Assistly, a social CRM and help desk software-as-a-service, announced version 2.0 of its product this week, including a new freemium pricing model. Your first Assistly user is now free, with no limitations. It costs $1 an hour for additional part-time agents or $49 a month for each full-time agent with unlimited usage.
Besides the pricing change, Assistly’s admin panel and reporting features got a facelift.
In addition to help desk ticketing, Assistly features the ability to monitor and respond to mentions on Facebook and Twitter. Other features include analytics, live chats, knowledge base, CRM/contacts and connectors to other tools such as Salesforce.com.
Ordinarily I might see a slash in pricing as a sign of desperation, but Assistly boasts such companies as Yelp, Etsy, 37signals, Pandora, Spotify and Instagram as customers. This seems like more of a strategic move to build more awareness and simplify pricing.
Assistly competes with other hosted help desks such as UserVoice, Zendesk and Zoho Support.