For those who’re looking for assist desk software program and evaluating Assist Scout vs. Freshdesk, this complete comparability of options, pricing, use instances, help, and scalability will make it straightforward to find out which device is the perfect match for what you are promoting.
It is vital to notice that Freshdesk’s dad or mum firm, Freshworks, affords a number of buyer help merchandise: Freshdesk (for e-mail help and constructing a assist middle), Freshchat (for chat help), Freshcaller (for telephone help), and Freshdesk Omni (for omnichannel help).
As a result of Freshdesk Omni is probably the most just like Assist Scout, we have chosen to check these two merchandise under in all sections of this text apart from the free plan comparability. Whereas Freshdesk Omni doesn’t supply a free plan, Freshdesk and Freshchat do, so in that particular part, we’ll evaluate Assist Scout to Freshworks’ à la carte buyer help merchandise.
It is also value noting that whereas we have performed important analysis to grasp how Freshdesk’s pricing works and what’s included in its plans, its web site is unclear, and its assist middle articles typically have conflicting info. It could be crucial to achieve out to their help staff or begin a trial to confirm which options you’ll really get for the worth you anticipate to pay.
Fast look: Who’s Assist Scout finest for vs. who’s Freshdesk finest for?
Assist Scout is the extra inexpensive choice for small, mid-size, and rising companies. Every plan prices $4-$34/person monthly lower than Freshdesk Omni’s plans, and it has extra options baked into the bottom value of its plans than Freshdesk, which has plenty of its options locked behind add-ons and usage-based pricing that improve its prices.
Freshdesk Omni is the higher alternative below two circumstances: 1.) if you wish to consolidate all your help instruments into one system and must ship telephone help or create buyer portals or group boards or 2.) in the event you plan to resolve a excessive variety of buyer queries routinely with AI.
Be taught extra about Assist Scout:
Assist Scout’s free plan vs. Freshdesk’s free plan
For those who’re a small enterprise or startup in search of a free platform that can assist you higher manage and handle your requests from clients, Assist Scout’s and Freshdesk’s free plans are each nice choices to contemplate.
Assist Scout’s greater person restrict (5 customers on Assist Scout versus two customers on Freshdesk) makes it a good selection for bigger groups. Additionally, whereas Freshdesk’s free plan can solely be used for six months, Assist Scout would not have a time restrict on how lengthy you should utilize its free plan, so it’s additionally a more sensible choice in the event you’re planning to stay with the fundamentals long run.
Nevertheless, whereas Assist Scout doesn’t embrace dwell chat in its free plan, Freshworks affords free dwell chat by its Freshchat product. On Freshchat’s free plan, you may add as much as 10 customers, embed a dwell chat widget in your web site or cell app, and handle chat requests in a shared inbox. So far as we are able to inform, there is no such thing as a time restrict on how lengthy you should utilize Freshchat’s free plan.
This is a comparability of what is included in Assist Scout’s and Freshdesk’s free plans.
| Characteristic | Assist Scout | Freshdesk |
|---|---|---|
Variety of customers | 5 | 2 |
E mail ticketing | ✅ | ✅ |
Information base | ✅ | ✅ |
Stay chat | ❌ | Out there in the event you additionally join a free Freshchat plan |
Reporting | ✅ | ✅ |
Ticket assignments | ✅ | ✅ |
Collision detection | ✅ | ❌ |
Inside notes | ✅ | ✅ |
Tags | ✅ | ✅ |
Snooze | ✅ | ❌ |
Ship later | ✅ | ❌ |
Saved replies | ✅ | ✅ |
For the rest of this put up, we’ll be evaluating Assist Scout’s paid plans to Freshdesk Omni’s plans.
Assist Scout vs. Freshdesk Omni: Characteristic comparability
Each Assist Scout and Freshdesk Omni allow you to ship e-mail, dwell chat, social media, and self-service help. So far as social, Assist Scout can be utilized to handle requests from Fb Messenger and Instagram. Freshdesk can be utilized to handle requests from Fb Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and LINE.
Freshdesk Omni does supply some channels that Assist Scout would not. With Freshdesk Omni, you may ship telephone help and create buyer portals and group boards. Assist Scout solely affords telephone through integration with one other supplier, and group boards and buyer portals will not be out there.
