Cayzu Help Desk Review: A Cheaper Zendesk Alternative?

What Is Cayzu and Why Consider It?

Zendesk is the 800-pound gorilla of help desk software — everyone knows it, it's packed with features, and it comes with a price tag to match. Cayzu is positioning itself as a more affordable alternative that still covers the essentials most small businesses actually need.

The platform gives you a centralized place to manage support tickets from email, social media, and a customer portal. You also get a knowledge base, reporting dashboards, SLA tracking, and multi-brand support. It's a surprisingly full-featured package for the price point, though as we'll see, some areas are more polished than others.

The Ticket Management Interface

The core of any help desk is how it handles tickets, and Cayzu's ticket window is solid. When you land on the main screen, you see all unresolved tickets with their status, priority level, and last update time. Clicking into a ticket reveals the full conversation thread, and you can reply directly from that same view.

The right-hand sidebar is where things get interesting. You can see the sender's contact info, assign the ticket to a different agent, change the status (pending, resolved, working on it), and set priority levels from low to urgent. There's also support for grouping tickets by department — so your sales team and your support team aren't tripping over each other.

Cayzu also includes ticket types (issues, complaints, feature requests, inquiries), tagging for future reference, dependency tracking, due dates, and built-in time tracking. That time tracking feature is particularly useful if you're running a service business with monthly retainers — you can log hours directly on each ticket and generate timesheets at the end of the month.

One handy feature is the ability to merge tickets. If a customer submits a second request about the same issue instead of replying to the original thread, you can combine them into a single ticket so nothing falls through the cracks.

Knowledge Base and Article Editor

Cayzu includes a built-in knowledge base where you can create FAQ articles and help documentation. You can organize articles into folders and subfolders, making it easy to build out a structured support library over time.

The article editor initially felt bare-bones — basic text formatting with limited font options and no way to insert links. However, Cayzu apparently pushed an update that significantly improved the editor, adding link support, image uploads, HTML editing, and file attachments up to 50MB. It's now a much more capable tool for creating useful help content.

Visibility controls let you choose who can see each article: all users (publicly available on the web), logged-in users only, or agents only. That last option is great for internal documentation — giving your team guidance on how to handle specific situations without exposing it to customers.

Contacts and Company Management

The contacts section automatically populates as people submit tickets, so you don't have to manually enter everyone. Each contact profile shows their information and a history of all tickets they've submitted.

You can also create companies and associate contacts with them. When setting up a company, you can specify an email domain — anyone who emails from that domain automatically gets linked to the company. This is a nice touch for agencies or B2B businesses managing support for multiple client organizations.

Reporting and Analytics

Cayzu offers a solid reporting suite broken into several categories. The main overview shows ticket volume, resolution rates, response times, and customer interaction metrics. You can filter by date range — last week, last month, last quarter — to spot trends.

The help desk load analysis gives you a bulk view of ticket volume, while more specific reports cover tickets by tags, open tickets by requester, and customer satisfaction scores. On the agent side, you get performance summaries so you can see who's keeping up and who might need coaching. All reports can be exported to Excel.

The timesheet report is especially valuable for service businesses. It tracks logged hours per client, so at the end of the month you know exactly what to invoice. There's also an article analysis report that shows which knowledge base articles are getting the most clicks and highest ratings — useful for understanding what your customers actually need help with.

One minor gripe: some reports didn't seem to populate immediately after activity, which suggests they may update on a periodic schedule rather than in real time.

Agents, Roles, and Groups

The agent management system in Cayzu is surprisingly granular. You can create groups (like "Support" or "Sales"), assign agents to those groups, and set up auto-assignment rules that distribute tickets in a round-robin fashion.

Roles give you fine-grained control over what each agent can do. Beyond the default Administrator and Agent roles, you can create custom roles — for example, a "Sales Support" role where agents can send replies and assign tickets but can't delete anything, view contacts, or access time tracking. This is great if you have contractors or part-time staff who need limited access.

Each agent profile includes options for help desk access levels: full access (see everything), group access (only tickets within their assigned group), or limited access (only tickets assigned directly to them). Between roles, groups, and access levels, you can build a permission structure that fits just about any team configuration.

Branding and Custom Domain Setup

Cayzu supports multiple brands from a single help desk console, which is a standout feature for agencies managing several clients. Each brand can have its own custom subdomain — for example, helpdesk.yourdomain.com — which you set up by creating a CNAME record in your DNS provider.

