Why we built Protodesk
Every existing tool felt either too heavy for small teams or too basic to handle modern support. Here's why we decided to build another one anyway.
Support tools have a split personality problem.
The enterprise end — Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, Freshdesk — is built for 50-person support orgs with dedicated admins, complicated SLAs, and budget lines that start at five figures. The small end — shared Gmail inboxes, Crisp, the Slack-channel-as-a-helpdesk pattern — is built for the first ten customers and falls apart at the hundredth.
In between, there's supposed to be Help Scout. And we like Help Scout. But it's email-first. If your customers live on WhatsApp, you bolt on a third-party integration and hope it holds. If you want AI to actually handle triage or draft responses, you're waiting for the next feature announcement. And the moment you need two teams with different SLAs, you're on the phone with sales.
We built Protodesk because we wanted all of that — WhatsApp-first, AI-native, teams and SLAs without the Business-plan upsell — in one inbox, at one price, for companies that don't have a Director of Customer Operations.
What we're committing to
- Free stays free. Not a trial. Not "free for the first 14 days". Actually free, for 3 seats, forever. Because customer support shouldn't be a luxury for solo founders.
- AI that explains itself. Every AI action — triage, auto-resolve, sidekick draft — shows you its reasoning and its sources. No black boxes. No "trust us."
- Multichannel means real multichannel. WhatsApp and email are first-class, not afterthoughts. Slack and Discord are next.
- Priced for humans. Starter $9.99/month. Pro $19.99. Business $39.99. If you need Enterprise, you'll know.
What's next
Over the next three months we're shipping:
- Public help center at your own custom domain (Business+)
- Full REST API and webhooks (Pro+)
- SSO and SCIM (Enterprise)
- Native Slack and Discord channels
If any of that matters to you, start free. We'd love to hear what you think.