Freshservice alternatives: where to go and how to migrate without losing history
Six destinations, one for each reason to leave, and an eight-step exit plan.
The short answer: Jira Service Management if your engineers already live in Jira and you want change management on the first paid tier, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus if you need an on-premises option or run five technicians or fewer, InvGate if you're locked into a Freshservice contract for months, HaloITSM or TOPdesk if you're tired of paying for add-ons, and GLPI Network Cloud if cost and EU hosting top your list. One thing to know before you pick: Freshservice lets your tickets go, but not your Workflow Automator rules, SLA policies or notification templates. You rebuild those by hand. We compared all six and checked their official pricing pages in 2026.
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored spot is always labeled on its card, and no affiliate link changes a score.
Why IT teams move off Freshservice
Credit where it's due: Freshservice is quick to roll out and easy to maintain for a small team. The trouble starts as you grow. Add-ons pile onto the invoice, the configuration hits walls, and renewal lands before you're ready. Here are the six reasons that keep coming up in 2026.
Full ITIL starts at $99 an agent
Starter is $19, Growth $49 and Pro $99 per agent per month, billed annually. Problem and change management only unlock on Pro. For a ten-agent team that just wants to log changes properly, the bill jumps from $490 to $990 a month. That's the moment a lot of IT managers start looking around.
AI and assets cost extra
Freddy AI Copilot adds $29 per agent per month, and only on Pro and Enterprise. Assets are billed in "Asset Units", sold in blocks of 500 and weighted by asset type. One admin on r/sysadmin put it bluntly: they "felt shackled by the limited customization + per device asset tracking costs."
Customization walls
Teams that scale report default fields and views they can't hide, change or remove. The common take: Freshservice is "cleaner out of the box but you'll hit customization walls pretty quick." On r/ITManagers, another manager summed it up: it "works fine as a ticket queue but that's kind of the problem, everything is still a ticket."
Reporting ends up in a spreadsheet
Built-in reports offer little flexibility, so many teams export tickets and build dashboards elsewhere. The export has its own limits: 10,000 tickets per file, a field selection you redo every time, and an analytics PDF that stops at 200 rows.
Cutting seats is where it gets tense
On Trustpilot, Freshservice sits at 2.2 out of 5 across roughly a hundred reviews. Complaints cluster around reducing agent licenses and a sales team that's hard to reach. Your notice period lives in your order form, so read it before you plan anything else.
Leaving takes more than an export
Tickets come out as CSV or Excel. Everything else is harder. Conversations and notes need the API or a full account export. CMDB relationships (the links between your assets) aren't in the standard export. Workflow Automator rules don't export at all, and the community request for it has sat open for years.
You're leaving because… go to…
The right Freshservice alternative depends on what's pushing you out. Usually one row matters more than the rest. Each card jumps to the full profile.
Free up to 3 agents, change management and Assets on Standard.
You need to stay on-premisesManageEngine ServiceDesk PlusCloud or self-hosted, free up to 5 technicians.
Your contract runs for monthsInvGateRuns at $0 until your Freshservice term ends, free migration.
You're done paying for add-onsHaloITSMOne price per agent, every module and integration included.
You manage a large estateTOPdeskUnlimited assets, tickets and end users on every plan.
Cost and EU hosting come firstGLPI Network Cloud€19 per agent per month, hosted in France, asset inventory built in.
Freshservice alternatives, tool by tool
For each tool: why switch to it, who it fits, where it falls short, how to migrate from Freshservice and what it costs. Prices come from each vendor's official page in 2026, in the currency the vendor shows: dollars for Atlassian and ManageEngine, pounds for HaloITSM and TOPdesk, euros for GLPI.
Jira Service Management: ITIL on the first paid tier
Jira teamsWhy switch. Freshservice holds problem and change management back for Pro. Atlassian ships them on Standard, at $21.50 per agent per month at the default calculator setting. Assets, its CMDB, comes along with 5,000 objects on Standard. And if your developers are in Jira, an incident becomes a dev ticket without copy and paste.
Who it's for. Companies where IT and engineering work side by side, and small teams: the free plan covers 3 agents.
Who it's not for. An IT team with no Jira footprint that wants something simple for end users. Setup takes time and an admin who knows Atlassian.
The catch. The per-agent price shifts with your agent count, and Premium runs $55.28 per agent per month. In Assets, each object type accepts only two uniqueness constraints, so settle your matching keys before you import the CMDB.
How to migrate. Help Desk Migration and OpsHub both read Freshservice. A plain CSV loses relationships, attachments and history. Map "Resolved" and "Closed" carefully, or your SLA reports will show breaches that never happened. Freshservice checkboxes turn into radio buttons, too. Run a pilot on 20 to 100 tickets first, then budget 2 to 3 days of agent training.
