Looking for Kayako alternatives? I get it – sometimes we need a change, whether it's due to slow support, buggy software, or just wanting to explore other options.
After talking with many of my peers, I found three main reasons people tend to leave Kayako: subpar customer support, limited customization, and concerns about cost and ROI. If Kayako isn't working for you anymore, it might be time to consider a good Kayako alternative.
If you're in a hurry and don't want to read the whole post, here are our top picks for the best Kayako alternatives:
But if I had to pick one, for most organizations, Help Scout is the best Kayako alternative. It offers a simple, easy-to-use solution that caters to startups and mid-sized businesses, providing seamless integration of essential support features while keeping teams focused on customer success.
Why you can trust TestBox’s guides: Unlike other publications, we have no incentive to encourage you to buy a specific tool. Our goal at TestBox is to help software buyers find the absolute best tools for their companies. Our free software lets you test and compare popular tools side-by-side, and our guides are designed solely to give you the information you need to decide which tools you want to test!
Here are all the Kayako alternatives and competitors we considered before arriving to our conclusion.
Every support team is a little different — the processes, habits, and goals of your team are unique to your business. Fortunately, the list of Kayako alternatives below includes a wide spectrum of tools that cover pretty much every scenario out there. From small businesses to ecommerce to enterprise organizations, this list has customer support software for every use case.
Gorgias is a help desk platform designed specifically for ecommerce businesses. Everything within Gorgias is built around ecommerce support teams — and it shows. That’s why we think Gorgias is the best Kayako alternative for ecommerce companies.
Gorgias includes robust integration with popular ecommerce tools like Shopify and Magento, enabling seamless customer support across multiple channels. From driving upsells to handling returns, Gorgias has a positive impact on every aspect of the ecommerce customer journey. Gorgias also includes AI-powered automation to handle repetitive tasks, saving your support agents time and improving efficiency across the board.
Gorgias takes the best of Kayako — the ease of use and ticket management functionality — and improves upon it. From macros to tags to omnichannel support, Gorgias makes it easy to understand where and why your customers are contacting you so that you can provide help quickly.
Pricing
Gorgias offers monthly and annual plans, starting at just $10/month for 50 tickets. As your ticket volume increases, so does the cost of your plan, ranging up to $900/month for 5000 tickets. Choosing an annual plan brings a slight discount in pricing. Gorgias also includes several optional add-ons — like automations— that bring additional costs.
Test drive Gorgias for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Zendesk is an industry leader in the customer support software space. Zendesk’s suite of support tools enables multi-channel support, self-service, and more. It includes virtually all of the functionality your support team could ever need, and that’s why we think Zendesk is the best Kayako alternative for enterprise organizations.
Several standout features set Zendesk apart from Kayako:
These robust features make Zendesk a great fit for large organizations and teams supporting complex products.
Pricing
Zendesk has multiple tiers of pricing, each with different functionality. Their cheapest plan starts at $19/agent per month, but for functionality more comparable to Kayako’s, you’d likely need to pay at least $49/agent per month. The Zendesk enterprise packages bring way more functionality, but pricing starts at $150/agent per month.
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 user-friendly help desk tool that bills itself as being “fast to launch and scale.”
Freshdesk’s feature set is comparable to many of the others on this list, including things like multichannel support, robust ticket management, automation, analytics, and more. We think Freshdesk is the best Kayako alternative for smaller teams looking for a cost-effective customer support ticketing tool.
While the range of features and customizations aren’t as powerful as with a tool like Zendesk, Freshdesk users rave about how user-friendly it is. It’s a great tool for delivering on its core job of helping you respond efficiently to your customers. In this way, Freshdesk is very similar to Kayako, whose users value the simple effectiveness of the tool.
Pricing
Freshdesk offers a free tier for up to ten agents (with a limited set of features). For more functionality, you’ll pay anywhere from $15/agent to $79/agent per month.
Test drive Freshdesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Help Scout is a great all-in-one customer support tool for smaller organizations. Its core feature set includes a universal inbox for multi-channel support, an easy-to-manage knowledge base solution, live chat, and automations.
One of the things that reviewers value about Help Scout is how focused Help Scout is on helping you optimize your workflows and build strong relationships with customers. As one reviewer put it, it’s “a service BY support teams FOR support teams.”
