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Top 12 Help Desk Tools for Small Businesses in 2025 - Reviewed and Compared
When you’re running a small business, your support team often wears many hats – answering emails, managing orders, and putting out fires all at once. A help desk software gives you the structure to stay on top of every customer conversation without the chaos. Here are 12 tools that can help you do just that.
An Overview of Help Desk Software for Small Businesses
Key Features of Help Desk Software for Small Businesses
Benefits of Using Help Desk Software for Small Businesses
The Top 12 Small Business Help Desk Software
An Overview of Help Desk Software for Small Businesses
Help desk software for small businesses are tools that help lean teams manage customer support in a more organized, efficient, and professional way. They centralize support requests from channels like email, live chat, social media, and web forms into a single dashboard.
Although there are help desk tools for businesses of all sizes, the ones we’re talking about are specifically designed to suit the needs of smaller teams. They’re easier to set up, more affordable, and come with just the right set of features to help you stay responsive without adding too much complexity.
To put it simply, they empower smaller support teams to punch above their weight and provide high quality, consistent experiences to customers. Let’s look at some of the key features help desks built for small businesses offer.
Key Features of Help Desk Software for Small Businesses
Help desk software for small businesses typically includes features like multichannel ticket management, automated assignment, self-service portals, internal collaboration tools, and performance tracking. Each of these capabilities plays a critical role in keeping your support operations organized, consistent, and scalable even with a lean team.
Let’s take a closer look at them.
1. Omnichannel Ticket Management
Small businesses often receive customer queries across multiple channels – email, live chat, social media, contact forms, and more. Omnichannel ticket management lets you bring all of these conversations into one unified inbox, so your team doesn’t have to jump between tabs or miss important messages.
By consolidating everything in one place, it also becomes easier to track the full context of each query. Whether a customer starts a query over chat, follows up via email, or ends the conversation on a phone call, your team can view the entire interaction in one place. This continuity gives agents the full context they need to respond effectively, without asking customers to repeat themselves.
Recommended reading
2. Automated Ticket Routing and Assignment
Automated ticket routing ensures that incoming support queries are instantly assigned to the right person – without any manual intervention. Tickets can be routed based on factors like issue type, priority level, or agent workload by setting up simple ‘if-then’ triggers.
For small teams that are often stretched thin and juggling multiple responsibilities, this feature is especially valuable. It helps eliminate the back-and-forth of figuring out who should handle what. Instead, tickets land directly in the right hands – saving time, reducing confusion, and helping customers get fast, accurate responses.
3. Self-Service Capabilities
Self-service features like a searchable knowledge base, FAQ section, or customer portal allow users to find answers on their own – without needing to contact support. This helps reduce the number of incoming tickets, freeing up your team to focus on more urgent or complex issues.
For small teams operating with limited bandwidth, a well-maintained self-service setup can be a huge time-saver and a great way to improve the customer experience. Customers appreciate being able to solve problems on their own without having to contact customer support teams.
4. Performance Tracking
Small businesses may not necessarily need the granular metrics that larger enterprises rely on, but it’s still very important to keep an eye on a few key metrics. Good help desk software should offer visibility into things like response times, resolution rates, SLA compliance, ticket volume, and customer satisfaction.
These insights help you identify where things are slowing down, make smarter decisions about how your team works, and continuously improve the way you support customers.
5. Internal Collaboration Features
Sometimes when an agent is working on a query, they might need inputs from a teammate or someone from another department. Internal collaboration tools like private notes and @mentions make it easy to loop in colleagues directly within the help desk.
This eliminates the friction of switching to another platform and reaching out to them for help. Instead, agents can tag teammates or leave notes right on the ticket – keeping all context in one place and making collaboration smoother and faster.
6. SLA Management
SLA, or Service Level Agreement, refers to the expected time frame within which a customer query should be responded to or resolved. Help desk software with SLA management allows you to set these time-based goals and automatically track whether your team is meeting them.
