| Functionality | 5 <p>Chatwoot is a lightweight tool that offers some support functionality that most SMBs will need. Chatwoot allows you to offer support via live chat, email, WhatsApp, social channels and create Help Centres. It also has basic automation and reporting functionality.</p><p>However, it lacks phone support, a no-code chatbot builder to automate chat-related workflow and meaningful analytics functionality.</p> | 9 <p>Freshdesk Omni offers very rich support functionality. It supports most channels, and the creation of help centres and community forums. It also has pretty advanced chat automation, AI and reporting functionality.</p><p>However, Freshdesk doesn't support offer unified analytics and automation workflows across its two modules - ticketing and chat.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 8 <p>Chatwoot has a simple, intuitive interface that is easy to use. It is easy to locate key information and navigating key workflows such as replying to tickets, setting up automation are straightforward and smooth. It should only take a few hours for an average startup employee to be proficient with Chatwoot.</p> | 3 <p>Freshdesk Omni has a steep learning curve and rather frustrating set up.</p><p>We also found a lot of setting unintuitive and unnecessarily complex. For instance, to set up automations for live chat, you'll have to visit at least 3-4 settings page (assignment, routing, conversation skills, advanced automation).</p><p>Its chatbot builder, in particular, is one of the most complex builders we've come across.</p> |
| Look and feel | 7 <p>While not as slick as more established competitors, we find Chatwoot's interface modern and slick with fast page load times.</p> | 3 <p>Freshdesk Omni feels rather dated and cluttered, both internally and externally. The amount of customisability and functionality can be overwhelming on many screens. age load times can also be painfully slow, taking up to 10 seconds on some screens and forcing a page reload.</p> |
| Customisability | 8 <p>Chatwoot only offers basic customisability out of the box. Ticket routing and automation options are limited, only basic stylistic changes can be made to the Help Centre, and there's no custom reporting.</p><p>However, Chatwoot is open source. This means its source code is publicly available, so you can customise pretty much anything if you have the engineering resources to do so.</p> | 8 <p>Freshworks offers a good level of customisability. It supports using custom code for deep customization of the Help Centre. You can also track custom events about customers for create personalized proactive messages and workflows. Custom data objects can be created, and agents can customize their workspace layout. </p> |
| Ease of Setup | 6 <p>Chatwoot offers a simple self-serve free trial for their platform. We found the initial setup to be very simple, taking less than 10 minutes. However, setting up your first channels can be a little tricky. For example, non-Outlook email users will need to configure email connections manually rather than a simple one-click approach. Additionally, Chatwoot offers a number of deeper customization options which can take some time to set up - such as workflow automations.</p> | 6 <p>Missive offers a simple self-serve free trial for their platform. We found the initial setup to be relatively simple, but somewhat unintuitive taking around 10 minutes. Setting up your first channels is also a confusing process from a UX perspective - but once you've figured your way around the interface, channels like email are simple to integrate (one-click for common providers). </p> |
| Customer Support | 6 <p>Chatwoot offers in-app live chat support during US business hours. In our experience, the quality of Chatwoot's customer support has been quite inconsistent.</p><p>At times, the team is very responsive and helpful. But we've also had experiences of having to wait up to 3 days for a response.</p> | 6 <p>While Frehworks offers 24/7 support live chat in-app and the support team is quick to reply, they don't always offer helpful/ relevant information.</p><p>We also found the live chat widget with Freshworks support unreliable, as you lose your current conversation when you switch between Freshdesk/ Freshchat.</p> |
| Integratability | 3 <p>Chatwoot only has 10 pre-built integrations, none of which are CRMs or phone systems, which many customers would ideally link to Chatwoot.</p><p>However, it does have an API for custom integrations.</p> | 8 <p>Freshworks offers hundreds of pre-built integrations with common third-party tools that SMBs use, including CRMs, email marketing tools, and project management systems. It also has an extensive marketplace for additional integrations and an API for custom integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 5 <p>Chatwoot offers easy contact export but doesn't allow for the export of conversations via self-serve. However, that latter should still be possible via API.</p> | 8 <p>Freshworks allows users to export key data (e.g. ticket and agent volume) via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API.</p> |
