Zendesk vs Intercom: Which Solution to Choose in 2024?

What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. The Help Center software by Intercom is also a very efficient tool. You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. If delivering an outstanding customer experience and employee experience is your top priority, Zendesk should be your top pick over Intercom.

You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two.

Their reports are attractive, dynamic, and integrated right out of the box. You can even finagle some forecasting by sourcing every agent’s assigned leads. At the same time, they both provide great and easy user onboarding.

It is great to have CRM functionality inside your customer service platform because it helps maintain great customer experiences by storing all past customer engagements and conversation histories. This method helps offer more personalized support as well as get faster response and resolution times. 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.

Check out our chart that compares the capabilities of Zendesk vs. Intercom.

It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’re going to pay for Intercom at end of the day. It’s highly customizable, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. So when I realized lots of companies actually prefer Zendesk over Intercom, I was surprised. Zendesk is designed to fit your business needs whether you’re a fast-growing startup or a well-established company. With this kind of organization, you will not only find your favorite apps but also discover new ones to meet your needs.

What really struck me though is that people seemed to like Zendesk more. Struck not in a bad way, more like in a very neutral ‘huh, this may be interesting’ way. 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. While both offer a wide number of integration options, Zendesk wins the top spot in this category. Intercom is the clear victor in terms of user experience, leaving all of its competitors in the dust.

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. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools.

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. G2 ranks Intercom higher than Zendesk for ease of setup, and support quality—so you can expect a smooth transition, effortless onboarding, and continuous success.

The difference in prices between plans is so significant because of the features each of them provides. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience Chat GPT are leaving all its competitors far behind. It’s beautifully crafted and thought through, and their custom-made illustrations are just next level stuff.

Now that we know a little about both tools, it is time to make an in-depth analysis and identify which one of these will be perfect for your business. Here’s a list of criteria we’ve used to differentiate the two for you. There is also an opinion that Zendesk’s interface and design are slightly less convenient in comparison to Intercom’s, which provides a more streamlined user interface. Additional payment per active user or seat depends on a chosen service and a plan. So, yeah, calculating costs, in this case, can be quite a hassle. Intercom does not have a built-in call center solution, but you can integrate Intercom with other call center software.

Desku as an Alternative to Intercom and Zendesk

Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them. Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience. Customers of Zendesk can https://chat.openai.com/ purchase priority assistance at the enterprise tier, which includes a 99.9% uptime service level agreement and a 1-hour service level goal. At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements.

So, it’s solid proof of how user-friendly Intercom’s interface is. We can say that Zendesk’s user interface is very clean and clear to understand. Besides its easy navigation, it also offers a mesmerizing ticketing system, multichannel communication, and analytics reporting. So, Zendesk’s users are always going to have a smooth experience with it. You can create an omnichannel CRM suite with a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools. Both app stores include many popular integrations, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Zapier.

Pricing for paid Pendo plans is only provided on a quote basis and there are no listed price ranges on the solution’s website. That said, certain reviews have stated that prices start at upwards of $20,000 per year for a single product and more than twice that for higher plans. Below you’ll find the best Intercom alternatives for different use cases. 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.

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Whether you’ve just started searching for a customer support tool or have been using one for a while, chances are you know about Zendesk and Intercom. The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high in terms of innovative and out-of-the-box features. Apart from its CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions, it also offers bespoke tools for automating and streamlining customer service and support operations.

They also offer several other features such as pre-defined responses, custom rules, and customizable online forms. Messagely’s pricing starts at just $29 per month, which includes live chat, targeted messages, shared inbox, mobile apps, and over 750 powerful integrations. The best part about Zendesk is that, along with its amazing features, it also provides its users with a magical wand for customizing them. Whether it’s the ticketing system, knowledge base corner, or branding elements, you get the full right to use them as per your brand’s need. Suppose you are thinking that Intercom isn’t offering any attractive features, but it’s actually not true. There is one mind-boggling feature in Intercom, and that is its in-app messaging serving.

Multilingual content and other advanced features come with a $49 price per agent per month. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive toolset that aids in automating customer service workflows and fine-tuning chatbot interactions. Its strengths are prominently seen in multi-channel support, with effective email, social media, and live chat integrations, coupled with a robust internal knowledge base for agent support.

Known for its scalability, Zendesk is suitable for various business sizes, from startups to large corporations. Twilio offers several solutions for managing different aspects of customer support and communication. It stands out for its customer data management tools that allow businesses to leverage customer information to build stronger relationships. HappyFox is a cloud-based customer support software that offers helpdesk and ticket support solutions to businesses of all sizes.

Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive. Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions. You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience.

The only relief is that they do reach out to customers, but it gets too late. 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. One of the most significant downsides of Intercom is its customer support. Existing customers have complained consistently about how they aren’t available at the right time to offer support to customers.

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. Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools don’t. It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style.

