Our Freshdesk review for 2025: is it the right help desk for your team?

Freshdesk is one of the biggest names in the customer support world, used by companies of all sizes to keep their customer service in check. It promises an all-in-one spot for managing tickets, chatting with customers, and keeping your team on the same page. But with new AI tools popping up constantly, you have to wonder: is Freshdesk still the best option in 2025?

To get the real story, we went through hundreds of user reviews from sites like G2, Capterra, and PCMag. This review breaks down Freshdesk’s main features, its pricing, and what people who use it every day really think. We’ll also show you how to boost its power with modern AI to get around its most common headaches, all without needing to switch to a whole new platform.

What exactly is Freshdesk? An overview for this Freshdesk review

So, what’s the deal with Freshdesk? At its heart, it’s a cloud-based customer service tool from Freshworks. It’s built to grab all your customer conversations, whether they come from email, phone, chat, or social media, and pull them into one tidy dashboard. Every time a customer gets in touch, Freshdesk creates a ticket. Your team can then see, manage, and solve these tickets from a single screen.

While bigger companies can use it, Freshdesk really seems to have small to medium-sized businesses in mind. It’s part of the wider Freshworks ecosystem, so it plays nicely with other tools and has a marketplace for third-party apps. The goal is to be the command center for every customer interaction, so nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

A deep dive into Freshdesk’s features for our Freshdesk review

To give you a proper feel for what it’s like to use Freshdesk day-to-day, we’re breaking down its key features based on what we heard from actual users. Here’s a look at what works well, what doesn’t, and where it tends to fall a bit short.

A Freshdesk review of the ticketing system and workflow management

Let’s start with the heart of Freshdesk: its ticketing system. It’s where all your support requests live, and it has some genuinely helpful features, like collision detection, which stops two agents from replying to the same customer at once (we’ve all been there).

Most users agree that the interface is clean and easy to use for everyday ticket handling. Creating, assigning, and keeping track of tickets is pretty simple, which helps teams stay organized. But when you try to get a bit fancier with automation, things can get messy. Based on user reviews on G2 and Capterra, setting up complex workflows isn’t as intuitive as you’d hope. Simple, repetitive tasks, like merging two tickets from the same person about the same issue, often have to be done by hand. That manual work adds up and eats into time that could be spent on tougher problems. On top of that, some users say the mobile app is clunky and missing key features from the desktop version, which is a pain for agents trying to work on the move.

This is a perfect example of where a modern AI tool can step in and make a big impact without you having to change help desks. For instance, an AI-powered triage tool like eesel AI can automatically merge those duplicate tickets, slap on the right tags, and send conversations to the right person or department, taking care of the manual busywork that Freshdesk’s built-in rules can’t handle.

A Freshdesk review of automation and AI (Freddy AI)

Freshdesk has its own AI, named Freddy AI. It’s supposed to handle chatbots, suggest canned responses for agents, and help you build out a self-service knowledge base. For teams who are just starting out, users on G2 say its basic automation for assigning tickets and using simple reply templates is a decent starting point.

But that’s usually where the compliments end. A recurring theme in reviews on Trustpilot and G2 is that Freddy AI’s skills feel pretty basic for what it costs. Users have called the AI-powered suggestions "underwhelming," and many find the setup for more advanced automation confusing. Some even mentioned that the AI features can be buggy or just aren’t as helpful as they expected.

This stands in stark contrast to a specialized AI tool like eesel AI, which plugs right into your Freshdesk account and learns from your team’s actual knowledge. It doesn’t just follow a set of pre-written rules; it trains on your past tickets, help articles, and even internal guides you have stored in Confluence or Google Docs. This lets its AI Agent give much more accurate, context-aware answers that can actually solve customer problems instead of just deflecting them. It can automate resolutions and escalate tickets when it’s truly stuck, which is miles ahead of what Freddy AI can do.

A Freshdesk review of reporting and analytics

Okay, let’s talk numbers. Freshdesk has reporting tools to help you keep an eye on things like ticket volume, first response time, and agent performance. The dashboards give you a nice visual snapshot of your support activity, which is good for a quick health check.

However, feedback from users on both G2 and PCMag points to some real frustration here. Some find the newer analytics module confusing, and creating the specific custom reports you actually need often means you either have to be a data wizard or upgrade to a pricier plan. Getting your raw data out to analyze in another tool can also be a headache. It’s hard to get the kind of clear insights that help you make your support better.

A big part of modern AI isn’t just showing you what you already know, but telling you what you don’t. An advanced tool like eesel AI can give you gap analysis reports that pinpoint the questions customers are asking that your help articles don’t answer. This gives you a clear to-do list for creating new content, helping you cut down on future tickets before they even happen, a level of insight that standard reporting tools just can’t offer.

A Freshdesk review of customization and integrations

One of Freshdesk’s biggest selling points is its huge marketplace, with over 300 app integrations. You can connect it to tools your team probably already uses, like Slack, Shopify, and Jira. It also lets you add some of your own branding to your support portal.

