Freshdesk alternative
A Freshdesk alternative for small teams
Freshworks’ prices are low, but a team that sells, supports and takes calls buys three products and pays three per-person prices, with call minutes billed on top. ContactRoll is one product with one price per person, and calls billed by Twilio at its own rates.
Freshdesk and ContactRoll, need by need
Freshdesk is the help desk from Freshworks, which sells its CRM and marketing tools (Freshsales Suite) and its phone system (Freshcaller) as separate products, each priced per user. [1]
| What a small team needs | Freshdesk | ContactRoll |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts, companies and a deals pipeline | Freshsales Suite: contacts, accounts and deals on every plan. [2] | Every plan, Free included; Free has one pipeline. |
| Support email as cases in a shared queue | Freshdesk: tickets and a shared inbox on every plan. [1] | Every plan, Free included: each email opens a case anyone can take. Free has one support address of your own. |
| Knowledge articles and a public help center | Freshdesk Growth and up: a customer portal and knowledge base. [1] | Every plan, Free included. |
| Calls in the browser, with recording and transfer | Freshsales Suite’s built-in phone, with recording and transfer from Growth, paid with phone credits; or Freshcaller, priced per agent. [2][3] | Every plan, Free included, through your own Twilio account: call groups, voicemail, recording, hold and transfer. |
| A phone menu for callers | Freshcaller Pro and up (phone trees). [3] | Plus, from ready-made templates, with owner-first ringing and warm transfer. |
| Marketing email to about 2,000 people | Freshsales Suite: 500 marketing contacts on each paid plan; more from $100 a month for 5,000. [2] | Every plan: 500 marketing contacts and 500 emails a month on Free, 2,000 marketing contacts on Standard, 10,000 on Plus. |
| Automation | Freshdesk automations on every plan; Freshsales Suite workflows from Growth. [1][2] | Plus: automation flows. Standard and Plus: sequences started by what a customer does. |
| Roles and who sees what | Role-based access on every plan; custom roles in Freshsales from Pro. [1][2] | Every plan: nine ready-made roles and scopes. Plus: roles of your own. |
| An API and webhooks | Yes, from Growth. [2][3] | Plus. |
What it costs a team of five, and of ten
Freshsales Suite Growth for the CRM and marketing email, its marketing contacts add-on for 2,000 people, Freshdesk Growth for tickets and the knowledge base, and Freshcaller Pro for calling with a phone menu. List prices, per month, paid yearly, in US dollars, before tax.
| What the team buys | 5 people | 10 people |
|---|---|---|
| Freshsales Suite Growth, $9 a user [2] | $45 | $90 |
| Marketing contacts add-on, from $100 for 5,000 [2] | $100 | $100 |
| Freshdesk Growth, $19 an agent [1] | $95 | $190 |
| Freshcaller Pro, $39 an agent [3] | $195 | $390 |
| Freshdesk, about | $435 | $770 |
| ContactRoll Plus, $59 a person | $295 | $590 |
| ContactRoll Standard, $29 a person: the CRM, support cases, calling with call groups, recording and cold transfer, and marketing email to 2,000 | $145 | $290 |
Leaves out phone numbers ($1 a month for a US local number), outgoing minutes, recording ($0.0032 a minute) and incoming minutes past the 3,000 included, and taxes. ContactRoll’s calls are billed by Twilio to your own account, with no markup: for example, 2,000 minutes a month in the browser, half of them recorded, with one number, come to about $34 at Twilio’s published US rates (a call put on hold or transferred also pays Twilio’s conference minutes). Try your own numbers in the calling cost calculator.
For a team of 3 people or fewer, ContactRoll Free costs nothing: 1,000 contacts, one pipeline, one support address, calling through your own Twilio account, and 500 marketing emails a month (Free’s limits). Freshdesk has no free plan; it offers a 14-day trial. (Freshdesk’s pricing page, read .)
Where Freshdesk is strong
- Low entry prices: a CRM with deals from $9 a user and a help desk with a knowledge base from $19, paid yearly, and a free CRM tier. [1][2]
- Freddy AI agent sessions included on paid Freshdesk plans. [1]
- Freshcaller is a full contact-center product, with queue callback, monitoring and a large number of included incoming minutes. [3]
Switching from Freshdesk
In Freshdesk, export your contacts as a CSV file from the Customers tab; the agent who starts it gets a download link by email. [4]
In Freshsales, contacts, deals and accounts come out as a CSV file through an Analytics report. [5]
Then import the file into ContactRoll as a CSV file (save it as CSV first if it came out in another format). Each column is matched to a field by its name, and you can change any match before importing. ContactRoll shows, row by row, what the import would do before it writes anything, and people who unsubscribed stay unsubscribed.
Import your contacts from a CSV file walks through it, and the CSV contact cleaner merges repeated addresses first if your file has them.
Questions
Is ContactRoll a Freshdesk alternative?
For a small team that wants its help desk, CRM, calling and marketing email in one product with one price per person and calls billed by Twilio at its own rates, yes. Freshworks costs less per product, and sells each part separately.
Can I bring my Freshdesk contacts to ContactRoll?
Yes. Export your contacts from Freshdesk’s Customers tab as a CSV file and import it into ContactRoll, matching each column to a field. ContactRoll shows what every row will do before it writes anything.
Sources
Every Freshdesk figure above, with the page it was read from and the date. Prices change, so check Freshdesk’s own pages before deciding. Freshdesk and every other product named here are trademarks of their owners, named only to say which product is described.
- Freshworks, Freshdesk pricing: https://www.freshworks.com/freshdesk/pricing/, read 2026-10-14.
- Freshworks, Freshsales Suite pricing and comparison: https://www.freshworks.com/crm/suite/pricing/, read 2026-10-14.
- Freshworks, Freshcaller pricing, comparison and call rates: https://www.freshworks.com/freshcaller-cloud-pbx/pricing/, read 2026-10-14.
- Freshdesk Support, exporting contacts: https://support.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/227562-can-we-export-contacts-from-freshdesk-, read 2026-10-14.
- Freshworks CRM Support, how to export reports: https://crmsupport.freshworks.com/support/solutions/articles/50000003040-how-to-export-reports-, read 2026-10-14.