This ensures that support teams stay accountable and consistent – especially when handling high-priority or time-sensitive issues.
Benefits of Using Help Desk Software for Small Businesses
Help desk software helps small businesses improve customer satisfaction, build team accountability, support scalability, reduce costs, minimize workload, and turn support data into actionable insights – making every part of daily customer service smoother and smarter.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the biggest benefits small businesses can unlock by using a help desk system.
1. Faster, More Reliable Customer Responses
Help desk software makes it easier to stay on top of every customer query. With all tickets centralized in one place and features like auto-assignment, SLAs, and canned responses, teams can reply faster and more consistently.
This reduces wait times, minimizes follow-ups, and creates a smoother experience for your customers.
2. Clear Ownership and Accountability
Small businesses often have people wearing multiple hats and taking care of a lot of things at the same time so it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. For example, a customer email might sit unanswered because everyone assumes someone else is handling it.
A help desk system assigns each ticket to a specific person, so there’s no confusion about who’s responsible. Managers can also track progress in real time, ensuring nothing gets missed or delayed.
3. Reduces Team Workload
When your team is small, answering the same questions over and over can eat up valuable time. Help desk software lightens the load on your support team with features like canned responses, self-service features and chatbots.
All of this helps prevent your support team from getting overwhelmed and gives them more time to focus on complex or high-priority tickets.
4. Smarter Use of Support Data
Apart from organizing customer conversations, help desk software gives you useful data about your support operations – like which issues come up most often, how quickly agents respond, and when ticket volume tends to spike.
With this information, you can make better decisions about staffing, improve your workflows, and spot areas where the support experience can be improved.
5. Lowers Support Costs Without Compromising Quality
With the right help desk software, small teams can handle a high volume of queries without needing to hire more people. Automations like ticket routing, follow-ups, and tagging take care of routine tasks in the background – reducing the need for manual effort.
This means your team can stay lean and still deliver fast, reliable support. You save on hiring and operational costs, while customers continue to get the help they need without delays.
6. Offers Easy Scalability as Your Business Grows
As your business grows, so will the number of customer queries. Without the right tools, it gets harder to stay organized and respond quickly. Help desk software makes it easier to scale by giving you systems that grow with you – you can add more agents, support more channels, and automate more tasks as needed. You don’t have to start from scratch each time and overhaul your existing system.
Comparison Chart of the 12 Best Help Desk Software for Small Businesses in 2025
Here’s a quick rundown of the top 12 help desk software available for small businesses today. It’ll give you a side by side comparison of the key features each tool offers, its starting price, and whether they offer a free trial.
Hiver
– Omnichannel Support
– Reporting and Analytics
– Internal collaboration
– Slack Integration
– Live Chat
– Knowledge base
– SLA Management
– Automated Workflows
– AI Copilot
– Free Version Available
$19 per month (7-day Free Trial)
Zoho Desk
– Zia AI Assistant
– Shared Inbox with Collaboration Tools
– Real-time Reporting and Analytics
– Canned Email Response Templates
– Free Version Available
$7 per user/month (15-day Free Trial)
Help Scout
– Omnichannel Agent Workspace
– AI-Powered Support
– Knowledge Base
– CRM Integration
– Free Version Available
$25 user/month (15-day Free Trial)
HappyFox
– Omnichannel Agent workspace
– AI-Powered Support
– Knowledge Base
– No-code self-service portal
– Free Version Not Available
$24 agent/month (14-day Free Trial)
SolarWinds
– Knowledge Base
– AI-Powered Support
– Ticket Routing
– Reporting and Analytics
– Free Version Not Available