While having a ton of integrations is great, reviews on Capterra and TrustRadius point out that the platform’s customization options are surprisingly limited, especially if you’re not on a top-tier plan. Building custom workflows or reports can be tough without shelling out for an expensive upgrade. More importantly, while Freshdesk can connect to other tools, it can’t natively learn from the knowledge sitting inside them, like a long Google Doc or a detailed Confluence page.

This is where a tool like eesel AI really makes a difference. It doesn’t just connect to your other apps; it treats them like a library. With a few clicks, you can link your Freshdesk instance to Confluence, Notion, Google Docs, and more, creating a single, smart brain for your AI. This opens up a world of custom automation that just isn’t possible with Freshdesk’s out-of-the-box integrations.

An honest look at Freshdesk’s pricing for this Freshdesk review

Pricing is one of the most common complaints you’ll see in Freshdesk reviews. It does offer a free plan and several paid tiers, but many users feel like they aren’t getting enough bang for their buck. Here’s a quick rundown of the plans.

Plan Tier	Price (Billed Annually)	Key Features	Best For
Free	$0 / up to 10 agents	Email & social ticketing, knowledge base, ticket routing.	Startups and tiny teams just getting their feet wet.
Growth	$15 / agent / month	Automation, marketplace apps, SLA management, collision detection.	Growing teams that need some basic automation.
Pro	$49 / agent / month	Custom roles, multiple products, advanced analytics, customer segmentation.	Mid-sized businesses that support a few different products.
Enterprise	$79 / agent / month	Skill-based routing, sandbox environment, IP whitelisting, HIPAA compliance.	Large companies with complex security or workflow needs.

Digging through reviews on Trustpilot and G2, a few pricing-related headaches kept popping up:

• Paywalled Features: Users mentioned that basic features, like exporting a CSV file, have been moved to more expensive plans over the years, forcing them to upgrade for things they used to have.

• Hidden Costs: Some people felt they were hit with add-on fees and other costs that weren’t obvious from the start.

• Tough to Cancel: A surprising number of reviews mention a difficult cancellation process, with a strict 60-day notice period that feels designed to lock you into paying for a couple of extra months.

• Not Enough AI Value: The cost for plans that include Freddy AI often feels too steep for what the AI can actually do.

For comparison, eesel AI’s pricing is designed to be straightforward. It’s based on how much you use the AI, so you only pay for the value you get. This lets you add powerful AI to your existing tools without being pushed into an expensive, all-or-nothing platform upgrade just to unlock a few features.

The verdict: our final Freshdesk review

So, what’s our final take? Freshdesk is a solid, user-friendly help desk, and for many small to mid-sized businesses, it’s a great starting point. It does a fantastic job of giving you a reliable, all-in-one system to keep your support tickets from spiraling into chaos.

Pros:

• Easy for new agents to pick up for basic ticketing.

• Brings email, social media, and chat into one unified inbox.

• A huge marketplace of third-party apps to connect with.

Cons:

• The built-in AI and automation feel basic and can be tricky to set up for anything complex.

• Reporting and customization are pretty limited unless you pay for the expensive plans.

• The pricing can be confusing, and some users feel stuck with pricey upgrades and strict cancellation terms.

It’s probably the best fit for teams who just need a central ticketing system and don’t require super-advanced or flexible AI. But if you want to use all your company’s knowledge, from internal docs to past tickets, to power really smart automation, you’ll likely hit a ceiling.

A Freshdesk review on how to supercharge your account with smarter AI

Let’s say you’re already using Freshdesk. You like the core platform, but you’re feeling the limitations of its built-in automation and AI. You want more power, but the thought of moving your entire support operation to a new system is a total nightmare.

This is the exact problem eesel AI was designed to solve. Think of it as an intelligent layer that sits right on top of Freshdesk to make it better.

Here’s how it works:

• It connects in a single click: eesel AI integrates directly with your Freshdesk account, but it also hooks into all your other knowledge sources, like Confluence, Google Docs, and Slack.

• It automates with real intelligence: The AI Agent uses this deep, unified knowledge base to resolve customer tickets on its own. For your human team, the AI Copilot drafts on-brand replies in seconds, and the AI Triage tool automatically organizes your support queue.

• You can test it before you go live: You can run the AI on your past tickets to see exactly how it would have performed on resolution rates and costs before you ever turn it on for your live customers.

The benefit is pretty clear: you get powerful, enterprise-level AI without the headache of ripping out and replacing the tools your team already uses every day.

Freshdesk review conclusion: get more from the help desk you already have

Look, Freshdesk is popular for a reason. It’s a capable help desk that gets the job done for many teams. But in 2025, its built-in features, especially around AI and automation, might not be enough to keep up with what modern customer support demands.

Instead of settling for those limitations or paying for expensive upgrades that don’t fix the real issue, you can make the tools you already have much more powerful. By adding an intelligent AI layer, you can turn your Freshdesk account from a simple ticketing system into a true automation powerhouse.

See how eesel AI can transform your Freshdesk experience. Start a free trial or book a demo to see it for yourself.