Industry
Taylor Halliday
Co-Founder
13 minutes
In 2025, the enterprise service management landscape continues to evolve rapidly, with vendors racing to integrate AI capabilities, improve user experiences, and meet the changing demands of the modern workplace. As organizations seek to modernize their help desk operations, Freshworks has remained a significant player in this space. This review of Freshworks takes a deep dive into the platform's current capabilities, evolution, strengths, limitations, and how it compares to emerging alternatives in the service management ecosystem.
The Evolution of Freshworks Through 2025
Freshworks has come a long way since its founding in 2010. By 2025, the company has continued to expand its suite of products, with Freshservice remaining its flagship IT service management (ITSM) solution. Looking at the trajectory of Freshworks over the past few years provides important context for understanding its current positioning in the market.
The company has been on a steady path of enhancement, particularly following its 2021 IPO, which provided additional resources for product development and market expansion. By 2025, Freshworks has made significant strides in several key areas:
Integration of more sophisticated AI capabilities across its product suite
Expansion of its service management functionality beyond IT to other business departments
Improved workflow automation capabilities with low/no-code tools
Enhanced integration capabilities with third-party systems and platforms
According to recent market analysis from Gartner, Freshworks has maintained its position as a strong competitor in the mid-market service management space, though it continues to face challenges breaking into enterprise-level deployments dominated by legacy vendors.
Freshservice in 2025: Key Features and Capabilities
Core Service Management Functionality
At the time of writing (2025), Freshservice continues to offer a robust set of core ITSM capabilities that form the foundation of its value proposition:
Incident Management: Freshservice's incident management has evolved to incorporate more predictive capabilities, using historical data and AI to suggest resolutions and automate certain types of incident responses. The system now provides more granular categorization options and improved SLA management.
Problem Management: The platform has enhanced its root cause analysis tools, with better visualization of problem patterns and contributor factors. Integration with monitoring tools has improved to provide contextual information about problems as they emerge.
Change Management: Freshworks has expanded its change management workflows to provide more flexibility while maintaining compliance with frameworks like ITIL. Risk assessment tools have become more sophisticated, providing better guidance on potential impact.
Asset Management: The asset discovery and management capabilities have been strengthened with better automated discovery tools and more comprehensive lifecycle tracking. Integration with procurement systems has improved to provide a more complete view of asset costs and utilization.
Service Catalog: Freshservice's service catalog functionality has been enhanced with better customization options and improved mobile experiences for end-users.
AI and Automation Capabilities
Like many of its competitors, Freshworks has heavily invested in AI capabilities. The company's Freddy AI has evolved significantly from its earlier iterations:
Conversational AI: Freshservice has improved its chatbot capabilities, allowing for more natural language understanding and better handling of complex inquiries. The system can now understand intent more accurately and maintain context throughout longer conversations.
Predictive Analytics: The platform now offers more sophisticated prediction models for identifying potential issues before they impact users, though these capabilities still lag behind some AI-first competitors.
Workflow Automation: Freshservice has expanded its automation capabilities, allowing for more complex workflow creation with less coding required. The system can now suggest automations based on observed patterns in manual processes.
Freshworks' AI capabilities, while improved, still don't match the depth of newer entrants that are built from the ground up and have AI infused throughout the product. Learn more here.
User Experience and Interface
The Freshservice interface has undergone several refinements over the years:
Agent Experience: The agent workspace has been streamlined to reduce context switching and provide more relevant information at the point of need. The system now better prioritizes tasks and suggests next best actions.
End-User Portal: The self-service portal has been redesigned with a more intuitive interface and better search capabilities. Mobile responsiveness has improved significantly.
Customization Options: Administrators now have more options to tailor the interface and workflows to their organization's specific needs without requiring developer resources.
Reporting and Analytics: Dashboards have become more interactive and customizable, with better visualization options and the ability to drill down into data more effectively.
Pricing and Deployment Options (as of 2025)
Freshworks has adjusted its pricing structure over the years, maintaining its position as a mid-market solution. As of 2025, Freshservice is offered in multiple tiers:
Plan | Price Range (per agent/month) | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
Starter | $29-35 | Basic incident management, knowledge base, self-service portal |
Growth | $59-69 | Adds problem, change, and release management |
Pro | $109-129 | Adds project management, advanced workflows, custom roles |
Enterprise | $169-189 | Advanced security, premium support, AI assistant premium features |
Deployment options have expanded to include:
Cloud-hosted SaaS (primary offering)
Hybrid deployment options for enterprises with specific data residency requirements
Enhanced API capabilities for custom integrations
While Freshworks continues to position itself as offering good value for mid-market organizations, its enterprise pricing has increased to fund more advanced features, placing it in more direct competition with high-end solutions.
Integration Ecosystem
Freshworks has significantly expanded its integration ecosystem over the years, recognizing the importance of connecting with the broader technology stack:
Native Integrations: The platform now offers improved out-of-the-box integrations with popular business tools across categories like project management, communication, development, and monitoring.
API Capabilities: Freshworks has enhanced its API framework to allow for more sophisticated custom integrations, though some enterprises still report limitations with complex integration scenarios.
Marketplace Growth: The Freshworks marketplace has grown substantially, with more third-party developers creating extensions and integrations for the platform.
Automation Triggers: Cross-platform automation capabilities have improved, allowing for complex workflows that span multiple systems.
However, as noted in a G2 comparison report, Freshworks still faces challenges in environments with complex integration requirements or highly customized workflows compared to more extensible platforms.
