Freshchat vs. Kustomer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Freshchat
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
A solution to engage customers with smarter conversations on any channel, designed so support, marketing, sales, and even bots to have conversations at scale with customers.
$19
per month (billed annually) per agent
Kustomer
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Kustomer is a customer service CRM platform built for managing high support volume by optimizing experiences throughout the customer service journey. Kustomer was acquired by Facebook in late 2020, but spun out in 2023 and re-launched as an independent entity, Kustomer, LLC.
$89
per month, per user
Pricing
FreshchatKustomer
Editions & Modules
Growth
$19
per month (billed annually) per agent
Pro
$49
per month (billed annually) per agent
Enterprise
$79
per month (billed annually) per agent
Enterprise
$89
per month, per user
Ultimate
$139
per month, per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshchatKustomer
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshchatKustomer
Features
FreshchatKustomer
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Freshchat
6.5
Ratings
28% below category average
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Chat history and transcripts7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat reporting6.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat and web analytics6.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshchat
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.1
Ratings
1% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshchat
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.5
Ratings
8% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshchat
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshchatKustomer
Small Businesses
Gist
Gist
Score 9.5 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshchatKustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
7.3
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.2
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.3
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Configurability
4.5
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(0 ratings)
7.2
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
4.5
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshchatKustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
its good app Freshdesk Messaging help me to contact the customer and contact the customer to inform my problem to solve it and is a good app and help full app and its easy to use uncomplicated and Freshdesk Helps me provide good quality to the customer and make customer feedback good for a company
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It works really well for you to ask a teammate to review a case/email/message and provide some input since you can all review the same conversations and client accounts. They can also cover your inbox using your email handle in case you are out of the office suing some well deserved PTO.
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Pros
  • Freshchat has been offering best-in-class chatbots that primarily focus on intent and engagement.
  • It is quite proactive and has rich media campaigns to segment and target audiences.
  • Freshchat is also one of my favorite software because it offers seamless integration with apps.
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  • All customer data (past orders, communication with customer service, rewards account data) is in one place. This helps agents avoid confusion and reduces the number of tabs they need to open.
  • The Knowledge Base (or K Base) is very helpful. Any time we roll out a new policy or have a limited-time promotion, we can add all the relevant information and worksheets there for the convenience of the agents. That way they can stay in a chat while looking up the answer to a question.
  • We can seamlessly move from chat into email if the customer leaves or the queue times are too long. All the interactions will stay on the customer profile page, so they are kept up to date.
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Cons
  • Bot communications used to take time to appear, but this was fixed recently and we are now more than satisfied to use it.
  • The initial process of setting up a Freshchat account is a long one.
  • The billing is per member/month which can get expensive fast.
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  • For our team, the feature that defaults all notes to begin in "done" status is difficult. Throughout each day we need to have notes open and assigned back and forth to different teams, and we have to remember to manually "open" each note. There is too much room for human error with this setting, and it is easy for important notes to be missed if a user forgets to open the note.
  • Similarly, it can be hard to remember to assign emails/notes to a particular team in addition to a user. We almost exclusively work out of team inboxes, and if someone on Care writes an email to a customer, the email will automatically be "done" when it is created, and it will be assigned to the user who wrote it, but not also to the user's team. There are instances where an email needs to be snoozed for several days/hours with further action needed, and unless the user remembers to assign the email to their team it may "awake" from the snooze and not be visible to anyone except the user who created it. Similarly to my first comment, this leaves a lot of room for human error and is not very intuitive.
  • Personally, I do not love that all tickets/emails/notes are jumbled together in the same inbox. While this gives visibility to everything on the "to do" list at the same time, it can be visually overwhelming. We have created unique folders for certain types of projects or categories of work, but have experienced tech glitches or just the awkwardness of another step to manually read the note, determine what type of category it is, and then manually assign it to another folder. Would love to have things auto-sort and take out this manual lift.
