What Are The Best & SaaS & WordPress Helpdesk Ticketing Software Solutions in 2024?
Experience the Best SaaS Helpdesk Ticketing Software for WordPress in 2024 – Elevate your customer support with cutting-edge solutions!
Discover the future of customer support with our in-depth look at the best SaaS and WordPress Helpdesk ticketing software in 2024. Learn about cutting-edge features, seamless integrations, and enhanced user experiences revolutionizing customer service. Stay ahead of the curve and watch our video to explore how these tools can elevate your business’s support system.
#1 -LiveAgent
Prices Small $9 per month per agent | Medium $29 per month per agent | Large $49 per agent per month
#2 -Zendesk
Prices Suite Team $55 | Suite Growth $89 | Suite Professional $115
#3 – Freshdesk
https://www.freshworks.com/freshdesk
Prices Free | Growth $15 per agent per month | Pro $49 per agent per month
#4 – Help Scout
Prices Standard: $25 per user (25-user limit); Plus: $50 per user per month; Pro Annual Onl.
#5 – Zoho Desk
Prices Standard $14 per user per month | Professional $23 per user per month | Enterprises $40 per user per month
WordPress & Open Source Solutions
#6 – osTicket
Prices Free | Cloud $12 per user per month
#7 – Awesome Support
Prices Standard $149 | Pro $229 | Enterprise $289
#8 – SupportCandy
Prices Personal $79 | Professional $149 | Agency $299
#9 – Help Scout Desk
#10 – Fluent Support
Single Site License Prices $103 | Agency $199 | Enterprise $319
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 80. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the best SaaS and WordPress help desk ticketing software. In 2024, if you have a membership website of any size, you will soon find that you have to deal with support tickets, student tickets, and having a central place where they can put those tickets and where you and the people who work for you can manage, will become quite essential. But some of these solutions can be very pricey, but we’ve got some other solutions that are very cost-effective. To discuss this important and interesting subject, I’ve got my regular but special guest, Haroon. Haroon, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?
[00:01:34.470] – Haroon Q. Raja
Certainly. Thank you, Jonathan. Regular and special reminded me of the show Sheep in the Big City, which had quite a lot of oxymorons in it. There was this general specific and this private public.
[00:01:46.970] – Jonathan Denwood
That about sums up life, doesn’t it?
[00:01:51.840] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah. So that’s who I am, the special regular. I’ve been working in the tech ecosystem for around two and a half decades with WordPress in specifically for around one and a half decades, actually, probably more than that. I have been there, done that, and worked with most of the tools in the ecosystem, and that puts me in a position to help my clients decide what works best for their use case. So that’s me.
[00:02:22.510] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to be looking at systems like Live Agent, Zendesk, Fluent Support, and a number of other WordPress. We can all combine it. It’s one of the strengths of this show, folks. We have an emphasis on WordPress, but we also look at the SaaS solutions as well and give you a broad outline of what the choices, the leading choices out there, are. It should be a great show. But before we get into the fine detail, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. As I said, we will be delving into this great subject, and you just listened to a couple of messages from the sponsors. And I just want to point out that we’re also offering a great new resource at the WP-tonic. Com website. We’re offering a course, a course that shows you how to build your membership website on WordPress using Lifter LMS and Cadence, plus a number of the leading WordPress tools. From beginning to end, it will guide you through the whole process. The course is only $49. It has over 20 lessons.
[00:03:50.690] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s fully featured, and it’s done by my colleague, Kirek. To get this great course that will show you how to build your membership website and website on WordPress, all you have to do is go over to Wp-tonic. Com/course, wp-tonic. Com/course, and you can sign up there. Also, I want to point out that if you do the course, in the end, you will get a coupon code for 50 % off your first year hosting with WP-Tonic. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s who you’re only going to get for that offer. But it’s a fantastic offer, is it not? Haroonn is nodding, so it must be good. So let’s go into… I thought we would start with the SaaS solutions first, and then in the second half, we go into the better subject of WordPress solutions. I’m only showing my biased listeners and views, but I’m very upfront about it. So Live Agent, let’s start with that. So first of all, would you like to give a quick intro of your own views about helpdesk solutions out there? What are your own observations before we go into the specifics, Arun?
