NexusHow Nexus compares.
Geckoboard is a fine cloud dashboard. But if your desk runs on a helpdesk — Zendesk, Freshdesk, Jira Service Management or a PSA — and you'd rather keep customer data on your own server and pay a flat price, not $119+/month, Nexus was built for you.
At a glance
Your data stays yours
Nexus runs on your server and reads your helpdesk directly. Nothing proxies through our cloud — there isn't one. Geckoboard ingests your ticket data into theirs.
Flat, honest pricing
£29–£119/month flat, every screen included. Geckoboard's published plans start around $119/month and climb with dashboards and seats.
Helpdesk-deep, not integration-wide
Built helpdesk-deep: Zendesk Support + Talk first — 20-second call refresh, SLA countdowns, CSAT, leaderboards — with the same board now reading Freshdesk, Jira Service Management and the major PSAs. Depth first, not 90 shallow connectors.
Pick a tool to size up.
Choose what you’re weighing Nexus against — the table swaps instantly. No spin: where they’re genuinely better, we say so.
The wallboard heavyweight, re-priced.
| Feature | Nexus | Geckoboard |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting & your data | Self-hosted — ticket data never leaves your server, and the board keeps running offline | Processed & stored in their cloud |
| Pricing | Flat £29 / £59 / £119 a month — unlimited screens & agents | From ~$119/mo, plus per-dashboard, per-TV and per-editor add-ons |
| Helpdesk depth | Native Support + Talk — SLA countdowns, CSAT, live call queue (20s refresh) | Good core widgets |
| Wallboard & TV | TV rotation, scheduling, full-screen SLA war-room | Send-to-TV |
| Look & feel | Remixable design system — 11 themes × 6 looks × 8 designs, set per screen or dashboard | Per-dashboard colours & a logo; can't fully restyle or remove branding |
| Control every screen (Pro+) | Push any board to any screen from one admin | — |
| Gamification | Leaderboards, goals, streaks, Agent of the Week | Lighter |
| Breadth of sources | Helpdesks & monitoring tools, depth-first — plus custom connectors for any JSON endpoint you control | 90+ integrations & spreadsheets |
| Build your own metrics | Calculated KPIs from a formula, live on the board | Custom widgets & datasets |
| Share & embed (Enterprise) | Public & signed-embed dashboards, SSO, named roles & an audit trail | Sharing & embeds on higher tiers |
Pick Geckoboard if you need 90+ cloud connectors — Salesforce, HubSpot, Sheets — on one screen. Pick Nexus if your floor runs on a helpdesk and you’d rather keep customer data on your own server at a flat price.
Gamification without the per-seat bill.
| Feature | Nexus | Plecto |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Flat £29–£119/mo, unlimited seats & screens | Per-seat with minimums — ~$200+/mo for a small team |
| Gamification | Leaderboards, goals, streaks, Agent of the Week | Excellent — contests, achievements |
| Helpdesk depth | Purpose-built Support + Talk, live SLA & CSAT | A connector among ~100 |
| Hosting | Self-hosted — your data never leaves | Their cloud only |
| Wallboard & TV | Rotation, scheduling, war-room takeover | TV display supported |
| Share & govern (Enterprise) | Public & embeddable dashboards, SSO, named roles & an audit trail | Seat-based access |
Pick Plecto if you want contest-style gamification across many sources and per-seat pricing suits you. Pick Nexus if your floor runs on a helpdesk and you want the motivation layer flat-priced on your own tin.
“Why not just use Explore?”
| Feature | Nexus | Zendesk Explore |
|---|---|---|
| What it’s for | A live wall your whole team watches all day | Historical reporting & BI inside Zendesk |
| Live on a TV | 20s calls · 60s tickets, runs forever on a wall | Periodic refresh; live widgets limited & plan-gated |
| Wall ergonomics | 4K scaling, rotation, themes, ticker, lock mode | Built for analysts at desks |
| Motivation layer | Leaderboards, goals, streaks, Agent of the Week | — |
| Share beyond seats | Client-scoped read-only links — no login needed | Largely seat/plan-bound |
| Historical BI | Operational trends, not a query builder | Excellent — custom queries, datasets, joins |
| Custom metrics on the wall | Calculated KPIs from a formula, live on the board | Full query builder (for reports, not a live wall) |
Honestly, they’re complements. Keep Explore for month-end analysis — it’s good at it and you already pay for it. Nexus is the always-on, motivating live wall Explore doesn’t do. Most customers run both.
Metric breadth, meet a real support wall.
| Feature | Nexus | Klipfolio |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | A live support wall your team watches all day | Self-serve BI metrics & custom dashboards |
| Hosting & data | Self-hosted — data stays on your server | Cloud — data ingested into theirs |
| Pricing | Flat £29–£119/mo, unlimited seats | Per-user / tiered, climbs with users & metrics |
| Helpdesk depth | Native Support + Talk — SLA, CSAT, live calls | Generic connectors; you build the views |
| Custom metrics & sources | Calculated KPIs & custom JSON connectors — without leaving the wall | Deep — its core strength |
| Wallboard & TV | Purpose-built rotation, war-room, themes | TV / PowerMetrics display |
| Gamification | Leaderboards, goals, streaks | — |
Pick Klipfolio if you want to assemble custom metric dashboards from many sources. Pick Nexus if you want a helpdesk wall that’s live, motivating and on-brand out of the box.
