A complete guide to Freshdesk live chat in 2025

Let's be honest, live chat isn't just a bonus feature on a website anymore. For most businesses, especially in e-commerce or SaaS, it’s essential. It’s often the deciding factor between making a sale and losing a customer to a competitor. That’s probably why you’re looking into a big name like Freshdesk and trying to figure out its live chat situation.

If that sounds about right, you’re in luck. We’re going to dig into what Freshdesk live chat is all about, the good, the bad, and the confusing. We'll walk through its features, try to make sense of its pricing (especially the AI part), and show you how to get the most out of it without being locked into its ecosystem.

What is Freshdesk live chat?

First off, the native tool for live chat in Freshdesk is called Freshchat. You can technically get it on its own, but it’s designed to work best as part of the Freshdesk Omnichannel package. The whole point of the omnichannel suite is to pull your chat, email, phone, and social media support into one dashboard for your agents.

Freshchat’s goal is to let you talk to customers on your site or in your app right when they need you, whether it’s for a support question or a sales query. It has a modern "messaging" feel to it, kind of like iMessage or WhatsApp. Customers can pop in and out of the conversation without losing the entire history, which is a massive improvement over old-school chats that disappear the second you close the window.

It’s a solid platform for managing conversations, but it starts to get a little complicated once you look at the built-in AI. The features are there, but the way they’re priced and the limitations they come with can be a real surprise. We’ll get to that soon.

Key features of Freshdesk live chat (Freshchat)

Freshchat packs a decent set of tools to help your team handle customer chats without pulling their hair out. Here’s a quick look at the main features.

A single inbox for everything

One of the best things about Freshchat is how it brings all customer conversations together. It doesn’t matter if a customer sends a message through web chat, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, or just a plain old email; it all lands in the same inbox. This gives your agents the full story of a customer's past interactions without them having to jump between different apps to find context. It saves a ton of time and makes for a much less frustrating experience for both your team and your customers.

AI-powered chatbots from Freddy AI

Freshworks has its own AI called Freddy AI. You can use it to build AI-powered chatbots that answer common questions, qualify new leads, or handle simple requests that don't really need a human. These bots are designed to fetch answers from your knowledge base and follow conversation guides that you build out.

A view of the Freddy AI chatbot builder within the Freshdesk live chat interface.

This sounds pretty good on paper. But the real-world performance, and more importantly, the cost, of Freddy AI are two things you really need to look at closely. We’ll break down the pricing and limits in a bit, because that’s where the story gets interesting.

Proactive messages and campaigns

Freshchat lets you start the conversation. Instead of just waiting for customers to run into a problem, you can set up automated messages that pop up based on what they’re doing on your site. For example, if someone is lingering on your pricing page or has items sitting in their cart, you can send a friendly nudge to offer help or maybe a discount code. It’s a clever way to help reduce abandoned carts and guide people who might be on the fence.

Reports and analytics

You can’t really fix what you can’t see. Freshchat gives you analytics on all the important stuff: how many chats you’re getting, how long it takes to first respond, resolution rates, and how individual agents are performing. These reports are helpful for spotting where things are slowing down and getting a general idea of how happy your customers are.

Understanding Freshdesk live chat pricing and AI limitations

Alright, this is where you need to pay close attention. Freshdesk’s pricing seems simple at first, but it gets complicated fast when you factor in AI for your live chat. The price you see advertised is rarely the price you’ll actually pay.

The omnichannel pricing puzzle

To get live chat, you’ll most likely need one of the Freshdesk Omnichannel plans. Here’s a look at what they cost if you pay annually.

The hidden costs and headaches of Freddy AI

That table looks innocent enough, but the AI features are bundled with some serious catches that can make your monthly bill pretty unpredictable.

First off, the AI Copilot is an add-on. This tool, which gives agents suggestions for replies, isn’t part of the standard Pro or Enterprise plans. It costs an extra $29 per agent, per month. So that $49 Pro plan suddenly becomes $78 per agent if you want your team to have some basic AI help.