- Free
- up to 3 agents
- Paid
- Standard $21.50 per agent/mo
- Change mgmt
- from Standard
- Catch
- price varies with agent count
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus: cloud or on-prem, free for small teams
On-prem optionWhy switch. Freshservice is cloud only. ServiceDesk Plus runs in the cloud or on your own servers, which settles the question for agencies, hospitals and manufacturers with strict hosting rules. The Standard edition is free for up to 5 technicians on one instance.
Who it's for. Small IT teams that want a real ITSM tool with no budget, and organizations that require self-hosting.
Who it's not for. A team that wants a light interface. It's feature-rich, and it needs configuring.
The catch. Cloud pricing is annual and tiered by technicians and assets. Standard starts at $1,545 a year for 10 technicians. Professional and Enterprise start at $645 and $1,595 a year for 2 technicians and 250 assets. On-prem runs $13, $27 or $67 per technician per month depending on the edition.
How to migrate. Pull tickets from Freshservice in date ranges and assets through a scheduled export, then load them into a trial instance during the 30-day trial. Assets go first, since tickets reference them. Save conversations for the final API pass.
- Free
- up to 5 technicians
- Paid
- on-prem from $13 per tech/mo
- Trial
- 30 days
- Catch
- annual cloud tiers
InvGate: switch before your contract ends
Assisted switchWhy switch. Eight months left on your Freshservice term is usually what kills the project. InvGate's SWITCH program targets exactly that. The platform runs at $0 until your current Freshservice contract ends. A migration specialist moves your tickets, workflows, service catalog and knowledge base for free. Implementation is covered up to 50% of the annual subscription.
Who it's for. IT teams committed to Freshservice for several more months who want to prepare the exit without paying for two tools.
Who it's not for. A team in a hurry: the average switch takes 12 to 16 weeks.
The catch. After the free period, you pay the published annual rates: Starter at $1,499 a year for 5 agents, Pro at $500 per agent per year (starting at $2,500 a year), Enterprise by quote from $12,000 a year. Ten agents on Pro come to $5,000 a year. Line that up against your Freshservice renewal before you sign.
How to migrate. The vendor runs it. Your job is to hand over the inventory of your rules, SLAs and forms, then check ticket counts after each batch. One caveat from the forums: an InvGate employee there claims hundreds of switches, so treat that as a vendor claim.
- Offer
- $0 until your Freshservice term ends
- Migration
- free, by a specialist
- Timeline
- 12 to 16 weeks
- Paid
- Pro $500 per agent/yr, from $2,500
HaloITSM: one price, no hidden add-ons
All-inclusiveWhy switch. It's the opposite of the Freshservice model. HaloITSM charges one price per agent, with every module and integration included. Requesters are free. Named and concurrent licenses cost the same, which helps shift-based teams. On r/sysadmin, it keeps coming up as the move for admins who hit the customization ceiling.
Who it's for. Mid-sized IT teams that want to configure everything and stop negotiating add-ons.
Who it's not for. A small team that only needs a ticket queue. All that flexibility costs setup time.
The catch. The listed price is £66 per agent per month, billed annually, as shown for the UK. A mandatory onboarding package is billed on top. Ask for the dollar figure and the onboarding cost before you sign.
How to migrate. Use the 30-day trial, no card required, to rebuild your forms and SLAs before loading data. The onboarding package exists to scope the migration: show up with your Freshservice rule inventory done and you'll save billable days.
- Price
- £66 per agent/mo
- Trial
- 30 days, no card
- Included
- every module
- Catch
- paid onboarding required
TOPdesk: built for large estates
Large estatesWhy switch. Freshservice bills assets in blocks. TOPdesk includes unlimited assets, tickets and end users on every plan. The vendor is Dutch, and the tool serves facilities teams as well as IT. That matters for a school district, a hospital or a city running thousands of devices.
Who it's for. Organizations with a big estate and several support teams under one roof.
Who it's not for. A three-person IT team hunting for the lowest price.
The catch. Essential, Engaged and Excellent cost £51, £72 and £101 per agent per month. Above 50 agents, pricing is by quote.
How to migrate. Clean your Freshservice assets before exporting. Unlimited assets make it tempting to bring everything. Load only what's still in service, with the relationships you actually use pulled through the API.
- Paid
- Essential £51 per agent/mo
- Included
- unlimited assets and users
- Vendor
- Netherlands
- Catch
- quote above 50 agents
GLPI Network Cloud: the budget pick with EU hosting
Lowest costWhy switch. GLPI comes from Teclib', a French company, and the hosted edition costs €19 per agent per month from a single agent. Asset inventory is part of the product, with no units to buy. Data sits with OVHcloud in France. Need full control? The open-source edition is free to self-host.
Who it's for. Teams with EU data requirements or a tight budget that still want ITIL and asset management.
Who it's not for. Anyone expecting a polished modern interface and built-in AI. GLPI is solid but plainer.
