Four support platforms held against the same six-category rubric. Real prices on the per-agent meter, the time it takes to onboard a small team, and an honest opinion on what each is actually built to do.
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The reference platform at the larger end of the support market. Email, chat, voice, social and a deep SLA engine in one place. Pricing climbs steeply at the higher tiers and the per-agent model adds up fast, but if you have an SLA-driven support team, Zendesk is the one to beat.
The class leader for live chat and proactive in-app messaging. Fin, the AI agent, is one of the few in this category that genuinely deflects tickets without making customers feel ignored. Pricing is fiddly and seat-based, plan it carefully before you commit.
Zendesk-shaped feature set at roughly half the price. The free plan covers the basics for very small teams, the paid plans give you automation and SLAs, and the upgrade path is clean if you outgrow it later. The right answer for a lot of growing support teams.
A shared inbox built for small teams that want their support to feel like email, not like a ticket. No ticket numbers shown to customers. The feature set is intentionally narrow, which is exactly why people love it.