Support and success

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5 Powerful Zendesk Alternatives for Building Engaging Self-Service Portals

Explore five robust Zendesk alternatives for creating effective self-service portals in 2024. This concise guide compares key features, pricing, and customization options of top competitors, helping businesses find the ideal platform to enhance customer support and streamline operations. Discover how these alternatives can transform your customer service experience.

Written by

Francisco Opazo

Last updated

October 11, 2024

BettermodeHQ

Table of contents

If you're looking for a self-service customer portal solution, you've probably come across Zendesk. It's a good customer relationship management tool, with many customer support features.

However, to get access to all of the help center, knowledge management and community forum features, you have to go for the most expensive plan – which comes with extra tools like email, chat, voice and social messaging.

Zendesk has some customizable help center themes, and you can edit their color, font and images. The builder isn’t drag-and-drop, but you can modify which elements show up on the page, not their location. This is one of the reasons you might be looking for Zendesk competitors.

Let’s look at the top 5 software for making a self-service portal.

5 Zendesk competitors in 2024

Bettermode

One of the top Zendesk competitors on the market is Bettermode, a no-code app and website builder. You can create stunning dynamic modules or simple static sites, all without writing a single line of code.

If you've ever used Webflow or WordPress, navigating Bettermode will be a piece of cake. Zendesk users will be impressed with how easy it is to use and how many customization options it offers. Let us explain how it works, and you can build your self-service portal for free.

There are currently eight modern web app templates (there will be 25 templates for different use cases available soon) you can base your site on, inspired by top-notch portals. With unlimited, intuitive customizability options, you can tailor them perfectly to your brand image and vision.

Bonus tip: Bettermode has a native CMS that eliminates the need for you to store your knowledge content in other apps. You can work on all of your content in the same space where you build your self-service portal and easily set up who has access to these articles ,and who can upload them.

Let's see how you can make a help desk for free. Choose the Cloud Project, which would be best for self-service portals.

All it takes to create a new help article is clicking the + sign in the upper right corner. This native CMS system gives you plenty of options to customize the content, such as adding media, formatting text or including SEO tags.

You can also move the individual sections around or add new ones. To access the editor, just press "C" on your keyboard.

The design studio is where you'll end up. As you can see in the top left corner of the website preview, it's adaptable to all devices and screen sizes. Feel free to open the template yourself and play around with the options.

You can add spaces like a getting started section, feature descriptions, events or product updates. There are also community management options and plenty of appearance customizations.

Need more pages? With Bettermode you can create:

Self-service client portals for SaaS or other industries
Blogs and publications
Help desk solutions
Brand community hubs
Customer feedback collection sites
Customer support forums
Event plans
Team Wikis and knowledge bases
Freelance and job listings marketplaces
Feature request platforms
Product roadmaps
Resource libraries

Overall, it's ideal for creating beautiful websites from scratch, because of its fun design and a comprehensive set of intuitive features.

Bettermode is the #1 choice for building customer support websites with no code due to its rich customization features, ease of use and an in-built CMS system.

Features

Plenty of functional templates that allow effortless layout changing, branding and elements (you can also start from scratch if you prefer)
Drag-and-drop builder
Native CMS with SEO options, customizable post types and unique fields
Access permissions
Website structures that adapt to all devices and screen sizes
Split view of the blocks list and real-time website visualization
Sorting, filtering, layouts and fields for all content sections
Appearance editor with logos, themes, typographies and styles
Users' and members' management
Customizable notification settings
Website analytics and moderation
Integrations, including robust API, Webhooks and SDK

UI/UX

Bettermode is visually attractive. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to use, even for complete beginners. You can log in and test the different options based on the template that best suits your needs.

When in doubt, you can also browse the Knowledge Base, Academy or Community for self-service help.

Pros

Easy to navigate and use even for non-technical users
An attractive design that makes it fun
Many use cases you can make with the customizable templates
Native CMS – this makes importing content redundant
A forever free plan that lets you access all of the tool's possibilities

User ratings

Bettermode users praise the tool for the great relation of price to value and its ease of use.

4.8/5 on Capterra
4.6/5 on G2
8.9/10 on TrustRadius

Source: G2

Pricing

You can start using Bettermode for free, no strings attached. The paid plans apply when you exceed five spaces. Prices start from $19 with annual billing or $24 with monthly payments. You can enrich Bettermode with add-ons like a CMS Upgrade or Translation Locale.

Helpjuice

Source: GetApp

Helpjuice is a knowledge base software solution. It helps customer support teams create self-service portals where clients can find all the necessary information without contacting the support team.

This tool also includes a CMS. You can drag and drop files into this editor, troubleshoot multiple answers and link to your other articles.

Source: Capterra

There is an analytics view for tracking your site's performance. You can see how many people read your articles and who found it helpful.

Source: Capterra

This alternative to Zendesk is best for users with coding knowledge who want access to advanced customization or for people looking for article impact insights.