Help desk software is a crucial tool for customer service, but enterprise software is notoriously expensive. When you’re a small business, the costs can be prohibitive. But that doesn’t mean you need to go without a ticketing system. In fact, there’s a huge range of free help desk software options on the market that can help you.

We’ve compiled a list of the best free help desk software to help you out. Let’s take a look at these platforms and compare their features, limitations and more!

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Article Roadmap

• Best Free Help Desk Software
  • HubSpot Service Hub
  • Jira Service Management
  • Zoho Desk
  • Freshdesk
  • LiveAgent
• Why Choose A Free Help Desk Software?
• Next Steps

Best Free Help Desk Software

When you’re looking for a help desk software or ticketing system, you want to ensure it comes with certain functionalities. Ticket management, multi-channel support, self-service support and automation are a few major requirements. And if you can get all of that for free, it’s even better.

A recent PWC report on customer loyalty found that 32% of customers had given up on a brand after a bad customer service experience. That underscores how important providing good customer service is to your business.

Free help desk software empowers small business owners by providing them with critical customer service tools to manage customer relationships. It’s also a great option for businesses looking to experiment with ticketing systems before making a final buying decision.

Let’s dive into our list of the top five free platforms on the market!

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HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub is a part of the larger HubSpot CRM ecosystem. It’s designed to help businesses deepen customer relationships and provide a superior support experience. HubSpot offers a free plan for its help desk software with a limited but impressive range of features, including chatbots, canned responses, email reply tracking, ticket pipelines and more.

HubSpot’s free plan is completely free, and not a trial plan. It allows for an unlimited number of users who can have access to all the free features. HubSpot also offers a 14 day free trial for its Professional and Enterprise tier plans.

HubSpot Service Hub live chat. Source

Top Benefits

• CRM Integration: HubSpot Service Hub comes along with the rest of HubSpot’s CRM suite, which includes tools for sales management, marketing and business operations, so users get multiple tools in one platform.
• Better Customer Relationships: HubSpot allows you to cultivate better customer relationships by enabling you to provide superior customer service. The addition of a CRM suite alongside customer service tools allows organizations to give more comprehensive support.
• Improved Agent Productivity: Tools like automated ticket management and agent scripting make helping customers easier and more efficient. Reporting tools provide insight into agent performance.
• Actionable Insights: HubSpot provides reporting tools that provide data on ticket volume, response times, customer feedback and more. The free plan includes up to three dashboards, each with ten reports per dashboard. This allows you to get valuable insights on your customer service performance and enables you to identify areas of improvement.
• Unlimited User Accounts: HubSpot allows for unlimited user accounts even in its free tier. Only features are limited.

Primary Features

• Contact Management: Contact management features include creating contact records, automatically updating contact record information, viewing previous interactions, recording and logging customer calls, and more.
• Ticketing: HubSpot’s ticket management tools include routing and automation features, reducing the need for manual data entry. It also helps keep track of key support metrics, like agent response time, ticket volume and more, from a single dashboard.
• Live Chat: HubSpot Service Hub offers a live chat widget that can be displayed on the company website, making it easier for customers to field their queries. You can create targeted welcome messages for different web pages or customer segments. The free tier displays HubSpot branding in the live chat widget, so it can’t be customized to a specific business’s branding.
• Team Email: Connect the team through a shared inbox. Set up rules to convert incoming emails into tickets or assign emails to specific individuals, distribute them across teams and sort through conversations from the shared inbox.
• Email Scheduling: Write emails to customers and schedule them for a specified date and time. The system automatically saves a draft in Gmail, letting users make changes or cancel the email before it’s delivered. For the free tier, the emails include HubSpot branding.
• Conversational Bots: HubSpot Service Hub offers chatbots that can integrate with the live chat widget to create tickets and send visitors to the right service representatives or knowledge base articles. The free tier is limited to ticket creation, lead qualification and meeting booking bots, with no custom branching logic.
• Email Tracking and Notifications: HubSpot Service Hub sends real-time notifications when emails are opened or clicked. It can also track which contacts responded to each email through the HubSpot email tool. The free tier is limited to 200 notifications per month.

Limitations

• Lack of customization, formatting options and templates in the knowledge base settings.
• Limited reporting and analytics features.
• Lack of timely UI/UX updates.
• The ticket system could not handle the high volume of tickets.
• The software only tracks the day a ticket is closed and not the time.

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Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management is a customer service management and ITSM tool from Atlassian, the developers of Jira, the popular project management platform. It’s designed specially for IT teams to conduct bug tracking and IT support. It connects dev ops, customer support and business teams to provide a comprehensive IT service solution.

The free plan from Jira Service Management allows for up to three agents, unlimited customers and about 100 emails a day. It also includes customizable workflows, self-service support and an interactive mobile app.