[00:05:21.360] – Haroon Q. Raja
In my experience so far, helpdesk tools are one area where, for most people, In my opinion, a SaaS solution makes more sense than doing their own self-hosted WordPress-based solution. Because it’s one of those things that you probably don’t want to technically manage. It’s just something that you want to always be there, always be functional without the risk of you having to debug an issue and customers are trying to reach out to you through that channel or through of the channels supported by the tool. There’s some slowdown due to some issue with a plugin on the site, and they can’t reach you. I personally trust SaaS solutions more. Or you run a dedicated install that is not your main e-commerce site, then you run a bit of a separate SaaS type of installation of your own, but not on your main WordPress install. Not for every case, but I don’t recommend it to be on your WordPress install in most cases.
[00:06:32.200] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally agree with you because that’s how we’ve done it at WP-Tonic. We run it on a separate hosted WordPress install, and we just run it on its own, basically. That makes sense. Let’s start with the Pacific’s Live Agent. Do you know anything about this one?
[00:06:55.140] – Haroon Q. Raja
Oh, yes. I’ve used it for a very long time. Way back when they offered a lifetime deal on AppSumo. I grabbed one. Usually, 9 out of 10 of my AppSumo deals are what I don’t really end up using much. I’ve just stopped buying stuff from AppSumo lifetime deals. But this is one of those very few tools that have been a great, immense investment. It was just an impulse buy at like 49 or 59 bucks. It has saved me a lot of money in terms of not having a monthly SaaS subscription, not worrying about hosting. I’ve used it extensively, and I must say it does pretty much everything that I’ve ever needed a customer support solution, a help desk solution to do for me. I give it 10 out of 10 from my needs. But then, of course, everyone’s needs are different. For my needs, it’s been a 10 out of 10.
[00:07:59.730] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a Swiss army knife of chat and support because it also provides extensive chat agents and a number of other features. It’s a Swiss army knife of support and chat combined. Starts at $9 per month per agent. Medium is 29 per agent, and large is $49 per agent. And that’s why these systems can get… If you have… It’s okay if you’re just doing it on your own, probably. But if you start having other people helping you with support, which is the situation at WP tonic. I have two other people who help me with the support at WP-Tonic. It soon adds up, folks. But for what it offers, the amount of functionality compared to some of the other solutions, it’s one of the better-valued SaaS-based systems, especially if you bought the lifetime deal.
[00:09:11.310] – Haroon Q. Raja
Oh, yes. You just can’t beat that.
[00:09:15.450] – Jonathan Denwood
No, they’re all right. On to the next one, which I see as the granddaddy of SaaS support ticketing systems. It was the leader in it for a time, and it spawned a lot of competition. And that, Zendesk. What are your views on Zendesk, Haroonn?
[00:09:46.300] – Haroon Q. Raja
It’s considered as, as you mentioned, one of the big daddies, one of the top industry standards, if you will, and that’s for good reason. I mean, their offering is solid, it’s reliable, does everything you need it to do, but it can get quite costly. A lot of corporate sectors, it’s one of the first go-tos in the corporate sector, in the large business sector. But I personally wouldn’t use it because it’s more expensive compared to alternatives that do the job for me. But for many people, for many organizations, that difference It may not matter much. For some small organizations, that does matter. So yeah, solid tool does everything you need it to do, but then your mileage may vary based on the pricing you get, based on your particular business requirements from it.
[00:10:46.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I totally agree with what Haroonn has just said. It’s really aimed at the higher end to some really very slick UX design, a very polished system. The API integration directly with a number of other leading SaaS-based products is rock solid, and it’s Zappia. Integration is also pretty rock solid. If you thought Live Agent was expensive, Zendes makes Live Agent look cheap. It starts at the team level, at $55 per month per agent agent. Growth is $89 per agent, and professional, wait for it, folks is $115 per agent. But I suppose if you got to that level, you must be pretty happy with the value that you’re getting. So it is a rock solid solution, but a pricey one. Would you agree with that?
[00:11:58.400] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah, go on. I agree. Even The entry-level plan is worth it when you consider the sheer number of integrations if you are going to use a lot of those integrations, and if you’re going to see the robust email chat, voice, social, and lots of omnichannel support. Their omnichannel support is one of the best in the industry and integrates with most channels out there.
