customer support can be slow to respond, which can be frustrating when dealing with urgent issues.
  • Notification Overload
    The platform can generate a high volume of notifications, which can be overwhelming and may require careful management to avoid interrupting workflow.

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

Intercom videos

Intercom Review & Tutorial - How to Use Intercom for Websites

More videos:

  • Review - Intercom Software Review, Engage, Respond, Educate
  • Review - BTI V6 1200m Bluetooth & Intercom Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Freshdesk and Intercom)
Customer Support
44 44%
56% 56
Help Desk
61 61%
39% 39
CRM
0 0%
100% 100
Customer Service
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

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

Intercom Reviews

  1. Eleanor Bennett
    · Digital Marketing Specialist at Logit.io ·
    An essential communication tool

    Intercom provides a lot of value to us. From live chat to email marketing and even helping us to create support documentation, Intercom handles a lot of key moving parts that are essential to keeping customers happy.


9 Best Tidio Alternatives Compared
Intercom is a customer engagement platform that serves mostly large and enterprise businesses. The software is known for its versatility, offering live chat, messaging, and in-app support, combined with advanced automation, AI bots, and customer data tracking.
Source: www.tidio.com
10 Best Freshdesk Alternatives for Businesses in 2024
Intercom is an alternative that excels in self-service support. It enables businesses to communicate and engage with their customers in real-time.
Top 11 Freshdesk Alternatives for 2024 (Ranked & Rated)
Intercom provides a useful suite of tools designed to improve your customer engagement. As a Freshdesk alternative, Intercom ticks several boxes when it comes to features:
9 Best ManyChat Alternatives & Competitors in 2024
Intercom’s main features are its helpdesk interfaces and chatbots. But it also includes lead qualification and nurturing functionalities. It offers product tours and resolution bots that can solve many customer concerns at once, freeing your reps’ time for the most complex queries. You can also make use of its Messenger integration and a provided chatbot to improve your...
Source: www.tidio.com
Top 13 Freshdesk alternatives and competitors for 2024
Intercom offers customer service software while also extending its platform to marketing and sales. Intercom is a newer platform to the CX market and has adopted AI and automation capabilities to keep up with business trends. Intercom features Intercom Messenger, a communication tool that provides customers with self-service or live support options.
Source: www.zendesk.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Freshdesk should be more popular than Intercom. It has been mentiond 12 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

Intercom mentions (7)

  • Enhancing Customer Support with a Live Chat Widget on Your Website
    Intercom: Famous for its conversational marketing focus, Intercom’s live chat widget offers features like proactive messaging and lead qualification. It also supports deep personalization for enhanced customer engagement. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • I started affiliate marketing, but with a twist
    Use chatbots to automate customer service: Chatbots use natural language processing to communicate with customers and answer their questions. By integrating chatbots into your affiliate marketing strategy, you can automate customer service and increase engagement with potential customers. This can lead to more sales and higher commissions. (Crisp, Intercom). Source: about 2 years ago
  • How to embed a web application into another website via API?
    I am trying to create an application that will work on a customer's website. Much like tawk.to or intercom.com. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Here's how I'd figure out the go-to-market for a Customer Support SaaS
    My way of doing marketing starts with figuring out what my overall project will (or will not) be. In this case, I looked at the vendors like Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, or Help Scout. They all have whizbang features such as live-chat, collaboration stuffs, automations and workflows. They bill per contact and addons. I’d emphasize a straightforward, fuss-free angle instead. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Chat widget with react.js
    I wanted to know the best practices of developing a widget. So I went through the popular implementations of it. I liked Intercom's widget very much. It is written in React. I analyzed how it works. The minimal javascript is loaded async on the webpage. It is injecting an iframe with id intercom-frame. That iframe has a script in it's head with a source URl. Obviously it is React bundle. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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!

Drift - A messaging app that helps you grow your business.

HelpScout - Help Scout is a simple, straightforward way to provide excellent support

Zoho Desk - Industry's first context-aware Helpdesk Software

LiveChat - LiveChat - premium live chat software. Approach customers directly on the website, make connections and drive more sales using LiveChat.