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Small business owners and their teams often juggle multiple responsibilities, which can make it challenging for them to provide top-notch service and support to their employees and customers. As small businesses scale, the volume of internal employee support requests or customer inquiries can become overwhelming, leading to reduced productivity or dissatisfied customers.
The right help desk software tool provides a centralized and automated system to organize, prioritize, and resolve help desk tickets promptly and enhance employee or customer experience. You don’t have to worry about exploring a pool of tools to find the right match for your small business—this article lists six top-rated affordable help desk software solutions based on verified user reviews and pricing found on vendor websites.
Per our research, we’ve considered products with base plans priced less than $51 per month as affordable software and arranged them in ascending order of their prices. (Read how we shortlisted these products at the end of this article.)
All products listed in the article are dedicated help desk tools, offering knowledge base management and ticket management for customer support and internal team issues.
A base plan is the most affordable pricing tier offered by a software provider. In addition to having the lowest price, base plans provide access to all core software features. However, they may have limitations compared to higher-tier plans in terms of available functionality, storage capacity, number of user seats, support options, etc.
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between August 2022 - August 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
As a multilingual help desk solution, LiveAgent lets you choose from 43 available language options. It standardizes and automates customer requests and interactions across various channels, centralizing all conversations into a single, universal inbox platform. The tool’s WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor allows you to format ticket responses via emails, form templates, and knowledge base articles. Formatting options include bold and italic text, numbered lists, images, tables, and links. You can also leverage pre-written messages based on the type or response, activity performed, and target audience with a single command or click. Responses can include answering frequently asked questions or directing customers to a knowledge base article.
The base plan offers up to three email accounts, two live chat buttons, 50 email rules, and 20 predefined answers. Upgrading to a higher-price plan gets you 150 email accounts, 50 live chat buttons, 500 event rules, 100 time rules, and 500 predefined answers. These plans also offer an AI answer assistant that uses ChatGPT to generate polished ticket responses.
Base plan features:*
Multiple ticket tabs: Create multiple ticket tabs and switch between simultaneous conversations to more efficiently resolve them.
Real-time dashboard: Access real-time insights into the number of ongoing tickets, resolved queries, and agent bandwidth.
Ticket mass actions: Select multiple tickets and run mass actions at once. The feature enables resolving, transferring, or deleting multiple tickets.
Starting price: $9 per agent per month
Cost to upgrade: $29 per agent per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Call, email, live chat, and knowledge base
Customer service and support agents handling high volumes of customer interactions and queries across multiple channels can benefit from LiveAgent. The tool helps serve customers who speak different languages, which is beneficial when addressing queries from a global customer base. The tool’s WYSIWYG editor helps maintain a unified brand voice across all interactions with the same formatting as the brand voice. All these features help standardize conversations to enhance productivity and speed up query resolutions.
EngageBay CRM is a customer relationship management system that includes a help desk module to streamline customer support operations, enhancing both marketing and sales efforts. You can set workflow automation rules to assign new tickets to specific agents or groups, close tickets based on status updates, and send notifications to agents for manual responses. You can easily track the latest and most urgent tickets, as well as view pending, unassigned, and unsolved tickets. The tool offers predefined views that you can customize or expand by adding new ones to meet specific customer support requirements.
The free plan gives access to all the help desk features. Upgrading to a paid plan provides access to integrated marketing, sales, and CRM solutions.
Base plan features:*
Contact management: Create and store all contact information in a centralized location, including names, phone numbers, communication history, purchase history, and support interactions. Categorize contacts based on location, industry, customer tier, or support issue.
Lead management: Convert tickets into potential leads and track their online activity, such as websites visited or past purchases, to gain insights into their interests and needs.
Email broadcast: Define a target audience, such as customers facing a specific issue or interested in a particular product or service. Craft an email message addressing the concerns or interests and send it to the entire list at once.
Starting price: Free plan for help desk
Cost to upgrade: $11.04 per agent per month (With integrated marketing capabilities)
Billing cycle: Biennial
Customer support options: Knowledge base, email, call, and chat
The tool is ideal for help desk teams that aim to enhance sales and marketing efforts with efficient contact management and lead generation. It allows you to seamlessly capture customer information via support tickets and convert them into leads based on their online behavior. This saves time and ensures and prevents missing out on potential leads due to an overwhelming number of customer tickets.