$39 per month/technician (30-day Free Trial)
Gorgias
– Knowledge Base
– AI-Powered Support
– Omnichannel Support
– E-commerce Integrations
– Free Version not Available
$50 per month for 300 Help Desk Tickets (7-day Free Trial)
Jira Service Desk
– Knowledge Base
– AI-Powered Support
– Reporting and Analytics
– Multichannel Support (email, help centers, and embeddable widgets)
– Free Version Available
$19 per agent/month
(7-day Free Trial for Standard and Premium Plans)
HubSpot Service Hub
– Knowledge Base
– AI-Powered Support
– Reporting and Analytics
– Automated Workflows
– Free Version Available
$15 per seat/month (14-day Free Trial)
Front
– Unified Inbox
– AI-Powered Support
– Team Collaboration Tools
– Automated Workflows
– Free Version Not Available
$25 per month for 10 seats (14-day Free Trial)
Zendesk
– Multiple Integrations
– AI-Powered Support
– Omnichannel Support
– Automated Workflows
– Free Version Not Available
$19 per agent/month (14-day Free Trial)
Freshdesk
– Omnichannel Support
– AI-Powered Assistance (Freddy AI)
– Knowledge Base & Self-Service
– Automated Ticket Assignment
– Free Version Available
$15 per agent/month (14-day Free Trial)
Groove
– Omnichannel Inbox (Email, Chat, Social)
– AI-Powered Summaries and Reply Suggestions
– Built-In Knowledge Base
– Free Version Not Available
$24 per agent/month (30-day Free Trial)
The Top 12 Small Business Help Desk Software
Now that we’ve seen a quick comparison of the top tools, let’s dive deeper into what each one offers. In this section, we’ll look at what makes each help desk stand out – so you can find the right fit for your team’s needs and budget.
1. Hiver
Hiver is an AI-powered multichannel help desk software designed to make small teams more efficient and powerful. It has the look and feel of your email inbox, with a panel on the left to manage all support channels – email, live chat, WhatsApp, voice, SMS, and social media. Since the interface is so familiar to most of us, you have to spend no time learning a new tool from scratch. It’s very intuitive.
You also get access to human-led customer support, round-the-clock, regardless of which plan you’re on. Although it has a very simple interface, Hiver packs a punch when it comes to the features it offers.
Key Features
- Multi-channel Support: Manage customer queries across email, chat, voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media in one place. Teams can monitor conversations effortlessly and respond faster, without jumping between different apps or tabs.
- Built-in Ticketing: Every customer query can be tracked like a ticket, making it easy to assign, follow up, and close the loop, without anything slipping through the cracks.
- Knowledge Base: Hiver lets you build a knowledge base with FAQs, how-to guides, and troubleshooting tips, so customers can find answers on their own, anytime.
- Internal Collaboration Tools: Shared Drafts, notes, and @mentions help the team work collaboratively on responses without forwarding emails or switching apps.
- Live Chat: Connect with website visitors in real time, resolve queries instantly, and convert more leads, without ever leaving your help desk.
- Slack Integration: Instant alerts about new tickets and assignments appear directly in Slack, so nothing is missed.
- Analytics: Monitor team performance with clear, actionable reports on response times, resolution rates, CSAT scores, and individual workloads, making it easy to spot trends and improve service delivery.
- Workflow Automation: Automate routine tasks like ticket assignments, follow-ups, and status updates with rule-based workflows, helping your team focus on high-value interactions.
- AI Capabilities: Hiver’s AI speeds up responses with smart reply suggestions based on your knowledge base, past tickets, and connected apps. It can auto-categorize and assign queries, adjust tone and grammar in one click, and turn long conversations into quick, easy-to-read summaries.
Pricing
Hiver has a forever free plan with basic functionality for teams that are looking to get started without incurring any overheads. Hiver’s paid plans begin at $19 per user per month and offer all the features mentioned above.
There’s also a 7-day free trial that gives you full access to all features.
Here’s what some of Hiver’s customers have to say about their experience with the tool:
Curious to see how Hiver can transform your customer service game?
2. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a help desk designed for small teams looking to deliver more contextual and personalized support. It automatically converts incoming customer messages from email, live chat, social media, web forms, and phone calls into tickets. These tickets are then organized by priority and status, and assigned to the right agents using predefined rules.
With Zoho Desk, customers also get access to a self-service portal and knowledge base. This helps customers find quick answers on their own, allowing your team to stay focused on resolving more complex issues.
Zoho Desk’s AI-powered assistant Zia further helps teams speed up responses by analyzing incoming messages for sentiment and suggesting relevant replies using data from your knowledge base. This helps teams quickly identify unhappy customers and respond faster, especially during high-volume spikes.
One of Zoho Desk’s biggest strengths is how it seamlessly integrates with other Zoho tools such as Zoho CRM. That said, teams have noted that connecting it with non-Zoho tools can take more setup and ongoing effort.
Pricing
Zoho Desk offers a free plan for up to 3 agents with basic ticketing and knowledge base features. Its paid plans start from $7 per agent per month.
Affordable entry-level pricing for small teams
Integration with non-Zoho tools can require extra setup and maintenance
AI assistant (Zia) helps speed up responses and sentiment detection
Advanced customization may have a learning curve
Free trial: 15 days.
User Reviews
“Their customer service is responsive, but difficult technical issues can take longer to address, especially when escalated. Additionally, while connectivity with other Zoho apps is excellent, integrating with external tools such as Slack or Jira need improved documentation and greater flexibility.” [Source].
“The interface is intuitive, the automation rules are powerful, and the ability to customize fields and workflows gives us exactly the flexibility we need.” [Source]
Recommended reading
3. Help Scout
Help Scout is a help desk designed for small businesses that want to offer support without the complexity of bulky software. It brings together customer conversations from email, live chat, and social media into one shared inbox, making it easy to stay organized and reduce tab-switching.
To lower support volume and make help more accessible, Help Scout offers a knowledge base for self-service (Docs) that lets customers resolve common issues independently. Businesses can also use its in-app messaging capabilities to proactively guide customers through onboarding or product updates, creating smoother user experiences without adding to support queues.
Help Scout offers a strong set of AI features that help growing teams stay efficient without losing their personal touch. AI Summarize condenses long email threads into quick bullet-point summaries, saving time on reading. AI Drafts suggests replies based on previous conversations and help articles, while AI Assist helps polish tone, grammar, and even translate messages.
For handling simple queries, AI Answers can respond instantly with accurate information. Together, these tools help small teams scale their support while keeping quality and speed intact.
Pricing
Help Scout offers a free plan. Its paid plans start from $25 per user per month.
Simple, user-friendly interface with minimal learning curve
Limited depth in reporting and analytics
Strong AI tools like Summarize, Drafts, and Assist for faster replies
Live chat requires agents to be actively online to function
Free trial: 15 days.
User Reviews
“Helpscout is not the most extensive product. It feels like some reports are limited in the drilldown capacities.
Also being “online” in the chat window is necessary to allow customers to “chat”. While I am always available, I do not have the site always open. So our chat is not as much offline as it was.” [Source]
“I really like how easy it is to have separate folders and inboxes for different teams, but HelpScout also makes it really easy to collaborate and leave notes for each other.” [Source]
4. HappyFox
HappyFox is a help desk platform that helps small businesses bring structure to their support operations. It pulls in customer queries from email, chat, phone, and social media – and organizes everything into a single, easy-to-use dashboard.
What makes HappyFox useful for small teams is its focus on automation. You can set up rules to automatically assign, escalate, or close tickets based on conditions like priority, status, or time. This takes repetitive work off your team’s plate and helps them focus on more important tasks.
To reduce ticket volume, HappyFox also includes a self-service portal and knowledge base, so customers can find answers on their own without reaching out every time.
It integrates with tools like Salesforce, Slack, Jira, and Shopify – making it easy to connect support with the rest of your business without custom setups or complex configurations.
