Intercom Vs Zendesk: Pricing, Features, Integrations in 2023

Since Zendesk’s inception, its ticketing system has remained the best in the business. Zendesk has over 160,000 customers, including some well-known brands like Siemens, Uber and Instacart. Zendesk identifies itself as a growth-enabling, all-in-one solution. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. One more thing to add, there are ways to integrate Intercom to Zendesk. Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration.

Zendesk’s intuitive design caters to beginners and non-technical users, offering a seamless experience right from the start. For instance, when you need to access specific features or information, Zendesk’s organized interface ensures that everything is easily locatable, reducing search time and user frustration. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments.

The ease of use and customization options play a significant role in the seamless integration of a customer support platform within existing business operations. Analyzing the user-friendliness and customizability of Zendesk and Intercom provides insights into their adaptability to diverse business environments. Intercom focuses on providing personalized customer messaging and support at every stage of the customer lifecycle.

It enables businesses to have real-time conversations with their customers through their website or mobile app. In contrast, Zendesk offers a more diverse range of communication channels, including email, social media, phone, and live chat. Apart from team conversations, it integrates with the ticketing system. Thus, the inbox is used to refer tickets to other customer service agents who can solve them.

Zendesk has been ruling the market for ages due to its multi-communication and ticketing system. Whether it’s about communicating via phone, email, or social media, Zendesk will intercom vs. zendesk always stay upfront. 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.

Let’s evaluate the user experience and interface of both Zendesk and Intercom, considering factors such as ease of navigation, customization options, and overall intuitiveness. We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform. Intercom has a different approach, one that’s all about sales, marketing, and personalized messaging. Intercom has your back if you’re looking to supercharge your sales efforts. It’s like having a toolkit for lead generation, customer segmentation, and crafting highly personalized messages. This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time.

Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard. Zendesk has great intelligent routing and escalation protocols as well. Yes, you can replace Zendesk with Intercom as both customer support platforms have a rich set of features and integrations. Also, this software offers a feature called ‘Business Messenger’ that comes with its own AI chatbot. Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, and respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles. Live chat add-on provides you with personal customer communication (via the web, mobile, and conversational messaging) without interrupting their experience.

It also helps promote automation in routine tasks by automating repetitive processes and helps agents save time and errors. In addition to all these features, Suite Growth Plan offers light agents, multilingual support, multiple ticket forms, and a self-service customer portal. The integration of apps plays a significant role in creating a seamless experience or a 360-degree view of customers across the company. Zendesk allows the integration of 1300 apps ranging from billing apps, marketing tools, and other software, adding overall to the value of the business.

Your best pricing plan will depend on your specific needs and budget. If you are a small business with basic CRM needs, then the Zendesk Support Team or Intercom Starter may be a good option for you. If you are a growing business with more complex CRM needs, then the Zendesk Enterprise or Intercom Pro plan may be a better option for you. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer.

Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. While the company is smaller than Zendesk, Intercom has earned a reputation for building high-quality customer service software. The company’s products include a messaging platform, knowledge base tools, and an analytics dashboard. Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. Intercom distinguishes itself by excelling in real-time customer engagement. It offers a comprehensive suite of features that empowers businesses to foster immediate connections with their customers.

The Expert plan, which offers collaboration, real-time dashboard, security, and reporting tools for large teams, costs $139. The Essential customer support plan for individuals, startups, and businsses costs $39. This plan includes a shared inbox, unlimited articles, proactive support, and basic automation.

Considering all the features of Zendesk, including robust ticketing, messaging, a help center, and chatbots, we can say that Zendesk excels in being the top customer support platform. It is a reliable and effective software for businesses of all sizes. However, businesses must choose between Zendesk vs Intercom based on their needs and requirements. In today’s business world, customer service is fast-paced, and customers have higher expectations.

Intercom Differentiation

Zendesk’s customer support is also very fast, though their live chat is only available for registered users. 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. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities. But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented.

It can team up with tools like Salesforce and Slack, so everything runs smoothly. And considering how appropriate Zendesk is for larger companies, there’s a good chance you may need to take them up on that. Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs. Zendesk is a much larger company than Intercom; it has over 170,000 customers, while Intercom has over 25,000. While this may seem like a positive for Zendesk, it’s important to consider that a larger company may not be as agile or responsive to customer needs as a smaller company.

Agents can assign sales inquiries and support requests to the respective team or team members. Selecting an ideal helpdesk software that suits your business needs is critical for the success of your customer support. In this article, we will directly compare two customer service providers—Zendesk vs Intercom, to help you evaluate what would work best for your business.