Opt for a tool with automated capabilities to track and assign new tickers or re-route pending and escalated tickets. Automation is mainly powered by artificial intelligence, which continuously learns from the user behavior and past activities to perform tasks accurately with minimal human intervention.
InvGate is an information technology service management (ITSM) and information technology asset management (ITAM) solution. It allows you to create, assign, optimize, and track support tickets from business users (i.e., internal employees). It also offers a centralized knowledge base and a repository frequently asked questions (FAQs) to facilitate self-service for customers or share products/service knowledge. The tool also enables remote control and management of IT assets, whether for updating IT services and infrastructure or responding to security breaches and cyber threats.
The base plan supports up to five users, granting access to all ITSM and ITAM capabilities, integration, and cloud storage. Upgrading to a higher-price plan provides unlimited user access, integration, and cloud or on-premise storage.
Base plan features:*
Self-service portal: Allow users to submit and track incident tickets, providing updates and status information. The feature enables users to submit requests for hardware, software, and other IT resources.
Inventory management: Discover, track, and manage an inventory of hardware, software, and fixed assets with details that include hardware data, location, software installed, updates performed, linked devices, and contracts.
Reporting and analytics: Track all the KPIs of help desk operations, such as ongoing, pending, and resolved tickets. Identify trends and patterns in the reason for new or pending queries to optimize operations and reduce the ticket count.
Starting price: $17 per agent per month
Cost to upgrade: $40 per agent per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Help center, FAQs, knowledge base, chat, call, and email
IT help desk and asset managers can benefit from using InvGate service desk software. The tool handles all your inventory assets and tracks their location, performance, and updates. You can remotely control and manage all the registered assets from your administrator dashboard. This saves the time and effort of addressing queries from remote teams. Additionally, the self-service dashboard is handy for remote employees to resolve minor IT issues via knowledge base and FAQs.
Desku allows you to customize a customer support chatbot using a visual, drag-and-drop interface. You can build the chatbot using available pre-designed blueprints without any coding. A chatbot recipe consists of several key components:
Intent: The customer’s potential requests or questions.
Entities: Specific details within an intent, such as an order number, product name, or email address.
Utterances: The different ways a customer might phrase a particular intent.
Responses: Pre-defined answers or actions that the chatbot provides based on the customer’s intent.
Actions: Tasks the chatbot can perform, like creating a ticket, sending an email, or retrieving information from a knowledge base.
Its base plan allows creating unlimited tickets and a single chatbot recipe. Upgrading to a higher-price plan gets you application integration and up to 10 chatbot recipes.
Base plan features:*
AI chatbot: Use AI to set up automated chatbot responses. The bot will automatically pull data from the available resources (such as your knowledge base or FAQs) and provide the right information to the customers.
Writing assistant: Use the AI assistant to generate automated customer responses. The feature uses text-based prompts with a question or keyword to generate an adequate answer, which can be used in chat or email when replying to customers.
Automated summaries: Summarize lengthy explanations or queries from customers via chat to understand the correct meaning in simple and fewer words.
Starting price: $19 per agent per month
Cost to upgrade: $39 per agent per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Call, chat, FAQs, email, and knowledge base
Customer service and support teams looking for an automated solution to queries with personalized messages can benefit from Desku. You can customize your chatbot to respond to customer queries and set relevant rules (tasks) to perform based on the query text or actions taken by the customer. The bot provides customers a link to access the knowledge base articles and resolve minor queries. This way, you can save time by attending to the customers on minor queries and focusing on critical resolutions. Additionally, the chatbot is available for customers even during non-working days or hours to maintain continuous service.
Read reviews and compare features to get valuable insights into the tool's ease of use, integration, and any hidden costs. Additionally, you can use comparison charts or software review websites to compare features and pricing across different vendors.
