A good helpdesk and customer support are necessary for today’s highly competitive business environment. Among the helpdesk platforms available in the current market, Freshchat has become a leading assistant that is being used by businesses around the world.
What is Freshchat?
Freshchat was developed as a messaging software designed to enhance business customer service and support channels. Developed by Freshworks, Freshchat was created to provide dedicated chat solutions to businesses and help them communicate with their customers seamlessly. The service offers context-driven Live Chat, Chatbot, Whatsapp & Apple business chat integration solutions for websites, mobile apps and even social media pages. Freshchat has become an industry leader in the customer helpdesk domain because of its automation and AI assist solutions. The service also offers chatrooms to communicate and help solve customers’ issues. Freshchat also keeps the chat logs on its servers so that there is no possibility of a loss of chat history. This helps businesses analyze customer issues and help them make lasting changes.
Why do you need to look for a Freshchat Alternative?
While Freshchat helps businesses render customer support in various languages, it is not without its own flaws. It’s important to understand that the service was developed by Freshworks as a basic helpdesk software and hence it doesn’t offer several opportunities for direct integrations. While the service was reworked with innovations in recent years, there are drawbacks to the platform, many of which have forced customers to look for alternatives. To give a more detailed view, let's look at some of the prominent disadvantages:
Integration Limitation
As mentioned earlier, Freshchat doesn’t offer superior integration opportunities for businesses when compared to other help desk software solutions available in the market. This means that businesses are forced to curb their customer support and service portfolio. Moreover, there aren’t many third-party applications that can integrate with Freshchat too.
Cost
Freshchat operates on a per-user billing model where it charges a fixed amount based on the number of registered users. This makes it expensive for small and medium businesses that operate on shoestring budgets. Furthermore, many customers have accused the service to push its consumers to purchase high-tier subscriptions by limiting access to several of its features for lower-tiered subscriptions.
Typos & Minor Bugs
It is also a concern that Freshchat has several minor bugs when it comes to some of its features like GIF selection. There are also response & time accuracy issues in the case of chat messages. This results in confusion and issues while communicating with customers. Several customers have reported that they have found grammatical mistakes & typos in customer message templates. Both of these factors result in frustrating customer service issues for businesses.
Automation Issues
While Freshchat offers automation support to customers, many businesses have reported that automation is complicated and comparatively slow compared to other market competitors. There are also limited tools for automation personalization within the service. Furthermore, there are some limitations in the automated functionality in terms of the ability to automate user interaction checkpoints.
UX & Performance Issues
In addition to the functionality issues, the service also has some significant UX & performance issues. It has been reported that there are more than a hundred different issues with the application that have led to customer dissatisfaction. Some of the major issues include the inability to delete or block messages, slow performance, and poor documentation.
Suggested Read: Top 10 Advantages of a WhatsApp Business Account
9 Freshchat Alternatives & Competitors to look out for
Since there is a necessity to look for Freshchat alternatives, we would like to help out by offering brief information about the top 9 companies that offer similar support solutions. Even though this list is not exhaustive, we hope that it will assist you in your search for alternatives. So, let’s take a look at some of them:
Botgate AI
Botgate AI helps businesses converse with their customers efficiently and grow through their hybrid bot and human model. The service helps businesses create engaging chat, conversational marketing & sales applications with automation assistance. The company’s main goal is to help businesses uncomplicate their customer support processes and offer seamless assistance.
Features:
- Botgate AI uses smart AI bots that help companies collect customer information & qualify their prospective leads through live chat
- The customer service UX is highly friendly & the company offers chat integration support to several social media platforms including Instagram.
- Botgate AI’s unique selling point is that it offers a shared inbox feature that helps companies manage multiple communication platforms from a single screen.
Pricing: Free Plan available. Prices start from ₹2300/- per month. Signup for a Free Trial.
Gallabox
As one of the leading WhatsApp service providers in India, Gallabox is focused on offering excellent customer service solutions based on WhatsApp Business API systems. The company focuses on simplifying customer support solutions and uses user-friendly interfaces. The chat platform is also scalable with high levels of customization options to suit the needs of all types of businesses.
Features:
- Gallabox is built on modern interfaces and can hence offer seamless integration opportunities with several leading CRMs and social media platforms.
- The company offers chat support APIs & chatbots with simple & clean UX. The services are highly customizable and easy to set up.
- Gallabox offers excellent support to all of its users. Many users have noted that the customer support team is highly responsive and provides efficient resolutions as soon as possible.
Pricing: Prices start from ₹2000/- per user/month. (₹1500/- per additional user)
Signup for a Free Trial.
Drift
Drift is a company that offers conversational sales & marketing solutions to businesses. The company helps businesses seamlessly connect with customers through chat, e-mail, video & other avenues. Drift’s solutions are focused on helping businesses not just interact with customers but intercept customer communications and turn them into profitable encounters. The company’s USP is its simple-to-use communication solutions that can offer real-time lead qualification & assistance.
Features:
- Allows companies to continue abandoned conversations by sending chat widgets as emails to customers.
