Zoho Desk vs Help Scout

Last Updated:

Our analysts compared Zoho Desk vs Help Scout based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Help Desk Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Zoho Desk, a help desk software from Zoho Corporation, streamlines customer support operations for businesses of all sizes. It provides a comprehensive suite of features, including a multi-channel ticketing system, knowledge base management, and reporting and analytics. Zoho Desk is particularly well-suited for organizations seeking an affordable and user-friendly solution to manage customer inquiries and improve support efficiency.

Zoho Desk's key benefits include its intuitive interface, customizable workflows, and seamless integration with other Zoho applications. Its popular features include automated ticket routing, self-service portals, and social media monitoring. Users appreciate its ease of use, robust functionality, and affordable pricing.

Zoho Desk offers flexible pricing plans based on the number of agents and features required. Its price range starts from a few dollars per agent per month for basic plans and scales up for more advanced features and support levels.

read more...
Help Scout's help desk software offers a streamlined solution for businesses seeking to enhance their customer support capabilities. It's particularly well-suited for small to medium-sized teams that prioritize efficient and personalized communication. Help Scout centralizes all customer interactions, including email, live chat, and social media, into a unified inbox, enabling teams to respond promptly and effectively.

Key benefits of Help Scout include its intuitive interface, customizable automation, and reporting features. Popular features encompass shared inboxes for collaborative support, pre-built templates for faster responses, and detailed analytics for performance monitoring. Compared to other help desk software, Help Scout is known for its user-friendliness and excellent customer support. Its pricing ranges from $20 to $65 per user per month, billed annually.

read more...
$12/User, Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$20 Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Streamlined Customer Interactions: Zoho Desk's centralized platform seamlessly integrates all customer interactions across multiple channels, providing a comprehensive view of customer engagement history and preferences.
  • Improved Agent Productivity: Automated workflows, canned responses, and AI-powered tools empower agents to resolve issues swiftly and efficiently, maximizing their productivity and reducing resolution times.
  • Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Zoho Desk's intuitive interface and personalized support experiences ensure a positive and frictionless customer journey, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Data-Driven Insights: Comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities provide valuable insights into customer behavior, agent performance, and service level metrics, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
  • Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing: Built-in collaboration tools and a knowledge base facilitate seamless communication between agents, fostering a collaborative work environment and ensuring consistent and informed responses.
  • Omnichannel Support: Zoho Desk supports a wide range of communication channels, including email, phone, chat, social media, and self-service portals, ensuring customers can reach support conveniently and efficiently.
  • Customization and Flexibility: Zoho Desk offers extensive customization options, allowing businesses to tailor the software to their unique needs, processes, and workflows.
  • Affordability and Scalability: Zoho Desk's flexible pricing plans and scalable architecture accommodate businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.
  • Integration with Other Zoho Products: Zoho Desk seamlessly integrates with other Zoho products, such as CRM, email marketing, and project management tools, creating a cohesive and powerful business suite.
  • Continuous Innovation and Updates: Zoho Desk undergoes regular updates and enhancements, ensuring customers benefit from the latest features, security patches, and industry best practices.
read more...
  • Easy Collaboration: Send private notes to teammates and discuss problems to find solutions together before replying to customers. Create a searchable library of frequently asked questions and insert them into replies in two clicks.  
  • Deliver Instant Answers: Allow customers to access knowledge base articles from anywhere on the website with Beacon (virtual agent). Embed the knowledge base content on any web page, so customers don’t waste time searching. 
  • All Time Availability: Work on any device including, desktop, mobile or tablet. Include SSL support on every site for free and offer peace of mind to customers. Allow customers to take advantage of configurable options and auto-generated sitemap for each article in knowledge base software. 
  • Easy Escalation: Allow customers to start a live chat from where they accessed the knowledge base. Direct customer support request to email queue when live chat isn’t available. Offer choice to reach out from any mode of communication that works best for them.  
read more...
  • Ticket Management: Engage in communication with customers and manage tickets across multiple channels, departments, products and brands. Create separate departments within the help desk to ensure appropriate responses to customer queries without any delays or unnecessary actions. 
  • Zia: Boost team’s productivity with the product’s AI assistance for business. This contextual AI features tools such as Zia Voice, Ask Zia, Zia Notifications, Zia Dashboards, Zia Skill Builder, Reply Assistant and Sentiment Analysis that help deliver quick, instant and high-quality support to customers.  
  • Productivity: Access work modes to proactively organize open tickets to make sales reps more active. Send helpful and informative responses to tickets using response editor, FAQs and templates. Combine the main functionality with CRM capabilities for closing more tickets in less time. 
  • Extensibility: Extend help desk service capabilities by integrating help desk modules with other software and services as per the needs of the business. Update details in help desk and other platforms via custom codes. Embed interactive and coactive widgets into the help desk interface via extensions and build custom mobile apps through SDKs. 
  • Insights and Impact: Get insights into team performance via dashboards and reports. Explore the product’s unique tools such as Radar — a mobile app for a proactive, hands-on manager experience -and headquarters-a live dashboard displaying a big picture of the team’s progress and performance. 
  • Customization: Customize help desk workflow and match it with the brand’s personality with the help center theme gallery to create a long-lasting impression on customers and promote team productivity.  
  • Support: Get access to GDPR compliance and protect customer’s data from leaking by managing the organization’s hierarchy and controlling data access. 
read more...
  • Collision Detection: See who replies or views comments in real time. Allow users to collaborate internally via notes and @mentions. Use tagging to trigger automation and categorize conversations. Use saved answers for most common queries through two-click access. Automate all actions, create custom folders and send bulk replies.  
  • Reports and Analytics: Measure team performance, monitor customer satisfaction rates and identify issues clearly to prevent complexities and issues without opening an Excel spreadsheet. Integrate the help desk platform with services such as Snap Engage and Olarkto. Store every chat automatically in the customer's profile.  
  • Shared Inbox: Manage all support requests in a shared inbox. Get all the collaboration features such as multichannel support, notification, advanced search, mobile apps, satisfaction ratings and developer tools to stay productive and deliver world-class support. 
  • Knowledge Base: Reduce support volume by 20% and encourage fewer conversations and happier customers with easy-to-add text, hyperlinks, images, tables, and videos to articles. Customize SEO details by selecting categories and adding related units.  
  • Messages: Offer proactive support, engage leads and onboard new customers with trigger-based messages. Send SMS from any blog, website, store, or Beacon-installed app. 
  • Customer Management: List customer data, app activity and previous conversations alongside every request to deliver more personalized and faster support.  
  • Live Chat: Help customers find help center content or chat with agents easily from the same tool. Recommend resources depending on the pages clients view, so they don't waste time looking for answers. 
read more...