There’s a lot that makes Help Scout a great alternative to Kayako, including its ease of set up, collaboration features, and better out-of-the-box reporting. That’s why we think Help Scout is the best Kayako alternative for small to mid-sized businesses looking for a reliable support solution.
Price
Help Scout’s tiered pricing ranges from $20/agent to $65/agent per month. Choosing an annual plan will net you about a 20% discount on total costs.
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
Front is a collaborative inbox solution that combines the best elements of email and team collaboration. It’s focused on funneling every message from every customer into one place, then making it easy for your team to take ownership of issues and work together as needed.
In many ways, Front functions like a superpowered Gmail inbox. Through intelligent tags, smart routing, and easy-to-use automation, Front empowers your support team to stay on top of a high volume of incoming questions from customers.
Front integrates with nearly 100 popular SaaS tools, far more than Kayako. It’s the perfect fit and the best Kayako alternative for support teams looking to streamline their communications and keep at the forefront of everything they do.
Pricing
Front’s Starter plan begins at just $15/seat per month. For more functionality, you’ll pay anywhere from $49/seat to $229/seat per month. Front also includes optional add-ons for an additional cost.
Test drive Front for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Alternatives to Front
Dixa is a relatively new player in the support software space. After getting started in Europe, Dixa has quickly expanded across the globe as support leaders everywhere recognize the value in their platform approach to customer experience.
Dixa’s strongest feature is its comprehensiveness. It brings everything your support team needs into one place, from voice to chat to email and social channels. Dixa also includes customer satisfaction surveys, in-depth analytics, a chatbot builder, and a quality assurance tool.
Dixa excels in several places where Kayako falls flat, including their robust reporting and analytics. With Dixa, it’s easy to understand what your customers are asking about and what your support team is working on. Although Dixa’s platform contains virtually all the tools your support team might use, its dozens of integrations also make it easy to connect to other tools or systems if the need arises.
We think Dixa is the best Kayako alternative for organizations that want an all-in-one platform solution.
Pricing
Dixa offers three tiers, plus custom Enterprise pricing. Their standard tiers range from $49/seat to $169/seat per month, although choosing an annual plan will reduce your total costs by 10-20%. All Dixa plans also include a seven seat minimum.
Test drive Dixa for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Although best known for its Sales and Marketing solutions, HubSpot’s Service Hub is a solid customer support tool in its own right. It includes most of the functionality you’d expect, such as omni-channel messaging, live chat, and knowledge base capabilities.
One nice bonus to Service Hub is that it also enables you to set up a secure customer portal, giving your customers more ownership and visibility into their conversations with your support team. It’s more effective than relying on email, and it can make the support experience feel more like a partnership.
That being said, two areas where Service Hub could improve are its ticket management and user friendliness. Reviewers regularly mention that Service Hub’s interface isn’t intuitive and that it can be difficult to set up ticket workflows. There are some ways where Service Hub is more powerful than Kayako, but it comes with a learning curve.
HubSpot’s Service Hub is the best Kayako alternative for businesses already using HubSpot for sales and marketing tasks. It’s also a good fit for small businesses looking for a free tool to handle basic support tasks.
Pricing
Service Hub’s starter tier starts at $10/user per month (although choosing an annual plan brings a 10% discount). For more functionality, HubSpot’s Professional plan costs $100/user per month, with a minimum of five users required. Their Enterprise plan — which requires at least ten users and includes even more functionality — is $120/user per month.
Test drive Hubspot Service Hub for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
There are plenty of great Kayako alternatives to choose from, each with its own strengths and opportunities. By and large, we think there are three top contenders that most support teams could see tremendous value from:
To be crystal clear: You can’t go wrong with any of these tools. Each will enable you to build and scale an effective customer support team and to service thousands of happy customers. Each one of these tools could serve your team well.
But if we had to pick, we think Help Scout is the best Kayako alternative for most organizations.
It’s designed to serve similar types of customers as Kayako, from newly established startups to thriving mid-sized businesses. Help Scout includes all of the core components that a growing support team needs, from live chat to ticket management to reporting and a knowledge base — and all of these components work seamlessly together. It’s simple, easy to set up and use, and keeps your team focused on helping your customers succeed.
Want to see for yourself? Test drive Zendesk, Help Scout, Dixa and more support tools today using TestBox Compare. It’s totally free, and it’s the best way to get hands-on experience to find the right Kayako alternative for your team.
Start testing and comparing how software could help your team in seconds.
Oh and did we mention it’s free? Because it is.
