The best Support tools
About Support
Customer support is how you keep customers happy after they buy. This section covers how to handle common questions, respond to problems, and scale support as you grow. Start by understanding what customers ask and writing answers once instead of answering the same question repeatedly. Then build tools to help customers help themselves. As you grow, consider hiring people dedicated to support, but always keep founders involved in reading customer feedback. Every problem you solve for one customer is often a problem for many.
Top picks
Help Scout
Pairs a shared inbox with a knowledge base for customer support and self-service help.
Best for: B2B and SaaS support teams that want a shared inbox with a proper knowledge base attached, without the weight of an enterprise helpdesk, from a small team to a larger group.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Price
- From $25/mo
- MCP server
- Yes
- API
- Yes
Freshdesk by Freshworks
Manage customer support tickets across email, chat and social channels with knowledge base tools.
Best for: Customer support teams of any size that want a ticketing helpdesk with email, chat and phone tickets, automation and AI agents, and that value a wide marketplace of integrations.
- Free plan
- No
- Price
- From $19/mo
- MCP server
- Yes
- API
- Yes
Zendesk
Customer service platform that combines helpdesk ticketing, omnichannel support and AI-powered knowledge base capabilities.
Best for: A customer support team that wants ticketing, a help centre and AI agents from one vendor, from a startup with a few agents to a large multinational team.
- Free plan
- No
- Price
- From €19/mo
- MCP server
- API
- Yes
Gorgias
Centralises customer support across email, chat, social and SMS for ecommerce stores with order-data integration.
Best for: Shopify and other ecommerce brands whose support volume has outgrown a shared inbox and who want customer tickets tied to order data, so agents can act without switching tabs.
- Free plan
- No
- Price
- From $10/mo
- MCP server
- Yes
- API
- Yes
Intercom
Supports customers across email, chat and phone with a unified inbox and an AI resolution agent.
Best for: Support and customer experience teams that want an AI agent to resolve a share of conversations alongside a human shared inbox across email, chat, phone and social channels.
- Free plan
- No
- Price
- From $29/mo
- MCP server
- Yes
- API
- Yes
The top 4 side by side
| 13 points compared | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $25/mo | $19/mo | €19/mo | $10/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | No | No | No |
| API | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| AI chatbot / agent | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI search & answers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom domain & branding | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Help centre / knowledge base | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live chat widget | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Native ecommerce (Shopify) integration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Public help centre | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Shared inbox & ticketing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Internal wiki | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Links |
All Support tools
- Manage customer support tickets across email, chat and social channels with knowledge base tools.
- Customer service platform that combines helpdesk ticketing, omnichannel support and AI-powered knowledge base capabilities.
- Centralises customer support across email, chat, social and SMS for ecommerce stores with order-data integration.
- Supports customers across email, chat and phone with a unified inbox and an AI resolution agent.
- Powers knowledge bases and help centres with AI search, chatbots and an AI writing agent.
- Meta's messaging app and API that lets businesses chat with customers on WhatsApp, from small shops to enterprises.
Put Support to work
How we rank
Every tool in a category is ranked by the same rule, worked out from the data we hold, not by who pays us. In order:
- How many of the category's shared features it has.
- Whether there is a free plan to start on.
- How open it is to AI: an API and an MCP server.
- Whether its pricing is public.
- Name, A to Z, when all else is equal.
When we add a tool or learn more about one, the ranking updates by itself.