Free Zendesk Alternatives in 2026: 10 Free Plans Checked, Plus Lighter AI Agents for Online Stores

Updated 3 November 2026: added the lighter Zendesk AI options for online stores, with every price re-checked on the vendor's own pricing page.

Free Zendesk alternatives do exist, but Zendesk itself doesn't have a free plan. As of November 2026 you get a 14-day trial, and after that the cheapest plan is $19 per agent a month. So if you want $0, you're leaving.

That last point is the one most lists skip. Moving from Zendesk to a free helpdesk makes your tickets cheaper to store. They still arrive, and somebody still has to deal with them. So pick the free tool for the thing it's good at, and be clear about which problem you're solving.

Does Zendesk Have a Free Plan?#

No. Zendesk's pricing page lists no free tier, only a 14-day trial, and that trial runs on Suite Professional features by default. It's an easy way to build a setup you then can't afford. (Our Zendesk pricing breakdown has the full story on that one.)

Past those included resolutions, each automated AI resolution costs $1.50 if you commit up front or $2.00 pay-as-you-go. That's the part of the bill that grows when your ticket volume does.

The closest thing to free is the Zendesk for Startups programme. The baseline is six months of Suite for up to 50 agents, stretching to two years through some VC and accelerator partners. You have to be new to Zendesk, under ten years old, funded no further than Series B, and under 250 employees (between 50 and 249 you need a partner referral). Worth a look if you qualify... most teams searching for a free alternative don't.

Free Zendesk Alternatives Compared#

Every free option we could verify is below, side by side. Seats is how many agents you get before you pay. The real limit is the cap you'll actually hit first, and it's rarely the seat count.

Two patterns jump out. The hosted free plans cap you on something other than seats (contacts, conversations, channels), so a team of two with a busy month runs out before a team of five with a quiet one. And not one free plan includes AI that can take an action in another system. Keep that second one in mind. We'll come back to it.

Free-Forever Helpdesks You Don't Have to Host#

These run in the vendor's cloud. You sign up, connect an inbox, and you're working the same afternoon.

Zoho Desk#

Zoho Desk's free plan gives you three user licences, free forever, and Zoho describes it as "easy email ticketing, right out of the box". That's an honest description. Automation, multi-department support, SLAs and AI all sit on paid plans, and light users (read-only colleagues) aren't available on the free edition either.

Best for: a three-person team that works almost entirely by email and wants a real ticket queue instead of a shared Gmail. If you already use Zoho CRM, it's an easy yes.

Acts or answers: neither, on the free plan. There's no AI at all until you upgrade.

HubSpot Service Hub#

HubSpot's free tier covers up to two users with no credit card, and HubSpot says it includes "essential ticketing, shared inbox, live chat, and basic integrations." But the live chat widget carries HubSpot branding until you pay. HubSpot's AI Customer Agent isn't on the free plan. You only get trial access to it when you buy a Professional or Enterprise seat (Professional starts at $90 per seat a month, plus a one-time $1,500 onboarding fee).

Best for: teams already running sales or marketing in HubSpot who want support conversations on the same contact record. If you're not in HubSpot, the free tier is fine, but the upgrade path gets expensive quickly. We compared its AI side in Hay.chat vs HubSpot Breeze.

Acts or answers: neither on free.

Jira Service Management#

Atlassian's Jira Service Management is free forever for three agents, with 2 GB of storage and community support, and it turns up in nearly every roundup for this search. It's built for IT and internal service desks first: queues, SLAs and a request portal rather than a shared inbox. Standard starts at $21.50 per agent a month. The only AI on the free plan is summaries in its reporting.

Best for: a small team that already lives in Jira or Confluence and wants customer requests tracked the Jira way.

Acts or answers: neither on free.

Help Scout#

Help Scout's free plan is the most generous on seats among the hosted helpdesks: five users, one inbox and one Docs (knowledge base) site. The catch is 100 contacts a month. That's roughly three new customers a day, and a single busy launch week will blow through it. Paid plans start at $25 per user a month. AI Answers is a separate charge of $0.75 per resolution, and Help Scout's page doesn't list it on the free plan.

Best for: small B2B or SaaS teams with low, steady volume who care about a clean email experience.

