BookStack vs. Freshdesk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BookStack
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Freshdesk
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software that helps businesses of all sizes to deliver customer support. Freshdesk converts requests coming in via email, web, phone, chat, and social into tickets, and unifies ticket resolution across channels. Additionally, Freshdesk lets the user automate workflows, provide self-service, manage SLAs, and measure metrics, to stay on top of customer support. Freshdesk also offers out-of-the-box features like an AI-powered support chatbot,…
$0
Up to 2 agents
Pricing
BookStackFreshdesk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free
$0
Up to 2 agents
Growth
$15
per month (billed annually) per agent
Pro
$49
per month (billed annually) per agent
Enterprise
$79
per month (billed annually) per agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BookStackFreshdesk
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BookStackFreshdesk
Features
BookStackFreshdesk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
BookStack
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.6
Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
BookStack
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
BookStack
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.3
Ratings
6% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BookStackFreshdesk
Small Businesses
Front
Front
Score 7.2 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Guru
Guru
Score 9.5 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Guru
Guru
Score 9.5 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BookStackFreshdesk
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
4.6
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
5.4
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
6.9
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BookStackFreshdesk
Likelihood to Recommend
BookStack is fantastic for having business users and not-so-technically-savvy IT users. It enables them to create a documentation they like in a visual way while still forcing them to adhere to logical structure of a document. It works fine even for more technical matters such as integration guidelines, especially when these concern some of the more obscure technologies. The exported docs are presentable but lack any interactivity. Where it lacks is generating heavily technical documentations. Heavier REST or GraphQL integrations should for example be documented through other means. As for developer documentations, there are definitely more suitable alternatives, also.
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Freshdesk is really good for start-up companies that want to update their current system or buy a new one. It is the best option possible when it comes to having a structure, following up, and making a better strategy because you can always see what your team is doing, and you have some great reports to help you.
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Pros
  • Documentation
  • Guides
  • Knowledge-base
  • Version control
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  • Follow up on all conversations that enter and are easy to use by the employee and save responses ready for use.
  • Find out the average rate of the number of conversations that occur in the company and conduct the analysis.
  • There is a feature it allows one to take a permit in the name of the employee who responds to the conversation and to know the problem faced by the customer and the solution.
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Cons
  • Continuity in backward compatibility
  • Dark mode
  • Absent tree view
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  • Data Security.
  • SLA Policies where it is not customer / contract driven but agents / groups driven.
  • Audit Trail is not available in Pro version makes the tool adoption difficult from compliance perspective.
  • Chat Bot and Fresh Chat Services has greater potential to explode, but the pricing model tagged to chat bot sessions .are illogical as it limits the ability to use the fresh chat feature
  • Agent Logon Screen use earlier version of Captcha as it is annoying for the agents to login. Very frustrating experience.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
My company that used Freshdesk was acquired by another company that uses Salesforce, so our only reason to keep Freshdesk would be records, but migrating the tickets, notes, and company details from Freshdesk to Salesforce was straightforward enough. Had the acquisition not occurred, we would have renewed Freshdesk because the cost of switching would've been too great in terms of price, time, and sunk cost (our Freshdesk customizations would not port over well).
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Usability
No answers on this topic
I gave it a rating of 9 out of 10 because they delivered on everything we asked them to do. Easy to setup, easy to deploy to end users, easy to customize, easy to enter tickets and so much more. Our experience with their support is top notch! After opening a ticket for support they call use back within 10 minutes every time!
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
I have encountered a lot of errors in the Freshdesk, however, they tend to resolve it on priority or at least they will share the timeline by when this can be resolved. Most of the time the issue has been from the other partner's end. They take time to resolve their vendor issues and they don't have any timelines in case of developed app errors.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
The reports take a lot of time to download if the time period is large. Also, the tickets take their sweet time to open and load. It is not fast as Zendesk. Only 30 tickets are visible in a single go and there isn't any option to select all. If we need to change the pages and dashboards it takes a lot of time to open.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
The main thing about Freshdesk user service is that once a request has been made for information about a feature of the platform, the support team responds to tickets quickly, within a day of writing and submitting them, with information that is concise enough so that there is no need to ask for help on the same topic again.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Support Team's knowledge and understood the company's requirement, and always shared the insight of the usage of the tool to it s full potential, moreover the team checks periodically to check if we using the tool right and if we are facing any kind of challenges. Also they would update us on new features that can make the work easy.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Video tutorials, questions answers round before and after testing and Fresh desk team would always share best practices on the needs. Furthermore would periodically check if we are able to work smoothly. Would send alerts to known any issues, send recommendation on new features. Freshdesk team always available when we need certain advise.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Most important, Freshdesk is a user- friendly platform which directly supports interfaces and navigates user to start. Helps to provide multiple and complex documentation and troubleshooting. It provides build templates for different workflows and processes also refuces effort and time to implement and perform corporate tasks and complete the execution.
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Alternatives Considered
Confluence, having only a slight advantage in terms of features compared to BookStack, really only makes sense to procure as a part of the Jira bundle. It requires much more maintenance from my experience and does not really deliver any extra value aside from the very strict certifications like HIPAA. DokuWiki and MediaWiki both provided way too much in terms of customizability, not really focusing on the business need. Of course, MediaWiki was conceived for a whole different purpose but is very often seen being used for both internal and public documentation delivery. DokuWiki did not provide the authors with the user-friendly environment that BookStack has and integrated most poorly with LDAP. As for OneNote, which was used for support docs prior to BookStack, it provided the authors with too much of a user-friendly environment, rendering the product of their work very inconsistent. Also, the sharing model was either peer-to-peer or within Teams, neither of which made it easy to audit and supervise.
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I use Freshdesk over other similar products I've tested because the price difference and ease of use for the end user seem to me to be the most suitable for achieving a better return on investment within my company. I also found the various AI-powered automation tools to be more optimal and automated, without having to go through long learning curves.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
My company had Freshdesk agents from support and success. It's generally difficult to customize permissions for different agent "roles." We were a fully distributed company, so "multiple sites" doesn't apply to us. We found Freshdesk features lacking as we grew our customer base, and adding agents wasn't easy because price steeply increases with number of agents.
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Return on Investment
  • Spillover within Business IT staff up, nearly double substitutability. This is through the ability of a support technician servicing a different product to find a guide describing how to solve the more frequent issues the way a product lead would do it.
  • Time to draft and publish a documentation down some 20% compared to previous solution.
  • OpenSource that integrates fine with enterprise-grade software and somehow even passes security audit. 20 times cheaper to implement compared to Confluence, almost free to maintain.
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  • Increased response times - Client Success maintains at 98% SLA for resolution
  • Categorization of feedback and issues - custom ticket fields make it easier for us to review why clients contact us on a high level
  • Standardization of internal procedures via templates, canned responses and automations
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ScreenShots