A hands-on Freshdesk customer service review for 2025

Picking the right customer support tool can feel like a massive decision. You need something that can bring a little order to the chaos, help your team out, and not cost a fortune. Freshdesk is one of those names that pops up everywhere, promising to be the one-stop shop for managing your help desk.

But then you start digging, and the picture gets a little blurry. For every glowing recommendation, there's a frustrated Reddit thread or a not-so-great Trustpilot review that makes you second-guess things. So, what’s the real story? Is it a decent platform with a few quirks, or are those red flags a sign of bigger problems?

This is a straight-up, honest Freshdesk customer service review for 2025. We’re going to skip the marketing spiel and look at what it’s actually like to use its features, how much its AI really costs, and what people are saying. That way, you can figure out if it's the right move for your team.

What is Freshdesk?

At its core, Freshdesk is a cloud-based tool from Freshworks designed to help businesses manage customer conversations from all over the place. Think of it as a central hub that pulls in your customer emails, phone calls, live chats, and social media messages into a single, organized ticketing system.

It’s mostly built for small to medium-sized businesses that have graduated from a shared inbox and need a more structured way to handle support requests. A big part of their pitch is the built-in AI, Freddy AI, which is supposed to automate simple replies, run chatbots, and give your agents a hand. On paper, it sounds like it does everything you'd want.

Core features

A help desk is only useful if it makes your team's day-to-day work easier, not harder. Let’s take a look at how Freshdesk’s main features actually hold up when you’re in the trenches.

Ticketing and omnichannel management

The good: To be fair, Freshdesk’s main strength is getting all your support channels into one feed. If your team is drowning in a shared Gmail inbox, this alone is a pretty big improvement. It gives you a way to track conversations and make sure nothing gets lost. A lot of users say the initial setup is fairly straightforward and they like having one view of every customer interaction.

The bad: While the idea is solid, the execution can be a bit wobbly. Users often mention that the interface feels clunky and slows down, especially when ticket volume is high. Others complain about bugs in the web and mobile apps, with

one person on Reddit saying, "the website just stops working...nothing is clickable."

Reddit

The ugly: A really common gripe is how it handles tickets. Agents often have to manually merge duplicate tickets from the same person or spend too much time on routing tasks that should be simple. The built-in automation can handle basic rules, but it often struggles with the nuances of real conversations, leaving your team with a messy queue to clean up.

Automation and workflow management

Freshdesk has a couple of built-in automation tools, "Dispatch'r" and "Supervisor," that let you set up rules to assign or escalate tickets. For basic, predictable stuff, they can be useful.

The problem, as many reviews point out, is that these tools are a pain to configure and are stuck in a rigid "if this, then that" mindset. They don’t really handle the gray areas of customer support, where one keyword might mean different things in different contexts. This can lead to tickets going to the wrong person and creating more manual cleanup for your team.

A more modern way to handle this is with a flexible AI workflow engine that you actually control. For example, eesel AI lets you decide to automate only the simple, repetitive ticket types (like "where's my order?") and automatically send everything else to a human. You can set it all up yourself in a few minutes without needing a developer.

A screenshot of the customization and action workflow screen in eesel AI, illustrating a key point from our Freshdesk customer service review.

Evaluating Freddy AI

Having a native AI sounds great. It's built-in, so it should just work, right? Well, that's not exactly the experience many Freshdesk users are having. Let's look at the gap between what Freddy AI promises and what it actually does.

Freddy AI's promise vs. reality

Freddy AI is pitched as a smart assistant that can handle self-service chatbots, help agents draft replies, and even resolve issues on its own. User feedback, however, paints a different picture.

• One business owner on Reddit talked about spending days training their Freshdesk bot, only for it to work for a couple of weeks before their account was shut down without any explanation.

• Another user in that same discussion noted that even Freshdesk's own demo chatbot on their site was broken, which doesn't exactly build confidence.

