The Best Help Desk Software for 2021

For support teams of up to three agents, Jira's Service Management tier is available for free. The next tier up is Standard, which has a price of $20 per agent per month. The Premium service tier has a $40 monthly per-user price tag and is designed for "organizations scaling high-velocity ITSM." The final service tier is Enterprise, though that option requires a conversation with the Atlassian sales team, since it takes a custom approach to better serve large companies.

In every tier but the free one, Jira can support up to 5,000 agents per site. Enterprise is the only service tier that can handle an unlimited number of sites; the others only support one.

Jira offers a seven-day free trial period. It also offers a discount if you pay for an entire year upfront. For example, you'd pay $1,000 for a year of the Standard tier, resulting in a $200 savings over the monthly cost. For the Premium service tier, you would pay $2,000 upfront but save $400 in the process.

Features

Jira is fully stacked with features. Whatever functions you need in an internal IT support solution, Jira likely has what you're looking for. These are just some of the features you can expect to find from the service:

Email-to-ticket support

Jira can turn help-request emails into tickets for your support team to address. The platform does this by monitoring a specific inbox for queries from your employees. If an applicable message comes through, it will scrape the message for keywords and place them in the appropriate fields. Though it's not technically an omnichannel platform, Jira says on its website that it has social media integration to "extend service channels."

Automated ticket assignment

If your support team is broken up into specific proficiencies, or you have one person on staff who's an expert on a certain topic, you can set up automation rules to ensure tickets that fit certain criteria go directly to the right person.

Internal ticket tracking

The ability to track a ticket's progress is incredibly important. Jira does this whether you're using the service for internal IT, customer-facing support, or both. Through the platform, users can have permissions and role-based capabilities to set, view, edit, share and act on requests to fit your support team's needs. Tickets can also be linked across teams to involve the right people.

User ticket tracking

In addition to internal ticket tracking, Jira allows the employee or customer who filed the request to stay up to date with the ticket's progress. Status updates and notifications can be configured to make sure the person who filed the request knows how much longer they have to wait for a response or resolution.

SLA status information

Consistency with your company's service-level agreement is important to create a streamlined and efficient support structure. Jira allows you to set custom SLA goals to fit your company's guidelines and business hours.

IT asset tracking

Your internal IT support team needs to keep track of tech assets within the company. They can do that more easily through the Jira platform.

Live chat and mobile support

The immediacy afforded through Jira's live chat and mobile app support can be an instant boon for your support team. Mobile apps are supported on Android and iOS devices.

Reports

Default reports include breakdowns of workload, SLAs, customer satisfaction and deflected requests. Through configurable dashboards, you can highlight the daily information you need while keeping an eye on real-time queue updates to see that you're working on the right thing at the right time. All reports can be exported for external stakeholders.

Security measures

Jira is compliant with ISO/IEC, SOC 2, PCI DSS, CSA STAR, HIPAA and GDPR security protocols. It also supports an encrypted connection for better security.

Ease of Use

Jira is one of the most popular solutions not only for its robust feature set, but also because of how easy its dashboard is to use. Everything you need is easily located through colorful menus, and information gathered through the ticket is recognizable at a glance. Built to provide "high-velocity support," Jira can make the support pipeline more accessible to everyone using the service.

Drawbacks

In our research of Jira, it was hard to find much to complain about. We did note that its pricing is a little higher than its competitors' prices for similar plan levels. This may be a case of "you get what you pay for," since it has so many features, but those features might be more than your team needs or your budget can justify. If you're looking for a cheap, simple internal IT service without a lot of bells and whistles, Jira may not be for you. This platform strives to be comprehensive, and simpler solutions (priced accordingly) are available elsewhere.

If you were considering Jira for its ability to work as a server-based platform, your time to adopt it for that reason is coming to an end in February. After that, Jira's Service Management solution will only be available as a SaaS or data center product.

• Sprout: This version can support unlimited agents but is relatively limited in the features it offers compared to the other service tiers.
  
  
• Blossom: $15 per agent per month. This tier has everything in Sprout as well as automations, collision detection, SLA management and mobile support.
  
  
• Garden: $35 per agent per month. This tier includes everything in the Blossom plan as well as time-tracking capabilities, performance reports and multilingual knowledge base support.
  
  
• Estate: $49 per agent per month. This tier offers everything in the previous plans along with custom roles, round-robin ticket routing and dynamic ticket forms.
  
  
• Forest: $99 per agent per month. This enterprise-level service tier provides everything in the lower tiers as well as skill-based routing, agent shifts, IP whitelisting and HIPAA compliance.

Freshdesk offers a 21-day free trial period for all of these plans.