[00:12:21.690] – Jonathan Denwood
What you got to understand, folks, if you have… There’s integrations and there’s integrations. Because a SaaS company says it’s got a direct integration with another SaaS product, it doesn’t mean it’s any good. You don’t have that problem in general with Zendesk. Normally, the integrations do what they say they’re going to do. Obviously, that’s a two-edged sold because obviously, it could be the company that Zendesk is trying to integrate with, and that’s one of the problems, or you’re relying on separate SaaS companies. But there we go. On to the next one, which I utilized because it offers a really great free product, and that’s Freshdesk. What’s your views on Freshdesk?
[00:13:14.740] – Haroon Q. Raja
So I think they started off in the name itself. It was like a fresh new take on Zendesk, which was getting a bit dated in the UI before they did a lot of updates back in the day when Freshdesk was starting. It was like a fresh new alternative to Zendesk, and they wanted it to be more entry-level friendly. Their pricing was better. They offered a free plan, and even their paid plans, a lot cheaper compared to Zendesk. For those organizations which were like modern startups with a tight budget without a lot of funding who wanted a solution and they couldn’t afford Zendesk, or it was way too corporate for them, Freshdesk was the go-to. It does a pretty good job at that.
[00:14:00.740] – Jonathan Denwood
So we used it when I started off. I had the free program. The free program is not crippled, but it has some strong limitations because obviously, I want you to upgrade to the paid version. One of the One of the major, major drawbacks of the free program is you can’t add any custom fields to the free program. We would get endless tickets when somebody said, I got a problem with my website. Can you help? Can you do a freebie for me? It had nothing to do with the hosting, it’s something else. But they wouldn’t give us the URL of the website. I’ve got hundreds of hosted clients. My memory is not that good. So I had to upgrade, and then more people joined my support team, and we were paying, ended up we were paying about 500. The UX design is nothing compared to Zendesk. It’s not terrible, but it is no shape or form as polished as Zendesk. I am a UX snob, but in functionality, that doesn’t matter. Compared to some of the leaders that we’re going to discuss in the SaaS platform, it’s pretty good value. The three is It’s like $15 per month per agent, and that’s the growth.
[00:15:36.060] – Jonathan Denwood
And then the pro is $49 per month, which isn’t cheap. The $15 compared to Zendesk and some of the others. Live agent obviously starts at $9, so there’s a considerable… But they don’t offer a free program, so you can see where this is going. You really got to look at what you really need at the beginning, and we can’t do that, but it’s great. I’ve used it myself. I would have no problem recommending it. On to another big leader. I think it’s either the biggest or the next big is Zendesk. And a lot of SaaS companies use this themselves, startup SaaS, and that’s Help Scout. What do you think of Help Scout?
[00:16:34.660] – Haroon Q. Raja
You would probably have a hard time choosing between Help Scout and Zendesk, to be honest, because they’re so competitive.
[00:16:42.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s the price that makes that easy It’s weird, doesn’t it?
[00:16:47.190] – Haroon Q. Raja
But in terms of feature set, I think Zendesk is a bit ahead of Help Scout. Well, maybe quite a bit ahead of Help Scout for certain very niche features that a vast majority might not need. For the organizations that do need it, it might be a deal breaker. It’s about making a list of every single thing you need and then seeing which is a better fit. But again, you simply can’t go wrong with it. Similar plans are comparatively cheaper on Help Scout compared to Zendesk.
[00:17:21.340] – Jonathan Denwood
About half, but they have user limits. User limit, yeah. When it comes to the UX design and the ease of use, because UX is not necessarily both joined at the hip because you can get a beautiful interface and it can be still extremely difficult to use. But in general, if they’ve spent a lot of money on the fit and finish of the interface. They’ve normally spent time working out the usability part as well, but not always, folks. But their standard plan starts at $25 per user with a 25 user limit, which isn’t bad because if you got up to 25 people in your support team, you shouldn’t be worrying it. And then the next one is $50 per user. And then I think they got a… That’s the plus plan. And then I think the pro plan, I think you got to ask them how much they’re going to rob you on that one. On to the next one, which is Zolodesk. Zolodesk has a lot of SaaS-based applications. It’s an Indian-based company. I’ve had dealings with them as a sponsor, and I know a few people in ZOHO. I actually use ZOHO CRM, and I’ve been using it for years, and I find it as a record, as my company’s digital hub, I find it works fine for me where I keep all my customer and business information in one place, and it’s been rock solid.