Product Ranking

#19

among all
Help Desk Software

#20

among all
Help Desk Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

87
75
83
62
61
50
93
75
Show More Show More
Email Management
Mobile Capabilities
Team Collaboration
Platform Capabilities
Dashboards and Reporting
Integrations and Extensibility
Platform Security
Team Collaboration

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Zoho Desk
Help Scout
+ Add Product + Add Product
Agent Productivity Call Center Management Dashboards And Reporting Email Management Live Chat Management Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Team Collaboration Ticket Management 83 61 93 100 79 100 94 100 82 62 50 75 66 74 83 73 85 63 0 25 50 75 100
83%
0%
17%
50%
17%
33%
8%
67%
25%
0%
0%
100%
83%
17%
0%
67%
0%
33%
100%
0%
0%
71%
0%
29%
64%
18%
18%
64%
0%
36%
100%
0%
0%
80%
0%
20%
92%
0%
8%
71%
0%
29%
100%
0%
0%
67%
0%
33%
82%
0%
18%
53%
6%
41%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

79%
0%
21%
100%
0%
0%
89%
0%
11%
89%
0%
11%

User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 4810 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 654 reviews
89%
of users recommend this product

Zoho Desk has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 4810 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

90%
of users recommend this product

Help Scout has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 90% when considering 654 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (16)
n/a
4.4 (2784)
4.3 (260)
n/a
4.67 (183)
4.5 (1645)
4.7 (168)
4.6 (339)
n/a
4.2 (26)
4.0 (43)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Zoho Desk and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Email Management, Mobile Capabilities and Team Collaboration.

