Freshdesk vs Hiver
A side-by-side comparison of Freshdesk and Hiver on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
8 of the 31 capabilities tracked on both differ, mostly in AI assist. Freshdesk starts at $19/seat/mo, Hiver at $25/seat/mo.
| Measure | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $19/seat/mo | $25/seat/mo |
| Charged per | Each agent seat | Each agent seat |
| AI billed at | $0.49 per AI session | $0.03 per minute |
| Included, where the other says no | 2 capabilities | 1 capability |
Capability by capability
8 of the 31 capabilities tracked on both products differ.
Channels
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Included | IncludedAll plans. "Connect inboxes from Google, Microsoft, Zoho, and more to manage customer emails efficiently." Hiver in Gmail requires a Gmail or Google Workspace account; Hiver Omni is provider-agnostic. | |
| Live chat | Not published | IncludedGrowth and above. Listed under Channels on the Hiver Omni comparison and named on the Growth card as part of Omnichannel. Includes a customisable widget, pre-chat form, chat templates, transcripts, message routing, offline settings, chat alerts and chat CSAT. |
| In-app messenger | Not published | NoLive chat is a website and app widget with a pre-chat form and offline contact form. Nothing in either comparison describes a persistent in-product messenger with outbound campaigns or product tours. |
| Voice | Not published | Paid add-onHiver Omni only, add-on on all three plans at $30 per voice seat per month with 1,000 pooled minutes and $0.03 a minute after. Not offered on Hiver in Gmail. |
| SMS | Not published | Paid add-onPart of the Voice add-on. The product navigation describes Voice as "Native voice and SMS support"; SMS has no row of its own in either plan comparison, so no separate gate is published. |
| Not published | IncludedUnknown. WhatsApp is named as a Hiver Omni channel in the pricing FAQ and on the security page, and appears as a component on the status page, but there is no WhatsApp row in the Channels section of either plan comparison, so no plan gate is published. | |
| Slack Connect | Not published | IncludedPro and above. Hiver calls it Slack channel: "Manage customer conversations from private and public Slack channels right from Hiver." That is Slack as an inbound support channel rather than Slack Connect specifically. A separate all-plans Slack integration handles internal alerts and discussion. |
| Community forum | IncludedPro and above. Forums are also included in the account XML export. | NoHiver ships a Help Center and a Customer Portal for submitting and tracking requests. Neither pricing page lists a community forum. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | Not published | IncludedAll plans, but quota'd: 2 Shared Inboxes on Growth, 5 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Send-from aliases are 1 per Shared Inbox on Growth and unlimited above it. |
| Ticket queues | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | IncludedAll plans. "Tickets Log any customer request as a ticket in one click." Routing, assignment, tags, custom views and a personalised agent view sit alongside it. |
| SLA policies | IncludedMultiple SLA policies require Pro. | IncludedPro and above. SLAs are named on the Pro card, along with SLA reports and SLA-based automations. |
| Business hours | IncludedPro $55 an agent and above. Not on Growth. | IncludedUnknown. Listed in the Analytics section as "Define your team's working hours so SLA and performance reports are more accurate" with no plan stated. |
| Macros / saved replies | Not published | IncludedAll plans, unlimited per account. Hiver calls them Email templates, and they are one of the objects the account export covers. |
| Side conversations | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | Not published |
| Custom fields | IncludedPro $55 an agent and above. Not on Growth. | IncludedAll plans, quota'd hard: 2 Custom Fields on Growth, 10 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Two fields is a real ceiling for anyone categorising beyond tags. |
| Custom objects | IncludedEnterprise $89 an agent only. | IncludedElite only. "Use your own data sets to power dynamic workflows instead of creating separate rules for every condition." Exports as CSV from the object's edit screen. |
| Ticket forms | IncludedPro $55 an agent and above. Not on Growth. | IncludedUnknown. Web Forms appear as a Channels row on the Hiver Omni comparison with no plan stated, and the June 2026 changelog lists Web Forms for Hiver in Gmail as still in testing. |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Skills-based routing | IncludedEnterprise. Intelligent routing arrives on Pro. | IncludedElite only. Named on the Elite card: route reimbursement emails to payroll specialists and so on. |
| Round-robin assignment | IncludedPro $55 an agent and above. Not on Growth. | IncludedUnknown. Round robin assignment and load balancing are Automations rows with no plan stated, though the per-plan automation quota applies to both. |
| Load balancing | IncludedPro $55 an agent and above. Not on Growth. | Not published |