[00:19:13.720] – Jonathan Denwood
I understand from them that Zolodesk is one of their third most popular or second most popular application in North America. It’s solid. I think I think it’s very similar to Freshdesk in the way it looks. But the problem for them, and I was surprised when they said it was the person I was talking to is a very honest person, so I believed in when he said that this is their second most popular application, is they don’t offer a free version, I don’t think, and it starts at $14, which is very similar to Freshdesk, but Freshdesk their free product. You would have to look at the specifics to see. I think it is a fight. If you’re looking at Zolo, you’re going to be looking at Freshdesk. If you’re looking at Freshdesk, you’re probably looking at Zolo. What do you think, Haroonn?
[00:20:17.600] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah. Zoho is going to be a no-brainer if you are tied into their ecosystem already. If you’re using their CRM, then pair it with help desk, and it’s like a fully integrated solution by one vendor. You don’t need to worry about Zepier connections or third-party integrations. That’s a pretty good selling point. If you’re using their sales solution, their CRM. They have a plethora of SaaS offerings. If you’re already using a few of those, maybe their bookings and appointment scheduling service, their forms, their It’s a sales pipeline system. Any of those tools pair really, really well with it. That’s not to say it’s useless for paring with any third-party solution. They do offer you widgets that you can just embed in your site. I mean, it works. But it works better with their solutions, and it’s a no-brainer if you’re already using their solutions. That’s the point. The pricing is also pretty reasonable.
[00:21:24.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’re spot on there because I’m a WordPress person, I’m a a little bit isolated on purpose. I use Zolo Booking, which is their finance package, and that’s pretty good actually for what you get. I actually use Zolo Subscription, which is invoicing, which is invoicing as well. Some of their SaaS products aren’t that particularly good. Others, like Zolo, CRM that I’ve been using for years, it’s pretty rock solid. But the problem is there’s all types of CRM, folks, and as a digital hub, it works fine. But if you’re looking for marketing optimization, Zolo have that broken off into a separate product, and that separate product, which I’ve forgotten what it’s called, actually doesn’t work that well. And it integrates with Zolo CRM really well. But as a stand-alone marketing optimization product, it has a lot to desire. Based on my experience, other people would have a different view. And that is the crux of the problem when you’re dealing with Zolo products. Because I’m in WordPress, I just choose one that I I don’t think that WordPress offers a really great solution. And WordPress has some great CRM solutions. But if you’re looking for a CRM solution as your digital hub, not your marketing CRM, WordPress doesn’t offer a great solution, in my opinion.
[00:23:21.040] – Jonathan Denwood
So I waffled on there a bit, but I thought, hopefully… What do you reckon? Did I offer any value there, Haroonn, or was I just waffled?
[00:23:28.380] – Haroon Q. Raja
I agree.
[00:23:29.390] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Well, I’ve just said God agreed to me, so there we go. So let’s go on to the last one before we go for a break. And this is an Australian company. This was brought to my attention, Haroonn, by the owner of WP Fusion, because he wrote a really fantastic piece on his blog, and he really knows his stuff, and they get hundreds of support tickets every day. And I forgot which SaaS product he was using, but it was costing him arm and a leg, and they moved. But it’s interesting. This is an Australian company. I think it is Australian. It’s called OS Ticket. And they offer… That’s okay.
[00:24:14.540] – Haroon Q. Raja
Go on. There’s a kangoo in the logo itself, so it is pretty Australian.
[00:24:19.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it could be Kiwis, but normally it’s a Kiwi, isn’t it? I apologize to any New Zealand listeners. You don’t like being compared It’s Australian, so there we go. I wasn’t doing it out of spite. They do offer a free product, but you’re going to have to self-host it. It’s a typical Linux. You got to be somebody like Haroonn or a lesser degree, somebody like me that wants to do it. I wouldn’t have bothered. I’m either going to go the WordPress route or I’m going to go the SaaS route. But I was told by the owner of WP Fusion that it’s been rock solid for him, but he’s got the self-hosted solution. And then they provide a cloud solution at $12 per month, which I think if you’re going for the cloud, it’s a little bit pricey, actually. I think you might as well go Refresh Desk, actually, or go Zolo Desk. But I’ll be interested. You got any experience with this, Haroonn?