The catch. No turnkey tool moves tickets from Freshservice to GLPI. The Data Injection plugin handles assets, contracts, users and groups, but not tickets. Ticket history goes through GLPI's REST API or a Teclib' partner.
How to migrate. Start with assets and users exported from Freshservice as CSV and loaded with Data Injection. Leave ticket history for last. Use the 45-day trial for a trial load, but keep real data out of it: the trial has no backups. Exit terms are clear too: Teclib' returns a copy of your database and attachments within 30 days, free of charge.
- Price
- €19 per agent/mo
- Trial
- 45 days
- Hosting
- France
- Catch
- no turnkey ticket import
The 6 alternatives side by side
Our default picks: Jira Service Management for a company already on Jira, ManageEngine for a small team or a self-hosting requirement. For scale, take a ten-agent team that needs change management. Freshservice Pro costs $990 a month before Copilot. Jira Service Management Standard lands around $215 at the default rate. Left column, entry price; right column, what matters for the move.
| Entry price | Strength and migration | |
|---|---|---|
| FreshserviceWhere you start | Starter $19, Growth $49, Pro $99 per agent/mo | Problem and change on Pro; workflows don't export |
| Jira Service ManagementJira teams | Free up to 3 agents, Standard $21.50 | Change and Assets on Standard; Help Desk Migration or OpsHub |
| ManageEngine ServiceDesk PlusOn-prem option | Free up to 5 techs, on-prem from $13 | Cloud or self-hosted; 30-day trial |
| InvGateAssisted switch | Starter $1,499/yr (5 agents), Pro $500 per agent/yr | $0 until your Freshservice term ends; free migration, 12 to 16 weeks |
| HaloITSMAll-inclusive | £66 per agent/mo | Every module included; paid onboarding on top |
| TOPdeskLarge estates | Essential £51 per agent/mo | Unlimited assets and users; quote above 50 agents |
| GLPI Network CloudLowest cost | €19 per agent/mo, 45-day trial | Hosted in France; assets via Data Injection, tickets via API |
Entry prices before tax, billed annually, in the currency each vendor displays. Always check against your own agent count.
Leave Freshservice in eight steps
Order matters. The first steps happen while Freshservice still runs at full capacity, on purpose: once you downgrade or the term ends, some data gets much harder to pull.
Read your contract and date the cancellation
FirstFind your order form and read the notice clause. It varies from contract to contract, and nobody will remind you. Put the deadline in your calendar with two weeks of margin.
Don't downgrade to save money during the transition. The Freshservice API caps calls per minute by plan: 100 on Starter, 200 on Growth, 400 on Pro, 500 on Enterprise. Pulling data from Starter takes four times longer than from Pro.
- If rushed
- another year to pay
Inventory everything that won't export
Day 1List what no export will carry: every Workflow Automator rule, every SLA policy, every notification template, portal branding, business rules and the service catalog. One screenshot per rule, showing conditions and actions, is enough.
That inventory becomes your rebuild spec. One row per rule, one column for its equivalent in the new tool. Rules nobody has triggered in a year can stay behind.
- Time
- half a day to two days
- If rushed
- a missing SLA
Export tickets in date ranges
10,000 capFreshservice exports stop at 10,000 tickets per file, emailed to you as CSV or Excel. Filter by date range, one quarter at a time, to stay under the cap. Tick the same fields every time: the selection isn't saved between exports.
Two traps. Conversations and notes are excluded by default. Service request item fields don't come along either. The export gives you the ticket list, not the full record.
- Cap
- 10,000 tickets per export
- Formats
- CSV or Excel
Pull conversations, attachments and CMDB through the API
Longest stepFull history means the API. Each ticket needs its own call for conversations. Each attachment is a temporary URL you download one by one. Each asset needs a call for its CMDB relationships. The knowledge base doesn't export as CSV, so pull it through the API as well.
The other route is the full account export under Admin, Account, Export Data. It's all or nothing, without attachments, with a download link that expires, and it can take hours on a large account. Keep it as an archive, not as your migration source.
- Throughput
- 100 to 500 calls/min by plan
- Archive
- XML account export
Map statuses, fields and categories
Build the mapping table: each Freshservice status to a target status, each custom field to a field, each category to a category. Be careful with "Resolved" and "Closed". Mapped wrong, they create fake SLA breaches on tickets closed months ago.
Check field types. A checkbox may become a radio button, a dropdown may lose its values. Create every field in the target tool before the first import.
- If rushed
- broken SLA reports
Run a pilot on 20 to 100 tickets
CriticalTurn off every notification and automation in the target tool first. Otherwise your users get hundreds of emails about two-year-old tickets. Then load a hand-picked sample of 20 to 100 tickets: some with attachments, some with linked assets, at least one per category.
