Freshdesk vs. Salesforce Experience Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly Salesforce Experience Cloud or Salesforce Community Cloud) is an online forum powered by Salesforce that enables businesses to connect with their employees, customers, partner organizations, and prospects. Designed to help facilitate communication and information sharing, customers can ask questions and request help, administrators can integrate data from third-party apps, and employees can collaborate across projects and…N/A
Pricing
FreshdeskSalesforce Experience Cloud
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshdeskSalesforce Experience Cloud
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FreshdeskSalesforce Experience Cloud
Considered Both Products
Freshdesk
Chose Freshdesk
We wanted to move our entire support on a single channel and manage all the support via a single channel so this is where omni channel helped us.

Additionally, knowledge bases and the AI agents are also on the same platforms, so these things help us to improve the quality of …
Chose Freshdesk
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 …
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk is way beyond these tool. The solution and technology provided is more more step ahead with the shared product.
Chose Freshdesk
We felt that Freshdesk offered better value in terms of pricing and offered a matching feature set. It was also highly recommended by a member of a team that had used Freshdesk in their previous organisation. Lastly the fact that it could integrate into Hubspot (that we use as …
Chose Freshdesk
We use all Freshdesk, Freshchat, and other Freshworks tools—they’re all great. Freshchat is awesome for real-time support, while Freshdesk handles tickets, automation, and multi-channel queries really well. Using them together gives us a complete, seamless customer service …
Chose Freshdesk
its better in terms of pricing for sure as others are completely to high costly.
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk was the easiest to set up and was the most straightforward product of all the products we evaluated. It had a better user interface for agents, and provided a great solution to meet our needs at a lower cost than the other products that we evaluated. Freshdesk offers …
Chose Freshdesk
Ultimately we ended up switching from Freshdesk to Zendesk, and then from zendesk to devrev. We're still trying to find the right fit for us - Freshdesk covers the same options as Zendesk, if you use the whole suite it's probably a good option.
Chose Freshdesk
Freshworks desk is very easy to use and understand.
The biggest strengths if Freshdesk as it's usability, Affordability and the vast number of features it provides for its clients.
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk lacks some of the functionality of costlier IT tool suites but makes up for it in value. Yes, that means you may have to use two tools to do the job of one complete suite, but for the price and the functionality, Freshdesk does what it does at the best value point.
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk has the edge, because of the easy user interface, data download, implementation options, One access for chats, calls, WhatsApp Business and emails. Segregation of tickets as per the respective department. Dashboard availability for each department, checking the …
Chose Freshdesk
As saied before, Freshdesk is very simple to use. It is very agile to our needs and uses, based on the requests are made from our employees only. So, everything they demand, is a well know task or activity in our duties. Zammad does it very well, but needs an on premises …
Chose Freshdesk
Superior in every aspect—it is that simple! It offers a more flexible product, smoother UI, and, importantly, a more patient and supportive account team.
Chose Freshdesk
Compared to Crisp, Freshdesk offers much more organization and is just much more helpful when it comes to having more than one region/team. Not that Crisp is bad, but with Freshdesk, internal communication and collaboration are much easier, which was quite important for our …
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk has a more modern and intuitive user interface, while Help Scout's interface is simpler and more minimalist.In case of features, Freshdesk offers a wider range of features, includes omnichannel support, AI powered automations, and advanced analytics. Help Scout is …
Chose Freshdesk
My company originally selected Freshdesk due to price, but as we grew, we found it lacking compared to its more expensive counterparts. I briefly compared Zendesk to resolve our main issues with Freshdesk, but I'd spent so much time and effort customizing Freshdesk that we …
Chose Freshdesk
Freshdesk is aimed more for direct customer support tasks.
Chose Freshdesk
Track it was too complicated to maintain.
