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Your customer service systems have a substantial effect on your business’s success. When implemented correctly, they enhance your efforts to build long-lasting customer relationships, enabling your company to thrive. Without them, you simply cannot provide customers with prompt and efficient support and ultimately lose them to your competitors.
A help desk software collects customer interactions, be it requests, questions, or issue reports, and converts them into tickets that your customer support agents can track, prioritize, and respond to in a timely manner.
Regardless of your company size and industry niche, help desk solutions help your customer support team provide effective service and manage their workload. The best part is, you don’t actually have to pay anything to acquire one, considering there are tons of excellent free help desk software options on the market.
That said, not every free help desk software is worth your money. Case in point: most vendors have free plans with serious limitations, and others offer a free trial for a specific time period only. Not to worry though; we worked hard to weed out the bad options and identify providers who actually deliver on their promises.
Read on to find out our top picks for the best free help desk software.
Our Criteria: Here's how we chose who made the cut
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Top Free Help Desk Software
We track thousands of tools in the customer success space, catering to businesses of various sizes. The following are the best free help desk software solutions per our research and expert council as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
Freshdesk allows you to categorize, prioritize, and assign tickets. The tool is also super easy to use and is scalable to grow as your small business grows. It has a generous free plan that includes several desirable features, including team huddle that lets agents bring in experts to resolve complex tickets and dynamic placeholder to auto-fill details like customer name, ticket status, or even ticket URL.
- Freshdesk enables your customer service team to offer proactive support across multiple channels, including Facebook, Twitter, email, and website, to engage your customers.
- Freshdesk is incredibly user-friendly. Your agents don’t need any specialized coding or technical knowledge to use it. Plus, it offers diverse templates with formatting components to simplify ticketing.
- Freshdesk's free plan is comprehensive, offering you all the features you would need as a small business and then some.
- With Freshdesk, your team can collaborate with each other and resolve issues faster.
- The platform comes with a mobile app that enables agents to provide support on the go. It’s available for both iOS and Android devices.
- In addition to a generous free plan, Freshdesk's paid plans provide great value for money. It gives you several advanced features like gamification at affordable rates.
- Freshdesk’s marketing is slightly confusing. Most of its advanced features require an upgrade to the highest pricing tears, which users don’t realize until after signing up. Here’s a free vs. paid plan breakdown, so you don’t find yourself making wrong decisions.
- You cannot provide temporary access to seasonal hires, part-time workers, or other team members in the Free plan. While this feature is available, you’ll have to upgrade to the premium plans.
- Freshdesk doesn’t offer dedicated technical support. As a result, complicated issues take longer to resolve.
Freshdesk
Review:
Freshdesk makes managing customer conversations significantly easier, thanks to its omnichannel view. The multi-channel support with smart automation allows you to help customers through their preferred communication method at a much faster pace.
Additionally, you don’t have to look at every single ticket, preventing support ticket pile-ups. The tool lets you create custom rules using the ticket creation feature to prioritize tickets based on the keywords used by customers and forward them to the right team member automatically.
Your agents can also add to-do items directly to the tickets to avoid missing out on anything, which helps boost their overall productivity.
Freshdesk
Customers:
HP, Henkel, Decathlon, Panasonic, American Express, Fiverr, Thai Union
HP, Henkel, Decathlon, Panasonic, American Express, Fiverr, Thai Union
Freshdesk
Pricing:
Freshdesk offers the following plans:
- Free – This includes integrated ticketing across email and social, knowledge bases, ticket trend report, analytics, and 24x7 email support.
- Growth – This costs $15 per agent, per month. Expect everything in the Free plan, automation, SLA management and business hours, in-depth helpdesk reporting, collision detection, and custom email servers and ticket views,
- Pro – This costs $49 per agent, per month. Expect the ability to include up to 5000 collaborators, round-robin routing, custom reports and dashboards, and CSAT surveys & reports — and everything in the Growth plan.
- Enterprise – This costs $79 per agent, per month. Expect everything in the Pro plan, along with a sandbox functionality, assist and email bots, and canned response suggester.
Freshdesk offers the following plans:
- Free – This includes integrated ticketing across email and social, knowledge bases, ticket trend report, analytics, and 24x7 email support.