Next is the per-resolution pricing. The real automation comes from the Freddy AI Agent, which is supposed to resolve issues on its own. The Pro and Enterprise plans give you 500 free "sessions" to try it out. After that, you’ll pay $100 for every 1,000 sessions. A session is pretty much any back-and-forth between a customer and the bot. This model means that the more your bot successfully helps customers, the higher your bill gets. It’s an odd system where good automation actually costs you more money.

Then there’s the lack of control. Native AI tools like Freddy can often feel like a "black box." It’s tough to set clear rules for which tickets the AI should handle and which it should immediately pass to a person. Trying to tweak its personality or see how it will perform before you let it talk to your customers is also a challenge. You kind of just have to cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Finally, your knowledge gets trapped. Freddy AI is at its best when it’s using information that lives inside Freshworks, like your Freshdesk knowledge base. But what if your team keeps important info in other places, like Google Docs, Confluence, or Notion? Trying to get Freddy AI to use that external knowledge is a huge pain and usually involves a lot of manual copy-pasting.

How to upgrade your Freshdesk live chat with eesel AI

So, what’s the move? You like Freshdesk, but the built-in AI feels too expensive and rigid. The answer isn’t to ditch your help desk and start from scratch. It’s to add a smarter AI layer that works with the tools you already use.

This is exactly what a platform like eesel AI is for. It connects directly with Freshdesk to give you seriously powerful automation without making you change how your team works.

Go live in minutes, not months

Unlike AI tools that lock you into long sales calls and complicated setups, eesel AI is designed so you can set it up yourself. You can connect it to your Freshdesk account with just a few clicks, without ever having to talk to a salesperson. You can have it working in minutes.

Connect all your knowledge sources

Remember that headache with your knowledge being stuck in different places? eesel AI fixes that right away. You can connect it to all the places your team stores information. That includes your past Freshdesk tickets, Confluence pages, Google Docs, Notion databases, Shopify product info, and more.

An example of eesel AI Copilot drafting a reply to a customer query about a refund policy directly within the Freshdesk live chat.

By learning from your team's past conversations, eesel AI picks up on your brand’s voice from the get-go. The answers it gives aren't just correct; they sound like they’re coming from one of your own agents.

Get full control and test everything first

eesel AI gets rid of the "black box" problem and puts you in control.

It does this with a simulation mode. Before you even think about turning the AI on for live customers, you can run it on thousands of your past tickets. It will show you exactly how it would have replied, which gives you a clear picture of what your automation rate will be and where you might need to add more information. No more guesswork.

You also get a customizable workflow engine. This means you get to decide exactly which tickets the AI handles. You can start small, letting it answer the most common questions, and have it escalate everything else. You can build rules and even teach the AI to do things like add a specific tag, look up order details, or send a conversation to the right person.

Transparent and predictable pricing

This is a big one. Unlike Freshdesk’s per-session model that charges you more for being busy, eesel AI has simple plans based on a set number of interactions. There are no fees per resolution, so you won't get a surprise bill if you have a busy month. Your costs stay fixed, which makes budgeting way easier. Plus, with flexible monthly plans you can cancel whenever, it’s a low-risk way to see what powerful AI can do for your team.

Should you use Freshdesk live chat?

Freshdesk’s live chat tool, Freshchat, is a solid choice if you just need a good system for your agents to handle chats manually. It’s well-integrated and does its job.

But if you’re looking for smart, affordable AI automation that you can actually control, you’re probably going to get frustrated with Freddy AI’s pricing and limitations pretty quickly.

A better approach is often to combine the two: use Freshdesk for its reliable help desk features and layer in a specialized AI platform like eesel AI to manage the automation. That way, your agents get to keep the workspace they know, and you get a powerful AI assistant to handle the frontline support without worrying about surprise costs.

Ready to see what your Freshdesk live chat can really do? Integrate eesel AI with Freshdesk in just a few minutes and give your support a serious boost.