Zendesk vs Intercom: In-Depth Features & Price Comparison

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. Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. Our integration with Intercom enables bi-directional contact and case synchronization, so you can continue using Intercom as your front-end digital experience and use Zendesk for case management. Fintech startup Novo had to pivot to new ways of working in 2020, just like everyone else. But the company’s story isn’t just one of pandemic-induced change—in the first half of the year, Novo’s client base grew from 2,000 to tens of thousands.

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. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level.

Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure. Welcome to another blog post that helps you gauge which live chat solution is compatible with your customer support needs. And in this post, we will analyze two popular names in the SaaS industry – Intercom & Zendesk. Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. However, you’ll likely end up paying more for Zendesk, and in-app messenger and other advanced customer communication tools will not be included.

Using the existing knowledge base functionality, they can display self-help articles in the chat window before the customer approaches your team for support. You can create these knowledge base articles in your target audience’s native language as their software is multilingual. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze.

The three tiers—Suite Team, Suite Growth, and Suite Professional—also give you more options outside of Intercom’s static structure. Suite Team is more affordable than Intercom’s $79/month tier; Suite Professional is more expensive. Overall, Zendesk wins out on plan flexibility, especially given that it has a lower price plan for dipping your toes in the water.

Introducing Zendesk and Intercom

For those of you who have been waiting for the big showdown between these two customer support heavyweights, we are glad to present the ultimate Zendesk vs Intercom comparison article. Many users complain that Intercom’s help is unavailable the majority of the time, forcing them to repeatedly ask the same question to a bot. When they do respond, they’re usually unhelpful or want to immediately transfer you to the sales department. Whatever you think of Intercom’s design and general user experience, you can’t deny that it outperforms all of its competitors. Everything, from the tools to the website, reflects their meticulous attention to detail.

Learn how top CX leaders are scaling personalized customer service at their companies. Intercom users often mention how impressed they are with its ease of use and their ability to quickly create useful tasks and set up automations. Even reviewers who hadn’t used the platform highlight how beautifully designed it is and how simple it is to interact with for both users and clients alike.

This SaaS leader entered into the competition in 2011, intending to help its clients reach their target audiences and engage them in a conversation right away. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium. These premium support services can range in cost, typically between $1,500 and $2,800. This additional cost can be a considerable factor for businesses to consider when evaluating their customer support needs against their budget constraints. Understanding the unique attributes of Zendesk and Intercom is crucial in this comparison.

Intercom vs Zendesk: pricing

Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views. Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support. But Intercom’s friendliness for growing companies is something you can’t afford to ignore. If your business is established and you need to cut down on those ticket resolution times, Zendesk may be worth it.

Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations. Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required. Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk.

It’s where customers ask the questions that may result in the largest sales in your company’s history. Zendesk has more pricing options, which means you’re free to choose your tier from the get-go. With Intercom, you’ll have more customizable options with the enterprise versions of the software, but you’ll have fewer lower-tier choices. If you don’t plan on building a huge enterprise just yet, we have to give the edge to Zendesk when it comes to flexible pricing options.

ThriveDesk empowers small businesses to manage real-time customer communications. Zendesk is perfect for businesses looking for comprehensive customer support tools. Its primary focus on ticketing zendesk vs intercom and a robust help center makes it a good fit for companies with heavy customer interaction. Zendesk also offers digital support during business hours, and their website has a chatbot.

Pricing Comparison: Zendesk vs. Intercom

What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. The cheapest (aka Essential) ‘All of Intercom’ package will cost you $136 per month, but if you only need their essential chat tools only, you can get them for $49 per month. As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years.

Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Zendesk’s pricing structure provides increasing levels of features and capabilities as businesses move up the tiers. This scalability allows organizations to adapt their support operations to their expanding customer base.

It’s a comprehensive knowledge base where customers can find answers to common questions, reducing the need for direct customer support. 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.

MOBILE APPS

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly. Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus. But this also means the customer experience ROI tends to be lower than what it would be if you went with a best-in-class solution like Zendesk.

It is tailored for automation and quick access to insights, offering a user-friendly experience. Nevertheless, the platform’s support consistency can be a concern, and the unpredictable pricing structure might lead to increased costs for larger organizations. Intercom is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

So you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Zendesk vs Intercom platforms. Intercom does have a ticketing dashboard that has omnichannel functionality, much like Zendesk. You could say something similar for Zendesk’s standard service offering, so it’s at least good to know they have Zendesk Sell, a capable CRM option to supplement it. You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. Yes, both Intercom and Zendesk let you try out some of their tools for free before you decide to pay for the full version. 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.

To begin, both platforms have large knowledge bases that cover a lot of different topics and commonly asked questions. These tools are like self-help books; they let people solve common problems on their own. The knowledge bases are usually well-organized and changed on a regular basis, so users can always find the most up-to-date and useful information. So yeah, two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. Intercom on the other hand lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge customer support load.

Great live chat

Just as Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers who ask for help. 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). With Intercom you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on the most relevant time or behavior triggers.

• Businesses of all sizes can rely on the Zendesk customer service platform and benefit from workflow management, powerful AI tools, robust insights, and more.
• Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams.
• You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting.

They want to make a space that makes it easy for people to find their way around and quickly adopt the app. The design philosophy is based on keeping things as simple as possible so that even people who have never used the site before can quickly figure out how it works. As time passes by, the line between Intercom and Zendesk becomes more blurred as they try to keep up with one another and implement new features, services, and pricing policies. At the end of the day, there is not a universally better option, just one that suits your needs and preferences the most. In addition, some of the services Zendesk offers have a free plan (find them below in the tables). Also, Intercom has a special proposition for early-stage startups, which can get Intercom’s pro products for $49/month for up to one year.

What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability. It caters to a wide range of industries, particularly excelling in e-commerce, SaaS, technology, and telecommunications. It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. 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. While administrators can automatically assign tickets to certain agents or teams, they can also manually assign tickets to members of sales or customer service teams.

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. There are even instances where customers don’t receive the first response in more than seven days. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features.

I’m pretty sure it’s a benchmark for other chat widgets out there. But I don’t want to sell their chat tool short as it still has most of necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers and live chat analytics. It has very limited customization options in comparison to its competitors. So, whether you’re a startup or a global giant, Zendesk’s got your back for top-notch customer support. Zendesk lets you chat with customers through email, chat, social media, or phone. While Intercom and Zendesk both offer robust features, they may not be the perfect fit for everyone.

Survey composer allows you to create the question and answer format, also customizing color, rating scales, and greetings. The Sell dashboard’s Tasks page sorts all of an agent’s tasks by due date. Agents can prioritize overdue tasks, today’s tasks, or future tasks. 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.

But that’s not it, if you want to resolve customer common questions with the help of the vendor’s new tool – Fin bot, you will have to pay $0.99 per resolution per month. You could technically consider Intercom a CRM, but it’s really more of a customer-focused communication product. It isn’t as adept at purer sales tasks like lead management, list engagement, advanced reporting, forecasting, and workflow management as you’d expect a more complete CRM to be.

You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions. With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk.

• If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges.
• Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie.
• It is also not too difficult to program your own bot rules using Intercon’s system.
• Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting.
• 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.

Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization. Keeping this general theme in mind, I’ll dive deeper into how each software’s features compare, so you can decide which use case might best fit your needs.

Messagely’s chatbots are powerful tools for qualifying and converting leads while your team is otherwise occupied or away. With chatbots, you can generate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve common customer queries without the need of a customer service representative behind a keyboard. Intercom focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.