A complete guide to the Freshdesk chatbot in 2025

If you’re running your helpdesk on Freshdesk, the thought of using its built-in AI has probably crossed your mind. And hey, it makes sense. You’re already on a solid platform, and adding some automation seems like the next logical step to scale support and give your team a bit of breathing room.

This guide is a straight-up look at the native Freshdesk chatbot, which you might know as Freddy AI. We’ll walk through what it actually does, how the pricing really works (it’s a bit of a maze), and cover the key limitations you should be aware of before diving in. We’ll also explore a more powerful and flexible way to bring AI into your Freshdesk world without having to start from scratch.

What is the Freshdesk chatbot?

When people talk about the "Freshdesk chatbot," they’re really talking about Freddy AI, Freshdesk’s in-house AI platform. Freshworks calls it an "agentic AI solution," which is just a fancy way of saying it’s built to help your human agents and AI work together like they’re on the same team.

Freddy is designed to work across all your channels, email, chat, phone, and social media, to keep the customer experience consistent.

On a day-to-day basis, its job is to:

• Offer self-service: Give customers quick answers to common questions so they don’t have to wait in a queue for a human agent.

• Help your agents: Act as a sidekick for your team by suggesting replies and pulling up helpful info right inside the agent workspace.

• Automate the boring stuff: Take care of the simple, repetitive questions and ticket tasks that eat up so much of an agent’s day.

So, while it’s easy to label it as just a chatbot, Freddy AI is more of a suite of tools that powers all of Freshdesk’s automation features.

What the Freshdesk chatbot brings to the table

Freshworks has packed a good amount of functionality into Freddy AI. Here’s a rundown of the core features you’ll be working with if you decide to set up a native Freshdesk chatbot.

The no-code Freshdesk chatbot builder

Freddy AI includes a visual, drag-and-drop builder for mapping out chatbot conversations without needing a developer. It comes with a few pre-built templates for common situations like processing refunds or tracking orders, which can give you a bit of a head start.

A screenshot of the Freshdesk chatbot builder, showing the no-code interface for creating conversation flows.

But while it’s sold as "no-code," it’s good to know that building genuinely complex, multi-step flows with branching logic can still turn into a pretty big project. You’ll likely spend a fair amount of time tinkering and testing within the Freshdesk ecosystem to get things running smoothly.

How the Freshdesk chatbot understands what customers mean

Instead of just scanning for keywords, Freddy AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to figure out what a customer is actually trying to say. This "intent detection" helps the bot grasp the meaning behind the words.

For instance, if a customer types, "my package never showed up," the bot gets that this is an "order status inquiry" and can kick off the right workflow. This lets you have much more natural conversations than you could with older, keyword-driven bots.

The Freshdesk chatbot works on every channel

One of Freshdesk’s biggest selling points is its omnichannel support, and the chatbot is built to reflect that. You can set up the same bot across your website, mobile app, and social channels like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. The idea is to give customers the same helpful experience, no matter how they reach out.

The Freshdesk chatbot omnichannel inbox, displaying customer conversations from various channels.::

Freshdesk chatbot analytics and reporting

The platform comes with built-in dashboards to track how your chatbot is doing. You can keep an eye on metrics like the number of conversations the bot handles, the most frequently asked questions, and how often it resolves issues without needing to escalate to an agent. These reports are meant to help you find gaps in your help articles and see where you can improve your automation.

The Freshdesk chatbot analytics dashboard, which tracks key performance metrics.::

Freshdesk chatbot pricing explained

Alright, this is where things get a bit tricky. The pricing for Freshdesk’s AI isn’t a simple monthly fee. It’s layered with add-ons and usage-based costs that can make your final bill a real surprise.

First things first: you can’t get any AI features on the free plans. You have to be on at least the Pro or Enterprise plan for Freshdesk or Freshchat. Once you’re on a paid plan, the AI tools are sold as separate add-ons.

Here’s how the costs generally break down:

• Freddy AI Copilot: This is the tool that assists your agents. It costs an extra $29 per agent, per month. So if you have a team of 10, that’s another $290 on your monthly bill just for this feature.

• Freddy AI Agent: This is the chatbot that talks to your customers. It includes a small number of "free" sessions (often 500 per account), but after that, you’re paying $100 for every 1,000 sessions.

The real question is, what counts as a "session"? Freshdesk defines it as any unique interaction between a user and the bot in a 24-hour period. This pay-per-use model is the catch. If you have a busy month, your chatbot bill could jump unexpectedly. You’re essentially penalized for getting more customers to engage with your support.

Feature	Plan Requirement	Additional Cost	Billing Model
Freddy AI Copilot	Pro / Enterprise	$29/agent/month	Per Seat
Freddy AI Agent	Pro / Enterprise	$100 / 1,000 sessions	Usage-Based
Freddy AI Insights	Pro / Enterprise	Requires Copilot license	Bundled

This piecemeal pricing makes it tough to budget. Unlike solutions with clear, all-inclusive plans, you’re left guessing what your bill will look like from one month to the next, which is a risky way to operate as you grow.

