Desk.com (discontinued) vs. Gist

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Desk.com (discontinued)
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Desk.com was a helpdesk, ticketing, and customer support product offered by Salesforce, and oriented towards the needs of small businesses. It is no longer sold and support has been discontinued. Salesforce recommends its modern Service Cloud as a replacement.N/A
Gist
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Gist is a unified marketing, sales, and support platform. It includes live chat, a help desk, knowledge base, email marketing, marketing automation, opt-in forms, and more.
$29
per month
Pricing
Desk.com (discontinued)Gist
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
$29.00
per month
Premium
$99.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Desk.com (discontinued)Gist
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Desk.com (discontinued)Gist
Features
Desk.com (discontinued)Gist
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Gist
8.9
Ratings
3% above category average
Chat history and transcripts00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Chat reporting00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Chat and web analytics00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Desk.com (discontinued)Gist
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Olark
Olark
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Desk.com (discontinued)Gist
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
Availability
1.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Desk.com (discontinued)Gist
Likelihood to Recommend
Desk.com and the Salesforce Service Cloud provide a sophisticated suite to easily create and track cases coming in, along with automatically routing and escalating issues as they arise. It allows me to configure my own workflows and customizes consoles with easy drag and drop functionality. It is the perfect help desk software, which integrates with the Salesforce Sales and Commerce clouds seamlessly. The in-app and mobile support is also very expedient and helpful.
Read full review
Gist is perfect for SaaS I'd say, and perfect for long sales cycles with lots of lead nurturing involved, and for scenarios where you re-market via FB ads, because there's FB custom audience integration built into the workflows. Perfect for customer service and support. Really outstanding there. It's a little less suited to ecom but they're hammering out the finishing touches to make ecom cart recovery easier.
Read full review
Pros
  • Help Center. Desk has worked endlessly with us to perfect our Help Center. They are dedicated and willing to work in order to make your product right.
  • Customization. Though we exceeded the rule limitation for Desk, they have still allowed us to take their product and make it our own. We have our own labeling, and priority system which help us hit important SLAs.
  • User education. Whenever there is a new feature released, I feel like I'm in the know about it which is extremely important when we've been requesting certain features for a long period of time. Their communication is on point.
Read full review
  • Gist provides endless ways of interacting with customers. I can chat and email with them, track their usage on my site, qualify them, add tags and other profile information, and so much more.
  • There is even an awesome live view that lets me spy on visitors to see how they're using the site.
  • The tools are powerful, easy to use, and constantly getting improvements. It seems like every week there is another update being rolled out that substantially extends the functionality or usability of the features in Gist.
Read full review
Cons
  • Internal knowledge tools are clunky and annoying to access, outside the regular workflow of everyday staff
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in business rules and custom fields
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in case handling - for example, if you begin a case as a phone call you CANNOT email the customer from the case. As though no one working at Desk has ever sent a follow-up email...?
  • Not very good for B2B, mid-to-large businesses. Difficult to set business rules based on company information (for example, service level/tier) and nearly impossible to track key stakeholders and get clear insight into the relationship at a high level
  • Reporting tools are clunky, slow, and just all-around pretty useless
Read full review
  • Free plan limits are too low.
  • Chatbots should work not only for Gist's native online chat, but also for the other chat-based channels such as Facebook. (instead of having to use another software for that purpose)
  • Pricing structure - Support bot should not be an add-on but a core feature.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
We will be very likely to renew our contract with Desk.com. It is easy to use, and provides us with everything we need to keep our customers and employees happy. They have also been very helpful in catering the application to our specific and unique needs, including working across brands and adding specific content for our products
Read full review
Gist is a quite reliable service with a lot of added values. We don't need to pay for different Saas for these important features. If I had an issue the team was super responsive and helpful, that is essential for every business. The email delivery is great, so virtually no email has landed into spam folder
Read full review
Usability
Once it is fully set up with all of the unique and necessary customizations for your organization, it becomes easier to use, but before that, it is not very user-friendly and there are not a lot of training resources available. You likely need a Salesforce admin for initial set-up who is experienced with customization.
Read full review
Gist does pretty much anything you want it to when it comes to managing your contacts. Sometimes I wish it updated faster, but wait a few beats and it gets there. I really love that I can show a colleague how to use the chat messenger and they understand it right away. Very user friendly!
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
We've never had a problem with Desk.com's availability.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Performance
Fast, responsive, gorgeous, and fun. It's always run like a thoroughbred for me.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
I always get the support and needed answers in a timely manner. Whether by email, ticket, or call. There's always a solution available or a potential one available. Everything is clear and straight to the point in customer support from Desk. I didn't face any difficulty so far with that.
Read full review
I have communicated with their team multiple times and every time they have been very responsive, knowledgeable, and polite. They work to make sure you are happy and informed of what is going on. Better their team keeps up to date with their app, giving you new features, and keeping you notified and educated about what they are and how to use them. A+
Read full review
Implementation Rating
As I stated earlier, implementation of Desk.com went more smoothly than most. The resources in the "Support Center" are fantastic, and I never ran into anything that left me stumped, angry, or disappointed.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Wix Answers was much better compared to Desk.com. It had more excellent and much better and more tools and was very customizable. Luckily it also had a search tool and also the sort and filter tools. The only thing better than Wix Answers on desk.com was that we could keep internal communication records by adding notes on tickets, and it saved a lot of time.
Read full review
They both seem to have parity with each other with each having their own small advantages. I went with Gist because it was more affordable. Infusionsoft customer for almost 5 years and it seemed I was always working more on getting it to work instead of getting work done. Gist is so intuitive I had it setting up and running the basics in a few hours.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • It has definitely had a positive impact by helping our team quickly address issues people are having with our product.
  • Desk.com has helped our team and company get better by addressing customer and tester issues faster, and tracking data so that our team can improve the quality and speed of all of our outgoing communications.
Read full review
  • Our ROI has increased significantly because of Gist's chat and app integration into our website. Contact forms are great but a real-time conversation means you can be more effective in meeting your customer's needs.
  • The additional features in the recent upgrade mean we can use Gist for more. They have always been effective for email campaigns, but the addition of the knowledge base and more effective workflows means we can automate more. This has saved us from buying more software.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Desk.com (discontinued) Screenshots

Screenshot of Desk.com ConsoleScreenshot of Desk.com Issue ScreenScreenshot of Desk.com Reporting and Analytics

Gist Screenshots

Screenshot of Live ChatScreenshot of Email MarketingScreenshot of Marketing Automation WorkflowsScreenshot of Knowledge BaseScreenshot of Meetings