Comment by nemesisj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nemesisj | Hacker News Reader

Is there any otherwise-vanilla SaaS out there that generates more controversy than Freshdesk (at least among the HN readership)?

Already on this article (8 comments posted as I write this) we have a FUD comment saying their post is "smug" and their customers should be worried, and then another talking about how you need to "be careful" about criticising the company because their employees victimised the commenter by "down voting them in groups".

Add to this the backdrop of ridiculous comments by Zendesk founder calling them a ripoff, and just the general FUD espoused by almost everyone whenever an Indian tech company is in the picture, and it's a bit sad.

We don't use Freshdesk, although we're considering moving from Zendesk to them due to some missing features, and I'm not Indian, but I really do think it's interesting how this company is just constantly and vaguely looked down upon by people who should know better.

FD seem to be scrappy, they're growing quickly, their product looks good, they give discounts to startups, and they just happen to be based in India - what's not to like?

I read HN daily and this is my first encounter with Freshdesk.

>FD seem to be scrappy, they're growing quickly, their product looks good, they give discounts to startups, and they just happen to be based in India - what's not to like?

Regardless of the quality of their offering, I'm personally turned off by the David vs. Goliath click bait being my introduction to the company. Maybe that's unfair, but so it goes.

What was it they said about "when life gives you lemons..."?

While I agree on a personal level that the post crosses the line somewhat between scrappy startup chutzpah to user acquisition tactic, I still like the idea of Freshdesk using a negative news item to position itself more aggressively.

I also think that outside the hyper-attuned HN community, this post is going to be seen more positively.

I too am turned off by the article. Girish Mathrubootham should've posted this on his own personal blog instead of under the Freshdesk corporate blog. It can _only_ present a bad image for the company. He can be a smug CEO all he wants on his personal blog.

I found it to be a great response. A competitor gets acquired, a news article says your company will be put out of business by it, and voila! An opportunity to rise above it.

And yes, when was the last time Microsoft put somebody out of business?

I went from Zendesk to Freshdesk purely based on my experience on one feature request on Zendesk. The feature was promised repeatedly for, roughly as I recall, 4 years and never delivered.

Freshdesk functionality isn't better, but it is cheaper and they've never made empty promises that affected me. The thread seems to have been removed now I search for it, not surprised, it reflected very badly on them.

Edit: Found it [0]. TL;DR, Lots of people wanted it. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming... Delivered years later...but not actually what was asked for...

[0] https://support.zendesk.com/entries/12834-Monospaced-Unforma...

That is the most ridiculous thread I've ever seen from a company. Not only did the employee take a shot at people (self hosting solutions is wrong) he also epically, never delivered what the people were asking for even after FIVE YEARS!!

I'm really wondering why he even continued to reply to the thread.

I didn't know much about how Freshdesk was founded, but this post is interesting: http://blog.freshdesk.com/the-freshdesk-story-how-a-simple-c...

From that HN thread:

> Whenever I read something like this I can't help but think "Here's a potential customer to whomever can get this right and at the right price". It seems like there's still a huge opening in this market for someone to come in and take all of ZenDesk and eSupport's customers.

> Do you really think so? It always struck me that there was 1001 support desk providers out there... is there really that much space? (cos if so it's going on my list of maybe projects :))

> There's always space for someone who does it better and/or cheaper than the competition.

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