- Growth – This costs $15 per agent, per month. Expect everything in the Free plan, automation, SLA management and business hours, in-depth helpdesk reporting, collision detection, and custom email servers and ticket views,
- Pro – This costs $49 per agent, per month. Expect the ability to include up to 5000 collaborators, round-robin routing, custom reports and dashboards, and CSAT surveys & reports — and everything in the Growth plan.
- Enterprise – This costs $79 per agent, per month. Expect everything in the Pro plan, along with a sandbox functionality, assist and email bots, and canned response suggester.
Best For
While companies of all sizes can find value in Freshdesk's paid plan, its Free plan is best suited for small businesses with up to ten agents.
Why we love it
:
Jira Service Management is essentially a collaborative IT service management (ITSM) solution that helps teams receive, manage, track, and resolve requests — all from a central location. You can build multiple projects and track and manage customer support requests and incidents with the software. Compared to other free help desks, Jira Service Management offers you several useful in-built features to resolve your customers' technical issues faster, reducing the need to rely on third-party tools.
- Easy issue tracking and great collaboration are the core features of Jira Service Management to provide customers faster, more efficient customer service.
- Jira Service Management allows customers to rate the quality of a knowledge base article, helping you identify improvement areas and update accordingly.
- Jira Service Management has a customizable user interface. You can also change the feel and look of the help desk center and portal to reflect your company’s branding.
- Incident and problem management is prompt and easy, thanks to Jira Service Management‘s alerts and email notifications.
- Jira Service Management’s mobile app support ensures you’re notified instantly about breached SLAs and all assigned, reported, watched, and mentioned requests.
- In addition to Jira Service Management's internal features, you can use its diverse range of integrations to further maximize functionality.
- Jira Service Management’s Free plan doesn’t offer customizable charts and dashboards.
- Jira Service Management has a rigid email notification system, so you cannot customize it, and your notification system may get easily cluttered. Modifying notifications per user or sending by batch isn’t an option either.
Jira Service Management
Review:
Regardless of whether you want to announce changes in your interface, manage incidents, or identify a bug, Jira Service Management has service desk features to simplify the process.
You get access to a wide range of help desk services. Prioritize tickets to ensure urgent ones are tackled first; create a single repository of planned changes and releases; set up custom automation rules to automate manual and time-consuming tasks.
It also offers you a single platform to handle all internal requests and issues, allowing you to empower your team, as well as track company-wide IT assets.
Jira Service Management
Customers:
Yale School of Management, Twitter, The Telegraph, Dominos, Square, Sotheby's, American Diabetes Association
Yale School of Management, Twitter, The Telegraph, Dominos, Square, Sotheby's, American Diabetes Association
Jira Service Management
Pricing:
Jira Service Management currently offers four subscription plans:
- Free – This plan is always free for up to three agents and lets you handle unlimited customers.
- Standard – This costs $20 per agent and gives you access to everything in the Free plan. Standard-exclusive features include suitability for up to 5,000 agents, 250 GB file storage, and unlimited email notifications, among others.
- Premium – This costs $45 per agent and gives you access to everything in the Standard plan. Premium-exclusive features include advanced incident management, unlimited file storage, and asset and configuration management, among others.
- Enterprise – You'll have to request a quote. Expect everything in the Premium plan, along with other features like enhanced data and analytics, centralized security and administration, and 24/7 dedicated senior agent support.
Jira Service Management currently offers four subscription plans:
- Free – This plan is always free for up to three agents and lets you handle unlimited customers.
- Standard – This costs $20 per agent and gives you access to everything in the Free plan. Standard-exclusive features include suitability for up to 5,000 agents, 250 GB file storage, and unlimited email notifications, among others.
- Premium – This costs $45 per agent and gives you access to everything in the Standard plan. Premium-exclusive features include advanced incident management, unlimited file storage, and asset and configuration management, among others.
- Enterprise – You'll have to request a quote. Expect everything in the Premium plan, along with other features like enhanced data and analytics, centralized security and administration, and 24/7 dedicated senior agent support.
Best For
Jira Service Management is designed for teams who create requests through the customer portal or by email, but its free plan will perfectly cater to the needs of smaller teams, helping them plan and track work more efficiently.
