A complete guide to the Freshdesk React Native SDK

Let's be real: your customers expect to get help right inside your mobile app these days. Making them leave your app, open a browser, and search for a contact page just doesn't cut it anymore. When people can solve a problem without breaking their flow, they’re just happier customers.

If you’re building an app with React Native, you’ve probably come across the Freshdesk React Native SDK as a way to embed support features. And while it’s a toolkit that lets your developers build an in-app help center, it’s not exactly a simple plug-and-play solution. Honestly, it’s a bit of an old-school approach. It requires a lot of developer time to build and maintain, and it doesn't come with any real intelligence built-in.

In this guide, we'll dig into what the SDK is, what it can do, where it falls short, and how newer, no-code AI platforms offer a much faster and smarter way to handle in-app support.

What is the Freshdesk React Native SDK?

The Freshdesk React Native SDK is basically a collection of code libraries and tools for your developers. It gives them the building blocks to integrate Freshdesk’s support features, like chat and FAQs, directly into your React Native mobile app. The main goal is to let your users get help without having to jump over to their email or a web browser.

Think of it as a kit of parts for your engineering team. They can piece together a chat window, pull in your help articles, and send user details to your support agents. But it’s important to see it for what it is: a purely technical solution. It means your developers will be installing packages, writing custom code, and managing configurations for both iOS and Android. It’s the classic, roll-up-your-sleeves, code-heavy way of doing things, and as we'll see, there are much more efficient ways to get this done today.

Key features and implementation

So, what can your developers actually build with this SDK? Let’s break down the main features you can add to your app.

In-app conversations and ticketing

The main thing the SDK does is let you (https://crmsupport.freshworks.com/support/solutions/articles/50000002720-how-to-integrate-react-native-sdk-for-chat-). When a user kicks off a conversation in your app, it automatically creates a new ticket in your Freshdesk dashboard, which is great for keeping all your customer chats in one place. You can even set up different conversation topics so that users get routed to the right team from the get-go.

But here’s the thing: the SDK only gives you the chat window. The conversation itself still fully depends on your human agents being available to answer. This is where an AI-powered platform like eesel AI completely changes the dynamic. Instead of just opening a line to a person, eesel makes the conversation smart from the very first message, and can often resolve the issue instantly without an agent ever needing to see it.

Integrated FAQ and knowledge base access

To help people help themselves, the SDK has a function called "showFAQs()". This lets your developers display articles from your Freshdesk knowledge base right inside the app. It's a decent way to nudge users toward self-service and hopefully cut down on some of the more repetitive questions.

The only catch is that this feature is totally passive, it's really just a document viewer. The user still has to manually search, click, and read to find what they're looking for. A modern AI solution is much more active. For instance, eesel AI doesn't just show you the knowledge base; it actually reads and understands everything in it, along with your past tickets and other documents, to give users a direct, conversational answer. It's the difference between handing someone a thick instruction manual and just telling them how to fix the problem.

User identification and context

To give your agents a bit of a head start, the SDK has tools for your developers to send user data from your app over to Freshdesk. Using functions like "setUser" and "identifyUser", they can pass along info like a user's name, email, or what subscription plan they’re on. This helps your agents know who they're talking to without asking a bunch of preliminary questions.

While that's helpful, it's another thing that requires custom code to set up. An AI tool like eesel AI gets this context on its own by plugging directly into your helpdesk. But it takes it a step further. eesel’s customizable actions can use that context to actually do things, like looking up a customer's order in Shopify or checking their account status in your own database. An SDK just can't do that on its own without your team sinking a ton of extra development time into it.

The hidden costs and limitations

The features might sound good on paper, but before you add this project to your engineering team's roadmap, you need to understand the real-world challenges and hidden costs that come with using an SDK for in-app support.

Heavy reliance on developer resources

From the first install to ongoing upkeep, the Freshdesk React Native SDK is going to take up a good chunk of your engineering team's time. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it project. Every time your app gets an update, or when Freshdesk or React Native releases a new version, things can break. That means more developer hours spent on tedious bug fixes and compatibility updates instead of working on your actual product.

This is a huge difference compared to eesel AI's approach. You can connect your Freshdesk account and have a working AI agent live in a few minutes, not months, and you don't have to write a single line of code. This frees up your developers and puts your support team in control of the tool they use every day.

Limited out-of-the-box intelligence

The SDK gives you a chat window, but it doesn't give you any of the logic behind it. If you want your in-app support to do anything "smart" like answering common questions automatically or routing tickets based on what the customer wrote, you have two choices: build that logic yourself from scratch, or pay extra for Freshdesk's separate AI products.

