Freshservice vs Help Scout vs Jitbit

Freshservice

Freshservice and Help Scout are built for different audiences. Freshservice serves internal IT: employees request laptops and access through a service catalog, technicians track incidents against assets in a CMDB, and on the Pro plan, changes go through approval workflows and a change calendar. The Slack and Teams integration means most employees never need to open the portal.

For an IT team, that's useful. For anyone else, it's overhead. Freshservice Pro costs $99 per agent per month, about $17,800 over 3 years for 5 agents, before asset packs or the $29-per-agent Freddy AI Copilot.

Help Scout

Help Scout is a polished shared inbox for customer-facing teams. It feels like email, so there's no learning curve, and the Beacon widget combines live chat and knowledge base search on your website. Saved replies, a Docs knowledge base and good CSAT reporting cover what most small support teams need.

It's much cheaper, about $6,300 over 3 years for 5 agents, but it's not an IT tool. There's no asset management, no service catalog, no change management, and SLA handling is basic. Help Scout is the better choice for supporting customers. Freshservice is the better choice for supporting your own staff.

Detailed feature comparison

	Freshservice	Help Scout	Jitbit
	Modern ITSM service desk from Freshworks	A simple help desk focused on email.	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50+ countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$17820	$6300	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$35640	$12600	$8367
Active Directory	✅ SAML SSO with Entra ID / ADFS, plus user sync from AD and Entra ID	✅ Only Azure AD is supported	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	✅ Customizable dashboards with real-time widgets	❌	✅ Live overview dashboard
Asset Management	✅ CMDB with agent-based and cloud discovery; 100 asset units included, more sold in packs	❌	✅ A complete asset management module tightly integrated into the rest of the app
Canned Responses	✅ Canned responses and scenario automations that update several fields at once	✅ They are called Saved Replies. You can insert them in ticket replies	✅ You can also assign canned responses to specific ticket categories if you need to
Community Forums	❌	❌	✅ Ideas Forum comes out of the box
Custom Fields	✅ Custom and dependent fields for tickets, assets and the service catalog	✅ Up to ten custom fields per mailbox	✅ Many custom field types, including dependant fields. Various privacy options.
Custom Statuses	✅ Custom ticket statuses with SLA timer control	❌	✅ Add custom statuses, customize how your customers see them and assign different colors to them
Customer satisfaction survey	✅ Built-in CSAT surveys with reports	✅ Comes with CSATs and a Happiness report	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Self-service portal branding and theming; the agent interface is fixed	✅ Customize Knowledge Base with externally hosted CSS files	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	✅ Editable templates for every notification	❌	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	✅ SLA-based escalations and multi-level reminders	❌	✅ Possible to set up various escalation scenarios via automation
Exchange Integration	✅ Microsoft 365 mailboxes connected via OAuth	❌	✅ Native EWS support instead of IMAP. oAuth support for Office 365
Import and Export	✅ CSV import for assets and users, ticket export to CSV or Excel	✅ Can be done via API	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	✅ Multilingual UI, portal and knowledge base	✅ You can manually translate some parts of the app	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	✅ PinkVERIFY-certified ITIL processes; problem, change and release management start at Pro	❌	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ Solution articles in the self-service portal, with approval workflows	✅ It's called Docs and it is highly customizable	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	❌	❌	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	✅ iOS and Android apps for agents and requesters	✅ iOS and Android	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	✅ Email, portal, phone, Slack and Microsoft Teams	❌	✅ 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	✅ Curated reports and a custom report builder; advanced analytics on higher plans	✅ Most must-have reports are included	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ REST API v2 covering tickets, assets, changes and more	✅ Separate APIs for KB and tickets	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	✅ SAML 2.0 via the Freshworks organization account, plus Google and Microsoft login	✅ Separate add-on for $5 per user per month	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	✅ Multiple SLA policies with business hours per group	❌	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Embeddable help widget for raising tickets and searching solutions	❌	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ Freshworks Marketplace with hundreds of apps	✅ 80+ apps	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	✅ Agent collision detection, private notes, child tickets and @mentions	❌	✅ See when other techs are viewing tickets in real-time, assign multiple people to a ticket
Workflow Automation	✅ Visual Workflow Automator with approvals, conditions and web requests	✅ Very basic automation features are available	✅ 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.