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Customer Service & Helpdesk

Kayako

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Kayako Ltd · kayako.com

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Kayako: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Kayako: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Kayako at a glance

Vendor
Kayako Ltd
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Kayako 2.5/5, the mean of 6 judges. Kayako is an AI help desk platform, strongest on knowledge and self-service where scores run 8 to 9: articles are drafted from resolved tickets with one-click publish, translation is on demand, per-article health scores and stale-content flags mark what needs review, and analytics name which articles prevent tickets. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 20 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 21 Oct 2026. all sources

Kayako alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Support Lead

Weighted verdict

Runs a team of twelve against an SLA the sales team promised. Wants routing that reflects skill, timers that warn before they breach, and reporting she can take to a quarterly review. Reads "AI-powered" as a claim to be checked against the queue on a Monday morning.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Support Lead

Panel median The Support Lead This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Support Lead
Ticketing, queues & SLA 3 of 5 3 of 5
Channels in one queue 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Knowledge base & deflection 4.5 of 5 4.5 of 5
Customer data protection 2 of 5 2 of 5
Integrations & API 3 of 5 3 of 5
European sovereignty 0.5 of 5 0.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 2.5 of 5 2 of 5

Ticketing, queues & SLA

How this is scored

The engine: how work is routed, prioritised, escalated and measured — and whether an agent can find the ticket they need among ten thousand.

0 — A shared mailbox with labels; no ownership, no status model, no history beyond the thread.

3 — Tickets with assignment and open/closed status, but routing is manual, there are no SLA timers and search covers subject lines only.

5 — Queues with rules-based routing, priorities, a working status model, SLA timers with breach warnings, and full-text search across ticket bodies.

8 — Business-hours-aware SLA policies per queue or customer, escalation chains, macros and triggers, merge and split, and reporting on first-response and resolution time by agent and queue.

10 — The workload is managed rather than merely tracked: capacity-aware assignment, SLA per contract with reporting an account manager could show a customer, audit of every status change, and search that finds the ticket from a half-remembered phrase.

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The Support Lead

Routing is the strong suit — the AI classifies, predicts priority and routes on skills, current workload and language, backed by a no-code builder to route, assign and escalate, with SLA health, first contact resolution and resolution time tracked in real time. Reporting names agent performance and CSAT but no per-queue breakdown. I found no public information on SLA timers that warn before breach, business-hours-aware SLA policies per queue, macros, merge and split, or ticket search — the things my team leans on daily. 1 3

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Channels in one queue

How this is scored

Email, chat, phone, portal, messengers and social — judged on what actually lands in the same queue with the same history, not on how many channel logos the marketing page carries.

0 — Email only.

3 — Email plus one more channel, but the second lives in its own inbox: no shared history, and a customer who switches channel starts again.

5 — Email, a web form or portal and live chat all landing as tickets in one queue, with the customer's history visible whichever channel they used.

8 — The above plus telephony integration with call logging, at least one messenger (WhatsApp, Signal or similar) with its consent handling stated, and a customer portal where a requester can see their own tickets.

10 — Channel is an implementation detail: every channel including voice and messengers writes to one conversation with one history, agents answer from one screen, and the customer can move between channels mid-issue without repeating themselves.

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The Support Lead

Email, live chat, web forms, voice, SMS/WhatsApp and social media are all claimed to land in one unified inbox, with the customer's full history on a single timeline so agents stop asking people to repeat themselves. It stops short of the top: I found no public information on call logging for voice, consent handling for the messengers, or a portal where a requester can see their own tickets. 1 3 4

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Knowledge base & deflection

How this is scored

Whether the product reduces the number of tickets as well as organising them: public help centre, article workflow, suggestions to agents and to customers.

0 — No knowledge base; answers live in agents' heads and old tickets.

3 — A basic article list, public or internal, with no editorial workflow, no versioning and no link between articles and tickets.

5 — A searchable public help centre with categories, draft and publish states, and agents able to insert an article into a reply.

8 — Article suggestions to the customer before they submit and to the agent while they answer, multilingual articles, review dates that flag stale content, and reporting on which articles deflect.

10 — Knowledge is a managed asset: gaps identified from unanswered tickets, article performance measured against ticket volume by topic, versioned content with approval, and deflection reported as a number the team can act on.

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The Support Lead

This is the deepest evidence in the file: resolved tickets become draft articles with one-click publish, relevant articles surface to agents in-ticket and to customers via the chat widget, articles translate on demand, health scores and stale-content flags mark what needs review, and analytics show which articles actually prevent tickets plus a prioritised list of undocumented topics. The one missing piece at the top: I found no public information on versioned content with an approval step. 3 5 6

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Customer data protection

How this is scored

A ticket archive is personal data written by the data subject. Retention, deletion, access control, subject rights, and what the vendor does with attachments — judged on what executes rather than what is promised.