As an issue-tracking solution, Issuetrak offers features for managing help desk operations. You can centralize ticket management, standardize workflows, and access valuable insights into the operational activities to improve overall support services. The tool enables the creation of tickets for email, web forms, and mobile applications. You can gather specific ticket information—including user name, certain concerns, and more—from multiple platforms into a centralized dashboard for instant access, management, and updates. Issuetrak’s workflow management and collaboration tools help break complex issues into manageable tasks. You can assign tasks, add comments, and share updates with team members via built-in chat and shareable workflows.
Its base plan offers access to up to 10 agents for all help desk and issue management features. With the higher-price plan, you can add unlimited users to view their ticket status.
Base plan features:*
Substatus rules: Define criteria that automatically updates an issue’s substatus (pending, complete, or on hold) or pauses the system clock until it is marked complete.
Issue cloning: Create a new issue by cloning an existing one with the details, including summary, description, issue type, priority, status, assigned to, custom fields, and any attached documents.
Bulk issue submission: Assign incoming issues automatically to members of a designated team in a rotating manner. When an agent is unavailable, the issue is assigned to the next available group members based on the alphabetical order of their user ID.
Starting price: $26 per agent per month
Cost to upgrade: $77 per agent per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Help center, FAQs, knowledge base, chat, call, and email
IT help desk teams can use Issuetrak to efficiently track, manage, and resolve employee concerns about issued or common assets (computers, printers, or mobile phones.). Employees can raise tickets from multiple sources based on their convenience and device availability, and the tickets are automatically directed to the available support agent. The agents can also leverage the workflow and task management feature to assign tasks, add feedback or additional information in comments, and discuss issue resolution via built-in chat. This allows for efficient collaboration, especially when dealing with complex issues.
Supportbench has integrated AI capabilities that processes customer interactions, including emails, chat transcriptions, and social media mentions, to extract textual data. It identifies the overall sentiment of the text (positive, negative, or neutral) and detects specific emotions such as anger, frustration, happiness, or satisfaction. The analysis considers the interaction context, including the topic, product involved, or previous interactions, to provide accurate insights. The tool analyzes in real time, enabling immediate responses and interventions.
Supportbench’s base plan covers up to 10 users to access all the tool capabilities. Upgrading to a higher-price plan gets you access to up to 50 users and priority support.
Base plan features:*
Escalation management: Allow agents to re-route raised issues to their superiors and categorize them by types for better understanding. The feature allows de-escalating cases back to the agents to execute the guided process.
Customer portal: Create multiple brand portals with articles and FAQs for customers to access and get answers to common questions and queries.
Survey: Craft surveys for varied cases, adding tailored questions as required for specific issues. The feature allows scheduling and deploying surveys to understand loyalty towards the business and the overall customer experience.
Starting price: $32 per agent per month
Cost to upgrade: $125 per agent per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: FAQs, chat, email, and knowledge base
Supportbench’s integrated AI is for help desk and customer support agents’ deadlines with many queries from multiple platforms. With this tool, agents can access all the conversation data in a single dashboard to shave off some time from switching between different platforms. You can also build custom surveys using the built-in survey builder and share them with your target customers to get insights into their needs or concerns related to the offered products and services.
Assess the base plan's reporting and analytics capabilities. Most help desk software base plans offer limited access to their reporting dashboard. This includes limiting the number of dashboards and reports, custom report generation, and metric filters.
All the products listed in this article include the features mentioned below. To identify these, we asked users to rate, on a scale of “low importance” to “critical,” how important different features are for help desk management software. The features showcased are those that the highest percentage of reviewers rated as “highly important” or “critical” over the past two years (as of August 12, 2024).
Feature name | Criticality rating (%) | Description |
---|---|---|
Ticket management | 91% | Track all incoming tickets and route them to the available agent for timely resolution. Create a repository of all incoming tickets from multiple platforms to refer to for similar queries in the future or access conversation history for a specific customer/business user. |
Real-time notifications | 83% | Send real-time email and web application alerts to the assigned stakeholders when a new ticket is received, a ticket is re-routed or escalated, or the latest sentiment report is generated. |
Knowledge base management | 83% | Build and manage a repository of informative articles, videos, and FAQs to guide customers or internal team members on business offerings or common issues. The public knowledge base can also be shared with customers in response to their tickets to facilitate self-service resolution. |
Access control/permissions | 74% | Control who can access the created dashboards and internal repositories using role-based access. These include read-only, edit, or comment. Also set two-factor authentication to ensure only authorized users can access the shared business resources. |
Alerts/escalations | 74% | Automate ticket escalations based on predefined criteria, such as priority age. The feature allows multiple ticket escalation levels to assign tickets to higher-level support teams or managers. Set service level agreements for different customers or ticket types and receive alerts when SLAs are at risk. |
Help desk solutions can cost as low as $9 or up to $125+ per agent per month, depending on various factors—features, number of users, infrastructure requirements, business size/type, training availability, deployment options, integrations, and storage. Most help desk solutions typically include the following pricing plans:
Free trials: These range from seven to 30 days and give users access to all or limited software features. These no-cost trial plans are ideal for businesses that wish to try out a tool before purchasing it.
