Freshdesk Pricing: Plans, Value and Hidden Costs Explained

Freshdesk stands out among the customer service software crowd thanks to its great value pricing plans – there's even a free Freshdesk tier (Sprout) you can use, plus some affordable plans beginning from $15 per user per month. Freshdesk is one of the biggest names in the world of customer support software. Its entirely cloud-based operation lends itself to a painless setup and reduced overheads.

As a product from Freshworks, Freshdesk is one of the cheapest service and support-focused on the market – undercutting the likes of Salesforce plus ticketing specialists like Zendesk. It's a part of the product family of parent company Freshworks, which is itself a giant among CRM providers.

But is Freshdesk worth paying for? Let’s take a closer look at its pricing plans, and see how it compares with the rest of the industry.

In this guide:

• Freshdesk Pricing Plans
• Freshdesk Cost Per User
• Freshdesk Add-Ons
• Is Freshdesk Worth the Price?
• Next Steps with Freshdesk
• Freshdesk Pricing FAQs

Freshdesk Pricing Plans

Freshdesk offers five pricing plans, each with botanically inspired names. The cheapest plan is, naturally, the Sprout plan, which gives you free, single-channel support for an unlimited number of agents.

The most expensive plan, by contrast, is Forest. It’s available as either a single channel option, or an omnichannel solution that integrates with email, phone, and more.

In our detailed table below, we explain everything you will – and won't – get at each Freshdesk pricing tier:

Freshdesk Sprout

The Sprout plan is completely free, and will certainly help your business get started on its customer management. For example, it gives you email and social ticketing to track customer queries and complaints.

You also get access to Freshdesk’s knowledge base feature, to allow your customers to help themselves. Plus, you can begin to analyse your tickets, how they’re dealt with, and more.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you can choose where your datacenter is located – which can be essential for complying with European GDPR, or California’s CCPA regulations.

Freshdesk Blossom

The Blossom plan is the first paid-for Freshdesk, costing $15 per month when billed annually, or $19 per month when billed monthly.

Compared to the Sprout plan, Blossom’s big advantage is its set of automation features. This means, for example, that you can free up agent time by making escalations and follow-ups happen automatically after a set period of time, or through any action that someone might take.

Similarly, you get collision detection, which alerts you if two agents are working on the same ticket – helping you confuse fewer customers and save time. You’ll also receive proper access to the Freshdesk Marketplace, which can help you connect apps to extend the capabilities of the software.

Finally, you’ll also be able to set up business hours, and create service-level agreements (SLAs) to ensure that customers get the same experience every time – and also ensure that your agents are all working to the same standards.

All told, for a relatively modest outlay, the Blossom plan is a significant step up from the free plan.

Freshdesk Garden

The Garden plan costs $35 per month, per agent when billed annually, or $45 per month, per agent when billed monthly.

The Garden plan mainly adds features which can help businesses become savvier with their agents’ time. For example, you can view performance reports on how each agent is getting on, as well as perform customer feedback surveys. You’ll also be able to invoice businesses for the time they’ve spent with your support agents.

Finally, you’ll be able to set up a multilingual knowledge base, and build and integrate custom apps – both of which are essential for ambitious businesses.

Freshdesk Estate

This is the first of Freshdesk’s plans where you get a choice of either an omnichannel solution or a single Helpdesk package. The Sprout, Blossom, and Garden plans have all been helpdesk packages.

As a helpdesk page, the Estate plan costs $49 per user, per month when billed annually, or $69 per user, per month when billed monthly. However, if you go for the Estate Omnichannel solution, it costs $79 per user, per month when billed annually, or $99 per user, per month when billed monthly.

Compared to the previous Helpdesk packages, the Estate Helpdesk version gives you extra features to make your operation more efficient. For example, the round robin routing feature will assign tickets to available agents automatically in a circular fashion – meaning that if two agents have finished tickets, the first to receive the previous ticket will receive the new one.

Similarly, custom roles can provide different agents with different access requirements, while dynamic ticket forms will improve the structure of your ticket forms to make everything as painless as possible for the customer. You’ll also get custom reports and dashboards for improved analysis, while customer segments can allow you to group customers together based on their requirements.

The Omnichannel Estate solution, on the other hand, allows you to manage customer support on email, social media, and phone channels.

