Zendesk to Freshdesk migrations lose data from 10 req/min export limits, 15–20 MB attachment caps, side conversation gaps, and 32-char tag limits. Custom engineering prevents it.
Every Zendesk to Freshdesk migration carries a data-loss risk that most teams discover too late — from Zendesk's strict 10 req/min export limits to Freshdesk's attachment ceilings and structural mismatches between objects that exist in one system but not the other. The root cause is structural divergence. Zendesk exposes side conversations, ticket audits, metric events, and satisfaction reasons as first-class API objects. Freshdesk has no native equivalents for any of them. A successful migration requires custom API work for inline image re-hosting, side conversation flattening, tag remapping for the 32-character limit, and careful rate-limit orchestration across both platforms.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
Deleted and suspended tickets
Zendesk's incremental export includes deleted tickets by default. If you do not explicitly filter these out during extraction, you will import tickets into Freshdesk that were intentionally removed from your Zendesk instance. Filter on the status field and decide upfront whether suspended and deleted tickets belong in your target environment.
Silent failure mode
Many scripts log a 429 error once and move on without retrying. The tickets from that failed page are never exported. You will not discover they are missing until an agent searches for a specific conversation post-migration. Always implement cursor-based pagination with retry logic.
The Trial Account Trap
If you are testing your migration scripts on a Freshdesk trial account, your API limit is severely capped at 50 requests per minute. Even a modest test of 5,000 tickets with comments and attachments will take hours and generate hundreds of 429 errors. Provision a paid Growth account (200/min) at minimum before running any meaningful test.
Freshdesk's official CSV import covers contacts and companies only
It cannot import ticket histories, threaded comments, inline images, or attachments. Use it for customer directory cleanup, not for historical ticket migration. (support.freshdesk.com)
When a vendor says they migrate tickets, ask to see one migrated ticket that includes a
When a vendor says they migrate tickets, ask to see one migrated ticket that includes a public reply, a private note, a side conversation, an inline screenshot, and at least one large attachment.
A file that Freshdesk can store may still be dropped by the migration utility you chose
If your engineering tickets include large log files, crash dumps, or design assets, those files will not arrive in Freshdesk unless explicitly handled by a custom pipeline. (developers.freshdesk.com)
Reporting data does not migrate
Zendesk Explore dashboards, saved queries, and historical metric aggregations have no import path into Freshdesk Analytics. Plan to rebuild your reports from scratch after cutover, and export any Explore data you need for historical reference as CSV before you begin.
The runbook
Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
01 Discovery Establish why you are moving, what "done" means, and who signs off.
Objective A written scope with agreed success criteria, a named owner per workstream, and a budget approved by finance.
Keep these open
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Pull the real numbers out of Zendesk
Export counts for tickets (open and closed separately), contacts, organisations, attachments, macros, triggers, automations, views and SLA policies. Note the oldest ticket date — history depth drives the whole timeline. Estimating from memory is the single most common cause of a blown migration window.
Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory -
Decide what history actually moves
Agree a cut-off with the support lead: all history, last 24 months, or open tickets plus a read-only archive. Every extra year of closed tickets adds API time and cost without adding much agent value. Get this in writing — it is the decision people relitigate mid-cutover.
A "move everything" default is what turns a two-week migration into a two-month one.
COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off -
Confirm Freshdesk can hold your support model
Walk your current workflow through Freshdesk: multi-brand, business hours, SLA targets, CSAT, side conversations, public vs internal notes, and any channel you depend on (voice, chat, WhatsApp, social). List anything with no native equivalent — those are project risks, not configuration details.
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Build the business case
Model licence delta, migration effort, agent retraining, and the cost of staying put (Cost of Inaction). Executives approve a number, not a plan, and you will be asked for it again at the go/no-go.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated Zendesk → Freshdesk timeline -
Name owners and set the go/no-go date
One named owner each for data, configuration, integrations, and agent enablement, plus a decision-maker who can call a rollback. Put the go/no-go meeting in calendars now, 48 hours before the freeze.
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Build a data-mapping spreadsheet
Map every Zendesk object to its Freshdesk equivalent. Flag objects with no equivalent (audits, metric events) and decide how to archive them.
