The Freshdesk alternative you can start for free.
Start free with email and live chat; every other channel comes with Premium, not an upsell tier. A branded help center and customer verification on first contact are on every plan. No credit card.
No credit card. Email, live chat, portal and knowledge base included.
Freshdesk facts checked 3 October 2026 from its public pages. Sources at the bottom.
A real helpdesk. Free.
Free plan, not a trial. Everything a small team needs to answer customers well.
Zono Free
- Email and live chat in one inbox
- A help portal or help center on your own domain, with automatic SSL
- A knowledge base
- One brand kit for your portal, chat widget and customer emails
- One extra language for your portal, widget and emails, with your own translations
- Sign customers in with your own app
- Customers verified on first contact: Envato, Shopify, WordPress, Gumroad, LemonSqueezy or your own license server
- Limited AI credits each month
- A small team with unlimited tickets
- No credit card
Freshdesk
Free for up to 2 agents for 6 months.
Zono and Freshdesk, line by line
Zono:Free plan, not a trial: a small team with unlimited tickets, email and live chat, a branded portal and knowledge base, customer verification and free AI credits every month. No credit card
Freshdesk:Free for up to 2 agents for 6 months
Zono:Email and live chat on Free; Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, LINE and TikTok on Premium. Replies go back where the customer wrote
Freshdesk:Email, chat, messaging and social tickets in one inbox
Zono:An AI agent on Premium, grounded in your knowledge base, saved replies and resolved tickets. Confidence threshold, escalation keywords, a live activity feed and a stop button; it acts on its own only once you switch it on. Cap it with a monthly budget or bring your own OpenAI or Anthropic key
Freshdesk:Freddy AI Agent with a block of sessions included, then billed per 100 sessions; Freddy AI Copilot is a per-agent add-on on Pro and Enterprise
Zono:Portal, chat widget and customer emails in your customers' language, with your own translations: one extra language on Free, no limit on Premium. Right-to-left languages supported
Freshdesk:Knowledge base on every plan; multilingual help desk from Pro
Zono:SLA policies, business hours and CSAT surveys on Premium
Freshdesk:Multiple SLA policies from Pro
Zono:Free: sign customers in with your own app, with one identity secret for chat and portal and portal single sign-on. Premium: "Continue with" Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Entra ID, Keycloak or any OpenID Connect provider
Freshdesk:Contact single sign-on with SAML, OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 or JWT
Zono:Premium: 14 tools for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or VS Code, with OAuth sign-in or API tokens
Freshdesk:MCP server on Growth, Pro and Enterprise, with API-key sign-in only
Zono:Envato, Shopify, WordPress, Gumroad, LemonSqueezy or your own license server, verified on first contact on every plan
Freshdesk:Not part of Freshdesk's published plans
Switching from Freshdesk
- Start on the free plan. No credit card needed.
- Run Zono alongside Freshdesk on email and live chat until you are sure.
- Import customers and knowledge base articles from CSV.
- There is no automatic ticket importer. If you want help moving over from Freshdesk, we help by hand.
- Upgrade to Premium when your team grows.
- Want a hand moving over? Email [email protected].
Zono or Freshdesk?
Sources
Freshdesk facts come from its public pages, checked 3 October 2026. Prices and plans change; if something here is out of date, tell us at [email protected] and we'll fix it.
Answer your next customer free.
Upgrade when you grow.
No credit card. Email, live chat, portal and knowledge base included.