Team email costs ₹420 an agent on Zoho Desk and US$25 on Hiver
What four help desks charge per agent, from their own pricing pages, to run a shared support or HR inbox, with the INR, GST and DPDP view. September 2026.
Managing a team’s email costs ₹420 an agent a month on Zoho Desk’s cheapest paid plan, US$19 on Freshdesk and US$25 on Hiver, all billed annually.123 That is the purchase this piece was really about in 2022, when it described an “email management system” with ticket numbers, a receipt queue, spam filtering and tagging. Every one of those components is now a feature of a help desk or a shared inbox. The personal tips that filled the rest of the piece, rules, folders, templates and follow-up reminders, are free inside Gmail and Outlook.
01One person and a team are two different purchases
For one person drowning in mail, the tool is a sorter. SaneBox, which the original recommended, lists US$4.54 a month for one account and US$22.04 for four, on two-year billing.5 Mailstrom, the other personal tool named in 2022, is still online under 410 Labs but prints no price on its home page.6 Neither assigns a message to a colleague, tracks a reply deadline or shows a manager what is waiting. A support@, accounts@ or hr@ address needs exactly those three things, and that is what the per-agent price buys.
The entry price per agent runs from ₹420 to US$90 a month, and only Zoho prints it in rupees
Cheapest paid plan with assignment and ticketing, per agent per month, annual billing, as published, September 2026
₹420
Zoho Desk Express; free for up to 3 users
plus 18% GST
US$19
Freshdesk Growth; 14-day trial, no free plan listed
Freshworks
US$25
Hiver Growth, inside Gmail and Outlook; US$35 billed monthly
Hiver
US$90
HubSpot Service Hub Professional, plus US$1,500 onboarding
HubSpot
Source: Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, Hiver and HubSpot pricing pages · as of 30 September 2026 · Zoho Desk is shown in INR as published for India; the others publish US$ only
02Choose by where the agent works, not by the feature list
The four tools do the 2022 checklist equally well: a ticket number on every thread, a queue for pending replies, rules that sort on arrival, saved responses. The real difference is where the person answering spends the day. Hiver runs inside Gmail and Outlook, so a finance or HR team that lives in its inbox learns nothing new.3 Zoho Desk and Freshdesk are separate consoles with deeper reporting, a knowledge base and more channels, which suits a customer support team. HubSpot’s Professional tier, with its onboarding fee, only makes sense if the company already runs HubSpot as its CRM.4
03If you are buying this in India
Zoho Desk is the only one of the four that publishes rupee prices: ₹420, ₹800, ₹1,400 and ₹2,400 an agent a month across its paid plans, before 18% GST.1 The others list in US dollars and are invoiced in rupees through a reseller, with GST on top. Zoho and Freshworks were built in Chennai and Hiver was founded by Indian entrepreneurs.7 A help desk holds customers’ and employees’ names, addresses and complaints, which is personal data under the DPDP Act; the Rules were notified on 13 November 2025, and the security-safeguard and breach-notice duties apply from 13 May 2027.8 Ask where the mailbox data is stored before you choose. TechBag resells Zoho Desk, Freshdesk, Hiver and HubSpot.
Sources
- Zoho Desk, pricing (India, INR per agent per month billed annually; free plan with three user licences) — undated page
- Freshworks, Freshdesk pricing (Growth US$19, Pro US$55, Enterprise US$89, annual) — undated page
- Hiver, pricing (Growth US$25 annual, US$35 monthly; Pro US$55) — undated page
- HubSpot, Service Hub pricing (Professional US$90 to US$100 a seat; US$1,500 onboarding) — undated page
- SaneBox, pricing (Snack, Lunch, Dinner; two-year billing) — undated page
- Mailstrom, home page (410 Labs) — undated page
- TechBag, Hiver, Zoho Desk and Freshdesk intel pages (origin, deployment, plans) — September 2026
- Legismith, DPDP Rules 2025 commencement timeline — notified 13 November 2025
Related on TechBag: the ITSM and service desk guide compares the help desks that also run internal IT tickets.
Disclosure. TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view.
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