Zendesk vs Intercom: In-Depth Features & Price Comparison

Intercom vs Zendesk What are the differences?

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case.

Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms. Zendesk for Sales offers three plans, ranging from $19 to $99 monthly per user, with free trials available for each plan. Intercom plan prices are determined based on your specific business needs, so interested users must contact them for specific price details. Intercom offers admin full visibility and control over all company inboxes, as well as agent access controls and role management. Intercom’s Messenger lets users schedule timely, targeted, and personal messages sent based on triggers and customer actions, and is automatically translatable into over 30 languages.

Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly. All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. Customer stories are another big part of the equation when comparing Intercom vs. Zendesk. Here, we’ll dig into three different companies that chose Zendesk in the Intercom vs. Zendesk debate.

Zendesk compared to Intercom

I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. 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. Team inboxes aggregate tickets applicable to the whole team–or a specific department–that any agent can address. Both Intercom and Zendesk offer seamless integrations with other tools and platforms. Intercom integrates well with popular CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot, as well as marketing automation tools like Mailchimp and Marketo. Zendesk also offers a wide range of integrations, including CRM, ecommerce, and productivity tools.

If you seek a comprehensive customer support solution with a strong emphasis on traditional ticketing, Zendesk is a solid choice, particularly for smaller to mid-sized businesses. In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market. ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively. 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.

But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way.

Zendesk Vs Intercom: Discovering The Perfect Helpdesk Match!

Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support. It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times.

But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request. The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?). Having the two presented side by side, which is the best CRM solution?

It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day. They charge for customer service representative seats and people reached, don’t reveal their prices, and offer tons of custom add-ons at additional cost. That’s why it would be better to review where both the options would be ideal to use.

Intercom vs Zendesk Pricing in a Table

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 intercom vs zendesk to focus on regularly. 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. Intercom also does not offer a free trial period for users to examine the software prior to joining up for their services.

• You get multiple support channels at no extra cost with over 1000 APIs and integrations.
• Each additional 1,000 contacts on a Starter plan will cost you $25/mo.
• The answers are analyzed to help streamline the AI and can also be collated into a report for your perusal.
• Intercom is more for improving sales cycle and customer relationships, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about, but it does lack wide email functionality.

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. Yes, you can integrate the Intercom solution into your Zendesk account. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms.

Pricing Comparison: Intercom Vs. Zendesk

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 is better designed for smaller companies and teams, while Zendesk is suitable for large companies to skyrocket customer support. In addition, Intercom offers omnichannel inbox, robust reporting, and automated workflows. Live chat add-on provides you with personal customer communication (via the web, mobile, and messaging) without interrupting their experience.

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. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two.

Finally, we also have some B2B customers (funeral homes) and expect this part of our business to grow significantly in 2021. Analytics features Intercom has is done through add-ons such as Google Analytics, Statbot, Microsoft Teams, and more. Let’s compare Intercom and Zendesk using the help desk features they have. Sure, you can have a front desk—but you don’t necessarily have to plunk down the cost it would take to buy that desk, train an employee, and add them to your payroll. After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option.

Agents can also start a voice or video chat with customers from the chat window. Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. To begin with, putting help desk platforms “side by side” is a thankless job as software differs in functionality, price, and purposes. The compared vendors share a strategy of delivering their services as either separate add-ons or all-in-one tools. If your organization aims to enhance customer engagement through live chat, in-app messaging, and proactive outreach, Intercom might serve as a viable alternative to Zendesk.

App Marketplace

The answer, as with most things in life, is that it depends on your specific needs and ultimate goals. In-app messages are notifications sent to users while they’re engaged with an app on mobile or PC. It allows companies to interact with customers while they’re active in the app, delivering information based on time or behavior. They may be utilized to alert consumers about product updates, provide assistance, and promote specials that are relevant to them. Zendesk’s dashboard ties together your customer interactions from every possible channel.

• Intercom has flexible prices that can change based on what your business needs, and they offer a 14-day free trial.
• Companies looking for a more complete customer service product–without niche bells and whistles, but with all the basic channels you want–should look to Zendesk.
• 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.
• 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.
• While both are customer-centric, it is worth mentioning that when we dig even a little deeper, the differences and similarities become quite apparent, even to a casual observer.

Each of such packages contains a set of tools from basic to advanced features. One study found that 67% of customers prefer calling an agent to help solve their query. Some help desk software provides call center tools as one of customer communication channels. The bot feeds customers and employees the relevant articles upon making a query.

Intercom’s pricing is based on the number of users and the desired features, making it more suitable for small to medium-sized businesses. Zendesk, on the other hand, offers tiered pricing plans based on the number of agents, making it a better choice for larger enterprises. It’s important to consider your budget and the specific needs of your business when evaluating the pricing options. It’s where customers ask the questions that may result in the largest sales in your company’s history. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer varying flavors when it comes to curating the whole customer support experience.