General, Assist Scout is extra inexpensive than Freshdesk Omni. Nevertheless, if you could supply telephone help or create group boards or buyer portals, Freshdesk will be the more sensible choice because it consolidates all your help instruments into one.
Channel pricing comparability
| Channel | Assist Scout’s beginning value | Freshdesk Omni’s beginning value |
|---|---|---|
E mail | $25/person monthly | $29/agent monthly |
Stay chat | $25/person monthly | $29/agent monthly |
Information base | $25/person monthly | $29/agent monthly |
Social media | $25/person monthly | $29/agent monthly |
Cellphone | Out there through integration solely | $29/agent monthly + $15/agent monthly for the Freshcaller add-on |
SMS | Out there through integration solely | Out there through integration solely |
Group boards | Not out there | $69/agent monthly |
Buyer portals | Not out there | $29/agent monthly |
Shared inbox options
Each Assist Scout and Freshdesk supply plenty of collaboration, group, and productiveness options that assist your staff handle e-mail requests extra successfully:
Ticket assignments that allow you to assign particular conversations to particular brokers.
Spherical-robin and load-balanced routing to distribute conversations equally.
Inside notes/threads to speak privately with different staff members earlier than responding to clients.
Collision detection to forestall duplicate work and replies.
Tags that allow you to label and filter requests.
Buyer profiles that present key details about the individual requesting help.
Auto-replies that permit clients know their requests have been obtained.
Saved replies that allow you to create canned responses to steadily requested questions.
Views that group collectively conversations that meet particular standards (tags, assignees, and many others.).
Workflows that routinely route and kind requests.
Freshdesk additionally affords a novel activity administration characteristic that may be useful when resolving advanced requests that require enter from a number of people. As an alternative of assigning and reassigning the dialog to a number of staff members, you may merely create duties for the totally different people who must do work to resolve the difficulty the shopper is reporting.
Information base and self-service options
With Assist Scout and Freshdesk, you may create an exterior data base to allow buyer self-service help. Each merchandise allow you to create articles and kind them into collections. Each supply built-in search options, offer you entry to revision histories, and allow you to customise the design of your assist middle.
Each merchandise additionally allow you to customise the visibility of your assist middle articles, letting you create articles or complete assist facilities which might be internal-facing or restricted to particular clients. That is useful for giving your staff entry to info you do not need to share with clients or creating assist content material that is completely for particular units of consumers.
Freshdesk additionally provides you the power to create group boards and buyer portals — two options Assist Scout would not supply.
So far as pricing for data base options, Assist Scout affords extra options at extra inexpensive costs. For instance, to customise the branding of your data base, serve your data base in a number of languages, or use article versioning on Freshdesk Omni, you will must be on the Professional plan ($69/agent monthly). These similar options can be found on Assist Scout’s Commonplace plan for $25/person monthly.
Reporting and analytics options
Each Assist Scout and Freshdesk Omni supply pre-built and {custom} stories — in addition to report exporting — so you may simply observe your KPIs and monitor quantity tendencies total and by channel. Each additionally supply workplace/enterprise hours, which is a method to outline the occasions if you supply help so your stories aren’t negatively impacted by days or occasions when nobody is working.
On the subject of reporting, Assist Scout can also be the extra inexpensive choice. Customized stories and workplace hours are included in all of Assist Scout plans (beginning at $25/person monthly), however these options are solely included in Freshdesk Omni’s Professional plan and better (beginning at $69/agent monthly).
AI options
Each Assist Scout and Freshdesk supply AI agent and copilot options that assist your staff reply to requests extra shortly.
AI brokers
Freshdesk’s AI agent is known as Freddy AI, and Assist Scout’s is known as AI Solutions. Each merchandise use data out of your assist middle and web sites to routinely reply clients’ questions in actual time. Nevertheless, Assist Scout’s AI Solutions is simply out there in its dwell chat widget, Beacon. Freddy AI can be utilized to routinely reply to clients on all channels.
Moreover, when related to different backend methods, Freshdesk’s Freddy AI can carry out actions by itself, similar to updating orders and processing refunds. This functionality shouldn’t be out there in Assist Scout.