Zendesk → Freshdesk specifics
- Inline images
- stripped from ticket comments (broken <img> tags pointing at expired Zendesk CDN URLs)
- Attachments over 15–20 MB
- silently dropped by Freshdesk or the migration tool
- Side conversations
- discarded entirely because no target object exists
- Unassigned tickets
- failing to import because Freshdesk's API requires an agent assignment
- Timestamps silently shifted
- due to timezone handling gaps between Zendesk (UTC-stored) and Freshdesk during import
Don't move on until
- Record counts confirmed for tickets, contacts, organisations and macros
- Success criteria signed off by the support lead
- Freeze window provisionally booked with the business
02 Data Audit Find out what is actually in the data before you try to move it.
Objective A profiled, cleaned export with every quality defect either fixed at source or explicitly accepted.
Keep these open
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Take a full Zendesk export and profile it
Export to CSV or JSON and profile every file: row counts, null rates per column, distinct values, and type consistency. Compare row counts against the API totals from Discovery — a gap here means your export is silently truncated, usually by pagination.
Data Profiler Profile the Zendesk export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Validate file structure before anyone writes a transform
Check delimiters, quoting, encoding (expect UTF-8, watch for BOMs and Latin-1), duplicate headers, and embedded newlines in ticket bodies. Ticket descriptions with raw newlines and commas break naive CSV parsers and silently shift columns.
A single unescaped quote in one ticket body can shift every subsequent column without any error.
CSV Validator Catch broken headers and ragged rows in the raw export -
Inventory PII and set retention
Scan for emails, phone numbers, payment card fragments, national IDs and anything else regulated in ticket bodies and custom fields — support tickets are where customers paste things they should not. Decide what gets migrated, masked, or dropped, and record the legal basis.
Ticket bodies and attachments routinely contain card and ID data that never appears in a structured field.
PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system -
Quantify duplicates, orphans and dead references
Count duplicate contacts (same email, different casing), tickets whose requester no longer exists, organisations with no members, and attachments whose parent ticket is gone. Fix these in Zendesk where you can — migrating them just moves the mess.
Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns -
Clean and normalise the export
Trim whitespace, drop empty rows and columns, normalise casing on emails and tags, and standardise every timestamp to UTC ISO 8601. Timezone drift is invisible at load time and shows up weeks later as SLA reports nobody can reconcile.
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Produce a masked copy for sandbox work
Generate a realistic but fake version of the export for testing and for any vendor who needs sample data. Loading real customer PII into a sandbox is a breach in most jurisdictions, and sandboxes are rarely covered by your DPA.
PII Masker Generate a safe copy for sandbox and vendor testing -
Audit your Zendesk data
Count tickets, attachments, side conversations, and tags. Identify any tags over 32 characters and attachments over 15 MB. This determines which migration method is viable.
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Request temporary API limit increases
Contact both Zendesk and Freshdesk support before migration to request temporary rate-limit increases. Zendesk can sometimes increase the incremental export limit; Freshdesk can raise the per-minute ceiling.
Zendesk → Freshdesk specifics
- Ticket audits and metric events
- abandoned because they have no Freshdesk equivalent
- Comments
- the Ticket Comments API, including inline-image-aware handling (developer.zendesk.com)
- The limit is account-wide
- , not per-API-key. If Freshdesk marketplace apps or other integrations are running, they consume from the same pool.
- Even failed requests count
- toward the limit. A malformed payload still burns a request.
- Pagination is capped at 100 records per page
- Importing 50,000 contacts requires at least 500 sequential API calls just to verify existing records before creating new ones.
Don't move on until
- Export parses cleanly with no ragged rows or encoding errors
- PII inventory complete and retention decisions recorded
- Duplicate and orphan records quantified and triaged
03 Field Mapping Turn two schemas into one signed-off mapping spec.
Objective A reviewed field-level mapping covering every object, with an explicit decision for every field that has no target.
Keep these open
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Generate the first-pass Zendesk → Freshdesk field map
Start from an automated match on both schemas, then review every row by hand. Automated matching gets the obvious 70% right and is confidently wrong on the rest — especially anything named "type", "status" or "custom_field_1".
Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the Zendesk → Freshdesk field pair -
Map status, priority and channel values, not just field names
Enumerate every value in each picklist on both sides and map them explicitly. Value-level mismatches are the defect class that survives all the way to production because the field itself mapped fine — a ticket that should be "Pending" arriving as "Open" reopens SLA clocks.
Statuses with no target equivalent (on-hold, pending-customer) need a policy decision, not a best guess.
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Decide how custom fields land
Create the target custom fields first, matching type exactly (a dropdown mapped to free text can never be mapped back). Where Freshdesk has no equivalent, decide between a new custom field, a tag, or a note appended to the ticket body — and record which.
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Resolve identity and threading
Decide how source IDs are preserved — most platforms will not let you set the primary key, so keep the original ID in a custom field. Without it, reconciliation becomes fuzzy matching and every future support question about an old ticket is unanswerable.
Losing the original ticket ID makes reconciliation and rollback effectively impossible.
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Plan attachments, inline images and threading order
Confirm size limits, allowed MIME types, and whether inline images survive as attachments or need rehosting. Decide the comment ordering and author attribution rules: comments loaded out of order, or all attributed to the API user, destroy the conversation history agents rely on.
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Freeze and sign off the mapping spec
Version the spec, walk the support lead through it row by row, and get explicit sign-off. Any change after this point goes through change control — mid-flight mapping edits are how partial loads happen.
Don't move on until
- Every source field is mapped, deliberately dropped, or parked in a custom field
- Status, priority and channel value maps agreed with the support lead
- Mapping spec version-controlled and signed off
04 Test Migration Prove the pipeline on a small, representative slice.
Objective A pilot load into a Freshdesk sandbox that reconciles cleanly and has been reviewed by real agents.
Keep these open
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Stand up a Freshdesk sandbox that matches production config
Create the custom fields, groups, brands, business hours and SLA policies first. A pilot into a default sandbox tests nothing, because the failures you care about are all configuration mismatches.
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Pick a deliberately nasty pilot sample
Take 500-1000 records chosen for difficulty, not convenience: the longest ticket threads, tickets with the most attachments, non-Latin character sets, merged and split tickets, deleted requesters, and every status value. A clean random sample proves only that easy records are easy.
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Run the load with masked data and instrument everything
Log every API request and response with its source record ID. When 40 records fail out of 10,000 you need to know exactly which ones and why, without re-running the whole batch.
PII Masker Never load real customer PII into a sandbox -
Measure real throughput against the rate limit
Record achieved records-per-hour under Freshdesk's actual rate limits, including retries and backoff. Extrapolate to the full volume: if the maths says the full load exceeds your freeze window, you fix that now, not on cutover night.
Published rate limits are ceilings, not throughput. Assume real-world rates are meaningfully lower once retries and backoff are counted.
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Reconcile the pilot and triage every failure
Diff source against target on record counts and field-level values. Every discrepancy gets a root cause and a fix — "probably fine" at pilot scale becomes thousands of broken records at full scale.
Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up -
Put real agents in front of the pilot data
Have two or three agents work sample tickets end to end in the sandbox. They find the things reconciliation cannot see: unreadable threading, missing context, macros that no longer make sense. Fix the mapping, then re-run.
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Run a test migration on a representative sample
Pick 100–500 tickets that include edge cases: large attachments, side conversations, long tags, inline images, multilingual KB articles. Validate every one manually — including timestamp accuracy on comments.
Zendesk → Freshdesk specifics
- Dry-run validation
- Before the real migration, run a pass that validates every record can be transformed and would be accepted by Freshdesk's API — without actually creating anything.
Don't move on until
- Pilot batch reconciles to 100% on record counts
- Agents have reviewed sample tickets and confirmed they are workable
- Measured throughput extrapolates to a viable full-load window
05 Cutover Execute the switch inside a controlled, reversible window.
Objective All in-scope data live in Freshdesk, agents working in the new system, and a rollback path that stayed available throughout.
Keep these open
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Pre-load history before the freeze
Load closed tickets and contacts days or weeks ahead while Zendesk stays live. Only open tickets and the final delta need to move inside the freeze — this is the single biggest lever on window length.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Size the freeze window from Freshdesk's real API limits -
Publish the runbook with times, owners and abort criteria
A timed sequence: freeze start, final export, delta load, channel switch, smoke test, go/no-go, agent switch. Name who does each step and the explicit condition that triggers a rollback. Decide the abort criteria before the night, when nobody wants to be the one to call it.
