HubSpot vs Freshdesk: A detailed comparison for 2025

Picking a new help desk feels like a massive commitment, doesn't it? You’re not just buying software. You’re setting up the entire foundation for how your team talks to customers. And when you start looking, HubSpot Service Hub and Freshdesk are two names that pop up constantly. They’re both heavyweights, but they’re built on two totally different philosophies about how your company's tools should work together.

This post is a straightforward, no-fluff comparison to help you sort out which one is the right call for your team. We’re going to look at their core features, dig into what their AI can (and can't) do, and untangle their pretty confusing pricing. The old debate of an "all-in-one suite" versus a "specialized tool" is a big part of the story here, but as you'll see, it's not the only way to think about it anymore.

What is HubSpot Service Hub?

HubSpot Service Hub isn't a standalone help desk. It's the customer service module of the giant HubSpot ecosystem. If your company is already using HubSpot for marketing, sales, or anything else, Service Hub is designed to click right into place.

The big draw is its deep connection to the HubSpot CRM. This gives your support agents a full 360-degree view of every single touchpoint a customer has had with your business, from their first marketing email to their latest purchase. For companies already living in the HubSpot world, this is a huge plus. The goal is to create one single place where all customer information lives.

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk, on the other hand, is a pure, dedicated help desk from the folks at Freshworks. It was built from the ground up with one goal in mind: managing customer support really, really well.

It’s packed with a ton of features made specifically for service teams, covering everything from smart ticket routing to managing conversations across channels like email, chat, and social media. Freshdesk believes in the "best-of-breed" idea, meaning it aims to be the best tool for one specific job and play nicely with other top-tier tools, like your Salesforce CRM. It gives you a powerful support platform without locking you into a single company's entire suite of products.

Comparing core components: Ticketing and automation

When it comes down to it, a help desk is about handling customer questions as smoothly as possible. Here’s a look at how HubSpot and Freshdesk manage the basics.

How tickets are handled

In HubSpot, support requests are called "tickets" and they live in customizable "pipelines" that connect straight to your CRM records. This is fantastic for context. An agent can see a customer's entire history without having to switch tabs, which can make for a much more personal conversation. Automation is handled by HubSpot's platform-wide workflow engine. It's seriously powerful, but because it's designed to automate everything (marketing, sales, etc.), setting up a simple support rule can sometimes feel like you’re using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Freshdesk gives you more specialized, support-focused features from the get-go. Think things like automatically distributing tickets evenly so no single agent gets overloaded, or linking related tickets together to solve complex problems. Its automation rules are built for support teams, so they often feel more intuitive when you’re trying to create a specific support workflow.

The limitations of automation engines

Here's the catch with both platforms: their automation is based on rigid, rule-based logic. You have to sit down and manually map out every single "if this happens, then do that" scenario. This is fine for basic tasks, but it doesn't take long for it to become a tangled web of rules that's a nightmare to manage as your company grows. Need to trigger an action in one of your internal tools? You’re probably going to need an expensive enterprise plan or a developer's help.

This is where you start hitting the limits of rule-based systems, and where a different kind of AI can step in. Instead of following a strict script, it can figure out what a customer actually means and then take the right action. For instance, eesel AI connects to your help desk and gives you a workflow engine you can fully customize. You can teach the AI to do specific things, like look up order details in Shopify or send a tricky billing question to the right person, giving you real control without the complex setup.

Feature	HubSpot Service Hub	Freshdesk
Ticket Pipelines	Highly customizable, integrated with CRM	Standard and custom ticket views
Automation Rules	Powerful, platform-wide workflow engine	Support-specific automation scenarios
Agent Collision	Yes	Yes
Load Balancing	No (manual assignment)	Yes (available on higher plans)
External Actions	Limited without custom code	Limited without marketplace apps

A deep dive into knowledge and AI capabilities

You can't really scale a support team these days without good self-service and some smart AI. Let's see how these two stack up.

Self-service and knowledge bases

HubSpot's knowledge base is a solid product. It’s tied in neatly with the CRM and has some great SEO tools built in, which helps customers find their own answers through a simple Google search.

Freshdesk also has a strong knowledge base with useful features like multi-language support, article version history, and even community forums where customers can help each other.

The problem? With both platforms, the burden is 100% on your team. You have to write every article, keep everything updated, and basically guess what information your customers are looking for.

Chatbots and built-in AI

HubSpot's chatbots are pretty good at what they were built for: generating leads for the sales team, asking qualifying questions, and booking meetings. They feel less like a true support tool and more like an "extension" of the marketing and sales parts of the platform.

Freshdesk’s "Freddy AI" is a bit more focused on support. It can help agents by suggesting replies and can power the bots that talk to customers. The catch is that it's almost always a paid add-on, and its intelligence is completely limited to the knowledge base articles you’ve manually written for it.