Copilot options
Freshdesk’s Freddy AI Copilot and Assist Scout’s AI Drafts, AI Summarize, and AI Help all use AI to assist your staff transfer extra shortly. With each merchandise, you may:
Immediately draft a response to an e-mail by utilizing info out of your data base, earlier help interactions, and web sites. That response can then be reviewed and edited for accuracy earlier than sending.
Create a abstract of a protracted back-and-forth help dialog, both in your historic data or to assist brokers engaged on the request rise up to hurry shortly.
Translate your e-mail replies into one other language to supply multi-lingual help.
Nevertheless, each merchandise additionally supply one AI characteristic you will not discover within the different.
Assist Scout’s AI Help permits you to refine what you have already written in a help reply or data base article, making it shorter/longer, fixing any spelling or grammar errors, or adjusting the tone/voice. It’s also possible to use AI Help to translate data base articles into different languages.
Freshdesk’s AI copilot will routinely detect sentiment and quantify it as constructive, impartial, or destructive that can assist you prioritize requests primarily based on how your clients are feeling.
AI reporting options
Freshdesk Omni additionally affords an AI insights device known as Freddy Insights, a conversational AI evaluation device that your staff leaders can use to get solutions to questions on your knowledge or staff’s efficiency or to generate {custom} stories and charts from prompts.
Proactive help options
Along with the entire options that allow you to help customers once they ask for assist, Assist Scout and Freshdesk additionally supply proactive help options that allow you to supply help earlier than somebody has to ask for it or to gather suggestions from clients.
In Assist Scout, you may:
Pop up a message in your web site or in your app when a person meets sure circumstances you set, similar to viewing a particular web page, spending a sure period of time a web page, or a web page a number of occasions.
Add a banner to the highest of your web site or app to get a message in entrance of all customers in a outstanding area.
Ship surveys to gather Web Promoter Rating scores from clients or to ask a custom-written query.
Freshdesk solely has one proactive help characteristic: Proactive Outreach. It permits you to ship both a one-time or trigger-based e-mail to clients.
With one-time emails, you may construct {custom} lists of consumers and ship a mass e-mail to them, which might be helpful for letting clients find out about new options or system outages.
With trigger-based outreach, you may ship emails to particular person clients routinely once they meet sure circumstances. This can be utilized to do issues like request suggestions on a current buy/interplay or remind clients about an deserted cart.
Assist Scout vs. Freshdesk Omni: Pricing comparability
Each Assist Scout and Freshdesk Omni use hybrid pricing fashions. The bottom software program for each merchandise is user-based, which means your per-month value will improve as you add new customers to your account. Nevertheless, pricing for each merchandise’ AI brokers is usage-based, which means you will pay extra primarily based on the variety of requests that your AI brokers resolve. Moreover, Freshdesk has usage-based pricing for a few of its integrations by its connector apps market.
Assist Scout has 4 pricing packages:
Free: $0/month for as much as 5 customers.
Commonplace: $25/person monthly.
Plus: $45/person monthly.
Professional: $75/person monthly.
So far as usage-based pricing, AI Solutions might be added to any paid Assist Scout plan; its pricing begins at $0.75/decision after a three-month free trial. AI Help is included in all paid plans at no extra value, and AI Summarize and AI Drafts are included in Plus and Professional plans at no further value.
Freshdesk Omni has three pricing packages:
Development: $29/agent monthly.
Professional: $69/agent monthly.
Enterprise: $109/agent monthly.
Freshdesk’s Freddy AI Agent might be added to all of its Omni plans for $100 per 1,000 periods ($0.10 every). Freddy AI Copilot might be added to its Professional and Enterprise plans for an extra $29/agent monthly. For integrating with apps in Freshdesk’s connector apps market, you will pay an extra $80 per 5,000 duties.
Assist Scout is the extra inexpensive choice total, with plans ranging between $4-$34/person monthly lower than Freshdesk Omni. Moreover, Assist Scout’s integrations and a number of of its copilot options are included within the base value of all paid plans with no utilization or add-on charges.