Where the native Freshdesk chatbot falls short

While Freddy AI has some nice features, support teams with big ambitions often find themselves hitting a wall. The native Freshdesk chatbot has a few fundamental limitations that can stop you from building the kind of end-to-end automation you’re really after.

Why the Freshdesk chatbot knowledge is stuck in one place

Freddy AI learns from your Freshdesk knowledge base. That sounds good on the surface, but then you remember where most of your company’s actual knowledge is stored. It’s scattered everywhere, in Google Docs, Confluence pages, Notion wikis, and buried in thousands of past support tickets.

The native Freshdesk chatbot can’t touch any of that. It only knows what’s been manually typed into the Freshdesk help center. This leaves your team with the tedious job of copying and pasting content from other sources, which quickly becomes a maintenance headache. The result? The bot gives incomplete or outdated answers, and your customers get frustrated.

A workflow diagram illustrating how the Freshdesk chatbot is limited to its own knowledge base, unlike more flexible AI solutions.::

No way to test the Freshdesk chatbot for real

You can build and test individual conversation flows in Freshdesk, but you can’t see how your bot will actually perform against thousands of real customer questions before you go live.

This means you can’t accurately guess your automation rate, pinpoint which topics the bot will struggle with, or forecast your cost savings. Launching a new automation becomes a "cross your fingers and hope for the best" moment. It makes it almost impossible to start small, prove the bot’s value with real data, and then confidently give it more responsibility.

Limited, rigid Freshdesk chatbot workflows

The no-code builder is fine for basic Q&A, but modern customer support is about more than just finding the right help article. What happens when a customer asks for their order status? Or wants to know if a product is back in stock?

The native chatbot hits a dead end. It can’t perform custom actions like looking up live order data in Shopify, creating a bug ticket in Jira, or updating a record in your CRM. You’re stuck with the basic actions and integrations that Freshdesk gives you out of the box. This puts a hard limit on what you can automate, leaving your agents to handle tasks that an AI should be able to do in seconds.

A better Freshdesk chatbot integration with eesel AI

The good news is that you’re not stuck with the native bot’s limitations. Instead of being locked into one system, you can give your existing Freshdesk setup a major upgrade with an AI platform built for flexibility.

eesel AI plugs right into your Freshdesk account in a few minutes, acting as the intelligent brain for your support operations. You don’t have to switch helpdesks or retrain your entire team.

Here’s how it tackles the biggest frustrations of the native bot:

• Connect all your knowledge: Don’t limit your bot to a single help center. With eesel AI for Freshdesk, you can connect all your knowledge sources with one click: past tickets, internal wikis in Confluence, Google Docs, and more. It learns from everywhere your information lives, so it can give complete and accurate answers every time.

• Test with confidence: Before you automate a single ticket, eesel AI’s simulation mode lets you test your setup against thousands of your past Freshdesk tickets. You get a real, data-backed preview of your automation rate and ROI, so you can go live knowing exactly what to expect.

• Get full control over workflows: Go way beyond simple Q&A. You can build custom API actions to look up order data from Shopify, triage tickets based on customer sentiment, or trigger just about any workflow your team relies on. You decide exactly which tickets the AI handles and what it does with them.

• Enjoy simple, predictable pricing: eesel AI has straightforward, feature-based plans with no per-resolution fees. Your bill is predictable and won’t penalize you with surprise charges for having a busy month.

Feature	Native Freshdesk Chatbot	eesel AI for Freshdesk
Knowledge Sources	Limited to Freshdesk KB	Unified: Tickets, Docs, Confluence, etc.
Pre-Launch Testing	Basic flow testing	Bulk simulation on historical tickets
Custom Actions	Limited, pre-defined actions	Fully customizable API actions & chatbot workflows
Pricing Model	Complex, usage-based fees	Transparent, all-inclusive plans
Setup	Native configuration	Self-serve, go live in minutes

This video provides a step-by-step guide on how to activate and enable the Freshdesk chatbot (Virtual Agent) for your support channels.

Move beyond the basic Freshdesk chatbot

The native Freshdesk chatbot is a decent place to start for teams just beginning to explore automation. But its siloed knowledge, rigid workflows, and unpredictable pricing create a pretty low ceiling for anyone serious about scaling their support.

To unlock real, meaningful automation, you need a solution that can tap into all your knowledge, give you complete control over workflows, and let you grow without worrying about surprise costs. An AI platform like eesel AI doesn’t just answer questions, it becomes a core part of your entire support operation. It lets you automate complex tasks, test everything with confidence, and finally break free from the limits of a closed system.

Ready to see what your Freshdesk support is truly capable of? Sign up for a free eesel AI trial and build a more powerful AI agent in minutes.