[00:25:38.570] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yes, I do. I’d compare it to… Os ticket is to help us solutions the way Motic is to marketing automation. Yes, that’s right. Or the way WordPress is for publishing. They have an open source, free and open source edition edition that you can download just the way MOTIC offers a free and open source edition that you can download and you install it on your own, VPS or cloud server or actual physical server. Then you just take care of the entire technical infrastructure and It costs you nothing. No per agent fee, no limitation on number of accounts to connect with it. It’s like yours. But you pay all of the hosting and technical maintenance fees if you hire someone for the technical maintenance or do it yourself. It’s a pretty good solution, very suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. For enterprise level, usually for enterprise support that most enterprise organizations need, large businesses need. It’s not meant for them, I guess. It’s meant for small and medium-sized businesses because enterprise level generally chooses to just pay a higher amount per user and get the corporate enterprise support that they need.
[00:27:05.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, they might be looking at itI agree. Because they’re all cutting back because things have become a bit tougher, aren’t they? So everybody’s looking at their budget, aren’t they?
[00:27:16.830] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah, true. When it comes to their cloud-hosted solution, at $12 per agent, it’s pretty close to $9 Dollar per agent of live agent, so competitive enough. But I’m not sure if I would go for this one, as Jonathan said, at that price point when it comes to their hosted solution.
[00:27:44.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the reason why I say that, Arun, is I might be wrong here because I didn’t study it enough. I did read the post on the WP Fusion because it was really interesting because at the time, I was looking at getting away with my I don’t own SaaS support ticketing system, but I decided to go with a WordPress plugin, which we’re going to discuss in the second half. It doesn’t make… But I think you just don’t get the integrations that you would get with Zendesk, or Help Scout, or some of those integrations with Alice. You’re not going to get that with their offering, and at that price, Because if you’re just looking for a ticketing system and these integrations, you don’t need them. But then it’s competitive. Other people would have a different opinion, wouldn’t they?
[00:28:47.600] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah. Their feature set is pretty good for a lot of small and medium-sized businesses. They give you unlimited custom fields, custom columns, and filters, and the whole topic management, like knowledge base part. Also, they’ve got a customer portal, which is customizable in the sense that if you’re using the free and open-source version, then you can customize it to your heart’s content. There are no limits that you can come across when using other SaaS platforms.
[00:29:25.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m really influenced by the owner of WP Fusion because I’ve known for a number of years and I’ve done business deals with him, and he’s a totally rock solid and trustworthy individual. He’s never welched on anything he’s promised me. And he really knows his stuff, and he’s done its praises, and he wasn’t getting any sponsorship or anything. So I would imagine it’s a pretty good product because of his endorsement, which when he induces things, I listen because he really knows his stuff. So, not much. Yeah, agreed. If he’s listening, he can send me the check next week, actually. That was a bit of English.
[00:30:15.440] – Haroon Q. Raja
Half to you, half to me. All right.
[00:30:19.960] – Jonathan Denwood
On we go. I think it’s time for us to have our break in the second half of the show. We will be talking about WordPress solutions. It should be a great second half. We will be back in a few moments, folks. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into the WordPress solutions, I I want to point out that the Membership Machine Show has a great WordPress Facebook group. It’s totally free. If you’ve got any questions about building a Membership website on WordPress, go here. We’ve got a great community of WordPress professionals and people like you building a great business on WordPress, a Membership business. Like I say, it’s called the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. Just do a search in Facebook and you’ll be able to join, and we love you to be part of the community. So on when we go on the WordPress. So we start off with awesome support. I haven’t used it myself, have you?
[00:31:30.170] – Haroon Q. Raja
I have, and back when I did try to use it, well, the last time I did try to use it, I had used it before with success for some client sites, but the last time when I tried to use it for one of my own projects, it wasn’t all that awesome, to be honest. My experience- Well, that’s the problem of calling it awesome support, isn’t it?
[00:31:53.020] – Jonathan Denwood
You are open to it. That was a terrible pun, actually, Haroon.