  • I love the idea of the autopilot setting, but we have not been able to use this for our work because it sorts items based on time, and not based on priority. In our line of work, we may have an urgent situation arise that needs attention before an email that was sent in 60 minutes ago. The autopilot feature would push the email to my associates sooner than it would the urgent situation from 5 minutes ago. Due to this, we manually monitor inboxes and assign work to ourselves and others.
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Likelihood to Renew
Freshchat has been a reliable and user friendly platform for the past 5 plus years for engaging with customers in real time. It has helped us streamline support, reduce response time and improve customer satisfaction. The advanced automation feature and chatbot functionality have also saved our teams a lot of manual effort and increased efficiency. I didn't rate 10 because there is still room for improvement in reporting and deeper integration.
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Because there's no other tool like Kustomer
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Usability
I give it an 8 due to its usability. Yes, I had a few issues to begin with and needed some assistance from Freshchat agents, but considering this is something that is completely new to me, to set up what feels like a professional chat handling system complete with autobot within a day is really saying something I feel.
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There is a learning curve, but it is more than worth it, especially to have a dedicated resource pointed at Kustomer and any other software it interacts with. The basic implementation is useful, and powerful - certainly a MASSIVE upgrade over taking care of your customers in an email inbox or shuffling between multiple windows and applications! It is also set up really well to grow and reconfigure with your business. I'm a big fan.
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Reliability and Availability
Freshchat has always been available when I needed to use it.
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Because Kustomer is available when you need it
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Performance
Freshchat always loads quickly and communication is quickly sent and received.
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Because ages load quickly, reports complete in a reasonable time frame, given their complexity
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Support Rating
The experience we had in past for lets say 4-5 months with the support team and our TAM was really helpful. The changes in the bot flow has helped our bot to ensure we connect with customer easily.
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It’s a great tool that has helped our company and overall customer service. I believe if we were able to edit certain setting for our specific company that would be hopeful. We have been told before that certain desires of ours would make a change throughout all of Kustomer. Which is not something we would want, we would just want that to change for our business.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
It was very easy to understand.
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Implementation Rating
I hope to show new users data because this can save a lot of time
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Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
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Alternatives Considered
We have used a self-developed solution for the same purpose with full in-house development however the features vs the value that freshchat provided were worth the selection, freshchat achieved overall better performance and received gemerally more praise, some key advantages were related to user experience and performance of the system
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I find it baffling how little data can be stored or associated with a customer in many other systems, and how difficult that can be to set up. It is fine if you already have a robust CDP that you can hook up and use to power your CRM, but it is rare that an organization has the resources or the customer-focus to rally behind setting up their customer service/experience team up for success. With a platform like Kustomer, you can actually evolve the relationship over time, or use the past experiences (number of contacts, purchases, previous issues, etc.) to power your next steps with a customer, making for a much more nuanced relationship with a human, not just a ticket.
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Scalability
We only implemented the product in 1 way so I cant speak to this.
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Because customer is flexible and scalable
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Return on Investment
  • From the positive effect of working on it, it helps employees to speed up their thinking and writing.
  • One of the positive effects of our clients is that their problems are solved easily and quickly.
  • Each employee knows how many of his chats have been resolved.
  • There is no negative effect in general.
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  • We’re getting so much positive feedback — which is not something you traditionally associate with a customer care team — because we’re making it effortless for customers to deliver both positive and negative feedback, and we can now resolve the bad feedback really really quickly.
  • Primarily from our increased efficiency with Kustomer, we’ve seen a significant reduction of $3 to $4 for every cost per contact.
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ScreenShots

Freshchat Screenshots

Screenshot of Channel Freedom: The interface to engage customers on the channel of their choiceScreenshot of Unified Agent Workspace: Equips agents to deliver personalization at scaleScreenshot of Admin and Analytics: These drive informed decisions to help business scale

Kustomer Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a customer profile within Kustomer.Screenshot of Example of how Kustomer’s automated chats can save agents time by handling less complex requests automatically.