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Freeze Zendesk and take the final delta
Stop new ticket creation, let agents finish in-flight replies, then export everything changed since the pre-load. Announce the freeze to the whole business, not just support — someone always tries to raise a ticket during it.
Tickets created during an unenforced freeze land in the old system and are the most common source of permanently lost data.
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Load the delta and open tickets
Run the delta load, then reconcile counts before touching any channel. Do not repoint email until the delta has verified — an inbound ticket arriving mid-load is far harder to untangle than a few extra minutes of freeze.
Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen -
Repoint channels and verify with live traffic
Switch email forwarding and MX or connector settings, update chat widgets and web forms, and re-authorise integrations. Then send real test tickets through every channel and confirm each lands, routes and triggers the right automation.
Email forwarding changes can take up to a full DNS TTL to propagate — check the TTL days in advance and lower it if needed.
Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze -
Run the go/no-go and switch the agents
Walk the exit criteria with the decision-maker, call it explicitly, then move agents over with a named person on hand for the first few hours. Keep Zendesk read-only rather than cancelled — cancelling the old contract on day one removes your only fallback.
Zendesk → Freshdesk specifics
- Deduplication keys
- Store the original Zendesk ticket ID in a Freshdesk custom field. Before creating a ticket, check whether a ticket with that Zendesk ID already exists. Same approach for contacts (deduplicate on email) and companies (deduplicate on name or domain).
- Checkpoint logging
- Track which Zendesk records have been successfully imported, at a per-record level. If the migration crashes at ticket #45,201, you should be able to resume from #45,201 without re-importing the first 45,200.
Don't move on until
- Full historical load complete and counts matched
- Inbound channels repointed and verified with live test tickets
- Rollback decision point passed explicitly, not by default
06 Validation Prove the migration is complete, then close it out.
Objective Documented evidence that data, workflow and reporting all survived, and a signed acceptance.
Keep these open
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Run the full reconciliation
Compare source and target on every object: total counts, counts by status, counts by group, attachment counts, and field-level spot checks on a random sample. Produce one report you can hand to an auditor.
Migration Validation Tool Reconcile Zendesk and Freshdesk record-for-record -
Verify field completeness, not just record counts
Re-profile the loaded data and compare null rates per field against the source profile. Matching record counts with a field that silently arrived empty is the failure mode counts alone will never catch.
Data Profiler Prove field completeness held up through the load -
Rebuild reporting and compare against baselines
Recreate your core dashboards — volume, first response time, resolution time, CSAT — and compare to pre-migration figures for the same period. Explain every variance; a changed SLA calculation is a real finding, not a rounding error.
SLA and first-response metrics are usually recalculated from the loaded timestamps, so they will differ if any timestamp mapping was approximate.
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Test the workflow layer end to end
Fire every trigger, automation, SLA escalation, macro and notification with a live ticket. Workflow does not migrate — it gets rebuilt — so it is untested until someone has actually watched it run.
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Confirm compliance and produce the audit trail
Re-scan the loaded data for regulated fields, confirm retention and deletion policies are configured in Freshdesk, and file the evidence with your PII decisions from the audit phase.
PII & Compliance Scanner Produce the compliance evidence your auditor will ask for -
Sign off, then decommission on a schedule
Get written acceptance against the Discovery success criteria. Keep Zendesk read-only for an agreed period (30-90 days is typical), take a final archive export, and only then cancel. Diarise the decommission date so it does not quietly renew.
Zendesk → Freshdesk specifics
- Inline image references
- Zendesk stores images on its CDN and embeds absolute URLs in ticket HTML. After migration, those URLs still point at Zendesk. If the Zendesk account is eventually closed, every inline image in your migrated tickets becomes a broken link. Re-upload attachments and rewrite the src attributes during import.
- Deleted or deactivated agent attribution
- Zendesk retains comments authored by agents who were later deleted. In Freshdesk, if the corresponding agent does not exist, the comment either fails to import or gets attributed to a fallback account. Prefix the note body with the original author's name and email before import so the history is readable regardless of who the system assigns as author.
