Best of
Best helpdesk system for small support teams
A helpdesk system turns customer requests, usually email, into tickets that a team can assign, answer and close, with the whole conversation kept on each one. The best helpdesk system for a small team makes email a ticket on its own, lets you set response-time targets, and gives customers a portal to see their own requests.
Side by side.
Facts a reader can check on each vendor’s own site. No prices.
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- SLAs:
- Paid plans
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- SLAs:
- Paid plans
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- SLAs:
- Paid plans
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- SLAs:
- Professional
- Customer portal:
- Professional
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- SLAs:
- Higher plans
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Up to three people
- Seats from one:
- Free up to 3; 5 on paid plans
- SLAs:
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- SLAs:
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- SLAs:
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- SLAs:
- Customer portal:
- Email to ticket:
| Free plan | Seats from one | SLAs | Customer portal | Email to ticket | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freshdesk | Paid plans | ||||
| Zoho Desk | Paid plans | ||||
| Help Scout | Paid plans | ||||
| HubSpot Service Hub | Professional | Professional | |||
| Zendesk | Higher plans | ||||
| Spodus | Up to three people | Free up to 3; 5 on paid plans | |||
| NinjaOne | Quoted | ||||
| ConnectWise PSA | Quoted | ||||
| ServiceNow | Quoted |
Checked on , against each vendor’s public plan pages.
Each one, plainly.
What it is, who it suits, and where it stops.
- 01
Freshdesk
The help desk most small teams try first.
Freshdesk is the help desk from Freshworks, and the Freshdesk ticket system is the one most small teams try first. Email, a web form and a portal all create tickets, and agents work them in a shared queue. The free plan is limited to two agents. Response-time targets are on the paid plans.
Best for: A support team that wants a help desk on its own and nothing else attached to it.
- 02
Zoho Desk
The help desk in the Zoho suite.
Zoho Desk is the help desk in the Zoho suite, with a free plan for three agents. Tickets come from email, forms, chat and the portal, and it connects to Zoho CRM if you use it. SLAs are on the paid plans. It has more channels than most small teams will switch on.
Best for: A team on Zoho CRM that wants tickets on the same contacts.
- 03
Help Scout
A shared inbox that behaves like a help desk.
Help Scout is a shared inbox that behaves like a help desk, without ticket numbers in the customer's face. It has a free plan capped by the contacts helped each month, a knowledge base called Docs and a chat widget. SLA targets are on the paid plans. There is no customer portal in the usual sense.
Best for: A small team that wants support to read like email, not like a ticket queue.
- 04
HubSpot Service Hub
The help desk that shares contacts with the free HubSpot CRM.
HubSpot Service Hub is the help desk in HubSpot, sharing contacts with the free CRM. Tickets and a shared inbox are on the free plan; the knowledge base, SLAs and the customer portal arrive on Professional. It fits a team already on HubSpot for sales.
Best for: A company already on HubSpot that wants support on the same contact records.
- 05
Zendesk
The reference help desk for support teams.
Zendesk is the reference help desk for support teams: tickets from every channel, a help center, SLAs, automations and reporting. Small teams find it more than they need, and the plans that add SLAs are the higher ones. There is no free plan. It is sold per agent.
Best for: A support team of ten or more that needs every channel and deep reporting.
- 06
Spodus
Support tickets beside the customer's deals, invoices and tasks.
Spodus is a client-operations workspace with a support module inside it. A forwarded address turns email into tickets, tickets carry SLAs, and every customer gets a private link to see a ticket's status, with replies reaching them by email. The ticket sits on the same customer record as the invoice and the deal, so an agent sees the account, not just the thread. There is no live chat. It is free for up to three people, and paid plans start at three seats.
Best for: A service business that wants tickets on the same records as billing and the CRM.
- 07
NinjaOne
IT ticketing inside an endpoint-management tool.
NinjaOne ticketing is part of NinjaOne, an endpoint-management tool for IT teams and managed service providers. Tickets link to the devices they are about, response and resolution SLAs run by priority, and end users have a portal. It is sold by quote, on top of the device licence. It is an IT help desk, not a customer one.
Best for: An IT team or MSP that already manages devices in NinjaOne.
- 08
ConnectWise PSA
The service board inside the MSP business system.
ConnectWise PSA, formerly Manage, is the business system many managed service providers run on, and its service board is the ConnectWise ticketing system. It holds tickets with SLAs, a client portal and email connectors, and the same tool does contracts, time and billing. It is sold by quote and takes a project to set up.
Best for: A managed service provider that wants tickets, contracts and billing in one system.
- 09
ServiceNow
ITSM for IT departments at large organisations.
ServiceNow ITSM is the ServiceNow ticket system: incidents, requests, problems and changes for IT departments at large organisations. SLAs, a service portal and inbound email are all standard. It is sold by quote with an implementation partner. It is not a small-business help desk, and it is rarely used for customers.
Best for: An IT department at a large organisation with a team to run it.
How we chose.
We listed the help desks a small service team is likely to look at, plus the IT ticketing tools people search for by name, and read each vendor's public plan pages on the date above. The columns are the three things a help desk exists for, plus whether there is a free plan and a seat minimum. The IT ticketing systems are on the list because the searches land here, not because a customer-support team should buy one.
More best-of lists.
The same table, dated the same way, for the other categories a service business buys.
- Best ofBest CRM software: a list of CRM systems, compared on facts
- Best ofBest CRM for small business, compared on facts
- Best ofBest HR management software for small and mid-sized teams
- Best ofBest invoice software for small business, compared on facts
- Best ofBest agency management software, compared on facts
- Best ofBest project management software, compared on facts
- Head to headSpodus against one tool at a time
Two ways
to start
Start fresh today, or bring the clients, deals and history you already have.
Start fresh
Free for up to three people.
You get every product: CRM, invoicing, support, team, chat and Spodus AI, which asks before it changes anything. Upgrade when your team grows.
Start for freeBring your data
Bring your data from the tool you use now.
Your deals arrive with their stages, owners and dates. Connect your work email, and each client's emails land on their record. On a paid plan, we'll move it all for you, free.
See the whole workspace, not one row of it.
Start today, or bring your own data to a demo and see it there.
Questions, answered
A helpdesk system collects customer requests, usually from email, into tickets that a team can assign, answer and close. Each ticket keeps the whole conversation and who handled it. Most products add response-time targets, a knowledge base, and a portal where customers can see the status of their own requests without emailing to ask.
A shared mailbox works until two people answer the same email or one email gets no answer at all. A help desk assigns each request to one person, shows what is waiting, and records who replied. If more than one person answers customers, or if you promise a response time, a help desk is the simpler tool.
An IT ticketing system, such as ServiceNow or NinjaOne, handles requests from your own staff about devices, access and software, and links tickets to assets. A customer help desk, such as Freshdesk or Zendesk, handles requests from customers and links tickets to accounts. The mechanics are the same; the records the tickets attach to are not.