WSDesk vs WP Support Plus: Comparison between WordPress Helpdesk plugins

This is the third article in the comparison series, and here without repeating which factors we use for comparison, let’s directly start the comparison between two of the top WordPress helpdesk plugins – WSDesk and WP Support Plus.

We believe that both these plugins are rich in features and is above its counterparts when it comes to the number of available features. But, it is important to note that, the quality of a plugin is not solely determined by the number of its features. Let explore every aspect of both these awesome plugins.

Ease of Use

The main thing is that everything become simple, easy enough for a child to understand.”
– Albert Camus

Interface plays a big role in determining the ease of use of a plugin. And WSDesk is one step ahead from most of the helpdesk plugins when it comes to the interface. It all comes down to how easily can a customer report an issue and how easily can the right support agent get back to him. When it comes to the ease of use, the requirement is to get the basic functions in place.

Both these plugins use AJAX based design, so there’s no scope of bringing any performance glitch in your site.

WSDesk has a simple form to submit a ticket and that’s the only way to do it whereas, WP Support Plus has an additional option of support button where a customer can contact you via some other methods too. Though this feature is quite an impressive one to have on your site but do you really need it? Having so many options to contact you might lead to a confusion into the customer’s mind. Moreover, the support button option doesn’t come with a lot of customization options, so it might look oddly out of place with your store design.

WP Support Plus, however, has some more feature to add to its ease of use, like the “FAQ” tab in the support section itself. This feature eases out the task of both the customer and the support agent. The agent can add any question and answer to the FAQ section if the question is expected to bug a number of customers. The only downside is that it’s a completely manual process for a support agent.

Automation

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
– Bill Gates

This is probably one of those fronts where WP Support Plus lacks considerably. Automation in WSDesk is highly advanced. You can Auto-assign tickets to specific agents based on a number of conditions using conditional operators. You can basically control the entire flow and movement of the tickets with automation.

The only automation involved in WP Support plus is the “Auto-reply” on the creation of a new ticket and “All pending tickets would be automatically closed after a certain number of days”, which you can configure.

Whereas in WSDesk, using triggers, you can send any number of auto-replies based on any number of conditions.

The Automation in WSDesk is unlimited. You can choose to activate or deactivate the automation. You can choose to schedule the automation. For example, you may want to send your customers some reminder from time to time based on some conditions.

Automation might not sound that significant for starters but once your business grows and tickets come pouring in, you would soon find it difficult to manage your store without automating as many processes as possible.

Knowledge Base

Right in the section of “Ease of Use”, I had mentioned the “FAQ” feature of WP Support Plus. Though it’s an interestingly useful feature and comes handy to the customers, it might not qualify as a tough competitor to an automated knowledge base.

An automated knowledge base has been one of the most desired features in a helpdesk plugin.

WP Support Plus has another interesting feature called “Canned Responses” which can be compared to “Auto-Suggestion”.

“Canned Responses”, in spite of being an interesting feature, falls behind to be of much use when it comes to the needs of the customers.

WSDesk has an easy integration with the plugin named List Category Post which helps in effectively categorizing of the knowledge base articles. Proper categorization is necessary to aid the customers in getting easy access to the suitable article.

Reports & Performance

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
– Mark Twain

WSDesk has an elegant way of storing and displaying the reports and performance concerning every agent which can be rightly compared to Zendesk. The reports and statistics section of WSDesk would give you a complete picture of the tickets handled by each customer along with his/her satisfaction rating. Satisfaction rating is indeed an important factor in determining the performance of an agent.

WP Support Plus though doesn’t focus much on giving a clear picture of an agent’s performance, it does stores the ticket counts corresponding to every status for every agent. It doesn’t have any option to determine how satisfied are the customers with your support agents, it does give you the exact estimate of the time spent on each ticket, through an addon. This again is a manual task, where the agent has to manually start the timer and record the time spent on his tickets.

Cost Effectiveness

Fortunately, both of these plugins pack in a number of premium features in the free version itself. One striking feature of WSDesk is that it provides, Email Piping in the free version!

In the case of WP Support plus, most of the advanced features are available as add-ons, which are available at $49 for 1 site. Sounds like a fair deal.

Considering the level of automation and reports present in WSDesk, $89 for WSDesk sounds highly reasonable.

Compatibility with other addons

Though WSDesk is compatible with a number of plugins like Easy Digital Downloads, WC Vendor Pro, List category Post, and Tawk, it has integration only with WooCommerce. It does have a unique feature of importing the Zendesk tickets.

WP Support Plus has integrations with both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. Though its Google Calendar Event addon, google calendar event button can be added to the tickets.

Closing comments

WP Support is loaded with a huge number of other features like –

1. The customer is able to assign tickets.
2. Ticket filtering in the front end.
3. Customization options.
4. The customer can add CC and BCC while replying to tickets.
5. Option to add Skype ID.

Though the above features look pretty interesting but do we really need them in a support plugin?

Isn’t the presence of automation, knowledge base and reports and statistics in a helpdesk plugin much more important?

Let us know in comments what you think of the comparison.

To explore more details about the plugins, go check out WSDesk – WordPress Helpdesk Plugin.

Read the product setting up article to understand the plugin, in detail. Or check out the product documentation section for more related articles.

You can also check out other WordPress and WooCommerce plugins in ELEX.