Helpdesk Ticket Statuses Compared: Zendesk vs Freshdesk vs Help Scout
The statuses side by side
| Zendesk | Freshdesk | Help Scout | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just arrived | New | Open | Active |
| Being worked on | Open | Open | Active |
| Waiting on the customer | Pending | Pending | Pending |
| Waiting on someone else | On-hold (optional, internal) | — (custom status on paid plans) | — |
| Done | Solved | Resolved | Closed |
| Locked | Closed (system only) | Closed | Closed + Conversation Lock |
| Number of standard statuses | 6 | 4 | 3 |
Zendesk: agents solve, only the system closes
Zendesk's documentation lists "six standard statuses or status categories": New, Open, Pending, On-hold, Solved and Closed. Three rules in it matter more than the names.
New is one-way. "After a New ticket's status has been changed, it can’t be set back to New."
On-hold is invisible to the customer. It "indicates the agent is waiting for information or action from someone other than the requester. On-hold is an internal status that the ticket requester never sees. While a ticket is set to On-hold, the requester sees the status as Open."
Agents cannot close tickets. "Tickets can’t manually be set to Closed." Instead, an automation does it: "The default automation setting is that a ticket is closed automatically four days after it has been solved." And there is a hard ceiling — if an admin switches those automations off, "the tickets will be closed automatically 28 days after they're solved. This 28-day rule is a system ticket rule that can't be changed."
The distinction between Solved and Closed is about replies. A solved ticket reopens when the customer writes back; a closed one does not — "even when a user replies, a closed ticket remains closed and the system creates a follow-up ticket."
Zendesk also notes that accounts created on or after February 13, 2024 may have an extra In Progress status, and admins can add custom statuses, each of which must sit inside one of the standard categories. You cannot create a custom status in the New or Closed categories.
Freshdesk: four statuses, and they start at 2
Freshdesk's default statuses are Open, Pending, Resolved and Closed. Its public API reference gives each one a fixed number:
| Status | API value |
|---|---|
| Open | 2 |
| Pending | 3 |
| Resolved | 4 |
| Closed | 5 |
There is no status 1. If you are integrating with Freshdesk, filter by these numbers, not by position.
One detail from the same reference shows how statuses interact with SLAs. When an agent sends an outbound email, "the ticket will be assigned to the agent sending the email and it will be created with 'closed' status. This makes sure that SLA timers aren't running unnecessarily on an outbound ticket." Status is not just a label in Freshdesk; it decides whether the SLA clock runs.
The API also records separate resolved_at and closed_at timestamps, so Resolved and Closed are tracked as two distinct moments.
Help Scout: three statuses and a lock
Help Scout keeps it to three:
"Active conversations indicate the conversation is waiting for action. New conversations are automatically set as Active when they arrive in your Inbox."
"Pending conversations are waiting on something. Set a conversation to Pending if you’re waiting to hear back from a customer, or you just need time to gather more information."
"Closed conversations are solved conversations. Set the status to Closed when you’re finished working with the customer, and you consider the case to be resolved."
Unlike Zendesk, agents close conversations themselves, and Closed is not final: "If a customer replies back to a Pending or Closed conversation, the status will automatically be changed to Active."
To stop ancient threads coming back, Help Scout has Conversation Lock. An admin sets a number of days, and "any new replies to a conversation after the number of days set will create a brand new conversation, instead of adding the new customer reply to the old conversation." It also locks any conversation with more than 100 threads automatically.
The one design decision that separates them
All three need an answer to the same question: what happens when a customer replies to a finished ticket?
- Zendesk splits "done" into two statuses. Solved can reopen; Closed can't, and only the system can set it.
- Freshdesk has the same two-step Resolved → Closed shape.
- Help Scout has one "done" status that always reopens, plus a time-based lock that turns late replies into new conversations.
If you are building a support tool, this is the decision to make first. It shapes your reporting (a reopened ticket either counts twice or it doesn't), your SLA clock, and what your customers see.
Method and limits
Statuses and quotes were read from each vendor's own documentation on 2026-09-24: Zendesk's help centre, Freshdesk's public API reference (its help centre articles now require a login), and Help Scout's docs. All three allow custom statuses on some plans, so a given account may show more than listed here. We have no affiliation with any of the three.
Sources
- Zendesk — About the ticket lifecycle and ticket statuses
- Zendesk — What is the difference between a solved ticket and a closed ticket?
- Zendesk — Creating custom ticket statuses
- Freshdesk — API reference: Ticket properties
- Help Scout — Understand conversation icons and colors
- Help Scout — Conversation Lock
Researched by SaaSReadyit, which writes AI-generated validation reports for software ideas. More research: The status that gets you paid.