ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus Cloud
The cloud edition's only real news is Slack, restated twice in four days.
Comparison · Support
Frill vs Kayako
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Frill and Kayako — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Frill vs Kayako: at a glance
What is Frill?
Frill just made its feedback board readable by any AI assistant, on every plan.
Frill is a feedback, roadmap, and changelog tool that has spent the past year on distribution plumbing — EU hosting, SSO for Okta and EntraID, multi-language, custom domains, a public npm SDK, and a Chrome extension. Releases arrive as monthly bundles rather than continuous drops. As of August 2, the MCP server that had been in public beta since June is generally available with ten tools and no setup beyond an API key.
What is Kayako?
Kayako's public changelog has been silent since mid-2022 — the radar is showing a stalled product.
Kayako has not posted a public changelog entry since June 2022. The most recent communication was a CEO apology over a performance incident and a series of link-only release-notes posts pointing to a Help Center article. The visible operational picture is an established customer-support product no longer broadcasting product motion.
Frill vs Kayako: editorial side-by-side
Frill
6.3SUPPORT
Frill just made its feedback board readable by any AI assistant, on every plan.
◆ Current state
Frill is a feedback, roadmap, and changelog tool that has spent the past year on distribution plumbing — EU hosting, SSO for Okta and EntraID, multi-language, custom domains, a public npm SDK, and a Chrome extension. Releases arrive as monthly bundles rather than continuous drops. As of August 2, the MCP server that had been in public beta since June is generally available with ten tools and no setup beyond an API key.
◆ Where it's heading
The shape of the work has shifted from making Frill reachable by humans in more places to making its data readable by machines: SDK, multiple API keys, webhook hardening, then MCP. Frill is betting that the value of a feedback board is not the board but the corpus behind it, and that the corpus is most useful when a product manager can query it from wherever they already work. Bundling MCP into every plan rather than the Growth tier says they want adoption volume, not a pricing lever.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release notes to extend MCP from read tools toward write actions — creating ideas or updating roadmap status from an assistant — and to surface usage of it in the admin dashboard.
Kayako
0.0SUPPORT
Kayako's public changelog has been silent since mid-2022 — the radar is showing a stalled product.
◆ Current state
Kayako has not posted a public changelog entry since June 2022. The most recent communication was a CEO apology over a performance incident and a series of link-only release-notes posts pointing to a Help Center article. The visible operational picture is an established customer-support product no longer broadcasting product motion.
◆ Where it's heading
Direction is hard to read from public changelog activity alone, but the trajectory implied by the silence is unmistakable: either the product moved its release communication elsewhere, or development pace slowed enough to stop justifying a regular changelog. Either way, prospects watching only the public surface see no momentum.
◆ Prediction
Without renewed public activity, Kayako will continue to be perceived as legacy in a category where Zendesk, Intercom, and HelpScout are publishing prominently. A customer-facing changelog refresh would be the lowest-effort signal to send, and is the most likely next move if the product is in fact still under active development.
Alternatives to Frill and Kayako
Other Support products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Frill or Kayako.
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
A near-daily fix stream, with Slack and Teams becoming where help desk work happens.
Canny
Canny is quietly turning customer conversations into a feedback pipeline nobody has to maintain.
LiveAgent
A mature help desk in pure maintenance, shipping the same fixes twice across two support branches.
Knowmax
A content-marketing feed arguing that AI in the contact center fails on knowledge, not models
Respond.io
respond.io is monetizing AI usage directly while putting an assistant that builds agents in every workspace.
See all Frill alternatives → · See all Kayako alternatives →
Recent activity from Frill and Kayako
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 9d agoFrillIntroducing the new Frill MCP! ⚡
- 1mo agoFrillPublic npm SDK, Chrome extension, and MCP beta
- 3mo agoFrillBoost Until scheduling and announcement preview controls
- 9mo agoFrillEU hosting region, Cloudflare domains, richer idea API
- 11mo agoFrillEntraID SSO, nine default languages, CSP hardening
- 1y agoFrillSubscribe to Updates
- 4y agoKayakoKayako Engineering Update
- 4y agoKayakoKayako Release Notes - April 2022
- 4y agoKayakoKayako Release Notes - February 2022
- 4y agoKayakoRecent performance issues
- 4y agoKayakoKayako Release Notes - January 2022
- 4y agoKayakoPlanned Maintenance Outage
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Frill and Kayako?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Frill is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Frill better than Kayako?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Frill is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Support products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Frill?
Top Frill alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Frill alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/frill for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Kayako?
Top Kayako alternatives in Support are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Kayako alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/kayako for the full list with editorial commentary on each.