Maxdesk vs Serif

Maxdesk is a hosted, web-based help desk and ticketing system for customer support and internal IT. Each workspace receives a support address that turns incoming email into threaded tickets. The ticket view brings conversations, priorities, statuses, assignments, internal notes and attachments together. SLA targets can vary by priority and business hours, with countdowns and breach alerts. No-code rules use triggers, conditions and actions to route, tag, escalate or auto-reply. Its dashboard reports ticket counts, SLA breaches, CSAT, response time, trends and live activity. Custom roles, groups, a permission matrix and ticket-scope controls manage access. The Free plan includes unlimited agents and tickets within fair use, basic SLA policies, templates, a knowledge base and limited active automations. Pro costs $20 a month; Elite costs $99 a month and adds AI capabilities.

Serif places an AI employee in shared email addresses such as info@, support@ and billing@ to handle routine messages. It connects to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, or can work with an address of its own. The assistant can qualify and route inquiries, answer common questions, collect paperwork, send quotes and follow up on unpaid invoices. Ambiguous or sensitive messages are escalated to the team, and users can approve replies before allowing independent operation. The shared inbox page offers $100 in free credits without a credit card, and each plan includes a 7-day free trial with full access. Listed plans include Lite at $30 a month, Standard at $50 a month, Pro at $200 a month, and Team at $50 a month per user; each is billed monthly. Serif says it is SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR and HIPAA compliant, and that emails are neither used to train general AI models nor stored on its servers. Apps are listed for web, macOS, Windows and iOS; Android is coming soon.