Features

These are some of the key features we found in our examination of Freshdesk:

Omnichannel support

Freshdesk can pull customer queries from various sources, including social media, email and live chat. This type of support can boost customer interaction and gives them more avenues for support.

Collision detection

To reduce confusion, Freshdesk lets support team members know when someone else is looking at a ticket and preparing to respond.

Auto-assign and ticket tags

Automation is a huge help in handling a series of customer issues. After you set the criteria, Freshdesk automatically assigns tickets to the right help desk technician and applies certain ticket tags based on information it gathers from the customer.

Mobile support

Freshdesk has mobile apps for both Android and iOS devices, allowing your team to read and manage customer requests anywhere. Though more robust field service management tools cost extra, Freshdesk's mobile apps are certainly a help in this area.

Security

Freshdesk supports security measures like SSL certificates, single sign-on and IP/network restrictions. HIPAA compliance is only available at the enterprise-level Forest tier.

Ease of Use

Freshdesk uses an easy-to-understand dashboard that looks similar to an email inbox or blog. Each major function is kept on the left-hand side in a column, while all related tickets and corresponding customer information, tags and categories are located on the right.

It's easy to invite other agents into a ticket through Freshconnect, where they can add private notes to the ticket for later viewing. Thanks to built-in automation tools, Freshdesk makes it easy for tickets to be sent to the right people and properly categorized and prioritized.

We don't think it would take the average user very long to understand how Freshdesk works.

Drawbacks

Though Freshdesk is a great service for mobile help desks, special features like automatic live chat and field service management cost an additional fee to implement. The latter feature is of particular importance to companies looking for a mobile help desk solution, since it includes a scheduling dashboard, time-tracking capabilities, a map view of where your employees in the field are located, and offline availability. This add-on alone costs $29 a month per field employee.

Also, if you operate a small healthcare facility, you'll have to look elsewhere unless you're willing to shell out for the highest service tier, because it's the only level with HIPAA compliance.

• The lowest service tier, Inbox, is aimed at small teams that want a shared email, chat and social inbox. Whereas most companies would skimp on the features at this low service tier, we were surprised to see that features like live chat and email support, a mobile SDK, collision prevention, and assignment automation rules were included for $15 per agent per month.
  
  
• The next tier, Growth, caters to slightly larger support teams. It includes everything in the Inbox tier, as well as access to more powerful automation features; custom views, fields, forms and reports; multi-brand and multi-language support; and advanced help center customization. This tier, which costs $30 per agent per month, allows up to five free collaborators, who can use the system to leave internal notes but can't directly interact with customers.
  
  
• For larger companies or teams, the Scale tier comes with everything in Growth, while also including advanced workflow customization, shared organizations, custom security policies and Salesforce integration, among other features. Coming in at $60 per agent per month, this tier allows for 10 free collaborators.

In case none of these tiers fit your needs, Kayako offers an Enterprise service plan that starts at $100 per agent per month. There is a free 14-day trial for each service tier.

Features

In our research, we found that Kayako has one of the largest feature sets out of the vendors we examined. The following are some of its particularly valuable features for small businesses.

Internal ticket tracking

As your support team handles tickets, it's important to be able to see their progress at a glance. With Kayako, support agents can track past conversations and activities, as well as a user's visiting habits, searches and past purchases. Through the interface, agents can see the status of a message, when the person on the other end has read the message, and when they're typing out a response in real time. As custom smart boxes are created, conversations can be instantly categorized, making it easier to track tickets.

Ticket collision detection

If your agent has brought someone else into the ticket to assist, there's always a chance that both people will try to reply to the customer at the same time, leading to embarrassing or confusing situations. Kayako prevents this by letting the agents see when the other is viewing and responding to the customer.

Live chat

Live chat service for your customers is a great function that many vendors either ignore or charge extra for. That's why Kayako's baked-in live chat service is worth mentioning. It's customizable to fit your branding and included in the monthly fee.

Self-help knowledge base

You can give customers the option to bypass your support team and find answers on their own, as Kayako facilitates the creation of a fleshed-out, multilingual knowledge base. This feature lets customers access support articles and curated answers to find solutions at any time of day. This not only empowers your customers but also frees up resources for your support staff, since they won't have to address as many repetitive issues.

Support for an internal help desk

Kayako can support your employees as well as your customers. Internal channels can be created to help the people working alongside your support team. The interface works the same way as the customer-facing one, with similar tools for automation, canned responses and support forms.

Hundreds of integrations

Thanks to the use of Zapier and its support for hundreds of third-party applications, Kayako can integrate with countless other pieces of business software without the need for confusing code.

