Zendesk vs Intercom Comparison 2024: Which One Is Better?

Automation and AI save resources and time–every automated workflow and routing decision frees an agent to work on more complex issues. The learning and knowledgebase category is another one where it is a close call between Zendesk and Intercom. However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company. If you’d want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials for 14 days. But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay.

Intercom also has a community forum where users can help one another with questions and solutions. For Intercom’s pricing plan, on the other hand, there is much less information on their website. There is a Starter plan for small businesses at $74 per month billed annually, and there are add-ons like a WhatsApp add-on at $9 per user per month or surveys at $49 per month. Your typical Zendesk review will often praise the platform’s simplicity and affordability, as well as its constant updates and rolling out of new features, like Zendesk Sunshine. For example, you can read in many Zendesk Sell reviews how adding sales tools benefits Zendesk Support users.

But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request. But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.

Zendesk Agent Dashboard

Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams. It was later when they started adding all kinds of other tools like when they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset. Intercom also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow. With its integrated suite of applications, Intercom provides a comprehensive solution that caters to businesses seeking a unified ecosystem to manage customer interactions. This scalability ensures businesses can align their support infrastructure with their evolving requirements, ensuring a seamless customer experience. On the other hand, Intercom brings a dynamic approach to customer support.

Right from managing your support tickets to training your employees, you can take your support operations to the next level. Basically, provides you with a knowledge base to create, organize, and store the articles that answer your customers’ questions. Has a bot that suggests relevant articles to customers who have questions.

It can automatically suggest your customer relevant articles reducing the workload for your support agents. All interactions with customers be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them fast and efficiently. There’s a plethora of features to help bigger teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. If money is limited for your business, a help desk that can be a Zendesk alternative or an Intercom alternative is ThriveDesk. Choose the plan that suits your support requirements and budget, whether you’re a small team or a growing enterprise. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium.

Vendor Support Quality

This makes it easier to get a more accurate sense of the total cost of ownership, which will increase if you want to leverage the full range of features. Overall, when comparing Zendesk to Intercom, Zendesk’s features will probably win out over time. But the most important thing is that you get a help desk that you believe in—and that you integrate it into a website as thoroughly as possible. You can use this support desk to help customers or you can forward potential new users to your sales department. You can create a help platform to assist users in guiding themselves, or you can use AI-enabled responses to create a more “human” like effect.

The extensive automation and robust ticketing operations that Zendesk offers are among the numerous capabilities that the company possesses. To cater to the needs of different businesses and teams, Zendesk offers multiple integration options. To customize your Zendesk experience, you can integrate the tool with third-party business applications such as Trello, Salesforce, Shopify, Aircall, etc. ProProfs Help Desk is a decade-old SaaS company that offers an array of customer service and learning tools for businesses across the globe.

Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans. Its straightforward pricing structure ensures businesses get access to the required features without complex tiers or hidden costs, making it an attractive option for cost-conscious organizations.

Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. Clearbit integrates with Intercom to provide users with enriched customer profiles. With this integration, Intercom customers can access Clearbit’s suite of APIs to enrich their customer profiles with additional information such as job title, company size, and industry. This allows them to better segment their audiences and target their messaging more effectively. Pipedrive is a CRM platform that helps sales teams stay organized and focused on their goals. It allows users to create deals, track activities, and manage contacts all in one place.

The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?). Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard. That not only saves them the headache of having to constantly switch between dashboards while streamlining resolution processes—it also leads to better customer and agent experience overall. Did you know that integrations between Zendesk and Intercom are possible? With the integrations provided through each product, you can make use of both platforms to provide your customers with comprehensive customer service. While Intercom Zendesk integration is uncommon, as they both offer very similar products, it can be useful for unique use cases or during migrations from one platform to the other.

Finally, you’ll have to choose your reporting preferences including details about what you’ll be tracking and how often you want to be reported of changes. On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to foresee how much Intercom will cost at the end of the day. They charge for agent seats and connections, don’t disclose their prices, and package add-ons at a premium. Although the Intercom chat window claims that their team responds within a few hours, user reviews have stated that they had to wait for a few days.

Zendesk vs. Intercom at a glance

Zendesk offers more flexibility with its pricing options and also has free services. In addition, the costs of Zendesk’s services are slightly easier to calculate. However, regardless of whether your choice is Zendesk or Intercom, you will be spending some time trying to figure out how much you will pay for the services. Their help desk is a single inbox to handle customer requests, where your customer support agents can leave private notes for each other and automatically assign requests to the right people. Just as Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers who ask for help. Intercom is 4 years younger than Zendesk and has fancied itself as a messaging platform right from the beginning.

Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. The workspace left-hand column notifies agents of all ticket updates. The top of the agent workspace shows an agent’s open tickets, ticket statistics, and satisfaction statistics, as well as tabs depicting all current tickets.