The setup process is straightforward: enter your desired subdomain in Cayzu, copy the provided URL, create a CNAME record pointing to it in your DNS management tool (GoDaddy, Namecheap, DNS Made Easy, etc.), and you're live. You can also force SSL and enable reCAPTCHA for added security.

Each brand gets its own favicon, from name, from email address, confirmation messages, billing rate, and even supported languages. If you're running support for multiple businesses, this multi-brand approach means you don't need separate help desk accounts for each one.

Setting Up Email Forwarding with Google Workspace

Getting your support email (like support@yourdomain.com) to flow into Cayzu requires setting up email forwarding, and the recommended method for Google Workspace users is through Groups.

Here's the process: In your Google Workspace admin panel, create a new group with the same email address you entered in Cayzu (e.g., support@yourdomain.com). Under access settings, make sure to enable "External — Publish posts" so people outside your organization can send emails to this address. Then add the Cayzu forwarding email address as a member of the group.

One important step: remove yourself from the group after adding the Cayzu address. Otherwise, every support email will also land in your personal inbox, which defeats the purpose of having a help desk. Once configured, any email sent to your support address automatically creates a ticket in Cayzu — and it works almost instantly.

Internal Notes and Email Templates

Internal notes are one of those features that seem minor until you actually need them. When multiple agents are collaborating on a tricky support issue, they can leave notes on a ticket that are completely invisible to the customer. This keeps the troubleshooting conversation separate from the customer-facing email thread.

Switching between internal notes and customer replies is as simple as toggling between tabs in the ticket view. It's a clean interface that makes it easy to keep both conversations organized without mixing them up.

On the email template side, Cayzu provides 13 configurable templates covering different scenarios — agent replies, new ticket confirmations, ticket closures, and more. Each template uses dynamic tags to insert relevant content like the reply text or ticket details. When you create additional brands, you can copy templates from one brand to another, saving you from rebuilding them every time.

Social Media and App Integrations

Cayzu supports Twitter integration, allowing you to link a Twitter account and (theoretically) convert tweets into support tickets. In practice, the integration didn't seem to work during testing — a tweet sent to the connected account never showed up as a ticket even after over an hour. Facebook integration was listed on the website but wasn't available in the actual platform, which is a notable gap.

The app integration library is more promising. You can connect Cayzu with Dropbox, FreshBooks, HubSpot, QuickBooks Online, several CRMs (Sugar, SuiteCRM, Zoho), survey tools like SurveyMonkey, screen-sharing via LogMeIn Rescue, live chat options (Olark, LiveChat, Tawk.to), and Zapier for connecting to just about anything else. The approach of integrating with existing services rather than building everything in-house is a smart strategy for a smaller platform.

Single Sign-On and Security

Single sign-on (SSO) is available for both end users and agents. If you have an existing platform where customers log in to purchase products, you can configure SSO so they're automatically authenticated in your help desk too. Agent SSO works the same way but is configured independently.

Under the security tab, you can generate API keys and set up IP filtering to restrict agent login access. This adds an extra layer of protection by ensuring only connections from known IP addresses can access the admin side of your help desk.

SLA Policies and Business Rules

Service Level Agreement policies let you define response time targets for each priority level. For example, you might set urgent tickets to a one-minute response target, high-priority to one hour, medium to eight hours, and low to 24 hours. These targets feed into the SLA reports, so you can track how well your team is actually meeting commitments.

You can also configure hours of operation — defining which days you're open, setting different closing times (like early Fridays), and adding holidays. This context matters because your SLA clock only ticks during business hours, so customers aren't expecting responses at 2 AM on a Sunday.

Assignment rules automate ticket routing based on conditions. You can route tickets to specific agents or groups based on product type, brand, source channel, subject line keywords, or description content. For a business with specialized agents, this means tickets automatically land with the right person instead of sitting in a general queue.

Custom Fields, Forms, and Lists

Custom fields let you capture information beyond the defaults. You can add single-line text, numbers, paragraphs, checkboxes, dropdowns, calendar dates, dependent fields, and company lists. These can be attached to tickets, contacts, companies, or assets, and you can mark them as required when creating or closing tickets.