Ease of Use

If you're familiar with Microsoft Outlook, Gmail or even a content management system like WordPress, Kayako's interface is pretty self-explanatory. When a conversation or ticket is opened, it immediately displays contextual information. You can easily see how the person's past interactions with support went and what they were doing on your site before they opened the conversation. The dashboard pulls conversations into the queue regardless of where they're coming from, and it all happens in real time.

On the right-hand side of the screen are the more sensitive pieces of the customer's data, including their email address, phone number and what time it is in their current location. Naturally, Kayako only gathers that information if the customer offers it, but the agent can also add those details manually. If you have multiple agents sitting in on the same conversation, you can even check their status on the issue, including who's actually viewing the conversation and who's actively typing in it. Thanks to different SLA settings, you can also see on the same screen how much time you have left to reply before you fall out of compliance with your company's policies.

Overall, we were impressed by the immediacy of information that Kayako's interface conveys.

Drawbacks

Though we were impressed with Kayako's feature set and ease of use, one thing stood out as a detraction – the price. Compared to some of its competitors, Kayako's prices are a little high. While it's hard to compare service plans, given how widely they vary in features, we found other companies whose lowest tier cost as little as $5 per agent per month. While those low costs came at a severe cut to the available features, it's worth noting that you can find cheaper services than Kayako if you're not looking for anything too fancy.

The other downside is the availability of Kayako's customer service. Though our email interaction with the company was fine, it's based in the U.K. and India, so it can be hard to catch the support agents during their business hours. You can reach the company on Twitter as well, but its main support apparatus seems to be a knowledge base. This hands-off service method may be fine for some, but frustrating for others. It's also a little frustrating that the live chat on the Kayako website is for sales only. That's a missed support opportunity, for sure.

Features

Free options on the internet tend to go light on features, so we were surprised at the number of options on Raiseaticket's platform. With omnichannel support, time management tools and special ticket features, its feature set packs quite a punch. These are some of its bells and whistles that we didn't expect to find in a zero-cost solution:

Team and agent management

If you have different teams of support agents tasked with handling different aspects of your business, or specific agents who are proficient in different areas, Raiseaticket allows administrators to assign tickets directly to the right people for the issue. Tickets can be routed by skills or groups and then escalated accordingly.

Multiple SLA configurations

Service-level agreements are a promise between your business and a client. By setting customer expectations for how quickly your support team will resolve any issues in the Raiseaticket software, you can make sure your agents stay on task to address concerns in a timely manner.

Real-time notifications

Agents, customers and support administrators get real-time notifications for certain tickets. These automatic notifications are triggered by certain events, like when a new ticket is opened or a new message comes in. Your support team can receive the message in real time over email or through a connected web portal, though Raiseaticket also supports notifications through Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Knowledge base

Over time, you can use the tickets your team has resolved in Raiseaticket to construct a knowledge base full of articles, how-tos and examples that your customers can use to find solutions on their own. Nearly every premium service touts this feature, so we were surprised to see it available for free.

Compliance

As a web-based service, Raiseaticket is compliant with GDPR and oriented for ITSM. Since Raiseaticket follows those industry standards, you can rest easy knowing your help desk software won't run afoul of existing guidelines.

Ease of Use

For a free service, Raiseaticket's dashboard is easy to use. On the main page, you can view a listing of all the available tickets, open a ticket, or view reports, existing articles, and frequently asked questions to help solve issues.

The dashboard provides a convenient overview of tickets, letting you select only the tickets assigned to a particular agent, see how many tickets have been designated as resolved or unresolved, and see what unresolved tickets have a pending status. Time-sensitive tickets are also easy to find; you can view overdue tickets as well as tickets that are due for completion either today or tomorrow. Agents can view tickets of a certain designated group or ones that fit a specific date range.

Custom reports can be scheduled to run at certain times and generated through the dashboard. Under the reports tab, you can create and export graphics as Excel files or send the data by email.

Other functionality on the dashboard is simple to use and understand. Though the dashboard may not be as flashy as other solutions on the market, we found the Raiseaticket system easy to learn.

Drawbacks

Though we were pleasantly surprised with what Raiseaticket has to offer as a free service, it clearly has some limitations. Of particular note is the absence of certain key features. Live chat, third-party integrations, social media support and mobile apps were glaringly missing. Though this would disqualify vendors for other use cases, some cuts are necessary to provide a free service, and those omissions might not matter to you if your priority is a free solution.

A major issue we found is the way Raiseaticket conducts its own customer service. If you have an immediate need for assistance from the company's support team, you'll have to rely on email or fill out a web form, since the company does not have live chat or a phone number to call.

You're beholden to any company's schedule when asking for support, but Raiseaticket is based in Malta and India, so its business hours are likely different from yours. It does offer setup and agent guides as well as a FAQs page, but if those resources aren't enough of a help for your issue, then you will have to reach out to the company on its terms.