Feature
FreshService
KeystoneOps
Pricing model
Per agent, per month
✓ Perpetual licence (self-hosted) or subscription building toward ownership (managed)
Cost (10-academy MAT)
~£17,280/year (32 agents @ £45/mo)
✓ £15,000 perpetual or £7,800/yr managed (Path to Ownership)
5-year TCO
~£86,400
✓ £15,000 self-hosted, or £29,400 managed — and you own the licence either way
Hosting
Vendor cloud (AWS Frankfurt typically)
✓ Self-hosted, or UK managed single-tenant (subscription builds toward ownership)
Data residency
EU, sometimes US
✓ UK only — always.
Helpdesk
Excellent
no edge claimed Excellent — feature parity
Estates compliance
Not included
✓ Built in
Asset management
Add-on (Freshservice Asset Pro)
✓ Built in, with on-prem network discovery
KCSIE / SCR
Not included
✓ Built in (replaces the spreadsheet)
Governance / risk
Not a thing
✓ Built in (KCSIE / Cyber Essentials / ISO 27001)
Health & Safety
Not included
✓ Built in — incidents/RIDDOR, accident book, risk assessments, COSHH, fire drills
People register
Not included
✓ Built in — one staff record the SCR + H&S check against
Recruitment / ATS
Not included
✓ Built in — careers site, sift, interviews, e-signed offers, safer-recruitment pack
Identity provisioning
Not included
✓ Built in — automated joiner-mover-leaver across Entra / Google / on-prem AD
Visitor & staff sign-in
Not included
✓ Built in — Welcome Desk kiosk, attendance, fire roll-call
Native mobile app
Yes
no edge claimed Yes — iOS & Android: self-service, approvals, presence, field capture
AI
Freddy AI — per-agent add-on, vendor cloud
✓ Built in — triage, reply copilot, Ask AI, Keystone Intelligent Assist; BYO key (no markup), off by default, PII-redacted
Ticket / change / problem
Yes
no edge claimed Yes
Approval chains
Yes
✓ Yes — sequential or parallel
Per-priority SLA
Yes
✓ Yes — plus per-department SLA policies
API surface
Yes — REST
✓ Yes — REST + webhooks + queue events
SSO
Yes
✓ Entra / Google / SAML / OIDC / LDAP
Audit log
Yes
✓ Yes — read-only, configurable retention
Data export / exit
API export; data stays in vendor cloud
✓ You hold the database (self-host) or get a full export + schema; source included
Migrating your data
Export to CSV; manual re-import or paid PS
✓ Built-in import toolkit — dry-run preview + downloadable failed-rows report
On-prem network discovery
No
✓ Go agent per academy
MAT vocabulary
Generic enterprise
✓ Academy / DSL / KCSIE / Ofsted built in
Vendor relationships
One per add-on (typical: 3-5)
✓ One
Comparison reflects FreshService's public pricing + documentation as of 2026. We try to keep this current; if you spot something out of date, ping us at /contact.