Why we love it
:
Zoho is a provider of all sorts of business solutions that are affordable yet on par with the market’s leading offerings. Zoho Desk exemplifies this, being a feature-rich customer service software that’s robust, intuitive, and budget friendly.
- With Zoho Desk, you get one of the most extensive feature lists of any help desk and ticketing system in the market.
- Zoho Desk is very flexible when it comes to pricing, as you can switch plans as you go if your team member count or necessities grow.
- It’s available in 22 languages.
- Lets you provide support across multiple channels.
- With Zoho Desk, you get one of the most extensive feature lists of any help desk and ticketing system in the market.
- Zoho Desk is very flexible when it comes to pricing, as you can switch plans as you go if your team member count or necessities grow.
- It’s available in 22 languages.
- Lets you provide support across multiple channels.
- Some of the product customizations can be hard to figure out, according to some users.
- The UX/UI can seem dated at times.
- Several users have reported that integrating the tool with several apps can be problematic.
- Some of the product customizations can be hard to figure out, according to some users.
- The UX/UI can seem dated at times.
- Several users have reported that integrating the tool with several apps can be problematic.
Zoho Desk
Review:
Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk software that allows you to provide context-driven support. It provides comprehensive features and workflows for ticket management, assignment, categorization, prioritization, escalation, and more. It also features a knowledge base for ticket deflection through self-service, as well as easy-to-use dashboards to track quality metrics such as customer satisfaction and overall team performance.
Zoho Desk
Customers:
Zoho Desk has thousands of customers and many enterprise-level clients. The most notable include McAfee, Daimler, LycaMobile, and Rogers.
Zoho Desk has thousands of customers and many enterprise-level clients. The most notable include McAfee, Daimler, LycaMobile, and Rogers.
Zoho Desk
Pricing:
Zoho Desk offers four pricing plans:
- The Free version is available for three agents, with features that include email ticketing, customer management, help center, private knowledge base, predefined SLAs, macros, multi-language help desk, mobile apps, and 24x5 email support.
- The Standard bundle ($14/user/month) includes everything on the Free bundle, plus social and community channels, product-based ticket management, help center themes gallery, public knowledge base, SLAs & escalations, customer happiness ratings, 24x5 phone support, and more.
- The Professional bundle ($23/user/month) includes everything on the Standard bundle, plus multi-department ticketing, team management, telephony, automatic time tracking, round-robin ticket assignment, ticket templates, ticket sharing, and more. This is Zoho Desk’s most popular plan.
- The Enterprise bundle ($40/user/month) includes everything on the Professional bundle, plus live chat, an AI-powered assistant, help center customization, multi-brand help center, advanced process management, global reports & dashboards, and more.
It is worth noting that Zoho Enterprise is on par with most top-tier plans by other providers in terms of features and goes for a significantly low price. Also, you can try any plan for free for 15 days.
Zoho Desk offers four pricing plans:
- The Free version is available for three agents, with features that include email ticketing, customer management, help center, private knowledge base, predefined SLAs, macros, multi-language help desk, mobile apps, and 24x5 email support.
- The Standard bundle ($14/user/month) includes everything on the Free bundle, plus social and community channels, product-based ticket management, help center themes gallery, public knowledge base, SLAs & escalations, customer happiness ratings, 24x5 phone support, and more.
- The Professional bundle ($23/user/month) includes everything on the Standard bundle, plus multi-department ticketing, team management, telephony, automatic time tracking, round-robin ticket assignment, ticket templates, ticket sharing, and more. This is Zoho Desk’s most popular plan.
- The Enterprise bundle ($40/user/month) includes everything on the Professional bundle, plus live chat, an AI-powered assistant, help center customization, multi-brand help center, advanced process management, global reports & dashboards, and more.
It is worth noting that Zoho Enterprise is on par with most top-tier plans by other providers in terms of features and goes for a significantly low price. Also, you can try any plan for free for 15 days.
Best For
Zoho Desk is a good fit for companies of all sizes looking for a comprehensive yet affordable customer support solution. Customer service-centric teams can take advantage of the integrated ticketing system, together with companies looking for a more cost-friendly knowledge management solution. If your organization uses other Zoho products, this should be an easy addition.
