Thinking about switching from GrooveHQ? We'll guide you to the best GrooveHQ alternatives and competitors for your team.
Speaking from my own experience, Groove works wonders for small teams, but when you start dealing with more team members or a larger customer base, you'll likely need a bit more functionality than Groove can provide.
If you're in a hurry and don't want to read the whole post, here is our conclusion about the best GrooveHQ alternatives:
If I had to pick just one, I’d point you to Help Scout. It offers a strong step up from Groove that will allow your team to continue to grow and scale, but it doesn’t add too much complexity if you’re just not there yet.
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To compile this list of alternatives to Groove, we looked at a multitude of criteria for tools, with a focus on:
Zendesk is the industry leader with their customer support tools, and it’s no wonder when you look at their feature set. They offer an omnichannel platform that includes email, live chat, social media, and more. Because they take an everything-for-everyone stance, it can be extremely powerful but often confusing and with the price tag to match.
If you’re looking to make a large jump in power compared to Groove, Zendesk is a great solution. In addition to a similar shared inbox approach, you'll find automation tools, AI, bots, and excellent reporting. You’ll also find a highly customizable help center within Zendesk, with a large marketplace of pre-made themes or the ability to create your own custom design to match your brand.
Zendesk also comes equipped with over 1,000 integrations, including Hootsuite, Jira, Magento, Microsoft Teams, Shopify, Slack, Trello, and Zoom.
However, if you're only just starting to press against Groove limitations, Zendesk may be overkill for your needs. Zendesk is best for larger teams that need the robust feature set offered and have the time and resources to customize their platform.
Zendesk offers multiple tiers of pricing, each with different functionality. Their least expensive plan starts at $19/agent per month and goes up to $150/agent per month or more. If you're looking to replace Groove with more functionality, you'll likely want to step up to their $49/agent per month plan.
Test drive Zendesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Zendesk Alternatives
As a Groove alternative, Freshdesk is packed with features. It includes an omnichannel help desk, which enables you to manage all customer communication from email, live chat, and social media in a single inbox. You can save time by using canned responses and bulk actions to handle tickets quickly and efficiently. Also, Freshdesk supports localization for multi-lingual teams.
The platform's well-designed ticketing system utilizes automation to assign and prioritize tickets based on keywords, requesters, or properties. Freshdesk also offers AI-powered chatbots that can provide step-by-step instructions to customers and detect frustration, forwarding the conversation to a live agent when necessary. My favorite feature of Freshdesk is the "thank you detector," which prevents tickets from reopening when customers write back to express gratitude. Small touches like that make a big difference to your day-to-day experience.
Freshdesk offers many integrations, including Shopify, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Slack, and Jira.
Like Zendesk above, Freshdesk may be overkill if you’re just starting to press against Groove’s limitations. However, with their lower-priced plans, it may work to scale upward over time rather than jumping right into the deep end.
Freshdesk’s pricing ranges from $15/user to $69/user per month when billed annually. They also offer a “free forever” basic plan if you’re looking for a limited feature set.
Test drive Freshdesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
With Help Scout, you’ll find a support platform that focuses on your customer’s experience. That customer-centric value is apparent not only in its features but also in the way the entire product is designed. For example, tickets in Help Scout are referred to as "Conversations," and customer data is captured and organized in easily accessible profiles visible from every conversation. Help Scout also emphasizes usability with a clean and intuitive interface.
Users can create a searchable library of answers to common questions and insert them into replies with just a few clicks. Help Scout also offers a tagging feature that enables users to categorize different types of requests, build detailed reports, and automate workflows.
Some key features of Help Scout include a shared inbox that makes it easy to toggle between different channels, while a real-time request queue helps agents keep on top of inbound messages. Agents can manage support requests on Help Scout’s desktop or mobile apps, available on iOS and Android.
Compared to Groove, Help Scout offers more features with a larger focus on scaling. Help Scout also offers Messages and workflows that will allow you to be more proactive with your service. However, if your team is growing rapidly, you’ll likely find yourself outgrowing Help Scout in a short amount of time.
Help Scout’s pricing starts at $25/user per month ($20 annually) on their standard plan and goes up to $65/user per month (annual only) on their Pro plan. Triggered messages are based on your number of visitors each month and plans start at 2,000 visitors.
Test drive Help Scout for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Front is an omnichannel customer messaging tool that centralizes email, live chat, and social media into one shared inbox. With a user-friendly interface inspired by Gmail, Front offers powerful support functionality, automated workflows, internal collaboration tools, and detailed analytics to help support teams monitor their performance and customer satisfaction.
One of the key features of Front is its shared inbox, which enables support teams to access all customer messages from a single location. Users can also manage messages with tags and filters and have the ability to snooze and close tickets.
You’ll also find dozens of integrations with leading platforms like Zoho, Zapier, Salesforce, and Murios.
Front is probably the closest competitor to Groove if you have a smaller team and you want to focus on that shared inbox experience. This means if you’re looking for similar functionality, Front is a great fit. However, if you’ve outgrown Groove, Front won’t provide a significantly better experience.
Front’s pricing plans start at $19/user per month (annual only) on their Starter plan, but you’ll most likely find yourself wanting their Growth plan ($49/user per month) or Scale plan ($99/user per month). They also offer a Premier plan ($229/user per month) with additional features and enterprise-level service, but it’s likely overkill for a team moving away from Groove.
