Free HubSpot Service Hub Alternatives in 2027: Help Desks With a Real Free Plan
HubSpot Service Hub is HubSpot's customer service software: a help desk workspace for tickets, live chat, a knowledge base, SLAs, feedback surveys and an AI Customer Agent, all tied to the HubSpot CRM. You can start with HubSpot's free customer service tools, but most of what makes Service Hub a real help desk sits in the paid plans, and HubSpot now sells those plans as one platform for sales, marketing and service. If you are a founder answering customers yourself or with one or two teammates, you may not need to pay at all. We checked HubSpot's own free tools and every alternative below on its official pricing page on 8 November 2026: what the free plan covers, how many people can use it, and what the next paid step costs. If you would rather self-host an open-source help desk, see our list of open-source HubSpot Service Hub alternatives.
Quick answer: if your contacts already live in HubSpot CRM, keep using HubSpot's free tools (2 users, tickets, shared inbox, live chat with HubSpot branding) until you outgrow them. For more free seats, pick Help Scout (5 users, shared inbox plus a help centre), Zoho Desk (3 users, email tickets, pairs with the free Zoho CRM) or Jira Service Management (3 agents, portal and knowledge base). For free website chat with a built-in contact list, use tawk.to. If you have a developer, FreeScout, Zammad or osTicket are open source and free to host yourself.
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What HubSpot's Free Customer Service Tools Include in 2027
In November 2026 the Service Hub pricing link on hubspot.com opens HubSpot's combined pricing page ("Sales. Marketing. Service. All together."), where one set of plans covers the whole platform. From our location it showed euros, billed annually, by default:
- Free (€0, no credit card): up to 2 users, the CRM, tickets to log customer issues, live chat on your website with HubSpot branding, and ticket routing that can assign to AI chatbots only (no workflows).
- Starter: shown at €7 per seat a month with a limited-time 65% discount, up to 10 users. It removes the chat branding and adds email and in-app chat support from HubSpot, simple automation and AI agents.
- Professional (€90 per seat a month): the full Help Desk workspace, the Customer Agent, knowledge bases (up to 100, with 10,000 articles), SLAs, help desk teams and NPS, CES and CSAT surveys.
- Enterprise (€175 per seat a month): adds skills-based ticket routing, sandboxes, permissions and multi-account features.
HubSpot's own help desk page sums up the free tier as "essential ticketing, shared inbox, live chat, and basic integrations"; automation rules and simple reporting start with Starter, while customer portals, the knowledge base, feedback surveys and API access come with Professional. The Service Hub product page still offers a 14-day free trial of the paid tools. So the free tools are enough for two people answering tickets and chats. You need an alternative when you want more free seats, a help centre for self-service, or chat without HubSpot's logo, and do not want to pay €90 per seat for Professional.
Free HubSpot Service Hub Alternatives Compared
Sources: each tool's official pricing page in its default view, checked 8 November 2026 (euro prices where the page showed euros from our location in the Netherlands).
The Best Free HubSpot Service Hub Alternatives in 2027
1. Zoho Desk: free email tickets for 3 agents, next to a free CRM
Zoho Desk is the closest swap if you like HubSpot's "CRM plus help desk" idea. The Zoho Desk pricing page (served to us in Dutch, prices in euros, billed yearly) lists a free edition, forever free, with three user licences and ticket management by email. Paid plans start with Express at €7 per user a month; the knowledge base, instant messaging and satisfaction ratings start with Standard at €14. The customer records side is covered by the Zoho CRM free edition, forever free for 3 users, so a three-person team gets tickets and a CRM from one vendor for €0.
2. Help Scout: a free shared inbox and help centre for up to 5 users
Help Scout is built around a shared email inbox that feels like normal email to your customers. On its pricing page, the Free plan includes up to 5 users, 1 inbox and 1 Docs site (a public help centre), with 100 contacts a month, 10 saved replies and 10 tags. That help centre is something HubSpot only gives you on Professional. Paid plans cost $25 (Standard), $45 (Plus) and $75 (Pro) per user a month in the default annual view; Plus is the plan that adds the HubSpot, Salesforce and Jira integrations, so you can keep HubSpot as your CRM and move only support to Help Scout.
