"Whenever I read something like this I can't help but think "Here's a potential customer to whomever can get this right and at the right price". It seems like there's still a huge opening in this market for someone to come in and take all of ZenDesk and eSupport's customers." —megamark16
I’m so upset at this. Not anything about Freshworks. But just how disappointed I am in Zendesk.
1) when I started my own niche electron app I paid for Zendesk and the SOBs put a limit of like 2MB on attachments. So users would email large screenshots and I’d have to ask the user to email to me directly. I contact Zendesk about this and got a “sorry” shrug and something like “we can support this but you must upgrade to the 10x cost plan.”
Sometime in the last year they relaxed that, so that’s nice.
2) I’m a solo Dev. I’m hiring my first part time support folks. I want to automatically assign a ticket to me so I can assign to them. Sorry, it’s going to cost me another $600+ year to do that.
I mean, c’mon. I get it. But to go from $5/month to $40x3/month is just not a fun experiment.
>Enter market, disrupt, get fat and lazy, raise prices, drop quality
Exactly this. But, it's funny how a brand's image sticks. I selected Zendesk for a business I ran years ago. And it was the slow-boiling frog experience, where it takes time to ultimately realize the rift between where you started and where you are. But we hobbled along due mainly to switching friction.
Still, I instinctively reached for them when evaluating support solutions recently, based on name and familiarity alone. But, with fresh eyes, it was immediately obvious that they were a complete nonstarter.
MailChimp's the same. They may not have ever been the lowest-priced solution, but time was they made it easy to get started and the value was there for a startup/small-biz. Now, they're trying to be quasi-enterprise with an over-priced bloated feature set.
These guys start disrupting by aiming for simplicity in a value-priced, pro-small customer offering. Then, in the pursuit of endless growth, they raise prices and become staunchly anti-customer in favor of their own economic objectives.
Would be nice to see companies continue to maintain their disposition to original customers and ethos, but pursue growth through new options that are truly optional and not subsidized by the entire user base. That, and adding new, complementary product lines that still retain that original ethos.
I work on ZenDesk all day every day, and it's the ONLY thing that I've fought to keep. As far as I'm concerned, it's awesome, and I think I'd only say that about maybe one other thing, GitHub. Of course, I don't pay for it, but it does what I want it to do, it functions perfect for what I need, and I can't say that about many other things. I don't think anything has happened to it, been a happy user for 7 years now.
Last 2 companies I worked at, we used zendesk for support tickets, and the support folks were pretty happy with it. However pricing is definitely an issue - at both these companies us engineers did not have individual zendesk accounts as it was deemed too expensive. So we couldn't check the ticket ourselves for details. Jira-zendesk integration mitigated this to some extent though.
Why not full Jira? Jira Service Desk + Jira Software, because as long as things are tickets, even if you are not an “agent”, you can still see the JSD tickets.
We tried fresh desk, but left disappointed. We now use Zammad, written in ruby by one of the lead devs of otrs, which used to be awesome before it went closed source (ish).
unlimited users and agents for the cost of a $5 a month VPS
We just started using freshdesk to field support calls a few weeks ago and I love it. The ability to update tickets with notes or direct communication with the user who logged the ticket is just nothing short of a miracle. Fantastic product.
Recent and related:
Freshworks (previously Freshdesk) files for IPO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732 - March 2011 (92 comments)
I believe, this is that comment:
"Whenever I read something like this I can't help but think "Here's a potential customer to whomever can get this right and at the right price". It seems like there's still a huge opening in this market for someone to come in and take all of ZenDesk and eSupport's customers." —megamark16
Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt (2010), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358398
Congratulations on a reverse-BrandonM, Mark.
This is offtopic but I think people need to realize that BrandonM's comment has been unfairly characterized.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275
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I’m so upset at this. Not anything about Freshworks. But just how disappointed I am in Zendesk.
1) when I started my own niche electron app I paid for Zendesk and the SOBs put a limit of like 2MB on attachments. So users would email large screenshots and I’d have to ask the user to email to me directly. I contact Zendesk about this and got a “sorry” shrug and something like “we can support this but you must upgrade to the 10x cost plan.”