Test drive Front for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Front App Alternatives
Dixa is a new contender in the support software industry, but it's already gaining recognition. Dixa's most notable strength is its extensive range of features. It consolidates all the tools your support team requires into one platform, including voice, chat, email, and social channels. Additionally, Dixa provides features such as customer satisfaction surveys, thorough analytics, chatbot creation, and a quality assurance tool.
In addition to its existing features, numerous integrations are available, allowing for connections to other tools and systems.
Dixa is an excellent option if your team or product is growing fast and you want a support platform that will give you everything you could want in the future. However, if you don’t imagine needing their large feature set in the next couple of years, it may not be worth the additional cost.
Dixa offers three plans plus custom enterprise-level pricing. Their standard plans range in price from $49/user to $169/user per month. All Dixa plans also include a seven-seat minimum and offer various add-ons, such as chatbots and a QA tool.
Test drive Dixa for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Intercom is a versatile platform that enables businesses to engage with their customers through various channels. Intercom provides an omnichannel approach that eliminates the need for separate tools by offering chat, email, and other communication methods.
In addition to support tools, Intercom also offers marketing features, including chatbot creation and automated messaging for in-app and email communication. It can also serve as a CRM to support your sales team. Finally, Intercom includes a help center feature that completes its all-in-one approach.
You’ll find that Intercom has a large app store offering integrations with well-known software like Salesforce, WhatsApp, Stripe, Slack, Facebook, Statuspage, and HubSpot.
Intercom is a great option if you’re looking for an all-in-one tool that allows multiple teams to use one platform. If you’re looking for a stand-alone support platform, you’ll be better served with a tool specializing only in support.
Intercom's pricing begins at $74 per month and goes up from there. Seats provide access to various tools in Intercom.
Rather than offering fixed-rate plans based on users and features, they instead calculate their pricing by:
Test drive Intercom for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Zoho's support platform includes a feature-rich help desk ticketing system, a self-service knowledge center, and an AI-enabled chatbot with advanced functionality. Users can also make and receive calls within the help desk and convert those recordings into tickets.
If you're looking for AI functionality, Zoho's chatbot, Zia, is a powerful addition to your toolset. Zia processes questions and directs customers to specific knowledge base articles, converts chats into trackable tickets, identifies sentiment (flagging any negatives), and alerts managers about unhelpful solutions.
If you use other Zoho software, you'll find built-in integrations with their entire suite of tools. Otherwise, they have a marketplace full of integrations with software such as HubSpot, Shopify, and Mail Chimp.
If you’re in the market for multiple tools at once, embracing Zoho’s software suite can help you deeply integrate without much effort. If you’re not using other tools in Zoho’s ecosystem, you’ll want to carefully consider which features you’re looking for and if there are better tools for those same jobs.
Zoho Desk offers a free plan with limited features as well as an “Express” version that starts at $7/user per month annually. For their more full-featured plans, pricing ranges from $20/user to $50/user per month.
Trengo is an all-in-one communication platform for businesses that offers various features to improve customer interaction processes. It includes instant messaging, email, social media, and telephone channels, making it easy for companies to manage all their conversations in one place. Along with customer support tools, Trengo allows businesses to engage with website visitors through live chat and to guide them on their journeys. It's a powerful and versatile tool that can help businesses streamline their communication processes.
You'll also be able to build "no-code" chatbots with Trengo's drag-and-drop blocks. Apart from being used for self-hosted live chats, chatbots can also be utilized on widely used messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and WeChat.
Trengo offers dozens of integrations with leading software such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, and Asana.
If adding automation and chatbots are essential, Trengo is an excellent choice. If that isn’t a feature you need, it may be better to look at other options.
Trengo pricing starts at $110 per month for a minimum of 5 users on their Grow plan and increases to $245 per month for a minimum of 5 users on their Enterprise plan. Annual plans offer a discount on their monthly prices.
Test drive Trengo for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
There are dozens of GrooveHQ alternatives out there, and we think these eight are some of the strongest options. The right choice, though, comes down to which features and support channels matter most. In the end, we think there are three top contenders from which most support teams would see value.
Option A: Help Scout
If your team has outgrown Groove but isn’t ready to take the complexity leap of software to a tool like Dixa or Zendesk, Help Scout is a great option. You’ll find it has every feature you could need to go beyond the service you currently offer, but it’s better set up to scale with you with its collaboration features and platform stability.
Option B: Dixa
If you want to move on from Groove and not even think about a new support platform for many years, Dixa is your best bet. It’s a giant leap beyond your current functionality, especially with their QA and chatbot add-ons. However, it does come at a steep cost in actual dollars as well as in required complexity. But if your team is growing quickly and you need to scale effortlessly, it’s going to be your ideal option.
Option C: Front
If Groove offers all the features you need but you’re annoyed with bugs or slowness, Front is your best alternative. Front takes the same shared inbox approach, with the tools you need for a small to medium-sized team, but it doesn’t bog the software down with complexity that your team just doesn’t have time to deal with.
Overall, we think Help Scout will be your best Groove alternative. It offers a strong step up from Groove that will allow your team to continue growing and scaling, but it doesn’t give too much complexity if you’re just not there yet.
Whatever features your team needs, finding the right software fit can be daunting. There are dozens of alternatives to Groove out there, and the process of buying software is rarely enjoyable. No one wants to deal with constant demos, gated products, obscure pricing, and non-stop phone calls. Plus, after all that, there’s no guarantee that you’ll feel confident in your decision. It’s not a great use of your time.
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