With eesel AI, that intelligence layer plugs right into the setup you already have. It learns from your past tickets and knowledge sources from day one, so it can give context-aware, human-like answers right away. You don't have to build the brains; they come as part of the package.

A fragmented and siloed knowledge source

The SDK is designed to pull information from one specific place: your Freshdesk knowledge base. But let’s be honest, where does your team’s real knowledge live? If your most up-to-date answers are scattered across Confluence, Google Docs, or Notion, your in-app support is going to feel incomplete and won't be very helpful.

This is where eesel AI really makes a difference. It can connect to all of your knowledge sources at once. By linking up to all the places your team keeps information, eesel makes sure your support agent, whether it's the AI or a human using the copilot, has the full story and can answer a much wider range of questions accurately.

This infographic shows how eesel AI connects to multiple knowledge sources, unlike the siloed approach of the Freshdesk React Native SDK.

Understanding Freshdesk's pricing for AI features

If you decide to stick with the Freshdesk ecosystem and add some smarts to your SDK-powered chat, you'll have to figure out their pricing for AI features. The core help desk plans are one thing, but the AI tools are sold as add-ons, which can get confusing and expensive pretty quickly.

Based on their official pricing page, here’s a rough breakdown of what you might pay for Freshdesk's "Freddy AI" features:

Feature	Plan Availability	Price	Key Detail
Freddy AI Copilot	Pro & Enterprise	$29/agent/month	This is an add-on for your human agents to help with things like drafting replies.
Freddy AI Agent	Pro & Enterprise	$100 per 1,000 sessions*	This is for the customer-facing automation, and the cost is based on usage.
Freddy AI Insights	Pro & Enterprise	Requires Copilot license	This gives you analytics on how the AI is performing.

*The first 500 sessions are included.

The most important thing to notice here is the pricing for the Freddy AI Agent. Paying per session means your costs can be unpredictable. If you have a busy month with a lot of support requests, you could end up with a surprisingly high bill. In a way, this model punishes you for having engaged customers who are actively seeking help.

On the other hand, eesel AI offers straightforward, predictable pricing with no per-resolution fees. Plans are based on a flat number of AI interactions per month, so you always know exactly what you're paying. This makes budgeting a whole lot easier and lets you scale up without worrying about costs spiraling out of control.

A screenshot of eesel AI's pricing page, highlighting its straightforward and predictable costs compared to Freshdesk's model.

A better alternative: No-code AI for Freshdesk support

The downsides of the SDK approach all point to one thing: for most teams, building in-app support from the ground up just isn't the best way to go anymore. A modern, no-code AI platform like eesel AI solves these problems and gets you a better result with way less effort.

Deploy in minutes, not months

With a one-click Freshdesk integration, you can have eesel AI up and running pretty much instantly. There's no developer time needed, no long implementation project, and no ongoing maintenance to worry about. You get value from it faster, and it costs less to own in the long run.

Test with confidence using risk-free simulations

One of the biggest headaches with any new tool is the uncertainty of whether it will actually work for you. eesel AI's simulation mode gets rid of that guesswork. You can test your AI setup on thousands of your past Freshdesk tickets to see exactly how it will perform, what percentage of tickets it can resolve, and what your potential return on investment looks like, all before you ever turn it on for a single customer.

This image shows the eesel AI simulation mode, a feature not available with the standard Freshdesk React Native SDK.

Get total control with a customizable workflow engine

With eesel AI, you’re in control. You can tweak the AI's tone of voice and personality, tell it to only use specific sources of knowledge, and create custom actions. This means your AI can do more than just talk; it can look up order details from your e-commerce platform, triage tickets by adding tags in Freshdesk, or escalate tricky issues to a specific team, all based on simple rules you set up in a visual editor.

A view of eesel AI's visual editor for creating custom rules and actions, a key advantage over the code-heavy Freshdesk React Native SDK.

Move beyond the Freshdesk React Native SDK for smarter in-app support

The Freshdesk React Native SDK is a decent tool if your development team has the time and resources to build a custom in-app support solution from scratch. But it represents a more traditional, labor-intensive way of solving the problem, one that often ends with a support experience that isn't very smart and costs a lot to maintain.

Modern AI platforms like eesel AI offer a much better path forward. By giving you a no-code, intelligent, and fully integrated solution, eesel AI lets you launch a smarter, more efficient, and more affordable support experience in Freshdesk, without bogging down your developers.

Ready to see for yourself? Connect your Freshdesk account to eesel AI and see what a truly intelligent support platform can do for you.