Start with who sends the tickets. If they are customers writing in by email, Help Scout and Freshdesk are the quickest to set up and Zoho Desk is the cheapest per agent; if they arrive across chat, phone and social channels at scale, Zendesk and Intercom are built for that volume, and online stores should look first at Gorgias. Companies already running HubSpot or Zoho CRM get the most from those vendors’ help desks, because tickets land on the same customer records. If the tickets come from employees, choose an IT service desk instead: Jira Service Management for teams that live in Jira, Freshservice for a full ITIL toolset at a lower cost. Before signing, run last month’s conversation volume through each vendor’s AI pricing, since per-resolution fees can exceed the seat price once an AI agent handles a large share of conversations.
How do AI agents change what a help desk costs?
Most vendors now bill AI by outcome rather than by seat. On their current price lists, HubSpot charges $0.50 per resolved conversation, Help Scout $0.75 per resolution, Intercom’s Fin $0.99 per outcome, Zendesk $1.50 to $2.00 per automated resolution beyond those included in each plan, and Gorgias $1.50 per automated interaction past the plan’s allowance, while Freshdesk sells Freddy AI Agent sessions at $49 per 100. Each resolution replaces work an agent would otherwise do, so compare the cost per resolution with what an agent-handled ticket costs you, and use spending caps where the vendor offers them.
Do we need a business associate agreement to handle patient data?
Yes, if you are a HIPAA covered entity or business associate and tickets may contain protected health information. The US Department of Health and Human Services says a cloud service that creates, receives, maintains or transmits electronic protected health information on your behalf is itself a business associate, even if it stores only encrypted data without the key, and that the two parties must sign a HIPAA-compliant business associate agreement (BAA). In this ranking, Zendesk (Suite Professional), HubSpot (qualifying Enterprise plans), Help Scout (Pro), Intercom (Expert), Freshdesk and Freshservice (Enterprise) and Jira Service Management (paid plans) support HIPAA with a BAA, and Zoho provides one on request. Check each vendor’s list of covered features, because some channels and add-ons are excluded.
What is the difference between a help desk and an IT service desk?
A customer help desk serves people outside the company, so it focuses on channels, response times, a public knowledge base and satisfaction scores. An IT service desk serves employees and follows IT service management practices: Atlassian describes the service desk as the single point of contact for everything a user needs from IT, while problem and change management, which find root causes and control changes to systems, go beyond basic IT support. That is why Jira Service Management and Freshservice add asset inventories, change approvals and service catalogs, features that customer-support tools generally leave out.