Compare Intercom Vs Zendesk Chat

In this case, each customer service software has a unique way of generating reports such as scheduling, the scope of the analysis, customer reports, and more. Intercom has Articles as a knowledge base solution for self-support, as well as internal support. This feature is available on all the channels your customers use to get in touch with your brand. Before choosing the customer support software, it is crucial to consider the size of the business. Some software only works best for startups, while others have offerings only for large enterprises. Let us look at the type and size of business for which Zednesk and Intercom are suitable.

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. Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features. Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons.

What are customers saying?

And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team. 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.

While there can be add-ons, such as premium customer support, you can generally anticipate what you’ll be paying for your Zendesk subscription. It calculates the cost of its Pro and Premium plans based on the number of AI resolutions, people reached, and seats (or users). This can make it challenging to estimate the cost yourself during your research and you need to speak with Intercom for more information. Luckily, a range of customer service solutions is available that enables you to communicate directly with your customers in real-time. These tools are ideal for personalizing the customer experience and building better customer relationships.

We’ve put together an average user rating for Intercom and Zendesk Chat based on all the reviews and scores they’ve gotten on our site. 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.

There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use. This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. There is automatic email archiving and incoming email authentication. Zendesk can also save key customer information in their platform, which helps reps get a faster idea of who they are dealing with as well as any historical data that might assist in the support. Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views.

With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle. Several decision-making factors, such as budget constraints, specific business requirements, and long-term goals, influence the choice between Zendesk and Intercom. Understanding these factors assists businesses in making a well-informed decision that aligns with their unique needs and objectives. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. 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.

Zendesk and Intercom offer a free trial of 14 days, but you will eventually have to choose once the trial ends. The pricing strategies are covered below so you can analyze the pricing structure and select your customer service software. Zendesk offers fast time to value, especially at the enterprise level. Its ability to scale with the businesses makes it an attractive option for growing companies. Its customizable options enable businesses to quickly gain value from its features by enhancing agility. Zendesk TCO is lower than Intercom due to its ability to scale, which does not require additional cost to update the software for a growing business.

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. Zendesk stands out as a champion of delivering personalized customer support due to its easy-to-use work-frame, many useful add-ons, and features in all tiers. The platform offers Zendesk Talk as its call center solution to keep up with other help desks. This feature is browser-based, so you don’t need additional software or hardware. Intercom offers call center features for your business via add-ons.

If you need a highly customizable, all-in-one platform with extensive built-in features, Zendesk may be the better choice. To begin with, efficient customer relationship management is important these days. Without proper channels to reach you, usually, customers will take their business elsewhere. And, thanks to the internet, a few taps will lead them right to your competitor!

Key Differences Zendesk vs Intercom

Zendesk and Intercom are robust tools with a wide range of customer service and CRM features. For small companies and startups, Intercom offers a Starter plan — with a balanced suite of features from each of the solutions below — at $74 per month per user, billed annually. You can create an omnichannel CRM suite with a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools.

• It also provides detailed reports on how each self-help article performs in your knowledge base and helps you identify how each piece can be improved further.
• If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.
• Intercom has Articles as a knowledge base solution for self-support, as well as internal support.
• Their reports are attractive, dynamic, and integrated right out of the box.

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.

Using Zendesk, you can create community forums where customers can connect, comment, and collaborate, creating a way to harness customers’ expertise and promote feedback. Community managers can also escalate posts to support agents when one-on-one help is needed. Intercom recently ramped up its features to include helpdesk and ticketing functionality.

Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. 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.

Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity. As a result, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing them to continuously improve their support processes and provide better service to their customers. Both Zendesk and Intercom are standout performers when it comes to providing comprehensive multi channel support, catering to diverse customer needs. Zendesk offers a versatile array of communication channels, including email, chat, social media, phone, and web forms. This breadth of options ensures that businesses can effectively engage with their customers through their preferred communication method. In the realm of automation and workflow management, Zendesk truly shines as a frontrunner.

Additionally, you can trigger incoming messages to automatically assign an agent and create dashboards to monitor the team’s performance on live chat. 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. For small businesses, the choice depends on the complexity of their CRM needs. Zendesk’s more affordable plans may be suitable if essential CRM functions are enough. However, if businesses seek a more personalized customer experience, Intercom’s advanced features could be beneficial.

Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles. However, if you compare Zendesk vs Intercom chat in ease of use, the letter wins. Create a chatbot with minimal coding and customize it to your heart’s content. When it comes to utility, Zendesk’s utility may not be as robust as a pure CRM solution. However, customers do have the option to go to Zendesk Sell for a more robust experience.

It offers a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries and support tickets across multiple channels, providing businesses with a powerful toolset for customer service management. Zendesk’s extensive feature set and customizable workflows are particularly appealing to organizations looking to streamline and scale their customer support operations efficiently. Zendesk is distinguished by its robust and versatile customer support solutions. It provides a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries, support tickets, and interactions across multiple channels. On the other hand, Intercom shines in its focus on conversational engagement and real-time communication with customers. It offers a chat-first approach, making it ideal for companies looking to prioritize interactive and personalized customer interactions.