| Triggers | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | IncludedAll plans, quota'd: 10 rule-based Automations per Shared Inbox on Growth, 20 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Scheduled, custom-field-based and app-based automations sit in the same section, as does making outbound API calls from an automation. |
| Workflow builder | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | Not published |
| Escalation rules | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | Not published |
AI resolution
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous resolution agent | IncludedAll plans. 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions included, then $49 per 100. Billed per session, not per resolution. | IncludedAll plans, and the comparison marks the AI Agents block "ALL PLANS" explicitly. "AI Agents Resolve requests end to end, analyze conversations, and automate customer operations." No allowance, cap, overage or per-resolution price is published for it anywhere. |
| Resolution over knowledge base | IncludedAll three plans, first 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions included, then $49 per 100 sessions. | Not published |
| Action-taking (API calls) | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "Looks up orders, issues refunds, and updates records across your systems." Hiver claims coverage of tools without APIs too: "If your humans can see it in a browser, our agent can too." |
| Handoff to human | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Part of Guardrails: "Decide when AI steps in, when it should hand off and set the bar for what needs human review." |
| Guardrails & citations | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Guardrails decide when AI steps in and when it hands off, observability shows every action taken across connected systems, and "Human in the loop Pauses for approval on actions you mark sensitive." |
| Multilingual AI | Paid add-onFreddy AI Copilot add-on ($29/agent/mo annual), Pro and Enterprise only. Live translation in 60+ languages. | Not published |
AI assist
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Reply drafting | Paid add-onFreddy AI Copilot add-on at $29 an agent a month billed annually, and only on Pro $55 and Enterprise $89. Not sold on Growth at any price. | IncludedAll plans. AI Copilot drafts replies, and AI Suggested Response returns "ready-to-send, contextual responses based on your connected knowledge sources". |
| Tone rewrite | Paid add-onFreddy AI Copilot add-on at $29 an agent a month billed annually, and only on Pro $55 and Enterprise $89. Not sold on Growth at any price. | IncludedAll plans. AI Compose "Polish and refine the tone, grammar, and structure of your replies." |
| Summarization | Paid add-onFreddy AI Copilot add-on at $29 an agent a month billed annually, and only on Pro $55 and Enterprise $89. Not sold on Growth at any price. | IncludedAll plans. AI Summarizer condenses long email threads; the Voice add-on adds AI call summaries. |
| Translation | Paid add-onFreddy AI Copilot add-on at $29 an agent a month billed annually, and only on Pro $55 and Enterprise $89. Not sold on Growth at any price. | Not published |
| Next-best-action | Paid add-onFreddy AI Copilot add-on at $29 an agent a month billed annually, and only on Pro $55 and Enterprise $89. Not sold on Growth at any price. | Not published |
| Auto-tagging | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "AI Tagging Automatically categorize all incoming emails by topic or type to improve routing and analytics." |
| Sentiment analysis | Paid add-onFreddy AI Copilot add-on at $29 an agent a month billed annually, and only on Pro $55 and Enterprise $89. Not sold on Growth at any price. | IncludedAll plans for AI Sentiment Analysis and sentiment reports. Customer Intelligence, which turns sentiment into account health and churn signals, is Elite only and marked Coming soon on the Hiver Omni comparison. |
AI voice
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Voice agent | NoNot on any plan. The three Freddy sections cover an email agent, a copilot and insights. Voice is Freshcaller, a separate product with its own bill. | Not published |
| IVR replacement | NoNot on any plan. The three Freddy sections cover an email agent, a copilot and insights. Voice is Freshcaller, a separate product with its own bill. | Not published |
| Real-time transcription | NoNot on any plan. The three Freddy sections cover an email agent, a copilot and insights. Voice is Freshcaller, a separate product with its own bill. | Not published |
| Call summarization | NoNot on any plan. The three Freddy sections cover an email agent, a copilot and insights. Voice is Freshcaller, a separate product with its own bill. | Paid add-onVoice add-on only, $30 per voice seat per month. Call recordings and transcripts are saved automatically and each call gets an AI-generated summary. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedAll plans. Portal customisation and article versioning require Pro. | IncludedGrowth and above. The Hiver in Gmail Growth card names Help Center directly; the Hiver Omni Growth card folds it into "self-service support". Nested categories, custom branding, a custom domain, a contact form, third-party code snippets and an internal help centre are all in the Help Center section. |