3. Jira Service Management: free for 3 agents, with a portal and knowledge base
Jira Service Management is Atlassian's service desk, now sold as part of its Service Collection. The pricing page lists a Free plan, "free forever for 3 agents", with requests by email, Microsoft Teams, Slack, an embedded widget or a customer portal, an embedded knowledge base, 1,250 automation steps a month and 2 GB of file storage; customers who send requests are unlimited. Standard costs $21.50 per agent a month in the default view. It fits a SaaS startup whose developers already work in Jira, because support requests can turn into bug tickets in the same system.
4. tawk.to: free live chat with a built-in CRM
tawk.to is the answer if HubSpot's free live chat is what you used most. Its homepage calls the product "100% Free" and shows an inbox, CRM, pipeline, automations, knowledge base, feedback and chat widget. The Why free page explains how it earns money: removing the "Powered by tawk.to" branding costs $29 a month, the AI Assist chatbot starts at $29 a month (with a forever-free plan for low chat volume), and you can hire trained human chat agents for $1 an hour. If you keep the branding, it is free for life.
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5. Tidio: free live chat and tickets for a small online shop
Tidio combines live chat, ticketing and the Lyro AI agent. On its pricing page the Free plan costs €0 and includes 50 billable conversations a month, 50 Lyro AI conversations (a one-time allowance) and 100 visitors reached with Flows automations. Starter is shown at €24.17 a month. It suits a small e-commerce store that gets a few chats a day; with more traffic, the 50-conversation cap arrives quickly.
6. Crisp: a free website chat inbox for solo founders
Crisp lists a Free plan, "free forever", on its pricing page: a website chat widget, a shared inbox, mobile apps, chat SDKs, a contact form and e-commerce integrations for 2 seats, with no AI credits. The shared email inbox starts with Mini at €45 a month per workspace (not per seat), and every account can try any plan free for 14 days.
7. FreeScout, Zammad and osTicket: open-source help desks you host yourself
If someone on your team can run a server, an open-source help desk has no seat limit at all. FreeScout describes itself as a free self-hosted Zendesk and Help Scout alternative; it is licensed AGPL-3.0, released version 1.8.250 on 7 November 2026, and sells optional paid modules. Zammad (AGPL-3.0, code updated on GitHub in November 2026) is a full ticketing system with a knowledge base, and its company also offers hosted plans. osTicket (GPL-2.0) is the long-standing PHP ticket system; its latest release on GitHub is v1.18.4 from June 2026. We compare these and more in our open-source Zendesk alternatives and open-source Freshdesk alternatives guides.
Not Free Anymore, or Never Free: What Changed Since the Last Version
The 2025 version of this list included several tools that no longer belong on a free list, or that we could not check:
- Freshdesk: the Freshdesk pricing page shows no free plan. The 14-day trial gives you the Enterprise plan, and the account is suspended if you do not pay; Growth starts at $19 per agent a month billed annually.
- Hiver: a 7-day trial of the Elite plan, then the account is suspended; Growth costs $25 per user a month. No free plan.
- Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk: still has a free Core plan for 1 to 5 tech seats, but it is built for internal IT support (employees reporting computer problems), not for customer service. Premium costs $6 per seat a month billed annually.
- SolarWinds Service Desk: the old free help desk page answered "Access Denied" when we checked, so we could not confirm a free version and removed it.
- LiveAgent (added to many similar lists): a 30-day free trial without a credit card, but no free plan.
- Zendesk: no free plan either, only a 14-day trial; Support Team starts at €19 per agent a month paid yearly. Our free Zendesk alternatives guide covers that switch.
Keep a CRM Next to Your Help Desk
The real reason teams choose HubSpot Service Hub is that support tickets sit next to deals and marketing emails in one CRM. Before you switch, decide where your customer records will live:
- Stay on HubSpot's free CRM and connect another help desk to it. Help Scout's HubSpot integration is on its Plus plan, so this route costs money once you need the sync.
- Move both to one vendor: Zoho Desk plus Zoho CRM gives 3 people a free help desk and a free CRM.
- Use a chat tool with its own contact list: tawk.to has a built-in CRM and pipeline, enough for a small team selling and supporting through the website chat.