Even though Zendesk’s site does not clearly specify the duration of the free trial, other web resources state that it lasts for 30 days, which is twice as long as Intercom’s free trial. Additional payment per active user or seat depends on a chosen service and a plan. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom does not have a built-in call center solution, but you can integrate Intercom with other call center software.

There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due. Intercom has a full suite of email marketing tools, although they are part of a pricier package. With Intercom, you get email features like targeted and personalized outbound emailing, dynamic content fields, and an email-to-inbox forwarding feature. When it comes to self-service portals for things like knowledgebases, Intercom has a useful set of resources.

On the other hand, if you prioritize customer engagement, sales, and personalized messaging, Intercom is a compelling option, especially for startups and rapidly scaling businesses. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, evaluating their core features and functionalities is essential to determine which platform best suits your organization’s customer support needs. Let’s explore how Zendesk and Intercom stack up in terms of basic functionalities required by a helpdesk software.

Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. Zendesk, on the other hand, may not stress the same conversation-driven method, even though it has powerful team management tools. Its strength is that it offers a wide range of tools for organising teams, such as booking systems, knowledge bases, and customer service features. These tools are great for keeping track of tasks and making sure workflows run smoothly, but they might not put as much emphasis on real-time conversations for teams as Intercom does.

In terms of customer service, Zendesk fails to deliver an exceptional experience. This can be a bummer for many as they can always stumble upon an issue. We hope this help desk comparison blog will help you make the best decision for your customer service team. Remember, before you opt for a full-fledged plan, it’s always better to go for a free trial to see how the solution really works. In addition to this, Intercom provides your business the right platform to offer proactive support. You can use targeted messages to suggest quick tips to new customers or to simply update them about scheduled outages or changes in business hours.

Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software. It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media. Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard. Zendesk has great intelligent routing and escalation protocols as well.

There are 3 Basic support plans at $19, $49 and $99 per user per month billed annually, and 5 Suite plans at $49, $79, $99, $150, and $215 per user per month billed annually. Intercom also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics.

It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. Further, if companies plan to create multi-channel campaigns, Intercom makes a great fit. However, customers should keep in mind that Intercom does not offer voice. Novo has been a Zendesk customer since 2019 but didn’t immediately start taking full advantage of all our features and capabilities. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake.

• On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary to investigate the nature of these integrations in order to ascertain whether or not they are relevant to the criteria that you have in mind.
• With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time.
• ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively.
• The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools.
• Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard.

The Sell dashboard’s Tasks page sorts all of an agent’s tasks by due date. Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website. Set triggers to target particular audiences at the right time, utilize carousels as part of a communication campaign, and compare carousels with A/B testing. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. Yes, you can find the Intercom integration in the Zendesk Marketplace—and it’s free to install. Fintech startup Novo had to pivot to new ways of working in 2020, just like everyone else.

Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. We hope that this Intercom VS Zendesk comparison helps you choose one that matches your support, marketing, and sales needs. But in case you are in search of something beyond these two, then ProProfs Chat can be an option. After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option.

Zendesk’s help center tools should also come in handy for helping customers help themselves—something Zendesk claims eight out of 10 customers would rather do than contact support. To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it. Based on the number of customer service agents you need to accommodate, you could be paying thousands of dollars every single month for the right customer support platform. Therefore, it becomes all the more important to review your options carefully.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is used by Intercom, a customer communication tool, to keep data sent between users and the platform safe. SSL encryption is a standard form of security that creates a safe and encrypted connection between a user’s computer and the Intercom servers. This keeps any data sent private and stops people from getting to it without permission. When you authorize your Ticksy account to work with Influx, we’ll use this access to read the content of tickets.

The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options.

They have a dedicated help section that provides instructions on how to set up and effectively use Intercom. Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time. How easy it is to program a chatbot and how effective a chatbot is at assisting human reps is an important factor for this category.

This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. Choosing the right customer service platform is pivotal for enhancing business-client zendesk or intercom interactions. In this context, Zendesk and Intercom emerge as key contenders, each offering distinct features tailored to dynamic customer service environments. They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options.

Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition. Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two. Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools. Zendesk has an app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers while on the go. The app includes features like push notifications and real-time customer engagement — so businesses can respond quickly to customer inquiries.

It gives detailed contact profiles enriched by company data, behavioral data, conversation data, and other custom fields. Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace.

Zendesk, on the other hand, is another top customer service platform that uses strong security steps to keep customer data safe. One of these steps is putting in place two-factor authentication (2FA). With this extra layer of security, users must show two forms of ID before they can access their accounts. This makes it even harder for people who aren’t supposed to be there to get in.

The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Track customer service metrics to gain valuable insights and improve customer service processes and agent performance. Prioritize the agent experience to maximize productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing employee turnover. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now.