Evaluate their features, compare them based on your business needs, and choose the one that aligns best with your goals and objectives. Zendesk outshines Intercom for customer support workflows with its core feature, the ticketing system. Zendesk’s ticketing system is renowned for its highly organized approach, which empowers businesses to manage customer support requests with unparalleled efficiency.

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. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake.

These features can add significant value for businesses aiming to implement more sophisticated support capabilities as they scale. Zendesk and Intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users. Choosing the right customer support tool for your business is vital to providing exceptional customer experiences. Both Intercom and Zendesk offer powerful features, but their suitability depends on your specific business needs and budget. Consider the features and capabilities, user interface, pricing, integration options, and customer support offered by each platform.

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. Now that we’ve discussed the customer service-focused features of Zendesk and Intercom, let’s turn our attention to how these platforms can support sales and marketing efforts.

Streamline support processes with Intercom’s ticketing system and knowledge base. Hence, Intercom may be a better choice for small businesses that do not need all the advanced features. Intercom and Zendesk, two of the most popular customer service platforms have gained popularity and unique clientele for themselves since their launch. While both are customer-centric, it is worth mentioning that when we dig even a little deeper, the differences and similarities become quite apparent, even to a casual observer. The best way, however, to maximize their potential is through intercom zendesk integrations on Appy Pie Connect.

In today’s world of fast-paced customer service and high customer expectations, it’s essential for business leaders to equip their teams with the best support tools available. Zendesk and Intercom both offer noteworthy tools, but if you’re looking for a full-service solution, there is one clear winner. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? 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.

The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Sendcloud is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that allows users to generate packing slips and labels to help online retailers streamline their shipping process. Businesses should always consider a tool’s TCO before committing to a purchase.

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. Intercom’s user interface is also quite straightforward and easy to understand; it includes a range of features such as live chat, messaging campaigns, and automation workflows. Additionally, the platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The comparison of whether Intercom is better than Zendesk depends on your specific customer support and engagement needs and objectives. If you seek to enhance customer engagement through chat-based support, in-app messaging, and proactive outreach, Intercom may be the superior option. While both Intercom and Zendesk excel in customer support and engagement, the decision between the two depends on your specific requirements.

Leave your email below and a member of our team will personally get in touch to show you how Fullview can help you solve support tickets in half the time. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. As you can imagine, banking from anywhere requires a flexible, robust customer service experience. If a customer starts an interaction by talking to a chatbot and can’t find a solution, our chatbot can open a ticket and intelligently route it to the most qualified agent.

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. With the base plan, you get some sweet facilities like a ticketing system, data analytics, customer chat history, and more. In comparison to that, you enjoy customized agent roles, sandbox, and skills-based routing, besides offering basic functionalities with the expensive enterprise plan. 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.

But their support and quality is not as good, they feel like a new product even though they have been in business a while. You keep having to get around their bugs, which you can, it is just annoying. It’s Intercom VS Zendesk, the battle of two well-known software in the help desk category. If you have been wondering which to choose Intercom or Zendesk, the good news is you aren’t alone. That’s true, businesses vary by industry, size, purposes, the software they need, a budget for that software, and the list can go on.

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. Intercom also offers a 14-day free trial, after which customers can upgrade to a paid plan or use the basic free plan. Unlike Zendesk, the prices for Intercom are based on the number of seats and contacts, with each plan tailored to each customer, meaning that the pricing can be quite flexible. This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features. Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans.

Zendesk is more robust in terms of its ticket management capabilities, it offers more customization options and advanced features like a virtual call center app. On the other hand, Intercom is more focused on conversational customer support, and has more help desk features suited for live chat and messaging. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive toolset that aids in automating customer service workflows and fine-tuning chatbot interactions.

When comparing the omnichannel support functionalities of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms show distinct strengths and weaknesses. This is not a huge difference; however, it does indicate that customers are generally more satisfied with Intercom’s offerings than Zendesk’s. 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. 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.

It empowers businesses with a robust suite of automation tools, enabling them to streamline their support processes seamlessly. Zendesk allows for the creation of predefined rules and workflows that efficiently route tickets to the appropriate agents, ensuring swift and precise issue resolution. Moreover, Zendesk excels in sending automated responses and escalating critical issues with precision. Intercom’s pricing typically includes different plans designed to accommodate businesses of various sizes and needs. While Intercom offers a free trial, it’s important to note that the cost can increase as you scale and add more features or users. Zendesk would be a perfect option for businesses that are searching for a well-integrated support system.