Thinking about moving on from HappyFox? I've been there!
In my experience, HappyFox’s plans are à la carte, meaning that each feature comes separately, which can add up in terms of cost and complexity. I remember when our team tried using the rules feature without paying extra for workflows - it just didn't work as well as we'd hoped. For smaller teams like ours, it became a bit too much.
So, I searched for the best HappyFox alternatives and managed to narrow down my list 7 tools. After giving them a thorough evaluation, I also picked my top 3 favorites.
To compile this list and help you in your software purchasing decision, we looked at a multitude of criteria for tools, with a focus on:
If you can’t read the whole post right now, here is our conclusion about the best HappyFox alternatives:
If I had to pick just one, I’d point you to Freshdesk. It has a similar set of features which will allow more teams to seamlessly transition away from HappyFox.
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Dixa is a rising star in the support software industry, quickly gaining recognition for its extensive range of features. Unlike HappyFox, you'll find Dixa consolidates the tools your support team needs, including voice, chat, email, and social channels. They do have a couple of add-ons that bring your help desk beyond the basics with features like customer satisfaction surveys, thorough analytics, chatbot creation, and a quality assurance tool.
Dixa also offers numerous integrations, allowing connections to other tools and systems.
If you're using most or all of HappyFox's options and your team needs powerful features, Dixa is a great option. It is on the expensive side, though, and because it’s a newer tool, you won’t have all the years of experience that come with a well-established platform.
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.
Zendesk is the industry leader with their customer support tools, and it's no surprise when you look at their feature set. They offer an omnichannel platform, including email, live chat, social media, and more. Because they take an everything-for-everyone stance, it can be a compelling offer, but it can also be unwieldy and with the price tag to match.
You'll find that Zendesk offers a similar powerful feature set compared to HappyFox, and it's far less à la carte. You'll find automation tools, AI, bots, excellent reporting, and a highly customizable help center within Zendesk, with a large marketplace of pre-made themes or the ability to create your own on-brand custom design.
Zendesk also comes equipped with over 1,000 integrations, including Hootsuite, Jira, Magento, Microsoft Teams, Shopify, Slack, Trello, and Zoom.
If you find that HappyFox is overkill for your needs, Zendesk is likely to be the same. On the flip side, though, if HappyFox has what you need and want for your team but you find their pricing and plans confusing, Zendesk is a great option. You'll pick the tier containing the features you want and then pay a monthly, flat per-agent cost. That makes it easier to scale your team size and budget for future team growth.
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 HappyFox 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
Freshdesk is a great alternative to HappyFox, as it offers a similarly wide range of features, but it comes in one suite of software rather than being offered piecemeal. Freshdesk comes equipped with an omnichannel help desk, allowing you to manage all customer communication — including email, live chat, and social media — in one place. Your team can save time by using canned responses and bulk actions to handle tickets more efficiently. In addition, Freshdesk supports localization for multi-lingual teams.
The platform has a well-designed ticketing system that uses automation to assign and prioritize tickets according to keywords, requesters, or properties. Additionally, Freshdesk offers AI-powered chatbots that can give customers step-by-step instructions and identify frustration. If needed, the chatbot will forward the conversation to a live agent.
You'll also find one of my personal favorite features that any help desk offers, the "thank you detector," which prevents tickets from reopening when customers write back to express gratitude. Small touches like that make a big difference in your day-to-day experience.
Freshdesk offers many integrations, including Shopify, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Slack, and Jira.
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.
Related Reading: Best Freshdesk Alternatives
With Help Scout, you'll find a support platform that's customer-centric to its core. For example, tickets in Help Scout are called "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.
With Help Scout’s Docs feature, users can easily create a library of answers to frequently asked questions and quickly insert them into replies. Additionally, its tagging feature allows you to categorize requests, generate detailed reports, and automate workflows. Help Scout boasts a shared inbox that streamlines the management of multiple channels and a real-time queue to stay on top of incoming messages. Users can manage support requests using the desktop or mobile apps available on iOS and Android platforms.
You'll also find that Help Scout integrates with numerous popular tools, including HubSpot, Infusionsoft, Jira, Mailchimp, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, and Zapier.
Compared to HappyFox, Help Scout is a lighter-weight option that focuses on being simple and straightforward. You'll find a handful of plan options and minimal add-ons with minimal add-ons that target a specific need like their Messages feature. The workflows feature, included in all plans, will allow you to be more proactive with your service. You'll find the power of it somewhere in between the basic HappyFox features and their own workflows add-on. It's a great solution for a smaller team, but if your team is growing rapidly or you're already relying on the higher enterprise-level features at HappyFox, you'll likely find yourself having outgrown Help Scout.