On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer database may not offer the same level of depth and richness as Intercom. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support. What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability.

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. Formerly known as Insights, Zendesk now uses Explore to provide analytics to help businesses tailor their services to increase customer satisfaction. If your business has an app, in-app messaging can be used to send messages to customers.

Zendesk also offers detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously. You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself. This customized dashboard will help you see metrics that you’d like to focus on regularly. If that’s not detailed enough, then surely their visitor browsing details will leave you surprised. This enables your operators to understand visitor intent faster and provide them with a personalized experience. With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before.

However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. Intercom also excels in real-time chat solutions, making it a strong contender for businesses seeking dynamic customer interaction. This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, especially for larger companies. While it offers a range of advanced features, the overall costs and potential inconsistencies in support could be a concern for some businesses​​​​.

Experience the amazing capabilities of Intercom and Zendesk Chat on desktop and mobile devices for unparalleled productivity and flexibility. Examine Intercom and Zendesk Chat prices and plans to make sure you get the best deal for your needs. What better way to Chat GPT start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? A free trial will give you a better look and feel of both the product. There is no harm in testing the waters before committing to one or the other, as both Zendesk and Intercom offer free trials.

MParticle is a Customer Data Platform offering plug-and-play integrations to Zendesk and Intercom, along with over 300 other marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools. With mParticle, you can connect your Zendesk and Intercom data with other marketing, analytics, and business intelligence platforms without any custom engineering effort. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts. Both tools also allow you to connect your email account and manage it from within the application to track open and click-through rates.

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. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard. Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. But I like that Zendesk just feels slightly cleaner, has easy online/away toggling, more visual customer journey notes, and a handy widget for exploring the knowledge base on the fly. Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs.

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. Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more https://chat.openai.com/ robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers). You can set office hours, live chat with logged-in users via their user profiles, and set up a chatbot. Customization is more nuanced than Zendesk’s, but it’s still really straightforward to implement.

Services such as CallHippo, Ozonetel, Toky, Aircall Now are just a few of many more add-ons in lieu of call center tools built into the help desk software. Zendesk does not provide its customers with email marketing tools for the basic subscriptions at the time of writing. However, the add-on Customer Lists available for Professional and Enterprise subscriptions does have mass email options. What makes it different from other help desk tools is the Answer Bot.

You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. 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. 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 you’re focused on customer service, sales, or a combination of both, Dominic’s insights will guide you towards the platform that best suits your unique business needs. Intercom offers a wide range of integrations with other popular tools and platforms, allowing businesses to connect their customer support with other systems. Zendesk also offers integrations, but the ecosystem may not be as extensive as Intercom’s. Intercom provides real-time visitor tracking, allowing businesses to see who is currently browsing their website or using their app. This feature enables support agents to proactively engage with customers and provide assistance. Zendesk may not offer the same level of real-time tracking capabilities.

Intercom focuses more on streamlining customer communication to help brands serve proactive support. Zendesk, on the other hand, focuses on multiple aspects like automating ticketing, analytics, self-service, etc. Another feature Intercom offers that Zendesk doesn’t is email marketing tools. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers.

• To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments.
• As two of the most popular and effective customer support solutions on the market, Intercom and Zendesk often compete head-to-head to win the business of companies like yours.
• To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of Zendesk’s pricing, let alone to calculate costs.
• Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers.
• Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously.

Its ability to seamlessly integrate with various applications further amplifies its versatility. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. 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. Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?).

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. Automated service to migrate your data between help desk platforms without programming skills — just follow simple Migration Wizard. As a rule, Intercom reviews are positive as many users praise the interface, the ease of use, and the deployment of the software. However, some users remarked that a developer is needed to properly install the software or run the risks of problems in the future.

Zendesk has a rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on over 5,600 reviews. Intercom has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, based on over 2700 reviews. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform.

However, it is a great option for businesses seeking efficient customer interactions, as its focus on personalized messaging compensates for its lack of features. If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible. So far, the chatbot can transfer chats to agents or resolve less complex queries in seconds. That means all you have to do is add the code to your website and enable it right away. When making your decision, consider factors such as your budget, the scale of your business, and your specific growth plans. Explore alternative options like ThriveDesk if you’re looking for a more budget-conscious solution that aligns with your customer support needs.

Zendesk’s dashboard ties together your customer interactions from every possible channel. This makes it easy for agents to manage requests and communicate with customers more efficiently. They also offer features that enhance collaboration amongst employees if you have a bigger team.

This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market. Zendesk offers more advanced automation capabilities than Intercom, which may be a deciding factor for businesses that require complex workflows.