• Over on review sites like G2, you’ll see users call the AI a "gadget" that isn't really helpful for anything beyond the most basic questions.

This is a pretty common problem with AI that's just tacked onto a help desk. It often feels like a feature added to a checklist rather than a core part of the product, and the result is usually a buggy and underwhelming experience for everyone.

Why a dedicated AI layer is better

Instead of putting up with a half-baked native AI, a lot of teams are finding more success with a specialized AI platform that works on top of their help desk. This is where a tool like eesel AI really makes a difference because it’s built for power and flexibility.

• Get up and running fast: Manually training a bot can take forever. eesel AI can be ready to go in minutes because it learns directly from your team's past ticket resolutions, macros, and knowledge sources automatically.

• Know what you're getting: Worried about a new AI messing things up? eesel AI has a simulation mode where you can test it on thousands of your past tickets. You can see exactly how it would have performed, what it would have said, and how much time it would have saved, all before it ever talks to a real customer. This takes all the risk out of launching.

• Connect all your knowledge: Freddy AI can only use the information you feed into your Freshdesk knowledge base. But your company’s real knowledge is probably scattered everywhere. eesel AI can connect to all of it, whether it’s in Confluence, Google Docs, or even past conversations in Slack, to give both customers and agents the right answers.

An infographic illustrating how eesel AI centralizes knowledge from different sources to power support automation, a topic covered in this Freshdesk customer service review.

The true cost: Pricing

A platform's price tag rarely tells the whole story. Many teams get drawn in by a low monthly fee, only to get slammed with extra costs for the features they actually need. Let’s break down what you’ll really pay for Freshdesk.

At a glance, that doesn’t look too bad. The problem is, the prices above don't include Freshdesk's main AI features. That's where the costs start to creep up.

• Freddy AI Copilot (Agent Assist): This is an extra $29 per agent, per month.

• Freddy AI Agent (Chatbot & Automation): You get a certain number of free "sessions," but once you run out, it costs $100 for every 1,000 sessions.

That per-session pricing model can be a real killer. It's totally unpredictable and basically penalizes you for getting more customer questions. If your chatbot has a great month and helps a lot of people, your bill skyrockets. This model is a huge point of frustration for users, and you’ll find plenty of people on Trustpilot complaining about surprise charges and confusing billing.

On the other hand, eesel AI's pricing is designed to be simple and predictable. There are no per-resolution fees. You pick a plan based on the number of AI interactions you expect, and all the products (AI Agent, Copilot, and Triage) are included. Your bill is the same every month, so you can grow your support without stressing about unexpected costs.

A visual of the eesel AI pricing page, which contrasts with Freshdesk's model by showing clear, public-facing costs, an important factor in this Freshdesk customer service review.

The final verdict: Is Freshdesk right for you?

So, after a detailed Freshdesk customer service review, it’s pretty clear that the platform isn’t for everyone.

Who it's for: Freshdesk can be a solid choice for small businesses that just need a basic, all-in-one system to get their tickets organized. If your main goal is to finally escape a shared inbox and you don't need powerful AI, it can get the job done.

Who should look elsewhere: If your team is serious about using reliable and affordable AI automation, you’re probably going to be let down by Freshdesk's native tools. The constant reports of bugs, expensive add-ons, and questionable customer support are real risks for a growing business.

This video provides a comprehensive Freshdesk customer service review, offering an overview of its features and functionality.

Upgrade your support without replacing your help desk

The good news is, you’re not stuck with your help desk’s built-in limitations. The smarter way to work these days is to add a specialized AI layer on top of the tools your team already uses.

eesel AI was built to do exactly that. It plugs right into Freshdesk, Zendesk, Intercom, and dozens of other platforms to give your support capabilities an immediate boost. You can go live in minutes, test everything safely in a risk-free simulation, and get simple, predictable pricing that helps you grow instead of holding you back.

Ready to see what a dedicated AI platform can do for your team? Start your free eesel AI trial today.