Freshservice vs Kayako vs Jitbit

Freshservice

Freshservice and Kayako rarely compete for the same buyer. Freshservice is an IT service management tool for internal IT teams: a service catalog for employee requests, asset management with discovery, approval workflows, and on the Pro plan, problem, change and release management. Employees raise tickets from the portal, email, Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Freshservice Pro is $99 per agent per month, about $17,800 over 3 years for 5 agents. Assets beyond the first 100 units and the Freddy AI Copilot ($29 per agent) cost extra, so the real number is usually higher.

Kayako

Kayako is a customer service help desk. Email, live chat and social conversations land in one shared inbox, Kayako Messenger puts chat and help center search on your website, and the customer timeline shows everything a customer has ever sent. Kay, its AI agent, resolves routine requests on its own and can take actions such as refunds, billed at $1 per resolution.

Pricing is quote-only; at the reported $79 per agent per month, Kayako comes to about $14,200 over 3 years for 5 agents. It has no asset management, no ITIL processes and no self-hosted option since Kayako Classic was discontinued. For external customer support, Kayako is the closer fit. For an internal IT desk, Freshservice is.

Detailed feature comparison

	Freshservice	Kayako	Jitbit
	Modern ITSM service desk from Freshworks	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	✅ SAML SSO with Entra ID / ADFS, plus user sync from AD and Entra ID	❌	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	✅ Customizable dashboards with real-time widgets	✅ Real-time dashboards for team workload and SLA status	✅ 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	✅ Macros that insert replies and update ticket properties	✅ 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	✅ Custom fields for conversations, users and organizations	✅ 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	✅ Built-in satisfaction ratings after conversations are completed	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Self-service portal branding and theming; the agent interface is fixed	✅ 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	✅ Editable templates for every notification	✅ Customizable email templates	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	✅ SLA-based escalations and multi-level reminders	✅ Escalation via SLA breach triggers and monitors	✅ 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	✅ 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 UI, portal and knowledge base	✅ Multilingual help center and localized customer-facing content	✅ 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	✅ 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 apps for agents and requesters	❌	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	✅ Email, portal, phone, Slack and Microsoft Teams	✅ 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	✅ Curated reports and a custom report builder; advanced analytics on higher plans	✅ 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	✅ REST API v2 covering tickets, assets, changes and more	✅ REST API covering conversations, users and organizations	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	✅ SAML 2.0 via the Freshworks organization account, plus Google and Microsoft login	✅ JWT-based SSO only. No SAML or Active Directory support in the current version	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	✅ Multiple SLA policies with business hours per group	✅ SLA policies with targets per priority and automated breach triggers	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Embeddable help widget for raising tickets and searching solutions	✅ Kayako Messenger widget with chat and help center search	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ Freshworks Marketplace with hundreds of apps	✅ Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, Stripe and others; no large app marketplace	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	✅ Agent collision detection, private notes, child tickets and @mentions	✅ Private notes, @mentions and collision detection	✅ 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	✅ 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.