The one space the place Freshdesk is extra inexpensive than Assist Scout is with its AI brokers. The utilization charge for Assist Scout’s AI Solutions is $0.75/decision. Freshdesk’s is rather more inexpensive at $0.10/session. Nevertheless, it is value noting that Freshdesk’s $0.10 charge applies to all conversations clients have along with your AI agent, whereas Assist Scout’s utilization charge solely applies to requests that the AI Agent resolves by itself.
Ease of use and setup
On the subject of buyer evaluations on G2, Assist Scout scores greater than Freshdesk for ease of use, ease of setup, and ease of admin.
Assist Scout is well-known for its ease of use. You may discover ways to use it in a day and turn out to be an influence person in every week, and it is so intuitive that little or no coaching is required when including new staff members to the system. As one Assist Scout buyer writes:
“What I like most about Assist Scout is the benefit of use. Assist Scout is simple to arrange and, normally, you may keep away from working along with your IT staff. Assist Scout additionally has a really intuitive interface, which makes coaching your staff straightforward! The Assist Scout staff bought it proper!”
Whereas clients additionally largely discover Freshdesk straightforward to make use of, some clients notice that integrating with third-party apps generally requires technical data, the excessive variety of options included within the platform might be overwhelming for brand spanking new customers, and connecting a number of Freshworks merchandise collectively is complicated and complex.
Integrations
On the subject of integrations, whereas Assist Scout has the next buyer score (8.5/10) on G2 than Freshdesk (8.2/10), Freshdesk affords extra integrations total.
Assist Scout has round 100 integrations with the first instruments groups need to connect with their help methods: Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Aircall, Shopify, Jira, Linear, and many others. Freshdesk’s Market, then again, has almost 700 totally different integrations with each big-name instruments and smaller, extra area of interest methods.
Assist Scout’s Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, and Linear integrations are included in its Plus and Professional plans at no extra cost. Freshdesk’s integrations with apps like Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, and GitHub are solely out there as connector apps, which have an extra charge of $80 per 5,000 duties.
Scalability
Each Assist Scout and Freshdesk are constructed to scale alongside groups. The main distinction is that scaling with Assist Scout is extra inexpensive, whereas scaling with Freshdesk Omni might be easier in the event you plan on including telephone help sooner or later.
Buyer help
Assist Scout has the next G2 score for its buyer help than Freshdesk, with a 9.1/10 in comparison with Freshdesk’s 8.7/10. It is not unusual for Assist Scout’s clients to put in writing evaluations like this one:
“The client help is over-the-top, superb, above-and-beyond useful. These will not be clichés, they need to be taken actually.”
Each person at your organization can contact Assist Scout’s help staff 24/6, there are dwell coaching lessons supplied each week, and, if you wish to self-serve, you may entry the platform’s complete data base.
If the entire info above did not make it clear which platform is the perfect in your staff, this is a remaining abstract that can assist you select the suitable choice:
Assist Scout is usually extra inexpensive than Freshdesk Omni. Its plans value between $4-$34/person monthly much less, and extra options are baked into the bottom value of Assist Scout whereas Freshdesk Omni sells them as add-ons. Nevertheless, Freshdesk’s decrease AI agent utilization charges could make it extra inexpensive in the event you anticipate you will want to make use of AI to resolve a excessive quantity of buyer requests.
Freshdesk is the higher alternative if you wish to consolidate all your help instruments in a single system and can want telephone help, group boards, or buyer portals instantly or sooner or later.
Assist Scout’s free plan is extra beneficiant than Freshdesk’s, making it a more sensible choice for small companies. It consists of extra customers and can be utilized by groups indefinitely. Freshdesk’s free plan can solely be used for as much as six months.
Freshdesk is the higher alternative if you wish to use AI to reply clients’ questions routinely on all channels. Assist Scout’s automated solutions are restricted to dwell chat. With that stated, Assist Scout’s AI Drafts can be utilized to generate AI replies to requests obtained through e-mail, nevertheless it requires brokers to generate, evaluate, and ship the replies. That may be a profit or a drawback, relying in your AI help philosophy.
Each Assist Scout and Freshdesk are leaders within the buyer help area, and you actually cannot go improper with both alternative. Contemplate the variations between the 2 platforms, choose the platform that appears like it’s going to finest help what you are promoting’s distinctive wants, after which begin a trial to make it possible for it really works for you each in principle and in apply.