- Self-host everything: an open-source help desk plus an open-source CRM. See our open-source Salesforce Einstein alternatives for the CRM side.
If you are also comparing HubSpot's marketing side, read HubSpot vs ActiveCampaign and our free Mailchimp alternatives.
Which Free HubSpot Service Hub Alternative Should You Choose?
- You are 1 or 2 people and already use HubSpot CRM: stay on HubSpot's free tools.
- You answer mostly email and want a help centre: Help Scout Free (5 users).
- You want a free help desk and a free CRM from one vendor: Zoho Desk plus Zoho CRM (3 users each).
- Your product team lives in Jira: Jira Service Management Free (3 agents).
- Most questions come through your website chat: tawk.to (free for life), Tidio or Crisp.
- You need many agents and have a developer: FreeScout, Zammad or osTicket on your own server.
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How Founders Run Customer Support Without Paying for Service Hub
In the first year, support is usually the founder's inbox. A free help desk makes it a team inbox: every question becomes a ticket, nobody answers twice, and you can see which questions repeat. Write saved replies for the ten questions you get most, then turn them into help articles; that is the cheapest way to cut your support load. Live chat is worth adding when your website gets steady traffic; our comparisons Tidio vs Zendesk, Intercom vs Zendesk, Zendesk vs Olark, Olark vs LiveChat and Olark vs Intercom help you choose. For chatbots on Messenger and Instagram, see ManyChat vs Chatfuel.
When you want AI to answer the easy questions, compare the hosted AI agents with the self-hosted options in our open-source Zendesk AI alternatives and open-source Intercom alternatives. Track which help articles people read with one of the free Google Analytics alternatives, and keep the rest of your stack free with our free Asana alternatives and free Zoho Books alternatives.
Support is also where you learn what to build next, so validate your startup idea with the questions customers ask, and turn your best answers into articles with the F/MS AI SEO Tool. Early-stage programmes in our accelerators for early-stage startups list often include software credits, and grants for early-stage startups can pay for the upgrade when you outgrow a free plan.
FAQ About Free HubSpot Service Hub Alternatives
Is HubSpot Service Hub free?
Partly. HubSpot's free tools include tickets, a shared inbox and live chat (with HubSpot branding) for up to 2 users. The Help Desk workspace, knowledge base, SLAs, surveys and the Customer Agent come with Professional, shown at €90 per seat a month billed annually on HubSpot's pricing page in November 2026.
What is the best free alternative to HubSpot Service Hub?
For a small team answering email, Help Scout Free (5 users, 1 inbox and a help centre). For a free help desk plus a free CRM, Zoho Desk with Zoho CRM (3 users each). For a portal and knowledge base, Jira Service Management Free (3 agents).
How many users does HubSpot's free plan allow?
Up to 2 users on the Free plan, according to HubSpot's pricing page. Starter allows up to 10 users.
Does Zoho Desk have a free plan?
Yes. Zoho Desk's free edition is forever free with three user licences and ticket management by email. The knowledge base starts with the Standard plan.
Does Freshdesk still have a free plan?
No. The Freshdesk pricing page shows a 14-day trial of the Enterprise plan and paid plans from $19 per agent a month billed annually; after the trial the account is suspended unless you pay.
Which free help desk includes a knowledge base?
Help Scout Free includes 1 Docs site, Jira Service Management Free includes an embedded knowledge base, and tawk.to includes a knowledge base for free. On HubSpot and Zoho Desk the knowledge base is on paid plans.
Is there a free live chat like HubSpot's?
Yes. tawk.to is free for life with branding, Tidio's Free plan covers 50 conversations a month, and Crisp's Free plan gives 2 seats with a website chat widget.
Can I keep HubSpot CRM and use another help desk?
Yes. HubSpot's CRM stays free, and help desks such as Help Scout connect to it; Help Scout lists its HubSpot integration on the Plus plan, $45 per user a month.
Is there a free self-hosted alternative to HubSpot Service Hub?
Yes. FreeScout and Zammad (AGPL-3.0) and osTicket (GPL-2.0) are open-source help desks you can install on your own server. You pay for hosting and setup time instead of seats.
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About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