Why we love it
:
LiveAgent offers some unique features, such as geotargeting and website visitor targeting, that help to improve and hyper-personalize customer support. Service level optimization is another handy feature that makes LiveAgent a great choice over its competitors. LiveAgent's phone app isn't at par with other help desks, though. The company needs to work on improving its interface so that support agents can help customers while on the go.
- LiveAgent’s modern user interface looks aesthetically pleasing while being easy to navigate.
- LiveAgent is super easy to implement and use. Even if your team isn’t tech-savvy, the time to productivity is quick.
- LiveAgent empowers small support teams to easily handle large volumes of queries. Critical features like a universal inbox, a live chat widget, and a knowledge base enable you to address all tickets with greater efficiency.
- For LiveAgent, every user is a valuable client. Expect 24/7 customer support via phone, live chat, or email. The support agents are also in-house and not outsourced, which further ensures you’re given accurate answers to all your queries.
- LiveAgent takes feedback seriously and is constantly trying to improve the software, so you’re assured of a reliable tool.
- LiveAgent needs to work on its mobile app interface. While convenient to work with, it isn’t as at par with the competitors.
- LiveAgent offers limited integrations, which may be a hindrance for companies wanting to significantly boost support effectiveness and visibility.
- LiveAgent’s Free plan doesn’t allow for integrations with social networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Viber — you’ll have to upgrade to the paid plans to get access. Therefore, you can’t offer customers omnichannel support and have to stay limited to email, live chat, and call center support.
LiveAgent
Review:
LiveAgent allows you to enhance customer engagement through its customizable live chat widget. Based on the time spent on any specific web page, you can invite your customers to chat, answering their basic questions and helping them make the right purchase decisions.
The ticketing system is also commendable. Each ticket contains the full history of customer conversations, including emails, chat messages, and phone calls.
LiveAgent
Customers:
Huawei, BMW, Yamaha, O2, Slido, Forbes, AirBus.
Huawei, BMW, Yamaha, O2, Slido, Forbes, AirBus, Hostinger, Atomer
LiveAgent
Pricing:
LiveAgent offers the following plans:
- Free – This plan offers 7-day ticket history, one chat button, phone number, and email address to streamline support, and a customer portal and forum.
- Ticket – This costs $15 per agent, per month. Features include unlimited ticket history and email addresses, advanced reporting, and the ability to create custom rules and time rules.
- Ticket + Chat – This costs $29 per agent, per month. In addition to everything in the Ticket plan, you get unlimited chat buttons, feedback management, chat satisfaction surveys, and real-time visitor monitoring.
- All-inclusive – This costs $49 per agent, per month. In addition to everything in the Ticket + Chat plan, you get call center support, IVR, call routing and transfers, and unlimited call recordings.
LiveAgent offers the following plans:
- Free – This plan offers 7-day ticket history, one chat button, phone number, and email address to streamline support, and a customer portal and forum.
- Ticket – This costs $15 per agent, per month. Features include unlimited ticket history and email addresses, advanced reporting, and the ability to create custom rules and time rules.
- Ticket + Chat – This costs $29 per agent, per month. In addition to everything in the Ticket plan, you get unlimited chat buttons, feedback management, chat satisfaction surveys, and real-time visitor monitoring.
- All-inclusive – This costs $49 per agent, per month. In addition to everything in the Ticket + Chat plan, you get call center support, IVR, call routing and transfers, and unlimited call recordings.
Best For
LiveAgent is a great choice for companies of all sizes looking for a user-friendly and reliable customer support solution.
Why we love it
:
Spiceworks give you access to all the features you would expect from a top-notch help desk ticketing system. This includes omnichannel support, automatic ticket assignment and management, and a self-service portal. What's more, there are no limitations on standard factors like the number of agent accounts, customers tickets and data storage, which is an issue with other free help desk solutions.
- With Spiceworks, you can offer your customers omnichannel query collection to submit queries and share concerns across channels. You don't have to worry about how much it costs, thanks to the free service.
- Spiceworks offers both cloud-based and on-premise versions of its free helpdesk ticketing system, which is quite rare in the customer support niche.