Acts or answers: neither on free. AI Answers, when you pay for it, answers from your Docs.

Crisp#

Crisp is free forever for two agents and 100 customer profiles, with a chat widget and a contact form. Crisp's pricing page is blunt about AI: "no AI credits included". Paid plans are priced per workspace, not per seat, starting at $45 a month for four agents. That's unusual, and it can work out cheaper than per-seat tools once you have a few people.

Best for: a founder doing their own support who mostly wants a chat bubble on the site. We've set it against an AI-first setup in Hay.chat vs Crisp.

Acts or answers: neither on free.

Tidio#

Tidio lets you add up to ten agents on the free plan, which sounds great... until you see the cap: 50 billable conversations a month. You also get 50 conversations with Lyro, its AI agent, once. That allowance doesn't renew. Starter is $24.17 a month for 100 conversations, and Lyro is priced separately from $32.50 a month.

Best for: small e-commerce stores that want to try chat and an AI bot before committing. More on how Lyro works in Hay.chat vs Tidio Lyro.

Acts or answers: Lyro answers questions within that one-off allowance. On the free plan, nothing acts on your orders.

Chatwoot (cloud)#

Chatwoot's hosted Hacker plan is free for two agents and 500 conversations a month, live chat only, and it keeps 30 days of history. Captain AI, the help centre and the other channels start on the $19-per-agent Startups plan.

Best for: trying Chatwoot before you decide whether to self-host it. If you like it, the self-hosted edition below is where the real savings are.

Acts or answers: neither on free.

Free for Six Months: Freshdesk#

Freshdesk was the go-to answer for "free Zendesk alternative" for years. That's changed. As of November 2026, Freshdesk's public pricing page lists three paid plans (Growth $19, Pro $55, Enterprise $89 per agent a month, billed annually) and a 14-day trial. No free plan.

What still exists is the Freshdesk Free Program. Freshworks' own support article says you can use it "at no cost for 6 months with a limited agent seat (two)", and that it's for Freshdesk only, not Freshdesk Omni. To make it more confusing, one of Freshworks' comparison pages still talks about a forever-free plan for two agents. We went with the pricing page and the support article, because those are what you'll actually be held to.

On paid plans, Freshdesk's Freddy AI Agent comes with 500 free sessions once per account, then costs $49 per 100 sessions. That's at least a predictable unit, which is more than you can say for a lot of per-resolution pricing.

Best for: teams who want something that feels like Zendesk, and who are fine paying after six months.

Acts or answers: neither in the free programme.

Self-Hosted and Open Source: Is It Really Free?#

The download costs nothing, and the running costs are paid in someone's time. If you've got someone who's comfortable with Docker or a PHP stack, these three are the real "$0 forever" options, and they have no seat limits.

Chatwoot Community Edition#

Chatwoot is the modern one: a shared inbox for live chat, email and social channels, released under the MIT licence. The Community Edition is $0 and Chatwoot calls it "free forever". What you don't get is Captain AI or custom roles, which start on Premium Support at $19 per agent a month, or SLA policies and SSO, which sit in the paid Enterprise Edition. It feels closer to Intercom than to Zendesk. We wrote a fuller Hay.chat vs Chatwoot comparison if you're weighing them up.

osTicket#

osTicket is the old reliable. Its own site calls it "completely free", it's GPL-2.0, and it runs on PHP and MySQL, including on Windows with IIS, which is rare in this list. It's email-first, it looks its age, and there's no AI. If you want a plain ticket queue that does exactly what it says, it's hard to beat on price.

FreeScout#

FreeScout is a free, AGPL-licensed help desk that'll feel familiar if you've used Help Scout. The core is free. Extras such as workflows, satisfaction ratings, WhatsApp and Telegram come as modules, each sold as a lifetime licence for one install. The AI Integration module is listed as free, but you bring and pay for the AI provider yourself.

What self-hosting actually costs#

Budget for a server, backups, upgrades, security patches and the person who does them. Somebody also has to be on call when the inbox stops receiving email on a Saturday. For a team with an engineer who enjoys this, it's a fair trade. For a team without one, "free" turns into a slow drain on the one technical person you have. Our post on open source helpdesk software goes deeper on hosted versus self-hosted. Hay.chat's code is source-available too, so you can self-host Hay.chat if you'd rather run everything yourself.