Chose Freshdesk
Good platform for organizing the tickets from different sources and making sure no single communication is missed in the cracks. Automations bring productivity. Customization is not easy unless you learn the SDKs/ APIs. but has a great deal to offer. Integrations with other …
Chose Freshdesk
We tried Freshchat, but since our app did not have advanced technology, we were not able to use it. However, the Freshdesk team supported us in exploring this option.
Chose Freshdesk
We have an omnichannel, so we use Freshdesk, Freshchat, and Freshcaller.
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
I have used Oracle Fusion and it was super slow if compared to Salesforce. The loading time was longer and information was not organized in a simple way like Salesforce. Even though I haven't participated in the decision process of subscribing to Salesforce, as an employee I …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Salesforce Experience Cloud was selected due to its tight integration with our existing Salesforce CRM platform. Customization of the portal was much, much simpler compared to Sharepoint - especially with role-based security parameters that are ultimately inherited based on …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly Salesforce Community Cloud) is better when you are using Salesforce for applications. Drupal is a solid open-source web content management system for internal and external websites, but if you are using Salesforce for services or case …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
We already have Salesforce Sales and Service Cloud and integration with Salesforce Experience Cloud is easier to configure and manage.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
We are currently using Vanilla to manage our community (including our knowledge base & ideas), but will be moving to [Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly Salesforce Community Cloud)] within the quarter. We decided to move forward with Experience Cloud because it integrates so …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Does not have direct access to the Salesforce data, must integrate and maintatin that integration which is costly. Just having a single source login is valuable.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
I have used Datatel/Colleague/Recruiter before. There were issues because only one person at the institution was able to have the student's record open at a time. This was problematic when collaboration between departments was necessary especially in the case of admissions, …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
After evaluating others on the market, we found that Salesforce Community Cloud comes with many more features than it competitors. Also Salesforce Community Cloud is way more user-friendly than others. And above all, we were looking for faster sales support in which Salesforce …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Before Community Cloud, a common alternative was the development of web sites externally with integration to Sales Cloud being made from external API calls. This is a far costlier and more complex endeavour since it requires a dedicated development team to create and maintain …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Overall, Salesforce is the most effective solution since it is part of an integrated stack to house and activate CRM audiences within an email, but also expand upon it via the DMP. This can allow for cross channel reach and exposure frequency measurement. If we were to partner …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Salesforce has highly customizable lead management and scoring, while HubSpot can get small businesses up and running quickly with lead generation via content marketing. HubSpot is unique in its focus on inbound and content marketing—in fact, that's at the core of what the …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
I never found another database solution that works as well as Salesforce.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
As our client already used Salesforce CRM, it is a simple integration tasks to link Community to CRM. As such this was a quick deployment with the base data already being present and easily linked to.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
I’m sure Salesforce does this as well but we were able to create many macros for Zendesk, that helped our agents interact with customers on a very consistent basis. We haven’t quite got that far in our organization, but I do think it would be useful to our agents.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Overall, Communities provides additional features and better front end experience.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Salesforce Community Cloud was purchased by the company and I was not a decision-maker or involved in the implementation process. Simply a user.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Zendesk was far better at case management.

Atlassian Confluence for knowledge base was not perfect but it was better than Community Cloud for search and appearance for the FAQ.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Other online community forum software vendors include, HiveBrite, ForumBee and Memeni. the main competitor being HiveBrite. Additional tools with chat functionality may also include Slack which i have used. Having th ability to create groups by product / team / region etc.

Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
I have personally not used any other software comparable to Salesforce Community Cloud at this time.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
We have only ever used a different internal program that was custom built by our web team. It was not functional with Outlook and all the other systems we use daily. Salesforce is our central hub for everything!