| Custom domain | Not published | IncludedUnknown. "Host your Help Center on your own domain for a consistent brand experience" is a Help Center row with no plan stated. |
| Multi-brand | Not published | IncludedUnknown. "Multiple Help Centers Create separate Help Centers for different products, teams, languages, or audiences" is a Help Center row with no plan stated. |
| Versioning | IncludedPro and above. Approval workflow and flexible KB hierarchy are Enterprise. | Not published |
| Localization | IncludedPro and above (multilingual helpdesk and knowledge base translation). | Not published |
| AI answers over KB | IncludedAll three plans, first 500 sessions included, then $49 per 100 sessions. | IncludedUnknown plan, all-plans knowledge sources. AI-powered search lets customers "ask questions in natural language and get AI-generated answers from your articles", and the Knowledge Hub feeds AI Copilot and AI Agents from Notion, Confluence, Google Drive or a website. |
Self-service
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Chatbot flows | NoNot on any plan. The AI Agent answers email from the knowledge base; the plan matrix describes no bot builder and no transactional actions. | Not published |
| Order lookup | NoNot on any plan. The AI Agent answers email from the knowledge base; the plan matrix describes no bot builder and no transactional actions. | Not published |
| Returns / RMA | NoNot on any plan. The AI Agent answers email from the knowledge base; the plan matrix describes no bot builder and no transactional actions. | Not published |
| Account actions | NoNot on any plan. The AI Agent answers email from the knowledge base; the plan matrix describes no bot builder and no transactional actions. | Not published |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Conversation QA scoring | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix enumerates nine sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Automated QA coverage | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix enumerates nine sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | IncludedElite only. "AI QA Automatically evaluate your team's responses to score quality, flag gaps, and surface coaching opportunities." AI QA Coach, the real-time version, is marked Coming soon. |
| Calibration | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix enumerates nine sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Agent scorecards | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix enumerates nine sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Forecasting | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix enumerates nine sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Scheduling | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix enumerates nine sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Adherence tracking | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix enumerates nine sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
Reporting
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Prebuilt dashboards | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | IncludedAll plans. Basic reporting on Growth, advanced pre-built reports for tags and users above it. |
| Custom reports | IncludedPro $55 an agent and above. Not on Growth. | IncludedPro and above. Custom reports and custom dashboards are named on the Pro card as Advanced Analytics. |
| Raw data export | IncludedNot plan-gated. The account export is self-serve on every plan. | IncludedNo plan gate published for the account export, which runs self-serve from Admin Panel > Settings > Export data and returns XML. Reporting exports are separate CSV downloads, and scheduled data exports are a plan-gated comparison row. |
| Data warehouse sync | NoNot on any plan. The analytics section lists six capabilities and none of them moves data out. | Not published |
| CSAT / NPS | Not published | IncludedPro and above. CSAT surveys are named on the Pro card, with CSAT survey reports, CSAT-based automations and chat CSAT alongside. Results export as CSV and filter by user. NPS is not offered. |
| Real-time reporting | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | Not published |
Collaboration
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Internal notes | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | IncludedAll plans. Notes carry @mentions, Collaborators pull in people outside the Shared Inbox, and Shared Drafts allow co-writing a reply before it sends. Notes export as part of the account export. |
| Assignment | IncludedAll three plans, from Growth at $19 an agent. | IncludedAll plans. Routing and assignments, with out-of-office and agent availability so conversations are not assigned to people who are away. |
| Collision detection | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "Prevents multiple teammates from working on or replying to the same conversation simultaneously." |
| Approvals | IncludedEnterprise $89 an agent only. | IncludedUnknown. "Set up step-by-step approval workflows so stakeholders can review and sign off on sensitive replies" appears in the Hiver in Gmail Collaboration section with no plan stated. |
