Intercom vs Zendesk: Comparing features, integrations, and pricing

Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. Using our API and apps framework you can build pretty much anything. And once you do, you can place it in The Zendesk Marketplace for all Zendesk customers to find. When choosing a solution to replace Intercom, make sure it offers the features you need and is priced to meet your budget.

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. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. Its competitor can be more flexible and predictable in this area.

• Intercom generally receives positive feedback for its customer support, with users appreciating the comprehensive features and team-oriented tools.
• Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016.
• Zendesk AI was modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset.
• 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.

After signing up and creating your account, you can start filling in your information, such as your company name and branding and your agents’ profiles and information. Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories. Their client base includes Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin.

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. With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk. It has a very intuitive design that goes far beyond its platform and into its articles, product guides, and even its illustrations.

Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. Tidio is a customer support application that enables teams to support customers after hours in multiple languages across different sites and via multiple channels, including the chat widget. Zendesk also offers proactive chat functionality to its user base. It enables them to engage with visitors who are genuinely interested in their services. You get to engage with them further and get to know more about their expectations. This becomes the perfect opportunity to personalize the experience, offer assistance to prospects as per their needs, and convert them into customers.

With a multi-channel ticketing system, Zendesk Support helps you and your team to know exactly who you’re talking to and keep track of tickets throughout all channels without losing context. The setup is designed to seamlessly connect your customer support team with customers across all platforms. These products range from customer communication tools to a fully-fledged CRM.

Premiere Zendesk plans have 24/7 proactive support with faster response times. Other customer service add-ons with Zendesk include custom training and professional services. Zoho Desk is a customer support software that provides many features to streamline ticket management, enhance agent productivity, and improve customer communication. Its analytics features make it an excellent choice for tracking customer interactions and requests.

Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones. After this, you’ll have to set up your workflows, personalizing your tickets and storing them by topic. You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user. Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs. Talking about the Intercom, it has flexible pricing plans that its experts can help adjust as per your requirements to match contacts and number of seats.

Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize. Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. Zendesk, like Intercom, offers multilingual language functionality.

What are the advantages of Zendesk?

So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. The latter offers a chat widget that is simple, outdated, and limited in customization options, while the former puts all of its resources into its messenger. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options. Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price.

It provides bots and chats automation features to make communication with clients more efficient. Also, Intercom’s messenger can be integrated with up to 100 apps. 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.

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. Intercom offers a simplistic dashboard zendesk or intercom with a detailed view of all customer details in one place. Operators will find its dashboard quite beneficial as it will take them seconds to find necessary features during an ongoing chat with the customers.

The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. Intercom offers just over 450 integrations, which can make it less cost-effective and more complex to customize the software and adapt to new use cases as you scale. The platform also lacks transparency in displaying reviews, install counts, and purpose-built customer service integrations. Help Scout offers three different pricing plans, with the total cost based on the number of users. If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible.

The good news is that you enjoy a generous free 14-day trial by opting to get an idea if the particular service is suitable for your business or not. And you would be surprised to know that the Intercom does not have a VOIP call service. So, if you have customers who prefer to call service with an Intercom, it wouldn’t be possible. You would rather have to integrate it with third-party apps like Appy Pie Connect. Although Zendesk does not have an in-app messaging service, it does have one unique feature, and that is its built-in virtual call assistant, Zendesk Talk.

Best Hiver Alternative Platforms for Customer Support Teams in 2023

Everything, from the tools to the website, reflects their meticulous attention to detail. It can be classified as a chatbox for average users, just like the ones found on a variety of websites. The user experience is similar to that of a Facebook Messenger chat.

Just like Userpilot, it offers you tools for onboarding, in-app communication, and customer support. You can also use it for employee onboarding and it works on mobile apps as well as web ones. Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity. A messenger platform that helps engage customers on your website or app.

It was later when they started adding all kinds of other tools like when they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset. Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform. Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze. Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels.

As more organizations adopt AI, it will be critical to choose a data model that aligns with how your business operates. Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale. The company offers a flexible pricing structure that allows you to mix and match the services you use and pay for them based on your needs. Help Scout offers a 15-day free trial that allows you to test various features and tools and determine whether it’s the right fit for your needs. Just like Intercom, Zendesk’s customer service is quite disappointing.

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. 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. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom.

You can set up email sequences that specify how and when leads and contacts are engaged. With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle. Zendesk’s per-agent pricing structure makes it a budget-friendly https://chat.openai.com/ option for smaller teams, allowing costs to scale with team growth. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. It is none other than the modern customer support software of Helpwise.

With both tools, you can also use support bots to automatically suggest specific articles, track customers’ ratings, and localize help center content to serve your customers in their native language. You can also add apps to your Intercom Messenger home to help users and visitors get what they need, without having to start a conversation. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms. Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk. You can contact the sales team if you’re just looking around, but you will not receive decent customer support unless you buy their service.