Custom forms build on those fields to create tailored submission forms for your end user portal. You control which fields are visible, set their order via drag-and-drop, and assign form icons. Hidden fields with default values let you pre-set things like product, source, or group without cluttering the customer-facing form.

Custom lists give you control over the dropdown options throughout the system. Don't need the "Duplicate" status? Remove it. Want to add a new ticket type beyond issues, complaints, feature requests, and inquiries? Add it here. You can customize statuses, sources, ticket types, and time/billing task categories to match your workflow exactly.

Assets: Useful in Theory, Confusing in Practice

Assets in Cayzu represent physical or digital items that your company or clients own — think company vehicles, equipment, or hardware. You create asset categories, define custom fields for them, then assign individual assets to companies.

The concept makes sense for certain industries. A contractor could track heavy machinery assignments, or an IT team could link hardware to support tickets. But the implementation is clunky. Setting up assets requires bouncing between multiple screens — custom fields, asset categories, companies, and then individual assets — and linking them to tickets feels unintuitive.

Honestly, unless you have a specific use case that demands asset tracking within your help desk, this is a feature you can safely ignore. Cayzu would arguably benefit from streamlining this area and focusing energy on strengthening its core support ticket experience.

Quick Responses and Canned Replies

Quick responses let you save pre-written replies for common situations. Instead of typing out the same answer to a frequently asked question every time, you create a canned response and insert it with a few keystrokes.

The interface is functional but could be smoother — you have to start typing to search for your saved response rather than browsing a clickable list. For teams handling high ticket volumes with recurring questions, this feature saves significant time. Just make sure to use it for detailed technical answers rather than generic "we received your message" replies, since those are better handled by automatic email templates.

The End User Portal

Cayzu provides a customer-facing portal where users can submit tickets, browse your knowledge base, and track their open requests. You can configure sign-in options (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Cayzu accounts, or SSO) and restrict ticket submission to logged-in users or known company domains.

The portal design is functional but not going to win any awards. You can customize the cover image, title, subtitle, and some informational panels, but you can't change the icons — a small limitation that feels unnecessary. Toggle switches let you show or hide various sections: the search bar, sign-up section, feedback panels, and knowledge base categories.

Realistically, many businesses will skip the portal entirely and just have customers email a support address directly. Email is something everyone already knows how to use, and it doesn't require customers to learn a new interface. That said, the portal does add value if you want to offer self-service through your knowledge base or give clients visibility into their ticket history and billable hours.

Ticket Settings, Widgets, and Extras

The remaining settings cover several useful housekeeping features. Auto-close rules can resolve tickets after a set number of inactive days. You can control email attachments, set default billable hour assumptions, configure your time zone, and CC or BCC supervisors on ticket replies.

The embeddable support widget lets you drop an iframe-based ticket form directly onto your website. It works, though the iframe-within-a-page scrolling experience isn't ideal. You can also link a custom CSS file to style it. For WordPress sites, it's as simple as pasting the embed code into a custom HTML block.

Tag management, satisfaction surveys (with the option to delay them 24 hours after resolution — a much better experience than bombarding customers immediately), and email whitelisting/blacklisting round out the configuration options.

What's Missing: Email Deliverability Concerns

One significant omission worth flagging: Cayzu doesn't provide self-service SPF or DKIM record configuration. These DNS records are critical for email deliverability — without them properly set up, your ticket replies could land in spam folders, making it look like you're ignoring customers.

Cayzu does offer DMARC configuration through a support request, but it's not something you can handle yourself from the admin panel. If you're planning to use Cayzu at any meaningful scale, getting this sorted should be one of your first steps. Keep a close eye on deliverability, especially in the early days.

Final Verdict: Is Cayzu Worth It?

Cayzu packs a lot into an affordable package. The ticket management system is solid, multi-brand support is a genuine differentiator for agencies, and the combination of SLA tracking, time logging, and custom forms covers most small business needs. The reporting suite is comprehensive, and the role-based permissions system offers surprising depth.

The weak spots are the social media integration (Twitter didn't work in testing, Facebook was missing entirely), the convoluted asset management system, and the lack of self-service email authentication setup. The end user portal is functional but visually dated.

If you're a small business or agency looking for a help desk that handles email-based support well, gives you multi-brand management, and won't break the bank, Cayzu is worth serious consideration. Just go in knowing that the social and asset features may not deliver on their promise — and make sure to get those email deliverability records configured right away.

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