Support Candy vs Fluent Support: A Comprehensive Comparison

In the age of hyper-connectivity, where there are more communication channels than Saturn has moons, effective customer support and streamlined customer relationship management are critical for business success. Support Candy and Fluent Support, two prominent WordPress plugins, offer solutions for these key business aspects.

Choosing the right WordPress support ticket plugins can be challenging, given the multitude of options available on WordPress. To assist you in making an informed choice, we’ve prepared a comprehensive comparison of Support Candy and Fluent Support. Both plugins have distinct features and functionalities.

This blog post will provide an in-depth analysis of both plugins, covering features, pricing, ease of use, integration options, and more. By the end, you’ll have the insights to select the best fit for your business.

Join us as we explore the strengths and weaknesses of Support Candy and Fluent Support, helping you make an educated decision to meet your business requirements.

Support Candy vs Fluent Support at a Glance

Let’s start by seeing how they stack up against each other at a glance

Feature	Support Candy	Fluent Support
Starting price	$79/year	$77/year
Key features	Unlimited tickets Unlimited users Unlimited agents Ticket routing Canned responses Email notifications	Unlimited tickets Unlimited users Unlimited agents SLAsMacros Live chat
Ease of use	Good	Excellent
WordPress rating	4.9/5	4.6/5
Live installations	10000+	6000+

Overview – What is Support Candy?

Support Candy is your trusty companion when it comes to handling customer support directly within your WordPress site. It’s a bit like having a personal assistant for managing all those customer inquiries and support requests, making sure everything is neatly organized in one place. With Support Candy, you can create, assign, and effortlessly keep track of support tickets, essentially turning it into your ultimate to-do list for customer service.

One handy feature of Support Candy is its email notification system. It keeps both your support team and customers in the loop by sending timely email notifications, ensuring that everyone stays informed about the status of support tickets and any updates. No more wondering or guessing – it’s all at your fingertips.

Support Candy also lets you create custom forms, which is incredibly useful for collecting specific information from customers when they reach out for support. This way, you can gather all the necessary details without the back-and-forth, making the support process more efficient.

Support Candy also provides knowledge base functionality but in the form of a third party integration. It possesses no native knowledge base functionality. Using this integration, you can create and share articles to answer common questions, saving time for your team and customers. Plus, it offers reporting and analytics tools to help you gauge your support team’s performance and customer satisfaction.

Overview – What is Fluent Support?

Fluent Support is like your dedicated customer support assistant right within your WordPress environment. It’s designed to streamline and optimize the way you handle customer inquiries, providing an all-in-one solution for businesses of various sizes.

One of Fluent Support’s notable features is its ticket management system, which simplifies the process of creating, assigning, and tracking support tickets. You can say goodbye to the chaos of scattered emails and messages – Fluent Support centralizes it all.

In addition, Fluent Support offers custom forms, enabling you to collect specific details from customers when they reach out for assistance. This feature minimizes the back-and-forth communication and accelerates the support process, making it more efficient.

Fluent Support includes a customer portal feature with a knowledge base but the knowledge base part as an integration (BetterDocs) rather than a native feature, allowing you to create and share informative articles to address common customer questions on a unified interface. They also provide reporting and analytics tools so you can monitor your support team’s performance and gauge customer satisfaction.

Ticket Management

Support Candy

When it comes to managing support tickets, Support Candy is a dedicated specialist. It provides a comprehensive and efficient ticket management system that covers all the basics. With Support Candy, you can create new tickets, assign them to the appropriate team members, and easily track their progress. It also offers email notifications, which means that you and your customers stay in the loop regarding ticket statuses and updates. Support Candy has you covered if you’re primarily looking for a ticketing system plugin that excels in ticket management and support organization.

Fluent Support

Fluent Support excels in simplifying ticket management with an intuitively designed interface that empowers businesses to wield control over customer inquiries. With a user-friendly system for creating, sorting, and customizing tickets, it streamlines the handling of questions and concerns, making support a hassle-free process.

Advanced filters and search functionality add another layer of efficiency, enabling the rapid sorting and organization of tickets. This feature enhances response times and ensures agents can navigate their tasks seamlessly. In addition, the system provides an at-a-glance view of your support desk’s status, offering clear insights into ongoing and resolved inquiries.