There are some other benefits thrown in, as well. For example, the customer timeline feature shows past interactions with customers across all your channels to give context on an issue. You can also share screens with customers to assist them with their problems. Plus, you get 3,000 minutes of free incoming VoIP calls per month from customers in the US, Canada, the EU, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Freshdesk Forest

Finally, there’s the Forest plan. As a helpdesk-only solution, it’ll cost you $99 per user, per month when billed annually, or $125 per user, per month when billed monthly. The omnichannel Forest plan will cost you $139 per user, per month with annual billing, or $169 per user, per month with monthly billing.

The single channel solution will allow you to route tickets to the agents best suited to fix problems, as well as set up shifts to manage agent workloads. There’s also an audit log to help you manage helpdesk changes, and a sandbox to try out new features in a secure environment in case something goes wrong.

You also get access to Freddy – Freshdesk’s AI and machine learning software. It costs $75 per agent, per month, plus $500 for 5,000 sessions per month. But it brings loads of features with it, such as email bots, auto-triage, and knowledge base article suggestions to help speed up your service and reduce your agents’ workloads.

As an omnichannel solution, you also get abandoned call metrics, IP whitelisting, and Freshdesk’s Omniroute feature, which helps manage your team’s workload across channels from one place.

Freshdesk Add-Ons

Beyond its extensive feature list, Freshdesk has a range of add-ons which can augment your operations.

Freddy Ultimate

Freddy Ultimate is Freshdesk’s AI and machine learning add-on, which can add lots of automation features to your service.

It’s only available on the Forest Helpdesk and Forest Omnichannel plans, and costs $75 per agent, per month – plus an extra $500 for 5,000 Freddy sessions per month.

You’ll be able to auto-triage customer queries, sending them to the right people at the first time of asking. It will also provide canned responses for email tickets, helping your agents respond to even the most difficult of problems.

The Assist Bot will guide your agents though pre-configured steps to resolve queries faster, and its improved analytics will help you visualize your support data for deeper insights.

Finally, the Robo Assist feature will help you integrate your own robotics process automation provider into Freshdesk to automate and speed up functions.

Freddy Self-Service

The Freddy Self-service add-on is available for all plans, and costs $100 for 1,000 sessions per month. It’ll help you automate the resolution of issues using highly customizable chatbots and better API connectors.

It has a chatbot builder function, which can help you create bespoke chatbots with no coding necessary. You can, however, customize the look and feel of your chatbot with custom CSS and Javascript coding. You’ll be able to set up rich media interactions, such as carousels and calendars, to make customer interactions easier.

The improved API connectors will help you integrate your bot with the apps and tools used by your agents.

You can integrate your bot with WhatsApp Business and Facebook Messenger, and again, you get improved analytics.

All told, it’s a great suite of features to help make your agents’ lives easier.

Field Service Management

The Field Service Management add-on costs $29 per employee, per month, and is available on all plans bar Sprout.

It helps to manage appointments and schedules, as well as help deliver support in person. It works with iOS and Android, as well as working offline. You can also get a full map view of where your staff are, and where customers are located.

Is Freshdesk Worth the Price?

Absolutely – Freshdesk has a fantastic feature set, and very attractive pricing plans.

User Ratings & Experiences

According to our research, Freshdesk is easily one of the best helpdesk-focused CRM solutions on the market.

On average, users have scored Freshdesk 3.7 out of 5. That might not sound mind-blowing, but it's way ahead of Salesforce, Zendesk, and SugarCRM, who score 2.9, 3.0, and 1.9, respectively.

Technical Support & Customer Service

When it comes to support, Freshdesk is also extremely well stocked.

It has a dedicated knowledge center, so you can fix your own problems easily. However, it also has 24/5 phone support. Email support is also available.

The Value in Using Freshdesk

Freshdesk, especially given its lower prices than many competitors, will certainly help you retain customers in the face of adversity.

With its range of tools, which can speed up ticket allocation and resolution, you’ll find that potentially tense interactions with customers become pleasant and smooth.

Freshdesk Cost Per User

As mentioned above, Freshdesk prices are available per user, per month.

This might seem concerning if you have a lot of people in your support teams, but most software providers price their services in the same way.

Freshdesk Alternatives

As far as we’re concerned, Zendesk and Salesforce are the only worthwhile competitors to Freshdesk.

Zendesk has better support options, with phone and live chat options available 24/7 on some plans.

Salesforce, meanwhile, has an improved feature set, with quick communication between agents and advanced issue management – including case re-routing and milestone tracking.

With that being said, however, Freshdesk is an eminently viable solution that is well worth your consideration.

Freshdesk Pricing FAQs

Let's take a look at the internet’s most-asked questions about Freshdesk.