[00:32:00.000] – Haroon Q. Raja
The tool itself did the job that it was advertised to do. I wouldn’t say the tool itself was the problem. But then the support provided by their developers. Let’s say the support for awesome support wasn’t all that awesome. Forgive my puns, but the support I received for awesome support by their developers, they were not exactly responsive. At that time, the overall opinion of many seasoned people from the industry about them who had been using them in the past and who had been trying to use them lately was that they made a tool, they had it reach a certain level of success, and then at that stage, they were not really doing anything for it.
[00:32:56.440] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re frozen. Hopefully, you come back. Come come back, Haroonn. He’s frozen, folks, but hopefully, he will come back. Put some money into the slot machine. This is one of the things Haroonn is right about this, is that if the plugin developer-Hi, am I still there? Yeah, you come back.
[00:33:22.590] – Haroon Q. Raja
Sorry, there was a bit of a connection here.
[00:33:23.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you come back. Yeah, so I think… Yeah, go on.
[00:33:29.600] – Haroon Q. Raja
So I was saying a lot of other veterans from the industry were also of the same opinion that they built it, they brought it to a certain level of success, and now they were just milking that success and not really actively working on the tool anymore. There were some ownership There were a lot of changes as well in the mix, or maybe that was speculation, but they just weren’t being that responsive to their user base, which the user base didn’t like as much. Then many people moved on from this. This was 2018 or ’19. I heard afterwards that they did pace up development a bit, but back then the feature request queue had been just stagnant for over a year or so.
[00:34:12.540] – Jonathan Denwood
All right, let’s move on before I I’m not getting a letter from. Support Candy, love the name.
[00:34:18.960] – Haroon Q. Raja
I’ve never used it. We didn’t discuss the pricing.
[00:34:22.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yes, thank you. It’s standard for awesome support. The price is 149. They’ve got a Pro at 229, and then it got enterprise at 289. That’s a bit strange. You got pro at 229, and then you’ve only got a slight jump to enterprise. I guess I got the wrong price, but I don’t normally make.
[00:34:44.440] – Haroon Q. Raja
You have the right price? There’s only a small feature set difference. Satisfaction, survey, private credentials, and documentation, these are only the three features that are different. Otherwise, the rest of the features are exactly the same.
[00:34:58.600] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. So Let’s go on. Love the name, but don’t know much about it. Support Candy. I do like the name, though. Ghani, have you used Support Candy at all?
[00:35:08.330] – Haroon Q. Raja
No, this one I haven’t had the chance to use so far. I’ve looked at it. I just didn’t come across That’s the situation where I had to use it. But the offering seems pretty solid.
[00:35:21.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. The prices are personal, 79, professional, 149, and agency, 299, which seems a bit more logical. And the personal at 79 is half the… Well, not quite half price, but substantially cheaper than Awesome Support. But I would imagine that so Awesome Support had more functionality. So you’re just going to have to look to see. But I haven’t used them. So let’s go on to another one. And I don’t know how they’re getting away with this, actually. Help Scout Desk. I don’t know how they got away with that name, actually. They must have got a cease and descease letter, wasn’t they? They must be based abroad, mustn’t they? Because how can they get away with using that name? Have you utilized this at all?
[00:36:28.710] – Haroon Q. Raja
I haven’t actually, but it seems that it’s probably-Do you have to use help desk? Yeah. I think it’s an integration plugin between Help Scout and WordPress. I haven’t had the occasion to actually use them.
[00:36:54.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Because it isn’t that particularly clear on their website, is it?
[00:36:58.750] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah, but they do say WordPress plus Help Scout, and they also say WordPress Heart Help Scout. So either it’s an integration between WordPress and Help Scout that they’re offering as a WordPress plugin, which seems quite likely to be the case, or I don’t know how they’re getting away with it.
[00:37:21.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I still don’t know how they’re getting away with it. Unless Help Scout has said, Oh, we got no intention of building our own WordPress We’re happy to let you provide the integration. So let them add it. Because they got a couple of endorsements. They got an endorsement from Mike.
[00:37:47.170] – Haroon Q. Raja
Actually, sorry to interrupt. It does seem like a WordPress native integration for Help Scout, which brings you a lot of features of Help Scout within WordPress without having to manually add their widgets and all. It gives you a plugin to integrate more strongly with the WordPress ecosystem. Yeah.