Pricing
HappyFox’s paid plans start at $24 per user per month. The software does not come with a forever free plan.
Free trial: 14 days.
Clean, intuitive interface for agents and customers
No forever free plan available
Strong automation options for ticket assignment and escalation
Limited integrations compared to some competitors
User Reviews
“The web-based nature of the app. Not a seamless user experience from the standpoint of the customer, coming from a GSuite Help Desk.” [Source]
“HappyFox offers an intuitive and clean interface, making it easy for both support agents and customers to use. The straightforward design helps in quickly navigating through complaints and managing them efficiently.” [Source]
Recommended reading
5. SolarWinds Service Desk
If your small business handles a lot of internal IT requests, SolarWinds offers a no-frills way to stay organized. It provides flexible deployment options, allowing teams to choose between a self-hosted setup or a cloud-based version, depending on their infrastructure preferences and security requirements.
It covers the basics well: ticket management, routing, and SLA escalations, without overcomplicating things. A built-in knowledge base lets employees solve common problems on their own, reducing ticket volume.
And workflow automation handles tasks like ticket assignment and prioritization, helping your team stay efficient without constant hand-holding.
Pricing
SolarWinds Service Desk’s pricing starts at $39 per user per month.
Free trial: 30 days.
Flexible deployment options (cloud or on-premise)
Higher starting price compared to other small business tools
Strong ITSM capabilities with incident and request management
May be overcomplicated for teams needing only basic ticketing
User Reviews
“Can be quite expensive compared to alternatives. For a basic helpdesk system, might be over complicated.” [Source]
“Simplified interface for ITSM processes for incident management, request management. Easy navigation for end users.” [Source]
6. Gorgias
Gorgias is built for fast-growing e-commerce brands that want to deliver quality support while driving sales. It consolidates customer interactions from email, live chat, social media, SMS, and voice into a single inbox. With deep integrations with Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce, agents can view order details, issue refunds, and manage subscriptions without ever leaving the help desk.
Gorgias comes with built-in AI tools to streamline support and lighten agent workload. Self-service flows and automated responses handle repetitive queries efficiently, while prebuilt chat flows and order management actions like tracking, cancellations, and returns take care of common tasks. Gorgias’ AI Agent learns your brand voice and policies to resolve tickets end-to-end with full transparency.
Gorgias also lets you build tailored dashboards to track the KPIs that matter most to your team. You can evaluate performance across agents, drill down into specific tickets for coaching, and use CSAT surveys to identify trends, measure satisfaction, and uncover areas for improvement.
Pricing
Gorgias’s pricing plan starts at $50 per month and includes up to 300 tickets. It supports up to 3 users. It does not have a free plan.
Free trial: 7 days.
AI tools and macros speed up responses and automate repetitive tasks
No forever free plan available
Deep e-commerce integrations with Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce
Pricing based on ticket volume can get expensive as volume grows
User Reviews
“The best thing is the easy to use macro responses, my entire team loves to use them.” [Source]
“What I don’t like about Gorgias is the lack of notification for new tickets (emails). You only get notified if a new chat is available but there are no options to add notifications on everything else. I already sent this as a suggestion and hopefully this will be included in a future update.” [Source]
Recommended reading
7. Jira Service Desk
For scaling teams that have outgrown messy support workflows, Jira Service Management offers a smarter way to stay organized. It replaces scattered emails, spreadsheets, and chat threads with a centralized system that pulls in requests from email, Slack, Teams, chat, and portals into one organized queue.
The tool lets you build custom request forms and design workflows with a drag-and-drop editor. Tickets are routed automatically based on team priorities. Its no-code automation handles repetitive tasks like ticket categorization, auto-responses, and assignments, cutting down on manual work and speeding up resolution times.
JSM comes with self-service features like knowledge management and customer portals that help deflect tickets. This frees up teams to focus on more complex, high-priority requests without increasing headcount.