- Spiceworks’ help desk isn’t only limited to your desk — it’s also available as an app for Android and iOS users. Thanks to this, you can manage support tickets on the go.
- Spiceworks provides an unlimited number of service tickets for each user. You can create as many decades as a situation needs, eliminating the need to delete tickets and allowing you to retain chat history. This also gives your team a reference point that they can go back to whenever similar issues or topics resurface.
- Spiceworks‘ large community is backed by dedicated IT professionals, specialized tech vendors, and other kinds of individuals willing to share their expertise when it comes to IT-related issues and help each other out. This ensures every member receives accurate and prompt responses to all their queries.
- Due to Spiceworks’ limited feature set, it isn’t very flexible. It lacks some of the more desirable features, such as knowledge base management, interaction tracking, and prioritization.
- Spiceworks doesn’t offer advanced reporting options, which restrict your view into agent productivity and the kind of support your customers are receiving. Additionally, you have to streamline reports to remove redundancy.
- To enjoy Spiceworks’ free help desk, be ready to view forceful ads and receive promotional emails — lots of them.
- Spiceworks' direct customer support is limited to email. So you don't get chat, phone, and social media assistance options.
Spiceworks
Review:
Spiceworks is deployable on the cloud for an online help desk or on-premise for a self-hosted platform. Use it to automate several manual tasks to free up your executives’ time. You can also create individual sites and user portals for each client your company manages to streamline efforts.
The help desk is designed to assist you in many ways, including getting answers to technical questions, learning from instructional resources, and troubleshooting IT issues. You can also launch Spiceworks within minutes to get started right away.
Spiceworks
Customers:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Untangle Inc., Arhaus, Sonic Corporation, Howard Brown, J2 Global, Inc.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Untangle Inc., Arhaus, Sonic Corporation, Howard Brown, J2 Global, Inc.
Spiceworks
Pricing:
Spiceworks stands out from competitors by offering all of its products for free. If you're wondering from where the company gets funds to run, it's from the ads that appear in the backend and are sponsored by numerous IT vendors.
Spiceworks stands out from competitors by offering all of its products for free. If you're wondering from where the company gets funds to run, it's from the ads that appear in the backend and are sponsored by numerous IT vendors.
Best For
Spiceworks makes a great choice for any business looking for a no-frills help desk software. While its functionality is limited, the fact that the tool is free of cost with ample features makes it a boon for small and medium-sized businesses. Companies looking for free cloud-based and on-premise versions help desk will also find Spiceworks a good match.
Help Sesk Software FAQ
Why should businesses invest in help desk software?
Help desk software can help businesses streamline their customer support process by automating repetitive tasks, routing support requests to the appropriate team or agent, and providing a centralized repository for customer information and support history. This can save time and improve the overall efficiency of the customer support process, which in turn results in better customer experience.
How to select the best help desk software?
- Define what "great customer service" means for your company and targeted audience
- Establish customer and employee customer support expectations
- Consider the key help desk features you absolutely need
- Cross-check with software vendors about the availability of the said features
- Look for affordable and scalable options
- Narrow down to options offering a free trial
- Choose the help desk software that’s most easy for you to navigate and configure
What is the difference between a service desk and a help desk?
A service desk and a help desk are both customer support solutions that handle customer inquiries, complaints, and requests. However, a service desk typically has a broader scope of responsibilities than a help desk. While a help desk is focused on providing technical support, a service desk may also handle non-technical inquiries and requests, such as HR or payroll issues. Service desks may also have more advanced tools and resources at their disposal, such as knowledge management systems and self-service portals, to help them provide more comprehensive support.
Final Advice
Choosing the right help desk software for your customer support team doesn’t need to be based on assumptions or involve tedious long research processes. You can eliminate much of the confusion and hard work by identifying your company’s needs and scheduling demos with vendors that can best cater to them.
If you’re open to upgrading to a paid help desk software down the line, make sure to pick a solution that offers trial periods. This way, instead of relying on others opinions and viewpoints, you can get a first-hand experience of how the help desk fits within your tech stack and performs. If you aren’t sure where to start, you can browse our guide on the best IT help desk ticketing systems for businesses of all sizes.
Best Free Help Desk Software
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