It gives detailed contact profiles enriched by company data, behavioral data, conversation data, and other custom fields. Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality. Intercom isn’t quite as strong as Zendesk in comparison to some of Zendesk’s customer support strengths, but it has more features for sales and lead nurturing.

In comparison, Zendesk customers pay a fixed price of $50 per agent—and only Zendesk AI is modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset. Zendesk is built to grow alongside your business, resulting in less downtime, better cost savings, and the stability needed to provide exceptional customer support. Many customers start using Zendesk as small or mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and continue to use our software as they scale their operations, hire more staff, and serve more customers. Our robust, no-code integrations enable you to adapt our software to new and growing use cases. Compared to Zendesk, Intercom offers few integrations, which may hinder its scalability. In a nutshell, both these companies provide great customer support.

If you go through Zendesk’s reviews and ratings section, you will get to see a long list of positive appraisals. And we all know that receiving such continuous positive Customer feedback isn’t easy at all. Essentially, Desku is not an option but a reliable replacement for Zendesk and Intercom that companies can rely on at lower costs and improved performance. For leading a successful business, communication is one of the keys.

Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. It is now trusted by multiple Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies.

• Zendesk is one of the biggest players in the realm of customer support platforms.
• Discover how chatbots enhance customer service and how they work.
• As a result, customers can implement the help desk software quickly—without the need for developers—and see a faster return on investment.
• At the end of the day, there is not a universally better option, just one that suits your needs and preferences the most.
• This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, especially for larger companies.
• These plans make Hiver a versatile tool, catering to a range of business sizes and needs, from startups to large enterprises looking for a comprehensive customer support solution within Gmail.

Whether it’s about communicating via phone, email, or social media, Zendesk will always stay upfront. Both the platforms have the knowledge base feature, and in my opinion, both of them are becoming winners. Though expensive and quality are synonymous in some worlds, such a principle cannot define Desku where it stands out as one of such affordable companies.

In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers. In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights. Zendesk started in 2007 as a web-based SaaS product for managing incoming customer support requests. Since then, it has evolved into a full-fledged CRM that offers a suite of software applications to its over 160,000 customers like Uber, Siemens, and Tesco. The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and integrating various channels seamlessly. However, compared to the more contemporary designs like Intercom’s, Zendesk’s UI may appear outdated, particularly in aspects such as chat widget and customization options.

They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. With over 160,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk has the CX expertise to provide you with best practices and thought leadership to increase your overall value. But don’t just take our word for it—listen to what customers say about why they picked Zendesk. Whether it’s peer-to-peer, internal-to-external, or tool-to-tool, Zendesk makes all types of collaboration easy. We are going to overview only their helpdesk/communication features to make the two systems comparable. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the hardest on your pocket.

Finally, you can pay $199 per month per user for unlimited sales pipelines and advanced reporting along with other features. Discover how chatbots enhance customer service and how they work. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features. Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options.

It offers customizable live chat widgets, omnichannel support capabilities, and integrations with over 300 apps. While Intercom is primarily a support solution, it does have add-ons that offer other functionalities such as product tours. Zendesk directly competes with Intercom when it comes to integrations. This live chat service provider offers 200+ integrations to its user base. With a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools, you get the option to create an omnichannel suite.

Looking for an Intercom Alternative? Try Userpilot!

Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. Now, their use cases comprise support, engagement, and conversion. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Nothing fancy, it covers just basic customer communication needs.

• It can automatically suggest your customer relevant articles reducing the workload for your support agents.
• Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required.
• It also has an Answer Bot that reduces the workload for employees.
• And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes.
• For leading a successful business, communication is one of the keys.

And that’s why it offers a long list of customization options like workflow automation, ticket management system, and layouts. Intercom allows visitors to search for and view articles from the messenger widget. Customers won’t need to leave your app or website to find the help they need.Zendesk, on the other hand, will redirect the customer to a new web page.

One place Intercom really shines as a standalone CRM is its data utility. 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.

This site does not include all companies or all available Vendors. However, this is somewhat subjective, and depending on your business needs and favorite tools, you may argue we got it all mixed up, and Intercom is truly superior. Some startups and small businesses may prefer one app, while large companies and enterprise operations will have their own requirements. Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets.

If that’s not detailed enough, then surely their visitor browsing details will leave you surprised. Zendesk maps out each activity a visitor performs on your website. This enables your operators to understand visitor intent faster and provide them with a personalized experience. During the full-scale russian invasion, we continue developing high-quality innovative technological products while volunteering and donating funds.

The main idea here is to rid the average support agent of a slew of mundane and repetitive tasks, giving them more time and mental energy to help customers with tougher issues. You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking. Zendesk also offers callback requests, call monitoring and call quality notifications, among other telephone tools. Zendesk is not far behind Intercom when it comes to email features. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use.