Check each ticket: requester, dates, conversations in the right order, attachments that open. Fix the mapping and rerun until the sample is clean.
- Sample
- 20 to 100 tickets
Rebuild automations, SLAs and forms
Go back to your step-two inventory and recreate each rule in the target tool. Start with what end users feel: auto-assignment, SLAs, acknowledgment emails. Nice-to-have automations come later.
Use the rebuild to simplify. A team that has run Freshservice for years usually has rules that contradict each other. This is the one moment when deleting them costs nothing.
- Time
- depends on rule count
- Training
- 2 to 3 days for agents
Cut over on a weekend, keep Freshservice read-only
Go-liveRun the full load, then catch up the tickets created since (the delta) right before cutover. Repoint the support email address, update the portal link on your intranet, then turn notifications back on.
Keep Freshservice open read-only until the end of the term you've already paid for. Agents can look up an old ticket while trust builds. Send your cancellation on the date you set in step one.
- If rushed
- tickets lost between tools
Is your tool missing from this page? Email us: hello@hackceleration.com
What makes a Freshservice exit fail
The same mistakes show up in community threads and in migration vendors' guides. None of them is really technical. They're calendar and inventory misses, and each one costs more than the time it would have taken to avoid.
Downgrading before you export
Dropping to Starter for the last few months cuts your API throughput to a quarter of Pro and removes scheduled exports. Export first. Downgrade after, if you must.
Trusting the CSV export
The CSV lists tickets without the back-and-forth with the user. Six months later someone asks why a laptop was reimaged, and the answer is still in Freshservice. Pull conversations through the API, closed tickets included.
Forgetting CMDB relationships
Assets come out, their links don't: which machine depends on which server, which software runs where. If change management relies on that, pull relationships asset by asset. Our guides to IT asset management software and switching from Lansweeper cover the inventory side.
Leaving notifications on during import
An import with notifications live sends one email per migrated ticket. On 30,000 tickets, that's a day of support lost answering worried users. Switch everything off on the target side before the first batch.
Missing the notice date
Annual plans renew at term end. Miss the window by a few days and you pay a full year for an empty tool. Log the date on day one.
Mixing up Freshservice and Freshdesk
Both come from Freshworks, but Freshdesk serves customer support and Freshservice serves internal IT. Some migration tools only accept Freshdesk as a source, so confirm Freshservice is on their list. Leaving Freshdesk too? Read our guide to switching from Freshdesk.
- Notice deadline logged, Freshservice plan left as is
- Inventory of rules, SLAs, notifications, portal and catalog
- Tickets exported in date ranges, under 10,000 per file
- Conversations, attachments and knowledge base pulled via API
- CMDB relationships saved if you run change management
- Status mapping signed off, including Resolved and Closed
- Target notifications off during import
- Pilot on 20 to 100 tickets checked
- Delta loaded, support email repointed
- Freshservice kept read-only until term end
Freshservice alternatives: frequently asked questions
What is the best free alternative to Freshservice?
For a small team, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is free up to 5 technicians and Jira Service Management up to 3 agents. GLPI is free if you self-host the open-source edition. Our ITSM software ranking covers the paid tiers.
How do I export all my tickets from Freshservice?
In date ranges: the standard export caps at 10,000 tickets per file and leaves conversations out by default. For full history, use the API, one call per ticket. The XML account export in the admin panel grabs everything at once, minus attachments.
Can I export Freshservice workflows?
No. Workflow Automator rules don't export, and the only copy option is cloning inside the same instance. SLAs and the service catalog are readable through the API but can't be imported anywhere as is. Screenshot every rule before you go, or let a vendor like InvGate rebuild them.
How do I cancel Freshservice without auto-renewing?
The notice period is set in your order form, so read that clause first. Send the cancellation in writing well before term end, keep the confirmation, and don't downgrade until your data is out.
How long does a Freshservice migration take?
A few weeks for a small team moving tickets and assets. InvGate quotes 12 to 16 weeks on average for a full switch, workflows included. API limits also set the pace: 100 calls a minute on Starter, 500 on Enterprise.
Is ServiceNow a better choice than Freshservice?
Rarely for a mid-sized company. ServiceNow targets large enterprises, with multi-month projects and budgets to match. Plenty of teams go the other way: our guide to switching from ServiceNow explains why.
Can I migrate from Freshservice to Zammad?
Not with Zammad's built-in importer: it only accepts Freshdesk accounts, not Freshservice. You'd go through both APIs or hire a migration vendor. If your need is mostly customer support, see our Zendesk review.
Is there a European alternative to Freshservice?
Yes, two. TOPdesk is Dutch and includes unlimited assets on every plan. GLPI is French, with its cloud edition hosted by OVHcloud at €19 per agent per month. Both suit teams with EU data residency requirements.
Get the next migration guide in your inbox
One tool to leave, one destination, one exit plan. Nothing else.