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Community Cloud is directly connected to the database (Salesforce), so there is no need for a 3rd party or an API to bring systems together. This means that CRM users can see all Intranet items from Salesforce directly. It's also extremely straight forward in use, but can be …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
This is the only product we have used.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
I did not select Community Cloud, but since we had the Salesforce platform it was preferred to use this instead of Office 365. I currently use SharePoint at my new organization and there is a much higher level of participation, customization, storage, and synchronicity among …
Features
FreshdeskSalesforce Experience Cloud
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.6
Ratings
7% above category average
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
External knowledge base8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
8.3
Ratings
7% above category average
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
Customer portal7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
10.0
Ratings
20% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
10.0
Ratings
18% above category average
API00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
9.3
Ratings
20% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
8.6
Ratings
18% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
8.0
Ratings
7% below category average
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Funnel Analysis00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
User Segmentation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Digital Experience Platform
Comparison of Digital Experience Platform features of Product A and Product B
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Salesforce Experience Cloud
10.0
Ratings
8% above category average
Campaign management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Cloud enablement00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Content aggregation00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Content classification00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Multi-channel content personalization00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Customer data analytics00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
DXP Third-Party Integrations00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Multi-website management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Digital asset management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Editorial workflows and task management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FreshdeskSalesforce Experience Cloud
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreshdeskSalesforce Experience Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Availability
4.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.5
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(0 ratings)
7.7
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
5.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.6
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
6.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreshdeskSalesforce Experience Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
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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[Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly Salesforce Community Cloud)] seems to be very well suited for what we want to use it for, which is to allow customers to have access to their ongoing and already-resolved cases, which will save our customer success team time and allow for transparency. It also seems well-suited for fine-tuning knowledge libraries, as it allows you to track the knowledge articles that are most impactful (and conversely, those that are less impactful) as you are able to track the path that customers use to self-serve ahead of submitting a ticket. I haven't run into any scenarios yet where we wanted to use Experience Cloud as a solution but discovered that it wasn't a fit.
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Pros
  • 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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  • Complete integration with the Salesforce ecosystem. Data displayed in your Community portal reflects records from a Sales Cloud organization
  • Highly customizable. A Community Cloud portal can be totally customized both visually and with different funcionalities with little to no coding skills required
Read full review
Cons
  • 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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  • None that come to mind - integrations, experience, and use is great! However, if you're trying to learn it yourself, you may benefit from consulting an expert. Or, if you're wondering if it's good for you, a business analysis will suit you well before you implement to save yourselves, time, money, efforts, and even people.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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No answers on this topic
Usability
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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Usability is pretty streamlined, especially if you're familiar with other Salesforce products, but even if not, take it from me, as I just entered the technological space about two years ago, that this product is pretty simple to learn. You don't have to jump in with your head underwater. Small wins and learnings along the way are what foster long-term understandings and enable your evolution alongside the product. I definitely recommend Salesforce Trailhead along with it
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Reliability and Availability
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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No answers on this topic
Performance
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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Through ease of use and expandability, I think that Community Cloud is a best in class at exposing Salesforce integrations, as well as expandability in working through building custom add-ons for Salesforce for collaborations and self-service. Additionally, the speed to market on these changes are lightning-quick and allow for experimentation.
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Support Rating
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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We have weekly calls with our Salesforce reps. They bring new ideas to the table and help with taxonomy builds. They have also answered many questions and connected us to the right people for us to grow our knowledge and utilization of the platform. They are a good partner overall in comparison.
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In-Person Training
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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No answers on this topic
Online Training
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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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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Salesforce Experience Cloud was selected due to its tight integration with our existing Salesforce CRM platform. Customization of the portal was much, much simpler compared to Sharepoint - especially with role-based security parameters that are ultimately inherited based on attributes within the Salesforce CRM platform. Salesforce Experience Cloud was a natural fit for this customer-facing purpose.
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Scalability
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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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • 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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  • Its given us much better issue and customer satisfaction tracking, since before Community Cloud much of our communications were extremely siloed within Outlook. We had no visibility because communications happened on an individual basis rather than a holistic level (the company).
  • We've increased user interaction and given our customers a reason to come to the website repeatedly.
  • Our costs have gone up, naturally, as the system proves to be a strong solution. We have pulled in other resources and teams which requires more licenses. I guess that's a sign of success but also a cost.
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ScreenShots