Furthermore, Fluent Support introduces ticket tags, offering a personalized ticket labeling approach. This adaptable system allows you to customize ticket management to match your specific organizational style, providing a level of control that simplifies your support operations.

Our pick: Fluent Support. Both are equally capable of providing all the essential features that a ticket management system should have but Fluent Support is more capable when it comes to ticket management. 

Email Marketing and Automation

Support Candy

It’s worth noting that Support Candy primarily focuses on support ticket management and doesn’t include email marketing or automation features. If your primary business need revolves around handling customer support inquiries and tickets, Support Candy aligns well with that objective however it lacks a any solid technical support when it comes to email marketing and automations. 

Fluent Support

Fluent Support provides a stand-alone tool for email automation. However, It doesn’t come equipped with their support software. This CRM tool is called Fluent CRM, which boasts robust email marketing and marketing automation features. With Fluent CRM, you can create and send targeted email campaigns, track their performance, and even set up automated email sequences. This integration availability makes Fluent Support an attractive choice if you want to combine support ticket management with marketing capabilities.

Our pick: Fluent Support. Has a separate fully enriched tool for email marketing and automation features, even if it doesn’t come stock with their support tool suite. 

Live chat

Support Candy

Support Candy is a ticketing system designed for WordPress, but it lacks a crucial feature: live chat support. While it excels at managing and organizing support tickets, the absence of live chat can be a significant drawback. Live chat provides real-time assistance to customers and can quickly address their queries. 

Without this feature, Support Candy misses the opportunity for immediate, one-on-one customer engagement, which is essential for handling urgent issues, providing instant solutions, and ensuring customer satisfaction. If your WordPress website requires both ticketing and live chat functionality, you may need to consider additional plugins or integrations, which can complicate your support system and potentially lead to a less seamless customer experience.

Fluent Support

It is a bit comical that even though Fluent Support markets themselves as a “complete” helpdesk software, they provide no live chat feature. They even use Crisp on their own website which is a third party app. This just highlights their dependance on the WordPress ecosystem. Live chat is a significant drawback for businesses seeking real-time engagement with their customers. Live chat has become an essential tool for instant customer support and issue resolution. 

Its absence in Fluent Support’s offerings can result in missed opportunities for prompt and efficient communication with customers. This limitation may lead to customers’ frustration due to delayed responses, impacting their satisfaction and overall customer experience. Integrating a live chat feature for immediate support is essential to maintain a competitive edge in the customer support software market.

Our pick: To be honest, neither if live chat is concerned. You’d be much better off picking a software such as ThriveDesk as it provides a dedicated native live chat. 

Custom Forms

Support Candy

Support Candy offers a robust and versatile custom form creation system, with access to over 16 custom field types. These custom fields allow you to customize your ticket submission forms extensively, ensuring that you can capture specific information that is crucial for addressing customer queries efficiently. 

With Support Candy, you can create dedicated ticket fields for gathering additional information about the ticket itself, agent-only fields for storing internal data relevant to the ticket, and customer fields that maintain consistent customer information across all their tickets. Additionally, the plugin includes a Terms & Conditions checkbox in the ticket form, which can be valuable for ensuring compliance and managing user agreements.

Fluent Support

While Fluent Support may not offer the same range of custom field types as Support Candy, it focuses on efficient ticket management and segmentation. This plugin allows you to segment tickets by the product, which can be useful for categorizing and prioritizing customer queries. 

Both customers and support agents have the ability to set the priority of a ticket, ensuring that urgent issues are addressed promptly. Additionally, Fluent Support provides the feature of adding internal notes to each ticket, facilitating better communication among support agents and streamlining the support process.

Our pick: Support Candy. It provides more form customization options as opposed to Fluent Support which focuses more on ticket segmentation and management.

Reporting and Analytics

Support Candy

Support Candy includes reporting and analytics tools that enable you to track support team performance and customer satisfaction. You can gain insights into how well your support operations are running, helping you make data-driven decisions to improve customer service. They give you statistics such as ticket Statistics,Response Delay, Ticket Closing Delay, Communication Gap, Ratings and custom Fields

Fluent Support

Fluent Support is king in this category because while providing basic reporting and analytics. They give you much more comprehensive statistics that will help you know more about your team and overall business performance. It provides reports such as personal reports, agent reports, agent summary export, individual agent summary export, individual performance, hourly reports, product report, business boxes reports

Our pick: Fluent Support. More comprehensive reporting capabilities.