- Secondary email threading
- Zendesk user identities can hold multiple email addresses. If you skip importing them into Freshdesk other_emails [], replies from those secondary addresses create new contacts instead of threading onto the existing record.
- Merged tickets
- Zendesk merges leave a stub ticket that redirects to the target ticket and appends comments from the source. The merge audit trail does not have a Freshdesk equivalent. Import the merged comments onto the surviving ticket and add a private note recording the original source ticket ID.
- CC and follower threading
- Zendesk tracks CCs and followers as separate lists. If CCs are not added to the Freshdesk ticket at creation time, reply-all behavior breaks and agents lose visibility into who was on the thread.
Don't move on until
- Full reconciliation report attached to the project record
- Reporting baselines match pre-migration figures within agreed tolerance
- Formal acceptance signed and archive retention scheduled
Field mapping reference
The field-by-field mapping for each object. Use this as the starting point for your mapping spec.
Zendesk Freshdesk Data Mapping
| Zendesk field | Freshdesk field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Organization | Company | Direct mapping. Keep Zendesk org_id as an external reference field. |
| User (end-user) | Contact | Map Zendesk identities (multiple emails) to Freshdesk secondary emails. Match on email. |
| Agent | Agent | Must be pre-created in Freshdesk admin before import. Match by email. |
| Group | Group | Direct mapping. Rebuild routing rules after import. |
| Ticket | Ticket | Preserve the original Zendesk ID in a custom field for auditability. Subject truncated at 256 characters. |
| Ticket Comment (public) | Conversation (reply or public note) | For historical replay, use a public note unless you intentionally want outbound email behavior. |
| Ticket Comment (private) | Conversation (private note) | Direct mapping. |
| Side Conversation | Private Note | No native equivalent. Flatten into private notes with participants, timestamps, and channel type preserved. |
| Ticket Audit | ❌ No equivalent | Export as JSON/CSV archive. Cannot be imported into Freshdesk. |
| Ticket Metric Events | ❌ No equivalent | Export and archive separately. SLA timer history is lost. |
| Satisfaction Rating | Satisfaction Rating | Freshdesk does not allow backdating ratings; store originals in a private note. |
| Tags | Tags | Tags > 32 characters are rejected. Truncate or remap before import. |
| Custom Fields | Custom Fields | Field types must match exactly. Create all fields in Freshdesk before import. Note: Freshdesk enforces a 255-character limit on single-line text custom fields. |
| Ticket Forms | Ticket Forms | Rebuild manually. Form logic does not transfer. |
| Macros | Canned Responses | Rebuild manually. No automated transfer path. |
| Triggers | Automations | Rebuild manually using Freshdesk's on-create/on-update rules. |
| Views | Views | Rebuild with equivalent filter logic. |
| KB Category | KB Category | Direct structural mapping. |
| KB Section | KB Folder | Direct structural mapping. |
| KB Article | KB Article | HTML body transfers. Inline image URLs must be rewritten. |
| Attachments | Attachments | 15 MB tool limit; 20 MB platform limit on paid plans. Oversized files are dropped. |
| Reporting metrics | ❌ Archive separately | Do not expect a native historical transfer. Rebaseline in Freshdesk. |
| Brand (multi-brand) | Product | Map each Zendesk brand to a Freshdesk product. Multi-brand instances require explicit brand-to-product mapping before import. |
Organization Company
Direct mapping. Keep Zendesk org_id as an external reference field.