Sometime in the last year they relaxed that, so that’s nice.
2) I’m a solo Dev. I’m hiring my first part time support folks. I want to automatically assign a ticket to me so I can assign to them. Sorry, it’s going to cost me another $600+ year to do that.
I mean, c’mon. I get it. But to go from $5/month to $40x3/month is just not a fun experiment.
What happened to ZenDesk? (And I mean that literally, not a rhetorical question)
I remember when they were the breath of fresh air in terms of online support, the disruptor.
Did they get worse? (Apart from prices increase) or did the expected standards increase and pass them by?
Classic cycle. Enter market, disrupt, get fat and lazy, raise prices, drop quality, create space for next organism.
Circle of life.
>Enter market, disrupt, get fat and lazy, raise prices, drop quality
Exactly this. But, it's funny how a brand's image sticks. I selected Zendesk for a business I ran years ago. And it was the slow-boiling frog experience, where it takes time to ultimately realize the rift between where you started and where you are. But we hobbled along due mainly to switching friction.
Still, I instinctively reached for them when evaluating support solutions recently, based on name and familiarity alone. But, with fresh eyes, it was immediately obvious that they were a complete nonstarter.
MailChimp's the same. They may not have ever been the lowest-priced solution, but time was they made it easy to get started and the value was there for a startup/small-biz. Now, they're trying to be quasi-enterprise with an over-priced bloated feature set.
These guys start disrupting by aiming for simplicity in a value-priced, pro-small customer offering. Then, in the pursuit of endless growth, they raise prices and become staunchly anti-customer in favor of their own economic objectives.
Would be nice to see companies continue to maintain their disposition to original customers and ethos, but pursue growth through new options that are truly optional and not subsidized by the entire user base. That, and adding new, complementary product lines that still retain that original ethos.
Can you cite specific problems with ZenDesk? Or name competitors that do things better?
Or are you making a general comment on software, not specifically ZenDesk?
2 replies →
I work on ZenDesk all day every day, and it's the ONLY thing that I've fought to keep. As far as I'm concerned, it's awesome, and I think I'd only say that about maybe one other thing, GitHub. Of course, I don't pay for it, but it does what I want it to do, it functions perfect for what I need, and I can't say that about many other things. I don't think anything has happened to it, been a happy user for 7 years now.
>I work on ZenDesk all day every day
>I'd only say that about maybe one other thing, GitHub
Curious: what's your job function that has you both "working on ZenDesk all day" and also using GitHub?
Are you using the Jira integration to track tickets/bugs?
2 replies →
Last 2 companies I worked at, we used zendesk for support tickets, and the support folks were pretty happy with it. However pricing is definitely an issue - at both these companies us engineers did not have individual zendesk accounts as it was deemed too expensive. So we couldn't check the ticket ourselves for details. Jira-zendesk integration mitigated this to some extent though.
Why not full Jira? Jira Service Desk + Jira Software, because as long as things are tickets, even if you are not an “agent”, you can still see the JSD tickets.
1 reply →
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
— Scott Farquhar
Did the CEO of Atlassian really say that? Isn’t that just a Batman quote? Did he apply it to Jira?
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We tried fresh desk, but left disappointed. We now use Zammad, written in ruby by one of the lead devs of otrs, which used to be awesome before it went closed source (ish).
unlimited users and agents for the cost of a $5 a month VPS
My god otrs is bad compared to any modern competitor.
I actually really like it still. It's a bit like vim, you have to learn it's quirks to get the most out of it
Related: http://ripoffornot.org/
Great news. Freshdesk is decent for a small startup looking to scale up support.
The login flow to Freshworks is and has been confusing since they rebranded. I hope they fix it and sensitive the spam filtering better!
We just started using freshdesk to field support calls a few weeks ago and I love it. The ability to update tickets with notes or direct communication with the user who logged the ticket is just nothing short of a miracle. Fantastic product.
(Edited typo)
I seem to be getting better at Indian-English-patois
>>> and has more than 2,000 employees and 1.5 lakh clients.
lakh = 100K
So please work out the total customers yourself. Revert back to me when you have the needful done.
we did it!
I found the Redditor