Where traditional AI falls short

This is the biggest weakness for both HubSpot and Freshdesk. Their AI is only as smart as the help center you have the time and resources to build. They can't learn from the single most valuable source of knowledge your company has: the thousands of real customer conversations your team has already handled.

This is what makes a tool like eesel AI completely different. It hooks into your help desk and starts learning from your team's past tickets from day one. It figures out your brand voice, understands common issues, and sees what a good solution looks like. But it doesn't stop there. eesel AI also connects to the places where your company knowledge lives outside the help desk, like your Google Docs, Confluence, and Notion. This creates one, truly smart brain for your company, not just a bot that spits out help articles.

Even better, eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode. You can test-drive the AI on thousands of your past tickets in a safe environment to see exactly how it would have responded and what your resolution rate would be, before you ever show it to a customer. It's a level of confidence you just don't get with older platforms.

Test eesel AI on your past tickets to see your future resolution rate before going live.

Understanding the platform and ecosystem approach

Your choice here really comes down to how you want to build your company's collection of software.

The pros and cons of HubSpot's unified platform

• Pros: All your customer data from marketing, sales, and service just works together automatically. You have one vendor, one bill, and one place to go for support.

• Cons: You can get locked into their world. If you only need the service tools, you might be overpaying for parts of the platform you don't use, and you're stuck doing things the "HubSpot way."

The pros and cons of Freshdesk's standalone model

• Pros: You have the freedom to pick the absolute best tool for every job (like keeping your favorite CRM). It has a ton of features purely focused on making your support team's life easier.

• Cons: Getting different tools to talk to each other can be a real pain. Your data can end up in different silos, leaving your support team without the full customer story.

But this all-in-one vs. best-of-breed debate feels a little dated. What if you could get that unified knowledge without getting locked into one platform? eesel AI was built to solve this exact problem. It plugs into the help desk you already have, whether that’s Freshdesk, Zendesk, or Intercom, in a few minutes. You get a powerful AI layer on top of the tools your team already knows, without the headache of a massive migration project.

A full pricing breakdown

Okay, let's talk about money. The pricing for both of these platforms can get complicated, and there are hidden costs that are easy to miss.

HubSpot Service Hub pricing

HubSpot has Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans. The monthly prices look straightforward, but watch out for the big "gotchas."

• Free: Very basic ticketing and live chat.

• Starter: Starts at $15 per seat, per month. Adds a bit more automation and reporting.

• Professional: Starts at $90 per seat, per month. This is where most of the good stuff is. But this plan also requires a mandatory, one-time onboarding fee of $1,500.

• Enterprise: Starts at $130 per seat, per month. This plan requires a one-time onboarding fee of $3,500.

Those onboarding fees are a serious extra cost, so make sure you factor them into your budget.

Freshdesk pricing

Freshdesk also offers Free, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise tiers. On the surface, their prices look more affordable, but the AI features you'll probably want will cost you extra.

• Free: For up to 10 agents, includes basic ticketing and a knowledge base.

• Growth: $15 per agent, per month (paid annually). Adds automation and collision detection.

• Pro: $49 per agent, per month (paid annually). Unlocks better reporting and customization.

• Enterprise: $79 per agent, per month (paid annually). Adds skill-based routing and other advanced features.

The main thing to watch here is that Freddy AI, their AI assistant, is a paid add-on. For example, Freddy Copilot costs an extra $29 per agent, per month, which can almost double the cost of your Pro plan seats.

A simpler, more transparent alternative

The complexity of these pricing models is why eesel AI's pricing is so refreshing. It’s simple and predictable. All the core products (AI Agent, Copilot, Triage) are included in one plan. The tiers are based on how much you use it, the number of AI interactions per month, not on which features you're allowed to access. Most importantly, there are no per-resolution fees, so you’re never penalized for successfully helping more customers. You get predictable costs and can even start on a flexible monthly plan you can cancel anytime.

This video provides a direct comparison of HubSpot and Freshdesk to help you decide which tool might be the best for your needs.

HubSpot vs Freshdesk: Which platform is right for you?

So, after all that, who wins the HubSpot vs Freshdesk matchup? Honestly, it depends on what your company values most.

Choose HubSpot Service Hub if: You're already deep into the HubSpot ecosystem. If your main goal is to have a single platform for marketing, sales, and service, and you're cool with their way of doing things, it’s a solid choice.

Choose Freshdesk if: You want a powerful, specialized help desk and you prefer to build your tech stack with the best tool for each specific job. Just be prepared for the total cost to creep up once you add the AI features your team needs.

Consider a new approach if: You want to make the help desk you already have way smarter. If you're looking for AI that's powerful, easy to set up, and actually unifies all your scattered company knowledge, eesel AI is the modern choice. It’s for teams that want next-level automation without the pain and cost of switching tools.

Ready to see what a truly unified AI support agent can do for your team?

Go live with eesel AI in minutes, not months. Start your free trial today.