Zendesk’s customer support is also very fast, though their live chat is only available for registered users. All interactions with customers be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them fast and efficiently. There’s a plethora of features to help bigger teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. Messagely’s chatbots are powerful tools for qualifying and converting leads while your team is otherwise occupied or away.

Reporting and Analytics

With Intercom you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on the most relevant time or behavior triggers. You can construct an omnichannel suite by combining productivity, e-commerce, CRM, analytics, social media, and other applications. Having more connectors accessible gives organizations the flexibility to select software that meets their specific needs. Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues.

There are even instances where customers don’t receive the first response in more than seven days. Zendesk has also introduced its chatbot to help its clients send automated answers to some frequently asked questions to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace. What’s more, it helps its clients build an integrated Chat GPT community forum and help center to improve the support experience in real-time. Just as Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers who ask for help. It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it has so many advanced features.

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. On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to foresee how much Intercom will cost at the end of the day. They charge for agent seats and connections, don’t disclose their prices, and package add-ons at a premium. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use.

They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? With industry-leading AI that infuses intelligence into every interaction, robust integrations, and exceptional data security and compliance, it’s no wonder why Zendesk is a trusted leader in CX. Intercom also uses AI and features a chatbot called Fin, but negative reviews note basic reporting and a lack of customization. Fin is priced at $0.99 per resolution, so companies handling large volumes of queries might find it costly.

ClickFunnels vs Shopify: Choose the Right E-Commerce Platform

Their AI-powered chatbot can enable your business to boost engagement and improve marketing efforts in real-time. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom. Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting.

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal. Zendesk AI was modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset. With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that’s intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Compare Zendesk vs. Intercom and future-proof your business with reliable, easy-to-use software. Crisp is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to communicate with their customers through various channels, including live chat, email, text messages, and social media.

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. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. You can see their attention to detail — from tools to the website.

Customization is more nuanced than Zendesk’s, but it’s still really straightforward to implement. You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.

Basically, provides you with a knowledge base to create, organize, and store the articles that answer your customers’ questions. Has a bot that suggests relevant articles to customers who have questions. Whether your customers prefer to communicate via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, Zendesk unifies all of your customer interactions into one platform. The software helps you to keep track of all support requests, quickly respond to questions, and track the effectiveness of your customer service reps. If you want both customer support and CRM, you can choose between paying $79 or $125 per month per user, depending on how many advanced features you require.

Features

Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. 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).

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. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now.

There are two options there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly. The difference between the two is that the Professional subscription lacks some things like chat widget unbranding, custom agent roles, multiple help centers, etc. Their help desk is a single inbox to handle customer requests, where your customer support agents can leave private notes for each other and automatically assign requests to the right people. You can publish your knowledge base articles and divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. Intercom is 4 years younger than Zendesk and has fancied itself as a messaging platform right from the beginning. Intercom lets businesses send their customers targeted in-app messages.

What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day.

It also offers a confusing pricing structure and fewer integrations, making it less scalable and cost-effective. Customer expectations are already high, but with the rise of AI, customers are expecting even more. Customers want speed, anticipation, and a hyper-personalized experience conveniently on their channel of choice. Intelligence has become key to delivering the kinds of experiences customers expect at a lower operational cost.

Today, thanks to the virtual technology revolution, you can find numerous help desk software, but our vote goes for Zendesk and Intercom. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform. Learn more about the differences between leading chat support solutions Intercom and Zendesk so that you can choose the right tool for your needs.

On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer support includes a knowledge base that’s very intuitive and easy to navigate. It divides all articles into a few main topics so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. It also includes a list of common questions you can browse through at the bottom of the knowledge base home page so you can find answers to common issues. Because of its easy navigation and interface, Intercom has always received positive words from its users.

This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. There is automatic email archiving and incoming email authentication. Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions.

If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom. It’s clear that both of these tools are designed for different use cases. Intercom is geared toward sales, whereas Zendesk includes everything a customer service rep desires. Its sales CRM software starts at $19 per month per user, but you’ll have to pay $49 to get Zapier integrations and $99 for Hubspot integrations.

Intercom has a full suite of email marketing tools, although they are part of a pricier package. With Intercom, you get email features like targeted and personalized outbound emailing, dynamic content fields, and an email-to-inbox forwarding feature. Zendesk is quite famous for designing its platform to be intuitive and its tools to be quite simple to learn. This is aided by the fact that the look and feel of Zendesk’s user interface are neat and minimal, with few cluttering features. 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.

You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. 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. You’ll start by signing up in Zendesk and choosing your product. Then, you can begin filling in details such as your account’s name and icon and your agents’ profiles and security features.