Managers also get real-time reporting and CSAT tracking, which help them monitor performance, identify bottlenecks, and raise service standards. This makes Jira Service Management a scalable fit for IT, operations, and internal support teams.
Pricing
Jira Service Desk’s paid plans start at $19 per user per month. It also offers a free plan with basic functionality.
Free trial: 7 days.
Strong automation and workflow customization with no-code tools
Steeper learning curve for non-technical users
Seamless integration with Atlassian products like Jira Software and Confluence
Interface can feel complex compared to simpler help desks
User Reviews
“It works very well with other Atlassian tools like Jira Software and Confluence. It helps me to organize support requests, incidents, and changes in one place. The customer portal is easy to use and friendly to them.” [Source]
“I think Jira’s weak point is ease of use. It is a tool that has a fairly slow learning curve and is not as intuitive for users who are not in the Technology environment.” [Source]
8. HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub is built for growing businesses that want to deliver fast, tailored customer support while staying fully connected to their sales and marketing data.
The platform’s AI features, like the Breeze Customer Agent, automate responses to common queries, resolve tickets instantly, and even identify gaps in your knowledge base to improve self-service options over time. This helps teams save time while delivering consistent, high-quality support around the clock.
Integrated with HubSpot CRM, Service Hub gives support agents full visibility into customer history, purchases, and previous interactions, making every conversation more informed and personalized.
With Service Hub, businesses can monitor key support metrics through built-in reports, track customer satisfaction with NPS and CSAT surveys, and use the Customer Success Workspace to identify at-risk accounts and upsell opportunities, helping teams proactively improve retention.
Pricing
The Service Hub Starter plan is priced at $15 per user per month. There is a free forever plan that you can avail too.
Free trial: 14 days.
Native integration with HubSpot CRM for full customer context
Interface changes frequently, which can disrupt workflows
Strong reporting, NPS, and CSAT tracking tools
Can feel less intuitive for newcomers
User Reviews
“The customer service is efficiently reactive and helpful, I’ve had nothing but great experiences chatting with the team and clearing some doubts.” [Source]
“Me and my colleagues have the impression that the UX is constantly changing, which makes it difficult to retain information and organise the creation of new projects. Although not extremely difficult to use, the interface is not exactly the most intuitive, meaning that for newcomers is hard to get a bearing of the main usages of the availables tools.” [Source]
9. Front
Front is a customer service platform for fast-moving teams that want to scale customer support without losing the personal element. It combines email, chat, SMS, social, and voice into a unified inbox, helping teams manage high volumes of customer conversations with clarity and speed.
Front also brings strong AI capabilities to the table. It can automatically categorize messages, route them to the right teammate based on intent, and suggest real-time replies to speed up responses. Over time, it helps surface common support themes, making it easier to streamline workflows and reduce repetitive work.
Collaboration is another strength – with shared inboxes, private comments, and clear conversation ownership, teams can stay aligned without stepping on each other’s toes. Front also integrates with tools like Salesforce, Jira, and over 1,500 others, so you can connect your support stack without much hassle.
Pricing
Front’s pricing plans start at $25 per agent per month. There’s no forever free plan available.
Free trial: 14 days.
Strong collaboration tools like shared drafts and internal comments
No forever free plan available
AI features for auto-categorizing and suggesting replies
Search functionality can be slow and lacks advanced filters
User Reviews
“What I like best about Front is how it brings email and team collaboration together in one place. The shared inboxes, internal comments, and clear assignment of messages help our team stay organized and aligned without needing to forward emails or rely on external chat tools.” [Source]
“It is sometimes very hard to find certain emails, the search function is not very sharp and more often than not I have to sift through tens of emails before finding the right one. Would be great to have filters for the search function such as only shortlisting emails by their sender or have certain words in their title. This would be especially helpful for any searches that go back months ago.” [Source]
Recommended reading
10. Zendesk
Zendesk is one of the biggest names in help desk software, trusted by businesses of all sizes to manage conversations across email, chat, phone, and social media.