| Zendesk field | Freshdesk field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| id | unique_external_id and a read-only field zd_org_id | Using both makes retries idempotent and helps with audits. |
| name | name | Keep names as is. |
| domain_names [] | domains [] | Preserve all domains for auto-association. |
| organization_fields{} | custom fields | Pre-create field schema and allowed values. |
| tags [] | tags or a multiselect field | Use tags if available. Otherwise, store in a multiselect. |
User Contact
| Zendesk field | Freshdesk field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| id | unique_external_id and a read-only field zd_user_id | Same idempotency pattern as companies. |
| name | name | Preserve capitalization. |
| Required for requesters. | ||
| user_identities emails | other_emails [] | Add every secondary address. |
| organization_id | company_id | Only reference a company that already exists. |
| phone, mobile | phone, mobile | Normalize formats if needed. |
| user_fields{} | custom fields | Precreate schema. |
| tags [] | tags | Optional but useful for segmentation. |
Tickets and full conversation his ry
| Zendesk field | Freshdesk field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| id | unique_external_id and a read-only field zd_ticket_id | Prevents duplicates and enables delta loads. |
| external_id | unique_external_id or a custom field | Use if you already rely on it in Zendesk. |
| subject | subject | |
| description (HTML) | initial note or description at create | Keep HTML, fix inline image links after upload. |
| requester_id | requester contact | Contact must exist. |
| assignee_id | responder_id | If the agent does not exist yet, assign to a staging group, then reassign. |
| group_id | group_id | Groups must exist. Consider storing original group name in a field for audit. |
| status | status | Use your crosswalk. If you need exact labels, create custom statuses in Freshdesk. Store the original Zendesk label in zd_status_label. |
| priority | priority | Map directly. If you used custom scales, keep the original in a custom field. |
| type | custom field zd_type | Freshdesk types differ. Keep it as a dropdown. |
| ticket_form_id | ticket_form_id and optional zd_form | Set the matching form id or keep the name in a field if you cannot match. |
| brand_id | product or portal assignment, or zd_brand field | Decide per brand. If consolidating, keep the original brand in a field. |
| tags [] | tags | One to one. |
| custom_fields{} | custom fields | Schema must exist. |
| due_at | due_by or zd_due_at | If not supported, store and drive an automation as needed. |
| via.channel | channel field or a tag | Keeps channel reporting intact. |
| created_at, updated_at | read-only in target | Add a first private note that states the original created time and author. Also store original_created_at and original_updated_at in read-only fields. |
| ccs or followers | CCs | Add them on create so notifications mirror history. |
Tickets and full conversation his ry
| Zendesk field | Freshdesk field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| public true | public reply | Maintain author identity if possible. |
| public false | private note | Keep internal notes internal. |
| body_html | body HTML | Clean and normalize. |
| attachments [] | uploaded files on that note | Keep original filenames. Rebuild inline references after upload. |
| Side conversations | private note with transcript and files | Start note with participants and original timestamps. |
CSAT response satisfaction
| Zendesk field | Freshdesk field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| rating value | rating on the ticket | Create after the ticket and conversation history. |
| free text comment | rating comment or a paired note | If the rating object cannot hold all context, add a note. |
| rater and time | private note text | Include "Original CSAT at 2024-03-10 11:05 UTC by …". |
| negative reason | appended to the note | No direct field, so keep it in the note body. |
Guide Solutions
| Zendesk field | Freshdesk field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Category | Create first. |
| Section | Folder | Create under the correct category. |
| Article (HTML) | Article (HTML) | Preserve formatting and headings. |
| Article attachments and media | Article attachments | Upload, then rewrite inline links. |
| Translations | Translations | Add after the base article. Keep locale codes aligned. |
| Labels and content tags | Article tags | One to one. |
| Redirect rules | Portal redirects | Recreate from a CSV. |
| Article comments | Optional appendix in article body | If you must keep them, add a "Legacy comments" section at the end. |
Risk matrix
Per-object risk for this pair. Plan extra validation around anything marked high.
| Object | Risk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Inline Images | high | Stripped from comments if not explicitly re-hosted; broken img tags pointing at expired Zendesk CDN URLs. |
| Side Conversations | high | No native Freshdesk equivalent. Discarded entirely unless custom-extracted and imported as private notes. |
| Attachments (>15 MB) | high | Silently dropped by Freshdesk or migration tools. All attachments on a note may be skipped if one exceeds 15 MB. |
| Tags (>32 chars) | medium | Rejected by Freshdesk. Must be truncated or remapped before import. |
| Ticket Audits | high | No Freshdesk equivalent. Must be exported and archived separately. |
| Metric Events | high | SLA timer history has no import path. Must be archived outside Freshdesk. |
| Satisfaction Ratings | medium | Freshdesk does not allow backdating ratings. Originals must be stored in private notes. |
| Unassigned Tickets | medium | Freshdesk API requires agent assignment on creation. A placeholder "Migration Agent" is needed. |
| Ticket Comments | low | Public and private comments map directly to Freshdesk conversation types. |
| Organizations / Companies | low | Direct mapping. Keep Zendesk org_id as an external reference field. |
The hard parts
What makes this specific migration difficult, beyond the mechanics.