Jira Service Management mobile app. Source

Top Benefits

• Efficient Ticket Management: Jira Service Management simplifies ticket management and ensures timely resolution of customer queries. The software can automate processes and ease agent workloads so they can focus more on ticket resolution.
• App Marketplace: Access Jira’s app marketplace and use a variety of integrations and plugins to expand the scope of the base software. The app marketplace features 1000+ paid and free plugins.
• ITSM Focus: Jira Service Management brings with it Jira’s bug tracking and incident management capabilities. The platform is perfect for IT support teams and can handle incident management, change management, technical bug tracking and other ITSM needs.
• Usability: Jira Service Management is user-friendly and easy to use and understand, especially with Atlassian’s free self-help resources for training and onboarding purposes.

Primary Features

• Automation Rules: Jira Service Management can automate processes and workflows and auto-assign issues based on specified conditions. It also provides out-of-the-box automation templates or an automation sandbox environment to create custom rules, without the need for coding.
• Email Notifications: Jira Service Management offers notifications depending upon the user role and how they interact with the request. Customers, agents and administrators get email notifications about activity on requests. The platform can send 100 emails daily on the free plan. After 100 emails, notifications are paused until the following day.
• Email and Embeddable Widget Support: Customers can submit support requests via email. The software adds a widget to their web page so that they can get help from the page they’re on.
• Self-Service Portal: Employees or customers can search the knowledge base to resolve support queries themselves without contacting customer service.
• Knowledge Base Management: Jira Service Management provides an embedded knowledge base which can be used to create, read, update and delete knowledge articles.
• Chat: Jira Service Management can connect with Slack or Microsoft Teams to convert chat conversations into tickets. Agents can respond, transition issues and close requests without leaving Slack or Teams.
• Forms: Jira Service Management provides a low- to no-code form builder to design forms that can be deployed in order to collect information.

Limitations

• No customer data storage.
• Limited options for customer interactions.
• Lack of native integrations.
• Limited customization.
• Lack of customizable reports.

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Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a ticketing system from Zoho. It helps simplify ticket management, improves agent productivity and helps organizations build better customer relationships. The platform includes multi-channel support, intelligent automations and multiple views for better ticket management. It also includes ticket histories and automatic solution suggestions to improve agent performance.

Zoho Desk’s free ticketing system allows access for up to three users, perfect for small businesses with limited customer support staff.

Zoho Desk reporting. Source

Top Benefits

• Customizability: Zoho Desk is very customizable and offers a great range of personalization features even in the free tier. Customize the app’s appearance, display screen settings, display font, reply button behavior, landing page settings, and date and time format.
• Service Level Agreements: The free tier offers priority-based SLA. It offers a default and non-customizable “Stop the SLA Clock” feature that pauses the response time counter when progress cannot be made on a ticket. Service level agreements (SLAs) help users manage response and resolution time by automating actions based on ticket deadlines
• Mobile Support: Zoho Desk allows agents to work even on mobile devices through multiple native mobile applications. The Radar App for Zoho Desk gives vital stats curated in real time for managers and agents. The Zoho Desk App allows users to collaborate from anywhere on mobile.
• Multi-Language Support: Zoho Desk offers multi-language support, making it suitable for teams around the world with different language requirements. It enables teams to offer support to customers in the language of their choice.

Primary Features

• Ticket Management: Zoho Desk offers various free ticket management features. Ticket history shows the activity on a ticket in chronological order. Ticket resolution notes document solutions to issues. Ticket tags give searchable labels to tickets to help organize them.
• Email Ticketing: Email tickets convert emails into tickets automatically when email is added as a channel.
• Agent Productivity: Zoho Desk offers features to aid in agent productivity, like quick ticket view (peek view), a response editor with rich text support, advanced search functionality and a response draft.
• Customer Support Channels: Zoho Desk offers limited multi-channel customer support in their free pricing tier, including email and feedback widgets with advanced web forms for ticketing support. Users can also set up a help center or knowledge base.
• Agent Dashboard: Zoho Desk tracks all agent performance parameters along with agent information and current availability.
• Customer Management: Zoho Desk offers various customer management features, such as storing contact and account information and adding private notes for contacts. Specific agents can also be assigned to certain contacts.
• Help Desk Automation: Notification rules automatically notify agents and customers about progress made on tickets. The macros feature combines actions performed frequently on tickets into macros that can be manually applied. Macros are limited to two per department.
• Help Desk Customization: Zoho Desk offers default email templates in the free tier. Customize tabs by renaming, hiding and reordering them at the top of the Zoho Desk interface.

Limitations

• No phone or chat support is available for the free tier.
• Lack of timely UI/UX updates.
• No native third-party integration or access to Zoho marketplace, except GSuite, in the free plan.
• Lack of email formatting features.
• Lack of options for alerts for ticketing and updates.

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Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a help desk platform that can increase customer engagement and satisfaction by simplifying ticketing, streamlining operational workflows and automating processes. This cloud-based platform offers various field service modules, including quick query resolution, omnichannel customer engagement and automated ticket routing.

Freshdesk allows access to a maximum of 10 agents for the free pricing plan.