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.
Related Reading: Best Help Scout Alternatives
One of the newest additions to the HubSpot suite of tools is their Service Hub, and it’s obvious they’ve spent time thinking about their customers’ needs. You’ll find a clear interface that puts a strong focus on customer information, so your team always knows the full context surrounding a customer. If you’re a HubSpot customer using Sales Hub or Marketing Hub, you’ll find a deep integration with your service desk that effortlessly gives you all the information you need. If you’re not an existing HubSpot customer, your team can still integrate and send in data for your team’s use.
You’ll find all of the essential channels such as email and live chat, along with integrations to extend the service. With their app marketplace, you’ll be able to add on call channels and social media and integrate with top platforms like Jira and Stripe.
If your team doesn’t use HubSpot, it may not offer a huge improvement over HappyFox, especially as you’ll find yourself needing to subscribe to multiple tools. However, if you do, you’ll find a complete picture of your customer’s data in a system that’s easy to fit into your company’s budget.
HubSpot Service Hub’s pricing starts at $50 per month ($45 annually) for a minimum of two users and maxes out at their Enterprise plan starting at $1200 per month (annual only) with a 10-user minimum.
Test drive Hubspot Service Hub for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Zoho offers a comprehensive support platform that includes various features such as a help desk ticketing system, a knowledge center, and an advanced AI-powered chatbot. Within the help desk, users can also make and receive calls, which can be converted into tickets for future reference.
Zoho's chatbot, Zia, is a robust addition to the platform for those seeking AI functionality. Zia can help customers find relevant knowledge base articles, track conversations and convert them into tickets, identify negative sentiment, and notify managers about unhelpful solutions.
If you are already using other Zoho software, you will discover seamless integrations with their complete set of tools. Otherwise, they have a marketplace full of integrations with software such as HubSpot, Shopify, and Mail Chimp.
If you need multiple tools, Zoho's software suite is a good choice as it allows for easy integration. You won’t find quite as much functionality as HappyFox, but if you’re using about half their add-ons and want something that integrates well with other tools and comes with straightforward pricing, you can’t go wrong with Zoho.
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.
LiveAgent is a tool designed to assist with customer communication. It offers a unified solution that enables businesses to manage multiple channels, such as emails, chat, social media, phone calls, and a knowledge base all from a single platform.
If you prefer the more à la carte approach that HappyFox takes and you have a live chat focused team, LiveAgent is a great alternative. They also offer an installable on-premise version for those enterprises with strict security protocols, which is rare in a cloud-driven software world.
LiveAgent has a free plan that offers one user, sharp reporting limitations, and other feature limitations compared to paid plans. Paid plans start at $12/user per month ($9 annually) for their Small Business plan and go up to $85/user per month ($69 annually) for their Enterprise plan.
Related Reading: Best LiveAgent Alternatives
There are countless HappyFox alternatives out there, and we believe these seven are some of the strongest options. Of course, the right choice for your team is down to which features and support channels matter most to you. We think these three are the top choices where most support teams would see tremendous value.
Option A: Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a great option if your team wants to keep the same level of simplicity without much change in feature set. You’ll see a bit of a drop in functionality if you’re using HappyFox’s Canned Actions, but Freshdesk’s Freddy AI is fairly new and already seeing improvement so they may close the gap.
You’ll also find a lower initial price point with their free plan, although that doesn’t come close to matching HappyFox’s features. You’ll likely find your team wanting their Enterprise plan to compete with the higher-level HappyFox features.
Option B: Zendesk
If you want to keep the same level of functionality but give yourself a simpler billing process, Zendesk is a great option. You’ll find a similar suite of features, with some added strength in chatbots and reporting.
You’ll also find the addition of multi-language support as well as a marketplace of hundreds of integrations vs. the 20+ you’ll find with HappyFox. You’ll trade off some simplicity, though, as Zendesk can be complicated to configure compared to HappyFox.
Option C: Help Scout
If HappyFox is just too much for your team and you want to bring simplicity to your interface, interactions, and pricing, Help Scout is where you should look. You’ll find similar features to HappyFox’s mid-range plans but in an all-in-one package. There is no need for additional add-on products to enable features like live chat or workflows.
Overall, we think Freshdesk is the best alternative to HappyFox for most folks because it simplifies your billing and software usage while offering a simple interface. Your team won’t find it overly complicated to set up or to use on a daily basis, and your finance team will find one set monthly bill that scales evenly with each new team member you add.
Whatever features your team needs, finding the right software fit can be daunting. There are dozens of alternatives to HappyFox 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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