Pricing and Plans

Support Candy

Personal	$79/year (Single site license)
Professional	$149/year (5 sites)
Agency	$299/year (20 sites)

Fluent Support

Single Site License	$77/year
Agency License	$149/year
50 Sites License	$239/year

Both Support Candy and Fluent Support offer a variety of pricing plans to choose from. However, Fluent Support offers more features overall, including advanced reporting features, custom ticket forms, agent collaboration, SLAs, macros, audit logs, and security features.

Additionally, Fluent Support offers a 50 Sites License plan, which is not available from Support Candy. This makes Fluent Support a better option for businesses with many websites.

Overall, Fluent Support is a better value for the money than Support Candy. It offers more features and flexibility, and it is more affordable for businesses with a large number of websites.

If money is limited for your business, a help desk that can be a Fluent Support or Support Candy alternative is ThriveDesk. They offer straightforward pricing plans designed to meet the diverse needs of businesses, with only 2 options to choose from; it makes it easier for business owners to make a decision regarding pricing. Choose the plan that suits your support requirements and budget, whether you’re a small team or a growing enterprise. 

Starter	$25/month (4 seats)
Plus	$85/month (10 seats)
Enterprise	$25/seat per month (Minimum 10 seats)

Our pick: Fluent Support. It offers more features and flexibility, and it is more affordable for businesses with a large number of websites.

Ease of Use

Support Candy

Support Candy prides itself on its simplicity and user-friendliness. Its interface is designed to be intuitive, making it easy for support teams to navigate and manage tickets efficiently. Creating and assigning tickets is a straightforward process, and you can set up custom forms with ease.

The plugin also provides ample documentation and resources to guide users through the setup and configuration process. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced user, you should be able to get Support Candy up and running without significant issues.

Fluent Support

Fluent Support is similarly designed with user-friendliness in mind. It offers an intuitive interface that makes handling support tickets, email marketing, and marketing automation accessible to users of all skill levels. Setting up email campaigns and automated sequences is streamlined to enhance user productivity.

The Fluent Support team also offers robust documentation and support resources. If you’re new to CRM and support plugins, these resources can help you get started quickly and make the most of the tool.

Our pick: Fluent Support. It offers custom ticket forms, agent collaboration, and SLAs, which can help to streamline the customer support process and reduce the time it takes to resolve tickets.

Integration Options

Support Candy

Support Candy offers a variety of integration options, allowing you to extend its functionality and connect with other tools that your business uses. While it primarily focuses on support ticket management, you can integrate it with plugins or third-party services that complement your customer support operations.

Common integration options for Support Candy include:

• Email Piping: Create or reply to tickets from an email account.
• WooCommerce Integration: Add a support tab on the My Account page and a help button for orders.
• Knowledge Base Integrations: Integrates popular knowledge base plugins for WordPress.
• FAQ Integrations: Integrates popular FAQ plugins for WordPress.
• EDD Integration: Integrates Easy Digital Downloads with the ticket.
• Gravity Forms Integration: Create multiple ticket forms using Gravity Forms.
• Slack Integration: Get instant notifications to your Slack Channel.
• LMS Integrations: Integrates popular LMS plugins for WordPress.

Fluent Support

Fluent Support is designed to be more than just a support ticket management tool. It includes features for email marketing and marketing automation, which means it integrates with email marketing platforms and third-party services to provide a seamless experience. 

Here are some of the integrations that they offer:

• WooCommerce & EDD: Let customers open support tickets against orders and select store products for queries. View customer orders and purchase history from a ticket view.
• Membership Plugins: Integration with Restrict Content Pro, Paid Membership Pro, and Wishlist Member. View member’s membership information from a ticket view.
• Learning Management Systems (LMS): Integration with LearnDash, LifterLMS, and TutorLMS. View student details when supporting.
• BuddyPress / BuddyBoss: Get a detailed overview of community members from the ticket overview.
• Smart Automation: Leverage the power of workflows and saved replies for automated responses, internal notes, priority setting, and agent assignment on customer queries. Implement manual workflows for task automation on selected filtered tickets, making it easier to automate multiple tickets with a single click.