KPI snapshots vs a living desk.
| Feature | Nexus | Databox |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | An always-on wall the whole floor watches | KPI snapshots, mobile-first |
| Hosting & data | Self-hosted — your data never leaves | Cloud |
| Pricing | Flat, unlimited seats & screens | Freemium, then tiered by data sources & boards |
| Helpdesk depth | Native, live — 20s call refresh, SLA, CSAT | A connector among many |
| Mobile & alerts | Native iOS & Android apps with push threshold alerts | Polished mobile app |
| Wallboard & TV | Rotation, scheduling, lock mode | Loop / TV mode |
| Gamification | Leaderboards, goals, Agent of the Week | Goal tracking, lighter |
Pick Databox if you track KPIs across marketing, sales & support and love a polished mobile app. Pick Nexus if the support floor is the point and you want it on the wall, self-hosted.
The DIY route, without the build.
| Feature | Nexus | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | A helpdesk wall, ready in minutes | Metrics & observability you build yourself |
| Setup | First-run wizard — paste a token, you’re live | Engineering effort — data sources, queries, panels |
| Helpdesk depth | Native Support + Talk — SLA, CSAT, live calls | None out of the box — you build every query |
| Extend it | Calculated KPIs & custom connectors — no query language to learn | Infinitely — via PromQL, plugins & effort |
| Wallboard & TV | Rotation, themes, war-room, kiosk mode | Kiosk / playlist (DIY) |
| Gamification | Leaderboards, goals, streaks | — |
| Pricing | Flat £29–£119/mo, supported | Free & open-source to self-run (or Grafana Cloud) |
Pick Grafana if you have engineers and want total control over metrics dashboards — it’s free and superb at that. Pick Nexus if you want a helpdesk wall that works today without building it.
Comparisons reflect each product’s published positioning and pricing to the best of our knowledge as at June 2026 — they change, so check each vendor’s site. Geckoboard, Plecto, Zendesk, Klipfolio, Databox and Grafana are trademarks of their respective owners; Nexus is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.
Where the others genuinely win
Breadth of sources: need Salesforce + HubSpot + Sheets + 90 others on one screen? Geckoboard, Klipfolio and Databox have huge connector libraries — Nexus stays helpdesk-deep instead.
Free & fully yours: Grafana is open-source and free to self-run. If you have engineers to wire data sources and build panels, it's hard to beat on price.
Fully managed: nothing to host. If running a Docker container isn't your team's thing, a cloud product (Geckoboard, Plecto, Databox) is the right call.
Deep historical BI: Zendesk Explore and Klipfolio do custom queries, datasets and joins Nexus doesn't — keep them for month-end analysis.
A typical 10-agent desk, per year.
Illustrative, using published entry pricing as at June 2026. Rival figures are in their listed currency (USD); Nexus is in £, so the figures aren't a direct currency-for-currency comparison.
Your team, your numbers.
Per-seat tools climb with every agent and every screen. Nexus is flat. Put in your own figures and see the yearly gap.
- Nexus Starter — £290/yr
- Nexus Pro — £590/yr
- Nexus Enterprise — £1,100/yr
You'd save £562 a year, and it doesn't climb as your team grows.
Illustrative — set the per-seat figure to whatever your current tool charges. Per-seat prices vary; Nexus stays one flat price with unlimited agents and screens, self-hosted on hardware you already own. Prices exclude VAT.
Still weighing up your options? Read the best helpdesk wallboards in 2026 and self-hosted vs cloud wallboards.
Common questions when comparing
Is Nexus self-hosted, unlike most wallboard tools?
Yes. Nexus runs on your own server from one Docker command, and your ticket data and connector credentials never leave your infrastructure. Cloud dashboards like Geckoboard, Plecto, Databox and Klipfolio require you to pipe your data into their SaaS; Nexus reads your helpdesk directly and keeps everything on-premises. If you'd rather not run a server, we also offer a managed instance in a UK/EU region.
How is Nexus different from Geckoboard, Plecto or Databox?
Those are general cloud dashboards you feed with connectors and build charts in. Nexus is a purpose-built support wallboard: it connects to your helpdesk or PSA directly, ships ready-made ticket, SLA, leaderboard and monitoring panels, and is self-hosted with flat pricing and unlimited screens — instead of per-widget or per-viewer cloud plans.
Can Nexus replace Zendesk Explore for a wall display?
For a live, glanceable team wallboard, yes. Zendesk Explore is Zendesk-only reporting built for analysts; Nexus is a real-time board designed for a wall-mounted screen the whole room watches, and it supports Zendesk plus Freshdesk, Freshservice, Jira Service Management, HaloPSA, SuperOps, NinjaOne, ConnectWise, Zoho Desk, Help Scout and Front — one ticketing provider per deployment.
Does Nexus charge per seat or per viewer?
No. Nexus is flat-priced — Starter £29, Pro £59 and Enterprise £119 per month — with unlimited agents and screens. A per-seat or per-viewer dashboard tool gets more expensive as your team and the number of TVs grow; Nexus does not.
See your own desk on the wall.
Demo mode fills the board with realistic sample data in about 30 seconds — no account, no card. Like what you see? Plans start at £29/month flat, with a 14-day free trial — billed only if you keep it.
Running multiple teams or need SSO? Talk to us about Enterprise →