Enterprise
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | IncludedAll three plans including Growth. JWT authentication is Enterprise. | IncludedElite only. "Let users log in securely through your identity provider with SSO. Supports OIDC and SAML." Named on the Elite card alongside HIPAA and custom roles. |
| SCIM provisioning | Not publishedNot listed in the published plan matrix. | IncludedUnknown. SCIM provisioning appears in the Hiver Omni Security and team management section with no plan stated. The Hiver in Gmail comparison has no SCIM row and lists an Okta integration instead. |
| Custom roles | IncludedRole-based access control on all three plans. Field-level access control is Enterprise. | IncludedElite only, and capped at 6 custom roles on Hiver in Gmail. "Create tailored permission roles to control what each team member can access and do." |
| Audit logs | IncludedEnterprise only. Unavailable on Growth and Pro. | Not publishedNo audit log or audit trail feature appears in either plan comparison, on the security page or in the export documentation. The security page describes internal logging of production server access by Hiver staff, which is not a customer-facing audit log. |
| IP allowlist | IncludedEnterprise only (allowed domains and IP whitelisting). | Not publishedNot listed in either plan comparison or on the security page. |
| Sandbox environment | IncludedEnterprise only. | Not published |
| HIPAA / BAA | Not publishedNot mentioned on the security page or in the pricing matrix. | IncludedElite only. "HIPAA compliance Handle protected health information with a HIPAA-compliant setup." No Business Associate Agreement is referenced on the pricing pages, the security page or the terms, so the compliance claim is published and the contract that normally backs it is not. |
| SOC 2 | Not publishedThe security page describes controls but names no certification, pointing to a separate Trust Center for attestations that is not publicly reachable. | IncludedAll plans. SOC 2 Type II, with the full report released on request to security@hiverhq.com under a non-disclosure commitment. |
| ISO 27001 | Not publishedNot named on the security page. | IncludedAll plans. Hiver publishes the ISO/IEC 27001 certificate for viewing rather than gating it behind a request. |
| GDPR | Not publishedA sub-processor list and regional data instances are published, but no explicit GDPR compliance statement was found on the security page. | IncludedAll plans, alongside CCPA. The privacy policy sets out access, deletion, restriction and portability rights, though portability is qualified as available "if it is possible, given our then-current automated systems and data architecture". |
| Data residency | IncludedNot plan-gated. US, EEA, UAE, India and Australia, chosen at signup. Moving regions later requires contacting support. | NoUnited States only. "All our services and data is hosted in the USA." The status page names the infrastructure as AWS us-west-2, and the last database backup is also held encrypted in Google Compute storage. No EU or other region is offered on any plan. |
| Data retention policy | Not published | IncludedTiered rather than configurable: analytics history is 12 months on Growth, 18 on Pro and 24 on Elite. This is a depth limit on reporting, not a customer-set retention policy for conversation data, and no configurable retention setting is published. |
Developer
| Capability | Freshdesk | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | Included | IncludedPro and above. Bearer-token keys created by an admin in Developer settings, carrying admin privileges. The Hiver Omni API is early access and enabled per account by emailing support, so on Omni the API is gated twice. |
| GraphQL API | NoNot on any plan. The published interface is REST, with per-tier rate limits. | Not published |
| App framework | IncludedAll three plans. Connector app tasks are metered at $80 per 5,000 regardless of tier. | Not published |
| Published rate limits | IncludedGrowth 100 req/min, Pro 400, Enterprise 700, trials 50. Per-endpoint sub-limits are lower and extra capacity is purchasable. | IncludedAll plans with API access. 1 request per second per account and 5,000 requests per day, with 429 Too Many Requests, exponential backoff guidance and a documented blacklisting risk for repeated retries. |
Both entries last checked Sep 9, 2026.
What Freshdesk costs
$19/seat/month
3 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Seat (agent) + usage hybrid - Free tier
No, 14-day trial - AI pricing
$0.49 per AI session - Vendor calls it
Freddy AI Agent session - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Billed again - AI billing window
3d of inactivity - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Not offered
1 of 9 not published by Freshdesk, checked
What Hiver costs
$25/seat/month
3 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Per user per month - Free tier
No, 7-day trial - AI pricing
Not published - Vendor calls it
minute - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Not offered
4 of 9 not published by Hiver, checked