Freshdesk vs Kayako vs Jitbit

Freshdesk

Freshdesk and Kayako cover much of the same ground: a shared inbox, a knowledge base, SLA policies, automation rules and reporting. The difference is in how they're sold. Freshdesk publishes its tiers and you can sign up, add agents and start working the same afternoon. The Garden plan comes to roughly $17,800 over 3 years for 5 agents, and community forums and CSAT surveys are included at that level. Freshdesk also has a much bigger app marketplace and the rest of the Freshworks suite (CRM, chat, ITSM) if you want to grow into it.

Freshdesk's weak spots are the price increases of recent years, Freddy AI being a paid add-on, and basic live chat living in a separate product. Still, compared to Kayako it is the more predictable choice: published pricing, a large user community, and a vendor whose roadmap isn't in the middle of a pivot.

Kayako

Kayako is the older of the two products, but today it's selling something different: a single "Kayako One" plan built around Kay, an AI agent that resolves tickets on its own and bills $1 for each resolution. At the reported $79 per agent per month, a 5-agent team pays about $14,200 over 3 years before any AI usage, which puts it in the same range as Freshdesk. Live chat is part of Kayako Messenger rather than a separate product, which is a real advantage over Freshdesk for teams that want chat and email in one inbox.

The trade-offs are transparency and ecosystem. Kayako's pricing is quote-only, the old per-agent tiers are gone, and some long-time customers reported price increases during the switch. SSO is JWT-only, there is no SAML, and the integration list is short compared to Freshdesk's marketplace. If you want an AI-first support tool and are fine negotiating with sales, Kayako is worth a look. If you want to compare plans on a pricing page and buy, Freshdesk is the easier route.

Detailed feature comparison

	Freshdesk	Kayako	Jitbit
	Fully featured help desk app	Veteran help desk rebuilt around an AI agent	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50+ countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$17820	$14220	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$35640	$28440	$8367
Active Directory	✅ Possible to authenticate users via SAML	❌	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	✅ Dashboard offers an overview of your KPIs	✅ Real-time dashboards for team workload and SLA status	✅ Live overview dashboard
Asset Management	❌	❌	✅ A complete asset management module tightly integrated into the rest of the app
Canned Responses	✅ Insert pre-formatted replies in responses	✅ Macros that insert replies and update ticket properties	✅ You can also assign canned responses to specific ticket categories if you need to
Community Forums	✅ Built-in forums on Garden plan or higher	❌	✅ Ideas Forum comes out of the box
Custom Fields	✅ Multiple types of custom fields, including dependant custom fields with various permission settings	✅ Custom fields for conversations, users and organizations	✅ Many custom field types, including dependant fields. Various privacy options.
Custom Statuses	✅ You can easily add custom statuses in addition to the built-in ones	❌	✅ Add custom statuses, customize how your customers see them and assign different colors to them
Customer satisfaction survey	✅ CSATs are a part of Garden plan or higher	✅ Built-in satisfaction ratings after conversations are completed	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Complete customization of public facing pages	✅ Help center and Messenger branding; the agent interface is not customizable	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	❌	✅ Customizable email templates	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	✅ Possible to set up with automation features	✅ Escalation via SLA breach triggers and monitors	✅ Possible to set up various escalation scenarios via automation
Exchange Integration	❌	❌	✅ Native EWS support instead of IMAP. oAuth support for Office 365
Import and Export	✅ Export tickets to CSV or Excel. Import via API.	✅ Migration from other help desks via the API or Kayako's onboarding team; no self-service CSV export	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	❌	✅ Multilingual help center and localized customer-facing content	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	❌	❌	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ Customizable knowledge base is a part on every plan	✅ Public and private help centers	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	❌	✅ Included in Kayako Messenger	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	✅ iOS and Android	❌	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	✅ Email, social, web and phone	✅ Email, live chat, Facebook and X (Twitter) in one shared inbox	✅ Possible to add unlimited channels via integrations and API
On-premise Version	❌	❌	✅ A full on-premises version that runs on Windows Server
Reports and Analytics	✅ A lot of reports and analytics tools	✅ Pre-built and custom reports; some users find custom reports hard to build	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ Well documented APIs for every app feature	✅ REST API covering conversations, users and organizations	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	✅ SAML protocol is supported	✅ JWT-based SSO only. No SAML or Active Directory support in the current version	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	✅ Allows you to define SLA policies for various ticket priorities	✅ SLA policies with targets per priority and automated breach triggers	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Comes with a widget for your site	✅ Kayako Messenger widget with chat and help center search	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ Has an app marketplace where you can get integrations as add-ons	✅ Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, Stripe and others; no large app marketplace	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	✅ Nested and linked tickets, shared ownership, field teams	✅ Private notes, @mentions and collision detection	✅ See when other techs are viewing tickets in real-time, assign multiple people to a ticket
Workflow Automation	✅ Rich automation features	✅ Triggers, monitors and macros, plus AI actions via the Kay agent	✅ Automation Rules are very powerful and can go beyond simple if-this-then-that logic

Looking for help desk software? Check out Jitbit. We offer a fully-featured app at a very affordable price. It comes with all the must have features like knowledge base, two-way email integration (including native Exchange and Office 365 support), automation, hundreds of integrations with third-party apps and much more. Available both as a hosted "SaaS" version and an on-premises version you can install on your own server.