What None of the Free Plans Do#

Look back at the AI on the free plan column. Mostly "none". Where AI exists at all, it answers a question from your help articles.

That's fine for "what are your opening hours". It's no help with "I need to change the address on order 4471 before it ships", and that's the kind of ticket that fills a Zendesk queue in an online store. Someone still has to open Shopify, find the order, change it and reply. A free helpdesk makes that ticket cheaper to hold, and the work is exactly where it was.

It's also why the 2023 forecasts about AI replacing a big share of support agents haven't played out. In October 2025 Gartner surveyed 321 customer service and support leaders and found only about a fifth had actually reduced agent staffing because of AI. Gartner now predicts that by 2027, half the companies that cut staff because of AI will hire people back for similar work. Emily Potosky, Senior Director of Research in Gartner's Customer Service and Support practice, put it plainly: "AI simply isn't mature enough to fully replace the expertise, empathy, and judgment that human agents provide."

My read: AI that only answers moves the easy questions off the queue and leaves the transactional ones there. Those are the tickets that eat the time. The useful question for any tool, free or paid, is how many issues get resolved without a human touching them (your first contact resolution rate), rather than how many were deflected to an article.

Lighter Zendesk AI Alternatives for an Ecommerce Store#

If Zendesk's AI agents feel heavy for an online store, there are two ways out. Keep Zendesk and swap the AI for one that runs on it, or move to a lighter tool that has its own AI. Either way, check what the bill counts, because every vendor counts something different.

On Zendesk itself, each plan includes 5 or 10 automated resolutions per agent a month. After that, each one costs $1.50 if you commit up front or $2.00 pay-as-you-go, on top of seats (as of November 2026). For a small store with a few hundred AI conversations a month, that per-resolution charge is most of the AI bill. Our Zendesk pricing breakdown has worked totals.

Hay.chat counts a resolution when the AI resolved the conversation by following your rules, and any action it sent for your approval counts as one, whatever you decide.

Fin on Zendesk#

Fin, Intercom's AI agent, connects to an existing Zendesk instance and works across Zendesk tickets and messaging. When a person is needed, it escalates to a Zendesk agent with the conversation history, and its activity is logged in Zendesk, so your reports keep working. Our Intercom Fin alternatives post sets it against nine other AI agents, and Hay.chat vs Fin is the side-by-side.

• Who it suits: stores that like Zendesk as a helpdesk but want a different AI on it.
• Price (November 2026): $0.99 per outcome, with a minimum of 50 outcomes a month.
• Drawback: you still pay Zendesk seats, and the per-outcome bill grows with your volume.

eesel AI#

eesel AI adds AI on top of the helpdesk you have, and its pricing page names Zendesk and Freshdesk among its integrations. It bills in credits rather than resolutions.

• Who it suits: stores staying on Zendesk that want the AI from a separate vendor.
• Price (November 2026): Teammate from $299 a month for 500 credits. A ticket or chat is 1 credit, however long, and extra credits are $0.80 each.
• Drawback: $299 is the entry point, so it's a step up for a very small store.

Hay.chat#

This is our product, so weigh this entry accordingly. Hay.chat isn't free, so it's not in the free table. It's an AI agent that works alongside Zendesk and calls Zendesk tools, and it also runs as the AI on a Chatwoot inbox (cloud or self-hosted), handing conversations back to your team when it should. So a free Chatwoot install plus Hay.chat is a real setup: a free inbox, and paid AI that does the work. If you'd rather keep your current desk, here's how AI agents that work alongside your helpdesk compare.

With Shopify connected, for example, the AI can look up an order, check its tracking, change where an undispatched order ships, or cancel and refund it, and cancellations and refunds wait for your approval by default.

• Who it suits: online stores on Shopify or WooCommerce whose Zendesk queue is mostly order status, address changes, cancellations and refunds.
• Price (November 2026): a 30-day free trial from sign-up with no card, then flat monthly plans from €50 with 500 resolutions included, and no per-seat fee. See pricing.
• Drawback: it isn't a helpdesk, so you keep Zendesk or Chatwoot for the tickets your team handles. It connects one Shopify store per workspace, and it has no SOC 2 or other certification.

