The price, stated fairly
Per agent per month, annual billing, read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-08-22.
| Zoho Desk | Moorline | |
|---|---|---|
| Free option | Free for up to 3 agents on one email channel | None. 30-day full refund instead |
| Cheapest paid tier | $7 per agent per month (Express) | $9 per month, flat |
| Cost at one person, per year | $84 | $108 |
| Cost at three people, per year | $252 | Not applicable. Moorline is single user |
| Mac app | Web only | Native, Swift |
| Your support address | Forwards your address into their inbox | Stays where it is, read over IMAP |
| Works offline | No | Yes. The database is a file on your Mac |
At one seat Zoho Desk wins on price by $2 a month. At three seats it is $21 a month and Moorline is not a candidate at all, because it does not do three people. Per-seat pricing is only a problem when you are buying coordination you do not need; when you genuinely have a team, it is the correct model and Zoho Desk is a reasonable way to buy it.
Where your support address ends up
This is the difference that survives after the pricing argument is over. Zoho Desk wants your address forwarded into their inbox. That is how ticketing works, and it is not a criticism: routing, assignment and SLA timers all need a queue the vendor controls.
The consequences are worth knowing before you commit, though.
- Your mail app stops being the record. Threads live in Zoho, and the copy in your mailbox is whatever the forward left behind.
- Replies leave from their infrastructure. That is usually fine and occasionally a deliverability conversation you did not plan to have.
- Leaving means migrating. Export exists; the history living somewhere you have to export it from is still the shape of the thing.
Moorline reads the mailbox over IMAP and leaves delivery alone. Nothing is forwarded, your other mail clients keep showing the same mail, and if you stop paying, your support history is exactly where it always was. The cost of that arrangement is that there is no queue for anyone else to share, which brings us to the part where this page tells you not to buy it.
When Zoho Desk is the right answer
Genuinely often. Stay with, or start on, Zoho Desk if:
- More than one person answers customers. Moorline has no shared inbox, no assignment and no roles. This is the whole conversation and nothing below it matters if this is true.
- You need channels other than email. Zoho Desk does live chat, a help centre, telephony and a customer portal. Moorline does email.
- You already run on Zoho. If the CRM and the books are there, the integration is real value and the suite price is why the number is low.
- Three agents fit in the free tier. Free is hard to argue with, and a $9 product that is not free should say so rather than pretend the free tier is a trap.
- You are not on a Mac. Moorline is macOS only, so a browser-based help desk is not a compromise for you, it is the only option.
When Moorline is the better fit
- You are one person and expect to stay one person. Everything in a ticketing system that coordinates people is overhead you carry and never use.
- The failure you actually have is forgetting to close the loop. A ticket queue tracks whether a ticket is open. It does not track whether the human on the other end has been told the thing is done, and closing a ticket is not telling them.
- You want a real Mac app. Keyboard-first, offline, no tab.
- You want your mailbox left alone. No forwarding, no migration, no exit cost.
Questions people actually ask
Zoho Desk has a free plan. Why would I pay anything?
You might not need to. The free plan covers up to three agents on one email channel, and for a founder answering a handful of messages a week that is a genuinely sufficient answer. The case for paying starts when you notice the free plan has no automation, no workflow rules and no way to tell a finished job from a communicated one, which is the gap Moorline exists to close rather than a gap Zoho is failing to fill.
Is Zoho Desk cheaper than Moorline?
At one seat, yes. Express is $7 per agent per month on annual billing against Moorline's $9 flat. That is a real $2 a month difference and it is worth saying out loud. What you buy with it is a native Mac app instead of a browser tab, and a mailbox that stays yours instead of one that forwards into Zoho.
Does Zoho Desk have a Mac app?
No. Zoho Desk is a web application, and the Zoho Desk desktop presence is a browser tab or a wrapper around one. There is a mobile app. If a native Mac client matters to you, that is the clearest line between these two products.
Do I have to use the rest of Zoho to use Zoho Desk?
No, it stands alone. The suite is the reason the price is low, though: Zoho Desk is priced to bring you into Zoho One, and the value proposition compounds if you also want their CRM, books and mail. If you want exactly one support tool and nothing else, you are paying for a strategy you will not use, which is the same argument this site makes about per-seat pricing.
What happens to my support address?
Zoho Desk forwards it into their inbox, which is how nearly every ticketing help desk works. Replies then leave from their infrastructure. Moorline connects to your mailbox over IMAP and leaves delivery where it already is, so your existing mail apps keep working and nothing changes for the customer.
Zoho Desk pricing read from their published pricing page on 2026-08-22. SaaS pricing moves, so check their page before deciding anything on the strength of a table on someone else’s website.