- The ability to qualify chats during the chat process and sort them to interact with the relevant teams right from the start.
- Allows customer service agents to organize & save frequent replies and use them instantly with a simple click.
Pricing: Pricing details are shared upon contact.
Book a demo.
Intercom
Intercom is a leading software solutions provider that is focused on generating quality customer service experiences for customers. This versatile platform provides messaging and chat support services to help businesses capture leads, increase customer engagement & increase lead conversions. The platform also enables businesses to integrate chatbot solutions & automate their workflows easily to onboard and manage customer interactions.
Features:
- Provides excellent omnichannel support by helping integrate multiple marketing & sales channels.
- Enables businesses to provide chat support in multiple languages with a simple click of a button.
- Enables businesses to track & export user data from CRMs and lists for further analysis.
Pricing: Free plan available. Prices start from ₹6250 per agent/month
Book a demo.
LiveAgent
This Freshchat alternative offers omnichannel live chat & helpdesk software solutions. LiveAgent is specialized in providing all-in-one support solutions for businesses that do not have existing support frameworks. The platform also helps them integrate with website builders, CRMs and other tools including SalesForce, Squarespace, Google Analytics, etc. LiveAgent is also the first platform to provide custom real-time chat widgets with simple yet efficient interfaces.
Features:
- Helps businesses centralize email/chat ticket storage to ensure that no ticket is missed.
- Ability to automatically convert regular customer queries into FAQs that can be used for self-support purposes.
- Helps businesses integrate social media platforms and track customer activity & brand mentions for further analysis.
Pricing: Free plan available. Prices start from ₹1800 per agent/month
Signup for a Free Trial.
Gorgias
Gorgias is a platform that offers dedicated customer service solutions for eCommerce & direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses. This platform focuses on offering simple & easy-to-use chat integration support for Shopify, WooCommerce & BigCommerce. Gorgias’ ability to pull customer data from e-commerce dashboards is also a critical factor as to why it is considered one of the best Freshchat alternatives for DTC businesses.
Features:
- Offers one of the best integration support for e-commerce channels, especially Shopify, and provides them with the ability to modify orders, initiate orders & raise refunds.
- Ability to create custom tags for conversations and use them for future conversations.
- Ability to create custom Macros for frequently asked questions & automatic replies.
Pricing: Prices start from ₹799 per agent/month. Signup for a Free Trial.
Reamaze
Reamaze is a helpdesk software support provider specializing in helping e-commerce brands connect with customers and resolve customer queries efficiently. The platform provides customized chat support software that boasts a host of features. Reamaze can also help track chat activity & customer service queries to help businesses provide in-depth personalized support.
Features:
- Helps businesses integrate with almost all e-commerce platforms and seamlessly offer personalized helpdesk support.
- The platform also adheres to GDPR compliance, which helps your business operate in the European markets efficiently.
- Helps businesses trigger messages using URL/UTM & e-commerce activities & offer personalized solutions.
Pricing: Prices start from ₹2300 per agent/month. Checkout pricing details here.
Kustomer
Kustomer is a Freshchat alternative that provides CRM and customer support solutions that help track, engage and manage customer relations through several channels. The platform focuses on delivering rich omnichannel customer service solutions with powerful automation assistance. Kustomer also provides integration opportunities with a wide range of websites, CRMs & messaging platforms.
Features:
- Enables businesses and teams to monitor conversations from various customer support channels including websites, messengers & emails from a shared screen.
- Provides powerful automation solutions to send autonomous customer responses and route conversations to different teams.
- Enables businesses to use notes & mentions to mark conversations for efficient collaborations.
Pricing: Prices start from ₹7100 per agent/month
Signup for a Free Trial.
Front
This Freshchat alternative is specialized in providing omnichannel conversational solutions to businesses across the spectrum. The company offers fast, accurate & efficient conversational support to help businesses build excellent customer relationships. The team also renders excellent automation assistance to help businesses scale their customer service solutions. While the platform is simple & easy to use, Front can render tailor-made communication solutions.
Features:
- A superior shared inbox feature that helps provide multi-channel chat solutions from emails, apps and other platforms.
- Increased analytics & customer data collection support to help businesses improve their customer experiences.
- Excellent automation assistance & flexibility to help scale customer service solutions as your business grows. Businesses can add personalized features & functionality based on their needs.
Pricing: Prices start from ₹1519 per agent/month. See pricing details here.
Suggested read: 13 Chatbot Trends and Statistics you can't miss in 2023!
A Better Alternative to Freshchat - Gallabox
While there are many alternatives to Freshchat, Gallabox will prove to be the best of the lot. This is because of the platform’s ability to offer rich conversation solutions & chatbots that are completely customized based on business needs. With the power of WhatsApp, Gallabox’s no-code workspaces can help offer simple-to-use chat solutions. In addition, businesses can set up their no-code conversational solutions at zero costs. Gallabox also offers reduced pricing for each additional user that your business adds. So don’t hesitate, start your free trial of Gallabox’s multilingual conversation/chatbot solutions.
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