Free versions Offer limited access to essential software features. These free plans are ideal for small businesses or individuals on a budget.
Entry-level plans: These start at $9 per agent per month and offer access to limited features. They are ideal for small businesses and include ticket management, task management, reporting/analytics, chatbot customization, and AI sentiment analysis.
Mid-tier plans: Range from $29 to $125 per agent per month and offer advanced features such as access controls/permissions and analytics. They are suitable for businesses that have outgrown basic help desk tools but don’t require the full range of functionality offered by enterprise-level systems.
High-end plans: These cost more than $125 per agent per month and offer a range of advanced capabilities, including unlimited features from entry-level to mid-tier plans, advanced security features, and dedicated customer support. They are suitable for large businesses with high-volume help desk and support needs.
Besides the software license, additional fees may include:
Usage-based charges: Certain tools charge based on usage metrics, such as the number of agents, emails, or chatbots created. If your usage surpasses predefined limits, you may incur additional charges.
Integration fees: Integrating help desk software with the existing tech stack, such as customer relationship management, email, or social media, may require additional charges. Additionally, specific integrations may require plugins or connectors, potentially leading to extra costs.
Training expenses: If the software is complex or requires particular expertise, you may need to invest in training programs or hire external consultants to utilize the tool’s capabilities fully.
Ask the software vendors the following questions to ensure you find the best help desk software platform.
Is there a limit on the number of tickets or chatbot interactions?
Help desk software base plans often have a reduced set of features compared to premium plans. This includes a limited number of team members who can access the software or restrictions on the number of chatbots created and the customers interacting with the bots. Understanding these limitations can help you assess whether the software can accommodate your current customer support needs and potential growth without unexpected costs or restrictions.
What security measures does the vendor adopt to protect customer data?
Check the help desk platform vendor’s security measures to protect your sensitive business data from unauthorized access, data breaches, or cyber-attacks. Inquire about encryption, access controls, user authentication, activity logs, and compliance with industry standards, such as the General Data Protection and Regulation (GDPR) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) Act.
Does the software integrate with other business tools?
Check if the selected help desk tool integrates with other business solutions for data import/export and collaboration. It should be able to smoothly connect to customer relationship management software, databases, project management tools, or cloud storage services. This integration enhances productivity by eliminating the need for manual data entry or switching between multiple platforms.
To be considered for this list, products had to:
Feature in GetApp’s 2024 Category Leaders report for help desk software.
Include a knowledge base and ticket management as core features.
Meet our market definition for help desk software: “Help desk software enables organizations to respond more efficiently to users, answering technical and functional questions by providing improved methodologies for ticket tracking, IT management, and customer service support. Integrating these elements improves the ability of customer service departments to provide fast and effective support to employees, end users, and customers. This facilitates the flow of new information from users, contributing to an organization's existing knowledge base.”
For all the 15 products included in the Category Leaders report, we assessed the monthly subscription price of the base plans and found the average price to be $51—we considered only products with publicly available pricing information. We then shortlisted products with a monthly base price lower than $51 for this article.
*Our research team identified these features from vendor websites (as of August 12, 2024) based on their analysis of what users find valuable in or expect from help desk software. This list is not exhaustive. For additional features, refer to the vendor’s website.
Editorial independence: We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.
Note: Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from GetApp’s help desk software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the GetApp directory that offer them. Only products with publicly available pricing information as of August 12, 2024, were considered for pricing calculation.
Saumya Srivastava