Inline Image Breakage
Zendesk inline images reference CDN URLs that expire after migration. Each image must be downloaded, re-uploaded to Freshdesk, and HTML references rewritten.
Side Conversation Gap
Freshdesk has no native equivalent to Zendesk side conversations. They must be extracted via a separate API and flattened into private notes.
Attachment Size Limits
Freshdesk enforces a 15–20 MB attachment limit. If any attachment per note exceeds 15 MB, all attachments on that note may be skipped.
Tag Length Restriction
Freshdesk rejects tags over 32 characters. Long Zendesk tags must be truncated, remapped, or hashed before import.
Dual Rate Limits
Zendesk's 10 req/min incremental export and Freshdesk's per-minute plus per-endpoint sublimits must be orchestrated simultaneously.
What breaks
Known failure modes. Have a recovery plan for each before you cut over.
Inline image references
Zendesk stores images on its CDN and embeds absolute URLs in ticket HTML. After migration, those URLs still point at Zendesk. If the Zendesk account is eventually closed, every inline image in your migrated tickets becomes a broken link. Re-upload attachments and rewrite the src attributes during import.
Deleted or deactivated agent attribution
Zendesk retains comments authored by agents who were later deleted. In Freshdesk, if the corresponding agent does not exist, the comment either fails to import or gets attributed to a fallback account. Prefix the note body with the original author's name and email before import so the history is readable regardless of who the system assigns as author.
Secondary email threading
Zendesk user identities can hold multiple email addresses. If you skip importing them into Freshdesk other_emails [], replies from those secondary addresses create new contacts instead of threading onto the existing record.
Merged tickets
Zendesk merges leave a stub ticket that redirects to the target ticket and appends comments from the source. The merge audit trail does not have a Freshdesk equivalent. Import the merged comments onto the surviving ticket and add a private note recording the original source ticket ID.
CC and follower threading
Zendesk tracks CCs and followers as separate lists. If CCs are not added to the Freshdesk ticket at creation time, reply-all behavior breaks and agents lose visibility into who was on the thread.
Ticket type mismatch
Zendesk ticket types (Question, Incident, Problem, Task) do not map one-to-one to Freshdesk types. Import the original type into a custom dropdown field to preserve reporting fidelity.
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
What data gets lost when migrating from Zendesk to Freshdesk?
The most common losses are inline images (stripped from comments), attachments over 15–20 MB (silently dropped), side conversations (no native Freshdesk equivalent), tags over 32 characters (rejected), and ticket audits/metric events (no import path). Automated tools and Freshdesk's native migration app all have documented limitations around these objects.
What are the Zendesk API rate limits for exporting tickets?
Zendesk's Incremental Export API is limited to 10 requests per minute, regardless of plan tier. With the High Volume API add-on (Suite Growth+ with 10+ agent seats), this increases to 30 requests per minute. Each request returns up to 1,000 tickets. Comments, attachments, and side conversations require separate API calls with their own rate limits.
What are the Freshdesk API rate limits for importing data?
Freshdesk enforces per-minute rate limits by plan: Growth (200/min), Pro (400/min), Enterprise (700/min). Trial accounts are capped at 50 requests/minute. These limits are account-wide — shared across all apps, integrations, and scripts. Per-endpoint sub-limits are lower: Ticket Create is capped at 80/160/280 per minute across Growth/Pro/Enterprise.
How do you migrate Zendesk side conversations to Freshdesk?
Freshdesk has no native equivalent to Zendesk side conversations. The correct approach is to extract each side conversation and its events via the Zendesk Side Conversations API, then import each message as a private note on the corresponding Freshdesk ticket — preserving the original subject, participants, timestamps, and channel type in the note body.
Can Freshdesk import Zendesk tickets from CSV?
Not as a full helpdesk-history migration. Freshdesk's official CSV import covers contacts and companies only. Full ticket threads with comments, attachments, inline images, and side conversations require API-based migration logic or a dedicated migration service.