It offers a full-featured ticketing system with automation, SLA tracking, and custom workflows – making it easier to stay on top of customer requests as they come in. Agents can collaborate using internal notes, and the unified interface keeps the entire conversation history in one place, no matter the channel.
Zendesk also includes a powerful self-service setup with an integrated knowledge base and AI-powered bots to help deflect common queries. For reporting, it provides detailed dashboards to track key support metrics like response time, resolution rate, and customer satisfaction.
While Zendesk’s entry-level plan is affordable, small businesses often find it limiting. Key features like reporting, AI tools, and automation are locked behind higher-tier plans or paid add-ons.
Pricing
Zendesk’s most basic plan starts at $19 per agent per month. There’s no forever free plan.
Free trial: 14 days.
Robust feature set with strong automation, SLA tracking, and reporting
Can feel overly complex for small teams
Supports a wide range of integrations
Support from Zendesk’s own team can feel impersonal
User Reviews
“I didn’t have a great experience with Zendesk’s own support team. Whenever I reached out for help, instead of providing direct assistance or walking me through a solution, they often just sent links to help articles. It felt impersonal and frustrating – especially when I was dealing with urgent or complex issues that weren’t easily solved by a knowledge base article.” [Source]
“As an admin, there are a lot of custom rules and workflows that you can set up for your team, and that is really useful.” [Source]
Recommended reading
11. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a popular help desk platform built by Freshworks, designed to help businesses manage customer support across email, chat, phone, and social media – all from a single dashboard.
It comes with core features like ticket management, team collaboration, and workflow automation, along with a built-in knowledge base to support self-service. Agents can use canned responses, smart ticket assignment, and SLAs to stay efficient and consistent, even during busy periods.
Freshdesk also offers AI tools like Freddy AI, which can help auto-suggest replies, summarize conversations, and identify common issues. Plus, its reporting tools provide clear visibility into team performance and customer satisfaction metrics.
With a generous free plan and scalable pricing, Freshdesk is a strong option for small businesses that want help desk software with room to grow.
Pricing
Freshdesk’s pricing plans start at $15 per agent per month. It also offers a forever free plan.
Free trial: 14 days.
Generous forever free plan with essential features
Can slow down during high ticket volumes
Omnichannel support with AI-powered assistance (Freddy AI)
Manual reassignment can be time-consuming
User Reviews
“The ‘Ticket Views’ option, it does a great job of organizing tickets and allowing me to track them through separate views. The SLA indicators also help me prioritize my work and ensure tickets are closed on time.” [Source]
“I do not feel any specific challenge while using the tool but the only limitations of the Freshdesk is that sometimes when the ticket volume is high, it takes time to load the tickets and the manual reassignment takes higher time that results in high resolution time for the customers.” [Source]
12. Groove
Groove is a simple, no-frills help desk built for small teams that have outgrown shared inboxes but don’t want the complexity of a full-fledged ticketing system. It offers a clean, email-like interface with a familiar three-panel layout – folders on the left, conversations in the middle, and message details on the right – making it easy to get started with little to no learning curve.
It supports email, chat, and social channels in a single unified inbox, giving your team a complete view of customer conversations without switching tabs. Groove also includes light AI features that can summarize conversations, suggest replies, and fine-tune tone – helpful for small teams trying to move quickly.
A built-in knowledge base lets you deflect common queries, and reporting tools provide just enough insight into team performance without overwhelming you with data.
Pricing
Groove’s pricing plans start at $24 per user per month. There’s no forever free plan with Groove.
Free trial: 30 days.
