Is Kayako still in business after the acquisition?

Yes, Kayako continues to operate under ESW Capital. The acquisition in 2018 provided additional resources for development, and the platform continues to be maintained and updated.

What makes Kayako different from Zendesk?

Kayako focuses on unified conversations showing complete customer history in one timeline, while Zendesk uses a traditional ticket based approach. Kayako also tends to be more affordable for similar feature sets.

Does Kayako offer on premise deployment?

Yes, Kayako Download edition allows on premise installation on your own servers, offering complete data control for organizations with strict security requirements.

Can I migrate from Zendesk to Kayako?

Yes, Kayako offers migration tools and services to import data from Zendesk, Freshdesk, and other platforms including tickets, contacts, and knowledge base articles.

Is Kayako suitable for enterprise use?

While Kayako serves some enterprise clients, it's optimized for small to mid sized businesses. Very large enterprises may find Salesforce Service Cloud or ServiceNow more suitable for complex requirements.

Kayako

Kayako is a unified customer service platform offering live chat, shared inbox, and help desk capabilities. Founded in 2001, it focuses on conversational customer support and team collaboration.

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About Kayako

Kayako is a customer service platform founded in 2001 in Jalandhar, India, by Varun Shoor (a college dropout who learned to code at age 13). The company was bootstrapped for 17 years before being acquired by ESW Capital in 2018. Kayako has served over 131,000 customers including major brands like FedEx, General Electric, and Sega.

The platform differentiates itself through a focus on unified conversations rather than traditional tickets, allowing support teams to view complete customer journeys across email, live chat, social, and phone in a single timeline. Kayako emphasizes collaboration features with internal notes, @mentions, and collision detection to prevent duplicate responses.

Kayako offers both cloud hosted and on premise deployment options (Download edition). The platform is particularly strong in live chat with real time visitor monitoring and proactive engagement capabilities. Recent updates have focused on improving the mobile experience and adding automation features.

Key Features

Unified Customer Timeline: View complete conversation history across all channels in a single, chronological thread rather than separate tickets.
Collaborative Shared Inbox: Internal team collaboration with @mentions, private notes, and real time collision detection.
Live Chat & Messaging: Real time chat with proactive triggers, visitor monitoring, and integration with Facebook Messenger and Twitter.
Help Center: Self service portal with knowledge base, FAQs, and community forums that can be embedded in apps and websites.
Automation & Macros: Workflow automation for routing, tagging, and responses with customizable macros for common replies.
Multi brand Support: Manage multiple brands or products from a single instance with separate portals and email addresses.

Pricing

Inbox: $15/agent/month Shared inbox, basic live chat, and email support for small teams getting started.
Growth: $30/agent/month Adds automation rules, custom fields, SLA management, and basic reporting.
Scale: $60/agent/month Includes multi brand support, advanced analytics, custom roles, and API access.
Enterprise: Custom pricing Dedicated infrastructure, custom SLAs, premium support, and account management.

Pricing last updated: February 22, 2026 at 9:52 AM