Our pick: Both plugins offer valuable integration options, but the extent and type of integration will depend on your specific business needs. Consider the tools and services you currently use or plan to implement, and evaluate which plugin’s integration options align better with your workflow and goals.

Customer Support and Documentation

Support Candy

Support Candy takes customer support seriously. They provide various support channels, including email support and a support forum where you can ask questions and seek assistance. Response times are generally prompt, and their support team is known for being helpful in addressing user inquiries.

In addition to direct customer support, Support Candy offers detailed documentation and guides. You can find resources that cover everything from installation to advanced configurations. This extensive documentation is beneficial for users who prefer self-help and want to troubleshoot issues independently.

Fluent Support

Fluent Support is dedicated to providing reliable customer support as well. They offer multiple support channels, including email and a support forum and customer portal where users can seek help and advice. The Fluent Support team is responsive and strives to assist users in resolving their questions or concerns.

In terms of documentation, Fluent Support offers a comprehensive knowledge base that covers various aspects of using the plugin. This resource can be particularly useful for users who prefer to access information independently and troubleshoot any potential issues.

One problem however is that they use a third party software in BetterDocs to provide a knowledge base feature, similar to Support Candy. This again goes against their claim as being a “complete” helpdesk solution.

A knowledge base is a bread-and-butter feature of a helpdesk software and using a third party software to provide these features simply makes the experience less personalized and meaningful for its users.

Our pick: Both plugins offer robust customer support options and comprehensive documentation. Your choice between Support Candy and Fluent Support will depend on your preference for support channels and the level of independence you require when using the plugin.

User Reviews and Testimonials

Real-world user feedback and reviews are invaluable when making a decision about a WordPress plugin. In this section, we’ll explore what users have to say about their experiences with both Support Candy and Fluent Support.

Support Candy

Support Candy has garnered a dedicated user base who appreciate its simplicity and effectiveness in managing support tickets. Users often praise its user-friendly interface, ease of use, and the ability to create custom forms to collect specific information from customers.

Support Candy currently holds a quite robust 4.9/5 WordPress rating, accompanied by mostly positive reviews such as

However, some users have noted that while it excels in support ticket management, it may not offer the advanced CRM features required by businesses looking for more comprehensive customer relationship management capabilities.

Fluent Support 

Fluent Support has received positive feedback for its versatility. Users appreciate its woocommerce helpdesk plugin features, email marketing capabilities, and marketing automation, which provide a holistic solution for managing customer interactions.

Many users find Fluent Support to be a one-stop solution for customer support and marketing, which streamlines their workflow and simplifies communication with customers. It holds a modest 4.6/5 WordPress rating with user reviews such as

However, some users have mentioned that their customer support can be unresponsive for long periods, which creates problems for customers.

Reading user feedback and reviews is essential for understanding how each plugin performs in real-world scenarios. These insights can help you weigh the pros and cons and determine which plugin aligns best with your specific business needs.

Our Pick: Support Candy. It’s overall higher rated and their customer service also did not seem as unresponsive as Fluent Support based on user reviews.

Security and Data Privacy

Support Candy

Support Candy places a strong emphasis on data privacy and security. They collect various types of personal data, such as comments, media uploads, and customer support information. To ensure the security of this data, Support Candy employs measures that protect against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. 

Personal data is handled with care and retained for specific duration, allowing users to request modifications or deletions. It’s essential to note that Support Candy explicitly states that they do not share user data with third-party individuals or services, providing a clear assurance of the privacy and security of user information.

Fluent Support

Fluent Support also prioritizes data privacy and security. They collect personal information, including order details, and automatically gather device information as users interact with the site. To safeguard personal information, Fluent Support employs encryption and digital signatures for sensitive data exchanges. 

They are transparent about data collection and usage, ensuring users understand how their information is processed and their rights to access, correct, or delete their data. Additionally, Fluent Support is actively working to implement General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) principles, demonstrating their commitment to staying compliant with evolving privacy regulations.

Our pick: Fluent Support. Their explicit mention of implementing GDPR principles and emphasis on transparency may provide a slightly higher level of assurance for users concerned about privacy and compliance with evolving privacy regulations. 

ThriveDesk: A Worthy Alternative

If you’re in search of a robust helpdesk solution that streamlines customer support, ThriveDesk has you covered. Designed with businesses in mind, ThriveDesk stands out as a powerful yet user-friendly live chat assistant tailored especially for eCommerce entrepreneurs as opposed to both Support Candy and Fluent Support, which boasts no native live chat feature.  