Email Management Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
Team Collaboration Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Help Scout and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Integrations and Extensibility. Help Scout stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Integrations and Extensibility Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Implementation: According to 100% of users, the software is extremely easy to set up and configure.
Ease of Use: Approximately 100% of users said that it has a helpful interface with an easy-to-use platform for small teams who wish to establish a helpdesk.
Features: According to 98% of customers, the product has tons of tightly integrated features in mail, CRM, bookings, messaging (Cliq) and conferencing (Meeting).
Show more
Intuitive Interface: User-friendly design simplifies navigation and ticket management, making it easy for support teams to get up to speed quickly.
Shared Inbox: Collaborative workspace allows multiple agents to manage tickets efficiently, ensuring seamless handoffs and faster resolution times.
Automated Workflows: Customizable automation rules streamline repetitive tasks, freeing up agents' time for more complex issues.
Powerful Search: Robust search capabilities make it easy to find specific tickets, customer information, and knowledge base articles, reducing time spent on manual searches.
Excellent Customer Support: Responsive and knowledgeable support team provides prompt assistance, ensuring a positive user experience.
Show more
Integration: According to 45%of customers, the product is a little bit tricky to integrate with its own domain.
Pricing: The pricing structure is difficult according to 50% users.
Customization: Approximately 40% of users claimed that the tools aren't very customizable in terms of automation, workflow and user interface.
Show more
Limited Customization: Help Scout offers limited customization options, which can restrict businesses from tailoring the software to their specific needs and branding.
Lack of Automation: Compared to other Help Desk Software, Help Scout lacks robust automation features, such as automated ticket assignment and escalation rules, which can hinder efficiency.
Pricing Structure: Help Scout's pricing plans can be perceived as expensive for businesses with a large number of agents or high ticket volume.
Limited Reporting Capabilities: Some users have reported that Help Scout's reporting capabilities are not as comprehensive as they would like, making it challenging to extract valuable insights and track performance.
Mobile App Limitations: The Help Scout mobile app has been criticized for its limited functionality compared to the desktop version, making it less convenient for remote or on-the-go support teams.
Show more

Zoho Desk is a help desk software that offers world-class customer experiences by prioritizing and managing customer interactions across multiple modules. Based on the reviews, the product is simple and intitutive. Users also said that they were able to implement it in no time and were able to figure out all the functions easily. With tons of features, it has won the hearts of many. However, some users said that customer support functions were lacking. Moreover, many customization options are only available for admins. Users also talked about the difficult pricing structure of the product. In all, it is a great product for all mid, small and big companies. But be sure to explore extensively before buying.

Show more

Help Scout, a popular help desk software, has received consistent praise from users in the last year. Many users emphasize its user-friendly interface, which makes it easy to set up and use, even for those new to help desk software. The software's intuitive design and customizable features allow users to tailor it to their specific needs, making it a versatile option for businesses of all sizes. When comparing Help Scout to similar products, users often highlight its superior customer support and documentation. Help Scout's dedicated support team is highly responsive and knowledgeable, providing valuable assistance to users. Additionally, the software's comprehensive documentation and tutorials make it easy for users to find answers to their questions and troubleshoot any issues they encounter. One of the key differentiating factors of Help Scout is its focus on email support. The software seamlessly integrates with email, allowing users to manage all their customer interactions from a single platform. This streamlines communication and improves efficiency, particularly for businesses that rely heavily on email support. Overall, Help Scout is highly recommended for businesses looking for a user-friendly, customizable, and reliable help desk software. Its strengths in customer support, email integration, and intuitive design make it an excellent choice for companies of all sizes that prioritize efficient and effective customer service.

Show more

Screenshots

Top Alternatives in Help Desk Software


Freshdesk

Front

Gorgias

HappyFox

Help Scout

HubSpot Service Hub

Intercom

Jira

Jitbit

Kayako

LiveAgent

LiveChat

Salesforce Service Cloud

ServiceNow

TeamSupport

Teamwork Desk

Vision Helpdesk

Zendesk

Related Categories

Head-to-Head Comparison

WE DISTILL IT INTO REAL REQUIREMENTS, COMPARISON REPORTS, PRICE GUIDES and more...

Compare products
Comparison Report
Just drag this link to the bookmark bar.
?
Table settings