In-app messages and email marketing tools are two crucial features that Zendesk lacks when compared to Intercom. Intercom, on the other hand, lacks key ticketing features that are critical for large firms with a high volume of customer assistance. To automate operations and reduce your employees’ workload, it is critical that customer support systems allow integration with other products. This enables organizations to work more efficiently and easily integrate their software without having to alter their present business processes.

Zendesk Support has voicemail, text messages, and embedded voice, and it displays the phone number on the widget. Zendesk has more pricing options, and its most affordable plan is likely cheaper than Intercom’s, although without exact Intercom numbers, it is not easy to truly know the cost. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices.

In 2018, Intercom raised $125 million in funding, which brought its value up to $1.25 billion and provided the company with all the rights to call itself a unicorn. First of all, Intercom positions itself as a business messenger, the primary aim of which is to deliver modern and reliable customer communication tool. There are four different subscription packages you can choose from, all of which also have Essential, Pro, and Premium options for businesses of different sizes. You’d need to chat with Intercom sales team for get the costs for the Premium subscription, though. Also, their in-app messenger is worth a separate mention as it’s one of their distinctive tools (especially since Zendesk doesn’t really have one).

If you’re exploring popular chat support tools Zendesk and Intercom, you may be trying to understand which solution is right for you. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities. Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first zendesk or intercom ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams.

Automating onboarding messages, product guides, newsletters, and the list goes on. Intercom understands very well that email marketing is no more than a magic wand for building strong customer relations. Moreover, research says that companies can reduce customer resolution times upto a great percentage through the helpdesk software.

With Messagely, you can increase your customer satisfaction and solve customers’ issues while they’re still visiting your site. However, you’ll likely end up paying more for Zendesk, and in-app messenger and other advanced customer communication tools will not be included. Zendesk chat allows you to talk with your visitors in real time through a small chat bar at the bottom of your site. When visitors click on it, they’ll be directed to one of your customer service teammates. For basic chat and messaging, Intercom charges a flat fee of $39 per month for its basic plan with one user and $99 per month for its team plan with up to 5 users. If you want automated options, Intercom starts at either $499 or $999 per month for up to ten users, depending on the level of automation you’re looking for.

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. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

While Intercom is a flexible and popular solution when it comes to customer service, there are certain use cases where it will likely fall short compared to other options. Overall, Intercom aims to increase customer satisfaction, strengthen customer relationships, and improve customer experience through personalized support. The Product Tours add-on contains features that aid onboarding, adoption, and feature discovery. Intercom’s product tours can include UI patterns like modals and tooltips as well as other media formats such as microvideos. On Capterra, Intercom has a rating of 4.5 given by 784 reviewers. While they like the ease of use this product offers its users, they’ve indeed rated them low in terms of services.

It’s a very good way of communicating with customers through multi-platform apps. Moreover, the best part is it also lets you send customized messages to various customers on the basis of their actions. When it comes to real-time analytics, Zendesk is winning our hearts. With its live analytics feature on the dashboard, it makes it easy for you to make instant decisions in no time.

Such live insights are very useful in evaluating your customer support process. But, you would not be able to enjoy such a live tracking experience on Intercom. Here comes Desku as the strong competitor, which can effectively substitute Zendesk and Intercom. Desku provides a user-friendly platform with robust features that enable easy transition during the migration from other support systems. That their customers are fully satisfied with their products and services, and so is the motto of our Desku chatbots. So, by holding Desku’s hand, you can open doors for a long list of happy and fully satisfied customers.

From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community. 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. The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load.

What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of Zendesk’s pricing, let alone to calculate costs. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get Zendesk or Intercom for your business, so let’s talk money now. As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years. As it turns, it’s quite difficult to compare Zendesk against Intercom as they serve different purposes and will fit different businesses. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. While doing my research for this article, I’ve not only tested both Intercom and Zendesk myself, but also read a pile of different articles, comparisons, guides, showdowns and all this kind of stuff.

It is a totally cloud-based service; you can operate this VOIP technology by sitting in any corner of the world. But, if we talk about Intercom, it is not as advanced as Zendesk. You will be able to find the most common chatting system with a single communication channel. So, communicating with customers on different communication channels would be difficult on Intercom. Zendesk has been ruling the market for ages due to its multi-communication and ticketing system.

However, the Intercom app store is far more intuitive and is much easier to navigate. It not only shows you all of the apps you can use, but it also divides these into topics and categories. There are many powerful integrations included, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and Zapier. By the end of the article, you’ll not only know all of the main differences between Zendesk and Intercom, but you’ll know which is the right tool for you. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.

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. But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations.

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer robust solutions, but the choice ultimately depends on specific business needs. While both platforms have a significant presence in the industry, they cater to varying business requirements. Zendesk, with its extensive toolkit, is often preferred by businesses seeking an all-encompassing customer support solution. Intercom focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support. Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans.

Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard. Zendesk has great intelligent routing and escalation protocols as well. Intercom has a wider range of uses out of the box than Zendesk, though by adding Zendesk Sell, you could more than make up for it.