Simple, email-like interface with minimal learning curve
Limited customization and advanced features
Supports omnichannel inbox for email, chat, and social
Knowledge base and reporting are more basic than competitors
User Reviews
“I would like to be able to select which parts of a conversation to include in responses and ‘forwards’ to users. At the moment it’s all or nothing. For some longer conversations involving input from various users, its not always appropriate for some recipients to see the full discussion.” [Source]
“Groove was super easy to implement in our project. They have a bunch of prebuilt features that are easy to add or configure from their web interface. It was pain free to add and from our testing, looks fairly robust. Customer support is also super helpful and quick to respond.” [Source]
How to Choose the Right Help Desk Software for Your Small Business
Now that we’ve looked at the best tools available in the market today, how do you go about selecting one? You’ll want to start by identifying your key goals: Are you aiming to speed up response times, reduce manual work, or gain better visibility into team performance?
Once your goals are clear, consider practical factors like team size, budget, and pricing models. Do you pay per user or per ticket? Can you try the software for free before committing?
As you narrow down your options, use these pointers to guide your decision:
- Ease of Use: Look for tools with a quick, hassle-free setup, especially if your team doesn’t have dedicated IT support.
- Reasonable Pricing: Make sure the pricing model aligns with your budget. Some platforms charge per user, and others per ticket. Understand what’s more cost-effective for you.
- Free Trial Feature: Always test before you buy. Prioritize platforms that offer a free trial or freemium plan to validate the fit.
- Improves Performance Metrics: Choose software that directly impacts key support metrics like CSAT scores, response time, and resolution times.
- Relevant Features: Focus on essential features that solve your problems. Avoid helpdesk tools overloaded with options your team won’t use and get confused by.
- Scalability: Your needs will change as your business grows. Choose a solution that can scale with your business without a steep learning curve.
- Strong Integrations: Check compatibility with your existing tech stack—email, CRM, collaboration tools, etc.
- Reliable Support: Finally, assess vendor support. Reliable, responsive customer service can make a big difference if you hit roadblocks.
Hiver, for example, offers 24/7 support and is known for its responsive team. Their support team has expanded significantly over time, ensuring customers can connect with a real, knowledgeable agent instantly.
Frequently asked questions
1. Do Small Businesses Actually Need a Help Desk Solution?
Yes, especially as they scale. Even small teams can quickly get overwhelmed handling customer queries across multiple channels: mail, chat, phone, and social media. A help desk streamlines customer requests better, tracks KPIs like response and resolution times, and ensures no customer inquiry slips through the cracks.
2. Which Is the Best Customer Service Software for Small and Medium Businesses?
The best customer service software for small and medium businesses should be easy to use, quick to set up, and fit seamlessly into daily workflows. Simplicity matters, especially for growing teams that don’t have time for complex setups.
That’s why 10,000+ teams, including HubSpot, Harvard University, Flexport, and Clutter, prefer Hiver – it takes just 15 minutes to set up, so teams can start managing customer conversations without any hassle.
3. What Are Some Small Business Use Cases for Help Desk Software?
Small businesses can use help desk software in various ways. It helps manage customer emails through a shared inbox, streamlines support requests from channels like live chat, WhatsApp, and social media, and tracks internal IT or employee requests. Businesses also use it for order management, billing support, service appointment scheduling, and general customer queries.
4. What Security Features Should a Small Business Look For in Help Desk Software?
When choosing help desk software, small businesses should pay attention to key security features. These include role-based access controls to ensure only authorized team members can access certain information, encryption to protect customer data, audit logs for tracking actions within the system, and compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR.
5. Can Help Desk Software Integrate with Social Media for Customer Support?
Yes, many help desk platforms integrate with social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (X). This allows businesses to manage customer messages, comments, and mentions from social media directly within the help desk dashboard.
6. How Do You Measure ROI on Help Desk Software?
The return on investment (ROI) from help desk software can be measured by looking at key improvements in customer service. Businesses often see faster response and resolution times, leading to higher customer satisfaction scores. There is also a noticeable reduction in time spent on manual tasks due to automation features.
Customer service software that feels like your inbox