Messaging Platform Integration: The Missing Piece
One area where Freshworks has made less progress than expected is in native integration with modern messaging platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. While basic notification capabilities exist, the deep contextual integration that allows employees to get help directly in their workflow remains limited.
This presents a notable gap in Freshworks' offering compared to messaging-native solutions like Ravenna's AI-powered help desk, which meets employees where they work. According to a 2024 HDI survey, over 75% of employees now prefer to receive support through their messaging platforms rather than switching to a dedicated portal or email.
The lack of seamless messaging platform integration means that despite improvements in its core functionality, Freshworks still requires employees to context-switch when seeking assistance - a friction point that newer solutions have reduced or eliminated.
Implementation and Adoption Considerations
Organizations considering Freshworks in 2025 should be aware of several factors that impact successful implementation:
Implementation Timeline: Typical Freshservice implementations range from 1-3 months depending on complexity, customization needs, and integration requirements.
Change Management: As with any service management solution, significant attention must be paid to change management and user adoption strategies.
Resource Requirements: While Freshworks markets itself as requiring less technical expertise than some enterprise alternatives, organizations still report needing dedicated administration resources to realize the platform's full potential.
Training and Support: Freshworks offers improved training resources and support options, but these vary by pricing tier. Enterprise customers report more satisfactory support experiences than those on lower-tier plans.
According to a 2025 Forrester Wave report, organizations that align adequate resources to implementation and have clear goals tend to see much better outcomes regardless of the specific platform chosen.
Strengths and Limitations of Freshservice
Key Strengths
Intuitive Interface: Freshworks continues to excel in providing a clean, intuitive interface that requires less training than many enterprise alternatives.
Mid-market Value: For mid-sized organizations with relatively standard service management needs, Freshworks offers a solid value proposition with a lower total cost of ownership than many competitors.
Quick Time to Value: Organizations can typically implement core functionality relatively quickly compared to more complex enterprise solutions.
Balanced Feature Set: The platform offers a good balance of features across ITSM processes without overwhelming users with complexity.
Growing AI Capabilities: While not leading the field, Freshworks has made steady progress in integrating useful AI capabilities that deliver real productivity benefits.
Notable Limitations
Enterprise Scalability: Large organizations with complex, multi-departmental service management needs still report challenges scaling Freshworks to their requirements.
Advanced Customization: Organizations requiring highly specialized workflows or deep customizations may find Freshworks more limiting than some alternatives.
Workflow Automation Depth: While improved, the automation capabilities still lack some of the sophistication found in platforms built with automation as a core principle.
Messaging Platform Integration: As mentioned earlier, the lack of deep, native integration with messaging platforms creates friction in the employee support experience.
AI Sophistication: Despite improvements, Freshworks' AI capabilities remain less advanced than those of newer, AI-native platforms.
Freshworks vs. Competitors
The competitive landscape for service management solutions has evolved significantly by 2025. Here's how Freshworks compares to key competitors:
Jira Service Management: Atlassian's offering continues to dominate among development-centric organizations. It offers tighter integration with development tools but can be more complex to implement and maintain than Freshworks.
ServiceNow: Remains the enterprise leader with the most comprehensive capabilities but at a significantly higher price point and complexity level than Freshworks.
Aisera: Has strengthened its AI-first approach, offering more sophisticated automation and virtual agent capabilities than Freshworks, but with a higher price point.
Moveworks: Continues to focus on conversational AI and automation, with stronger natural language capabilities than Freshworks but a narrower feature set for traditional ITSM processes.
Ravenna: We combine sophisticated AI capabilities with a deep messaging platform integration that meets employees where they work. Unlike Freshworks, our platform is built around modern communication workflows rather than traditional ticketing models.
Is Freshworks Right for Your Company?
Based on our review, the platform remains best suited for:
Mid-sized organizations with straightforward service management needs
Companies prioritizing ease of use and quick implementation over advanced customization
Organizations with modest budgets seeking a balanced feature set
Teams that value an intuitive interface and are willing to accept some limitations in advanced capabilities
You should consider alternatives to Freshworks if you:
Have complex, multi-departmental service management needs at enterprise scale
Require deep integration with messaging platforms like Slack and Teams
Need cutting-edge AI capabilities for advanced automation and self-service
Have highly specialized workflows requiring extensive customization
Prioritize meeting employees where they work rather than training them to use a new system
What’s next for ITSM?
Looking beyond this review, several trends are shaping the future of service management that you should be aware of as you choose an ITSM vendor that fits your needs:
AI-first platforms will continue to gain market share as organizations prioritize automation and intelligence over traditional process management.
Conversational experiences will increasingly replace form-based interactions as natural language processing technology improves.
Cross-departmental service management will become the norm as organizations seek to provide consistent employee experiences across IT, HR, facilities, and other functions.
Workplace messaging integration will be considered a core requirement rather than an add-on feature as organizations recognize the productivity impact of context switching.
Predictive and proactive support will gradually replace reactive models as AI systems become better at identifying and addressing potential issues before they impact users.
Wrapping up
Freshworks has maintained its position as a solid mid-market service management solution, with steady improvements across its feature set and gradual enhancement of its AI capabilities. The platform continues to offer good value for organizations with relatively standard service management needs who prioritize ease of use and implementation speed.
However, the service management landscape is shifting rapidly toward AI-native solutions that meet employees where they work, particularly in messaging platforms that have become the center of the digital workplace. In this evolving context, Freshworks occupies a somewhat transitional position - improved from its legacy approach but not fully embracing the conversational, messaging-centric future of employee support.