Freshdesk ticket resolution. Source

Top Benefits

• Better Customer Service: Freshdesk offers various ticket management, agent productivity and customer management features which allow users to provide a better customer service experience. The platform also streamlines operational workflows and reduces idle time.
• Customizable Branding: Freshdesk offers customizable branding on the public customer portal, so companies can use their own theme and branding instead of Freshdesk branding.
• Actionable Insights: The ticket volume trends report helps users understand the overall ticket load of their team. By default, the report displays data for the last 29 days. Users can change the date range, or apply other filters like group name, agent name or company name. Reports can be exported to email or downloaded as PDFs.

Primary Features

• Integrated Ticketing System: Freshdesk allows users to assign and prioritize tickets and set deadlines. It also offers multichannel support and converts support requests arising from email, social media, live chat and messaging apps into tickets which can be resolved through the Freshdesk system.
• Workflow Automation: Automate ticket creation and create rules for incoming tickets. The software performs actions on each ticket based on predefined conditions. These rules let users automate actions such as assigning tickets to the right groups or agents, setting ticket properties like priority and type, triggering email notifications, deleting tickets or marking tickets as spam.
• Knowledge Base: Freshdesk helps users set up a knowledge base for their customers. Users can publish articles and other materials to create a repository of information that answers commonly asked questions.
• Help Widgets: The Freshdesk help widget allows users to embed solution articles and contact forms within their website or product for their customers. When customers need help, they can open the widget to search through self-service materials or submit a ticket.
• Agent Scripting: Freshdesk offers a canned response feature in the free tier that allows agents to send pre-written replies to similar customer queries.
• Dynamic Placeholders: Freshdesk allows users to add dynamic content and personalize automated emails. With a dynamic placeholder feature, users can auto-fill details like customer name, ticket status or even ticket URL.

Limitations

• No time tracking for agents in the free tier.
• Lack of proper reporting functionality in the free tier.
• Lack of timely UI/UX updates.
• No SLA management in the free tier.

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LiveAgent

LiveAgent is an online ticketing platform that supports personalized, multilingual customer service. It offers all-in-one helpdesk support by combining all communication channels, including email, live chat, phone calls and social media, in a single company inbox.

LiveAgent offers additional services through third-party companies to provide CRM, including sales and marketing automation. Users can analyze help desk performance and generate multiple reports to reward high-performing support agents and track customer satisfaction.

LiveAgent call management. Source

Top Benefits

• Improved Agent Productivity: LiveAgent improves agent productivity by providing a single unified platform for customer service and ticket management. It enables work gamification and real-time dashboards to show agents their work and performance.
• Unlimited Users: LiveAgent allows access for an unlimited number of users. Only features are limited.
• Quicker Issue Resolution: From streamlined ticket submission to self-support tools, LiveAgent’s robust features enable you to resolve issues quickly and provide a better overall customer experience.
• Customizability: Liveagent offers various customization features in the free tier, including customizable email templates, contact form, chat and call widgets as well as the ability to create a custom knowledge base.

Primary Features

• Customer Portal: LiveAgent lets you set up a customer self-service portal with a knowledge base, FAQs, feedback forum, ticket submission and customization tools.
• Contact Forms: Customizable contact forms allow customers to make support requests directly from the website. Users can opt for a contact form with a submission button or one embedded in a webpage.
• Customer Forum: LiveAgent allows users to create an online community forum to ask questions, provide answers and lead discussions, for either public or internal use.
• Email Ticketing: LiveAgent offers email ticketing capabilities for both incoming and outgoing email accounts. It can automatically create a ticket for each email the company receives and assign it to the appropriate department or agent for resolution. LiveAgent offers only two email addresses for incoming and outgoing email accounts in the free tier.
• Live Chat Button: LiveAgent offers a free live chat button. Once the chat is implemented, the online agent can chat with the customers and prospects in real time. LiveAgent offers only one live chat button in the free tier.

Limitations

• Ticket history is only available for up to seven days in the free plan.
• Lack of reporting functionalities in the free tier.
• Only one integration and zero social media integrations available in the free tier.
• Limited automations in the free tier.

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Why Choose a Free Help Desk Solution?

A 2023 report by Zendesk found that 81% of business leaders see customer service as a growing priority over the next year. But you don’t need statistics to know that customer support is important. If you’ve ever had to wait for hours on end to get an issue resolved, you know how that experience shapes your perception of a company’s brand.

Customer service is one way small businesses can differentiate themselves and improve their customer retention. But with the cost of enterprise ticketing systems being what it is, small businesses have a harder time gaining the competitive edge. That’s what makes free help desk software a great alternative.

Free help desk software empowers small business owners to deliver enterprise-grade customer support to their customers. It also provides a way for businesses to test out customer service software and establish how well it works for them before committing to premium software. Either way, it gives you a chance to test the waters before you dive in, while also allowing you to reap some major benefits.

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Next Steps

Providing high quality customer service doesn’t have to be expensive. Free help desk tools can help you create superior customer experiences without breaking the bank. If you’re looking for more help desk ticketing tools to consider, check out our free comparison report to learn more about top industry leaders.

Which free help desk platform stood out to you the most? What do you think is the most important element of customer service? Let us know in the comments!