[00:38:12.250] – Jonathan Denwood
So that makes sense. I can totally understand because it starts at a one-site license at 49.99. They do do a multi-site license that would appeal to our agency. But because utilizing is the similar with Zolodesk and Freshdesk, they do provide widgets and that for WordPress, but then they tend to be dog ugly and pretty limited in functionality. And a lot of the time, they’re not worth the bother, are they, Haroonn? So a lot of people who… And Help Scout is very popular in the startup, medium-size business area, and a lot of those companies is have a WordPress website and integrate and not use in some crummy integration solution. This is attractive.
[00:39:14.440] – Haroon Q. Raja
One more thing I’ll add about these guys. I didn’t notice that earlier, but I just noticed they’re the ones behind a relatively popular help It’s a built plugin for WordPress called Help Scout. So they are also behind the free plugin. All right. Yeah, on WP. Org repository. It’s wordpress. Org/plugin-help-scout.
[00:39:44.980] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s amazing. You can find your little niche in the world of 43 plus, of the whole websites of the world. You can find your little corner, can’t you? To make a reasonable living, can’t you?
[00:39:58.670] – Haroon Q. Raja
I agree.
[00:39:59.350] – Jonathan Denwood
There you On to the last one, and the one that we use at WP Tonic. And it’s from a great plugin shop. We use Fluent Support, and I’ve been very happy with it, and it’s got a nice interface. The people behind it, the founder is a great guy, A very generous individual, and he knows how to do business the right way. And he’s also the guy behind Fluent Booking, which we use to and we provide to our hosting customers. And he’s also that him and his company are the people behind Fluent CRM, which is really fantastic, folks. It’s, I would say, better than an active campaign in some ways, but for, I would say, the majority of people, it provides just as equal functionality as active campaign, and they’ve kept improving it. But I’ve been really happy with this. I don’t know What are your thoughts about this, Haran?
[00:41:19.600] – Haroon Q. Raja
If you are to use a self-hosted WordPress-based help desk solution, help and support solution, you don’t need to look further. This is the plugin for it.
[00:41:29.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s got a nice… The thing about him and his team is they normally do reasonably good interface design, don’t they? It’s normally reasonably polished, isn’t it?
[00:41:44.490] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yes. The feature set is also pretty impressive for a self-hosted plugin-based solution within WordPress, and the pricing is also very, very reasonable.
[00:41:56.530] – Jonathan Denwood
I know you… I think you utilize another CRM, but I think they’re really dominating the WordPress native CRM market now. Would you agree with that?
[00:42:10.540] – Haroon Q. Raja
Completely agree. The other one really need to up their game to compete with these guys now.
[00:42:17.920] – Jonathan Denwood
I think Jetpack and Automatic have tried to get in this, but I don’t think it compares anything to floor.
[00:42:26.420] – Haroon Q. Raja
No, we’re close. That one doesn’t even come close to the other one, Groundhog. That one is way far behind. That one used to be called 0BS CRM before Automatic purchased it and made it Jetpack CRM. Even back then, it had nothing on either Groundhog or Fluent CRM. It was way behind.
[00:42:48.060] – Jonathan Denwood
The price is for one site, single site, it’s $103, unlimited agents. Agency, I think that’s up to 50 It’s 199, or it could be lower than that. And then they got enterprise at 319. These are not ridiculous prices for what you’re getting, I like to say. And the other thing, the company behind it, they do fluent forms. If you’re hiring a developer and you’re doing something very complicated, you’re probably going to be looking at Gravity forms. And which is still a good solution, especially if you’re doing some detailed custom work. But in general, if you’re not in that particular area and you’re just looking for general functionality, the free and also the Pro version of Fluent Forms, I think, is the best, especially the free for what you get. And you just get added level of functionality with the Pro. And that’s part of that additional functionality is how it can integrate with their other products, especially the Fluent CRM. So they’ve got one of the most powerful, I think it’s In the general form market with the Proviso Gravity Forms, and I’ve been with Gravity Forms for years, and I have a grandfather playing with them, and I just it, and that’s that.
[00:44:34.220] – Jonathan Denwood
But compared to the other big players in the form market, I think Fluent Forms, which then integrates with Fluent Support, is one of the top form solutions out there. Would you agree with that?