Three guardrails worth knowing. Refunds, cancellations and discounts wait for your approval by default. Below a confidence threshold, it hands the chat to a person instead of guessing. And you can switch on reply approval so every AI reply waits for a human to OK it before it goes out. That's probably the sensible way to start. If you want to see how it compares with Zendesk's own AI, we've put that in Hay.chat vs Zendesk AI.

Start a 30-day free trial, no card needed

Gorgias AI Agent#

Gorgias is a Shopify-first helpdesk with its AI Agent on every plan. It bills per automated interaction past the plan's allowance, and each interaction also counts as a ticket. If you're weighing the two desks, read Gorgias vs Zendesk for Shopify. The AI comparison is in Hay.chat vs Gorgias.

• Who it suits: Shopify stores ready to move off Zendesk to a desk built for ecommerce.
• Price (November 2026): Basic is $60 a month on monthly billing, with 300 tickets and 30 automated interactions. After that, AI Agent interactions are $1.00 each on monthly plans or $0.90 on annual plans.
• Drawback: you move off Zendesk to Gorgias's own helpdesk, and every AI interaction also uses a ticket from your allowance.

Tidio Lyro#

Lyro is Tidio's AI agent, sold as a stand-alone product apart from the Tidio chat plan. Tidio becomes your inbox, so this is a move away from Zendesk rather than an add-on to it. More in Hay.chat vs Tidio Lyro.

• Who it suits: chat-first stores with modest AI volume that want a cheap way in.
• Price (November 2026): Starter is $24.17 a month for 100 conversations. Lyro starts at $32.50 a month for 50 Lyro conversations. Tidio's page lists bigger Lyro tiers without a price on each.
• Drawback: the chat plan and the Lyro packs are billed apart, so you're watching two allowances.

When Free Stops Being Enough#

Free plans are a good start and a bad place to stay too long. You've outgrown yours when one of these happens:

• You hit the real limit before the seat cap. Help Scout's 100 contacts, Tidio's 50 conversations and Crisp's 100 profiles go first. If you're turning customers away from chat at month-end, you've outgrown it.
• You need a second channel. Zoho Desk's free plan is email, Chatwoot Cloud's is chat. The moment you want both in one queue, you're on a paid plan somewhere.
• You need SLAs or automation. None of the free hosted plans give you real automation rules.
• Your Freshdesk clock runs out. Six months goes fast.
• The same five tickets keep coming back. If a big share of your queue is order status, address changes, cancellations and refunds, a bigger helpdesk won't fix it. An AI that can take those actions will.

When you do upgrade, the number to watch is how the bill grows. Per-seat plus per-resolution pricing (Zendesk at $1.50-$2.00, Help Scout at $0.75, Intercom's Fin at $0.99, which our Intercom pricing guide breaks down) gets expensive in exactly the months you're busiest. A flat plan with resolutions included is easier to budget for.

Ready to Take the Routine Tickets Off the Queue?#

Keep the free helpdesk if it works for you, and add the part it can't do. Hay.chat starts at €50 a month with 500 resolutions included, and the first 30 days are free with no credit card. Refunds and cancellations wait for your approval by default, so you can watch it handle real order and refund tickets and decide from there. If you're weighing Fin too, our Intercom Fin alternatives post prices ten AI agents side by side.

Start your free trial

Sources#

All vendor pages checked 3 November 2026.

• Zendesk: pricing and Zendesk for Startups
• Fin: pricing and Fin for Zendesk
• eesel AI: pricing
• Gorgias: pricing
• Zoho Desk: pricing
• HubSpot: Service Hub pricing and help desk software
• Jira Service Management: pricing
• Help Scout: pricing
• Crisp: pricing
• Tidio: pricing
• Chatwoot: cloud pricing, self-hosted plans and GitHub repository
• Freshdesk: pricing and Understanding Freshdesk pricing, plans and subscription management (modified 28 January 2026)
• osTicket: osticket.com and GitHub repository
• FreeScout: freescout.net, modules and GitHub repository
• Gartner: press release, 3 February 2026, with quotes as reported by ITNews Asia, 25 February 2026