ThriveDesk caters to small businesses, providing the tools needed to manage real-time customer interactions effectively. Features like a help desk and ticket system, quick replies, seamless file sharing through the chat widget, the convenience of emojis, customer satisfaction surveys, sales tracking reports for eCommerce, 

What elevates ThriveDesk above most helpdesk software is that it provides a tailor-made customer service portal for WordPress users called WP Portal with built-in knowledge base functionality, which you can host directly on your WordPress site.

Another thing that put it ahead is its live chat. It’s USP being that since it’s their own custom live chat, people using ThriveDesk do not have to juggle multiple interfaces to handle support tickets. All tickets are viewable under one unified dashboard, drastically reducing support time.

Worried about system performance? Don’t be. ThriveDesk boasts a lightweight and optimized design that ensures smooth website functionality without slowing it down. Our speedy agent interface guarantees swift responses and maximum efficiency, all while ensuring your website operates seamlessly.

Key Features

Here are some of their key features: 

• Self Service Portal (WPPortal)
• Third-party Integrations
• Performance Metrics
• Live Chat
• Workflow Management
• Alerts / Escalation
• Ticket Management
• Customer Database
• Email Management
• Extensive Knowledge Base
• Surveys & Feedback
• Pricing for ThriveDesk starts at just $25 per month.

Why ThriveDesk is your best bet?

When evaluating Helpdesk solutions for WordPress, some of the leading options are often ThriveDesk, Support Candy and Fluent Support. However, while all three plugins offer ticketing systems, ThriveDesk stands out. 

What defines a true Helpdesk solution? Built-in elements like knowledge bases, team workflows, self-service portals and automation. Lets look at a comparison table to get a more clearer picture

Feature	ThriveDesk	Support Candy	Fluent Support
Knowledge base	✅ Built-in	❌ Only accessible through third partyintegration	❌ Only accessible through third party integration
Live chat	✅ Integrated	❌ No live chat available	❌ no live chat available
Assistive AI	✅ Smart replies	❌ No AI assistive support available	❌ No AI assistive support available
Self service portal	✅ Branded customer service portal	❌ No customer service portal feature	✅ Customer service portal available
Target audience	SaaS businesses, WordPress businesses, Agencies, Consultancies. No real limitations.	WordPress dependant	WordPress dependant
Pricing	$25/month	$79/year	$77/year

By centralizing tickets, docs, chat, portals, and automation into a helpdesk wordpress plugin, ThriveDesk delivers a all purpose Helpdesk for not just WordPress sites but also multiple types of businesses. Support Candy and Fluent Support only offer subsets of these capabilities and are only the most effective in a WordPress environment.

For SaaS sites and busy support teams aiming to deliver 5-star customer service, ThriveDesk checks all the boxes as an All round high level Helpdesk. 

Which one to pick for your business?

Support Candy shines in the realm of support ticket management. Its user-friendly interface, customizable forms, and knowledge base feature make it a valuable tool for businesses that prioritize efficient customer support. It places a strong emphasis on data privacy and security, assuring users that their information is handled with care and not shared with third parties.

It however falls short on its promise as a complete helpdesk as it lacks native knowledge base features and customer portal features. It has no live chat functionality and its customer support is slow and ignorant at times.

On the other hand, Fluent Support offers a broader range of features, encompassing support ticket management, email marketing, live chat and marketing automation. While its feature set is versatile and suitable for businesses looking for a one-stop solution for support and marketing, it also places a high value on data privacy and security. Fluent Support is actively working to implement GDPR principles, showcasing its commitment to compliance with evolving privacy regulations.

But it’s a similar story like Support Candy. Even though Fluent Support does provide a customer portal feature it still depends on third-party integrations to provide knowledge base functionality. And similar to Support Candy, it lacks a live chat feature.

Unless you’re an eCommerce business that must have live chat as a feature, the choice can vary, but for most categories we looked at, Support Candy was the more robust and dependable plugin overall. 

Now, having discussed both software in depth, you can still be on the fence about picking either. For such an eventuality, you can look into solutions such as ThriveDesk, a similarly robust software with better-optimized features such as WP Portal, native live chat and knowledge base, regular updates, and extremely strong customer support.