[00:44:49.680] – Haroon Q. Raja
I agree, except that in my personal experience, I’ve used fluent, I’ve used Gravity, but ever since I’ve used WS WS Form Pro, I’ve been hooked. Nothing else comes close. I’ve stopped using Gravity at all. Fluent is still, I would call it probably the second best or tie it along with Gravity Form for the second best, but the top crown has been taken away by WS Form Pro.
[00:45:17.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Nothing else comes close. I would never use it because I’ve had some difficulties with the owner of that particular plugin, and I wouldn’t, not in its functionality yet, but I I would be reluctant to use it and recommend it to a client, Aaron. I leave it at that because I don’t want to get sued, but that’s been my personal experience. Totally different attitudes to the people behind the Fluent. The owner of the Fluent plugin and his team are rock solid people. My business dealings with them, they’ve always treated me totally upfront and extremely fair rarely. I can only talk about my personal experiences with different companies and different owners.
[00:46:10.610] – Haroon Q. Raja
Agreed. We have different experiences with different companies and different owners. Yeah, Yeah.
[00:46:15.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Shall we end this? What are your final thoughts? When it comes to SaaS, if you’re committed to utilizing SaaS and don’t listen to our advice that you should utilize WordPress, which of the SaaS that we talked about would you recommend to a client?
[00:46:36.930] – Haroon Q. Raja
Well, again, it will depend on their specific needs. But for most small and medium-sized businesses, a live agent is the best choice. It would be my de facto choice. But if they have very specific needs that another tool fulfills better, then they can’t go wrong with that either.
[00:46:58.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I agree. I would either have a live agent or a fresh desk myself. They’re the two for that small—to medium-sized company.
[00:47:10.540] – Haroon Q. Raja
For a large organization, if budget is no issue, then hands-down Zendesk.
[00:47:15.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. You’re not going to go wrong with the Zendesk, are you? Because they’re going to be looking at integrating with other SaaS-based products, and they’re going to be looking at reliability and rock solid functionality, and that’s what they’re going to get from Freshdesk. When it comes to WordPress, I think there’s only one, and that’s Fluent Support, isn’t it?
[00:47:44.850] – Haroon Q. Raja
I wouldn’t totally discount Support Candy. I just haven’t used it myself yet, so I’m not in a position to give a yay or negative verdict on that one, which is pretty rare in our sessions because usually all of the tools that we review in our sessions are what I’ve actually used in one way or the other. But this one I haven’t. But it looks solid. I would actually consider giving it a try for probably the next client project that comes up that requires something like this.
[00:48:16.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but it’s just all the integrations with the Allergrade products. We’re a big supporter of Fluent, and we offer a lot of their products as of our hosted bundle. This is because membership, having a CRM, and having effective marketing optimization are quite important. And we provide the Fluent Pro form plugin, the Fluent CRM. Then they brought out something that I was praying for an effective online booking plugin with Fluent Booking. And I think that’s been a big success. We offer that as part, which links in with the CRM and the Fluent form in a great combination of three core functionalities for people looking for coaching or membership websites. That’s why I’m such a big supporter of them.
[00:49:15.570] – Haroon Q. Raja
And add to it Fluent SMTP, the Free SMTP plugin.
[00:49:18.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, that’s free, but that’s also a bedrock plugin product. So they really got a strong, really strong library of plugins around the marketing. So they’re broadening it out, but they have got some linkage, some synergy, haven’t they? How they’ve expanded out in areas that they do. So they’re not built with one plugin. It’s in a totally different area of their core competence, which you get with a lot of plugins and multiple plugin shops. You can have them They can buy something like the chocolate factory is notorious. He’ll buy anything from it, any sector. And there’s no real signal linkage. They’re from one area to the other, where we’re fluent. They’ve broadened their library, but you can see some synergy. Would you agree with that?
[00:50:20.520] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yes, I agree.
[00:50:22.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. It’s been great. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. I think we’ve offered some great value, and Haroonn has been fantastic. So Haroonn, What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and maybe have a chat with you?
[00:50:36.140] – Haroon Q. Raja
They can visit hqraja.com, which is my website. There, they can reach out to me using the form.
[00:50:47.270] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. If you want to book a quick chat with me and get some advice about your present or future membership website, you can go to the WP-Tonic website and book a free consultation with me, or you can just join the Membership Machine Show Facebook group and you can get some great advice and free support on that platform. We will be back next week with either a great interview or I have one of my special regular guests joining us. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. Oh, bloody.
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