0 — No retention policy stated, no deletion path, agents all see everything, and no DPA is published.

3 — A DPA on request and coarse roles; deletion is described as something the customer arranges, and there is no stated retention period.

5 — A signable DPA published, configurable agent roles and queue-level visibility, a stated retention period, and deletion of a requester's data that can actually be executed.

8 — Automatic retention rules per queue or data category, attachment handling stated, an audit log of who opened which ticket, documented support for access and erasure requests, and pseudonymisation or redaction of ticket content.

10 — Built for a data-protection audit: retention executed and evidenced per category, field-level redaction, full audit trail, subprocessor list published, and the vendor's own support access to customer instances documented and consent-gated.

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The Support Lead

Role-based access, audit logs, SOC 2 Type II and GDPR are claimed built in from day one, and the privacy policy routes erasure requests to privacy@kayako.com with standard contractual clauses for restricted transfers. Retention is stated only as "as long as reasonably necessary" — no period I can hold anyone to — and the subprocessor list is available only on request. I found no public information on a published signable DPA, queue-level visibility for agents, attachment handling or redaction of ticket content. 1 2

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Integrations & API

How this is scored

The systems a helpdesk has to reach — CRM, shop, order management, identity — and whether the API is documented for building or gated behind a partner conversation.

0 — No API and no named integrations; context is copied in by hand.

3 — A handful of native integrations and a read-mostly API, with no webhooks and no documented rate limits.

5 — Named integrations for common CRM and shop systems, a documented REST API with keys, webhooks for the core ticket events, and SSO.

8 — Maintained bidirectional integrations, customer context from other systems shown inside the ticket, SCIM provisioning, documented rate limits and a sandbox.

10 — A component rather than a destination: versioned API with a deprecation policy, event streaming both directions, an app framework for in-ticket extensions, and integrations the vendor maintains rather than lists.

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The Support Lead

Salesforce, Shopify, Stripe, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp and Zapier with thousands of apps, open APIs, webhooks, developer docs and SSO/SAML, all included with no per-connector fees, plus a unified timeline where agents see orders, subscriptions and billing inside the ticket. I found no public information on documented rate limits, SCIM provisioning or a sandbox, which is where a serious build-out would bite. 1 7 8

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the ticket archive lives, who the contracting entity is, which subprocessors touch it, and whether vendor support can read customer data. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated or non-EU, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — support tooling, analytics, AI features — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, EU contracting entity, full subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor in the EU, certification published, and a self-hosted or private-cloud option for buyers who need the archive on their own infrastructure.

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The Support Lead

The Kayako platform is managed by ESW Operations, LLC of Austin, Texas, data may be stored in the EEA, the United States or any other country where the company has facilities, and subprocessors are named only on request — with standard contractual clauses and Data Privacy Framework certification as the stated transfer safeguards. For a buyer weighing European sovereignty that is a US contracting entity with hosting uncommitted to Europe, so it sits just above the bottom for the transfer measures alone. 2

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a support lead can compute the real annual invoice for their agent count — including the channels and features they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-agent headline exists, but the tier where the needed channel or SLA feature begins is unstated, or light-agent and contact limits are not mentioned.

5 — Per-agent prices public for the main tiers with billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed capability (telephony, messengers, SLA policies) sits in an unpriced bundle.

8 — Every tier and add-on priced publicly with per-agent maths, billing period, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom enterprise work lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator or table producing the annual invoice for a given agent count and channel selection, including usage-metered channels and overage.

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The Support Lead

Public unit prices exist — $79/agent/mo for Kayako One on one page, $1 per AI resolution or AI-deflected question, all integrations and API access included with no connection limits. But the captured pages give different figures for the same plan — "Custom pricing for your team" elsewhere and $1 per ticket on a third page — and I found no public information on billing period, minimum term or VAT treatment. I cannot put a defensible annual invoice in front of finance for twelve agents. 4 5 6 7

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Kayako

Is Kayako European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where Kayako is based.

Where does Kayako store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026.

Does Kayako have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 20 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Kayako?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates Zendesk (3.5/5), Intercom (3.5/5) and HubSpot Service Hub (3/5) highest among the other 28 Customer Service & Helpdesk products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Zammad (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Kayako alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (8)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor page kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Privacy policy — found from the homepage kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Ticketing, queues & SLA — found from sitemap kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Channels in one queue — found from sitemap kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Knowledge base & deflection — found from sitemap kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Knowledge base & deflection — found from sitemap kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Integrations & API — found from sitemap kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Integrations & API — found from sitemap kayako.com Checked 20 Oct 2026 Details →