Intercom Vs Zendesk: Pricing, Features, Integrations in 2023

Some startups and small businesses may prefer one app, while large companies and enterprise operations will have their own requirements. 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.

The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. Zendesk is a customer service software offering a comprehensive solution for managing customer interactions. It integrates customer support, sales, and marketing communications, aiming to improve client relationships. zendesk vs. intercom Known for its scalability, Zendesk is suitable for various business sizes, from startups to large corporations. Whatever people are using to communicate with each other, whether it be online or over the phone, they expect to also be able to talk to the businesses they use with those same tools and platforms.

You can create these knowledge base articles in your target audience’s native language as their software is multilingual. 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.

Resolutions in minutes—not months

Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables. We’re big fans of Zendesk’s dashboard with built-in collaboration tools, but we wish the Agent Workspace came with the Team or Growth plans–not just Professional. Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. The right side of the screen displays all customer contact information and company interaction history, and the agent can contact the customer via any channel with just a few clicks. The admin and manager dashboard provides a zoomed-out view of all activity taking place in each inbox, for whole departments and individual agents. Agents can respond in any channel by typing in the text box and have access to deep customer experience history and background in the right-hand column.

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. As a conversational relationship platform, Zendesk gives you the option of live chatting with customers via your website, mobile, and messaging. Though, if you compare Zendesk chat vs Intercom, the plugin is a bit hard to use as reviewed by customers.

Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

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. AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible. All these features are necessary for operational efficiency and help agents deliver fast, personalized customer experiences. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform.

Our breakthrough AI chatbot, Fin, can resolve up to 50% of support questions, instantly. Fin sets the new standard for AI in customer service, dramatically reducing support volume, unlocking 24/7 support, and delivering CSAT-boosting service. You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Intercom calculates the price based on the number of seats (users) you request.

Zendesk wins the ticketing system category due to its easy-to-use interface and side conversations tool. Insights provides advanced reporting and metrics but is available only for the Professional and Enterprise plans. The Intercom Platform shows you who your customers are and what they do in your web or mobile app, for free.

Understand essential metrics to track, top tools to check out, and common… 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. 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.

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. It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement. Zendesk’s user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for.

Users can use the information you are providing or turn to a community forum for answers. With Intercom pricing is based on the total number of people you track and communicate with, not the number of agent seats your support team has. Be careful, pricing will automatically adjust as your business grows and you track more people.

What are the advantages of Zendesk?

I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. From the inbox, live agents and chatbots can refer to and link knowledge base articles, to elaborate on replies and help customers locate answers. 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.

A lot can be gleaned from a customer support tool’s ticketing features. These features help support reps manage and organize support requests and ongoing communications so they are vital tools that will be used every day. Zendesk and Intercom are robust tools with a wide range of customer service and CRM features. 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. Research by Zoho reports that customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help companies triple lead conversion rates.

Automation

Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. 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.

• Zendesk has more pricing options, which means you’re free to choose your tier from the get-go.
• Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features.
• While Intercom also provides a user-friendly interface, some users may find it a tad overwhelming, especially when juggling multiple support requests.
• Intercom’s messaging system enables real-time interactions through various channels, including chat, email, and in-app messages.
• They also have an integrated capability where you see everything related to the one customer in one spot – all their interactions with you, and can move the customer through your custom stages.
• Is it as simple as knowing whether you want software strictly for customer support (like Zendesk) or for some blend of customer relationship management and sales support (like Intercom)?

When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. 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. 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. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind.

In addition, Zendesk and Intercom feature advanced sales reporting and analytics that make it easy for sales teams to understand their prospects and customers more deeply. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not. 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. A helpdesk solution’s user experience and interface are crucial in ensuring efficient and intuitive customer support. 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.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Key features and functionalities

If you’d want to test Zendesk and Intercom before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials. Intercom has a standard trial period for a SaaS product which is 14 days, while Zendesk offers a 30-day trial. If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. It’s great, it’s convenient, it’s not nearly as advanced as the one by Zendesk. 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.

If no payment method is added at the end of the trial period, the account is deleted 90 days after the trial expiration date. 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. Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons.

Check out our list of unified communications providers for more information. Intercom has a unique pricing structure, offering three separate solutions, each intended for a distinct use case. We wish some of their great features were offered in multiple plans, but none features overlap among plans. The Zendesk Admin Center panels allow administrators to control settings, accessibility, automations, and workflows for everything from chatbots to integrations and custom APIs. In an omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company. Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer service platforms, each with its own set of distinct advantages and drawbacks.

Sendcloud adopted these solutions to replace siloed systems like Intercom and a local voice support provider in favor of unified, omnichannel support. Businesses should always consider a tool’s TCO before committing to a purchase. Many software vendors aren’t upfront about the cost of using their products, maintenance costs, or integration fees. Altogether, this can significantly impact affordability in the long term.

After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option. Whether Intercom is cheaper than Zendesk depends on your specific usage, feature requirements, and the number of users in your organization. When it comes to customer communication, Intercom has a perfect layout and customer information storage system.

Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize with your custom themes. If you create a new chat with the team, land on a page with no widget, and go back to the browser for some reason, your chat will go puff. What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views.

In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. 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.

Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure. 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. Welcome to another blog post that helps you gauge which live chat solution is compatible with your customer support needs.

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. However, the customer service (and the ways how a company delivers it) creates a centerpiece of a brand.

Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Starter – costs $89 monthly, including 2 seats and 1,000 people reached/mo. Each additional 1,000 contacts on a Starter plan will cost you $25/mo. Pro plan is rather a team plan that costs $395/mo and includes 5 seats.

They also offer features that enhance collaboration amongst employees if you have a bigger team. In navigating this conundrum, several digital tools can come in handy, and two of the most popular options are Intercom and Zendesk. As both platforms have their pros and cons, it can be difficult to decide which one is right for your business.

Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. 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. However, it’s essential to consider the strengths of Zendesk, which offers a comprehensive and versatile customer support platform. While Intercom excels in certain aspects of customer communication, Zendesk offers its own set of strengths that cater to different aspects of customer support and engagement.

It introduces shared inboxes tailored for different teams, such as sales, marketing, and customer success. These shared inboxes facilitate seamless customer interactions across multiple channels, ensuring that teams can collaborate efficiently and maintain consistent, top-notch support. Zendesk and Intercom are prominent players in the field of customer support and engagement platforms, each offering unique capabilities and advantages to address varying user requirements.

You can integrate different apps (like Google Meet or Stripe among others) with your messenger and make it a high end point for your customers. 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.

They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. 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. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media.

As stories of AI chatbots replacing entire customer support teams… This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time. This is one of the best ways to qualify high-quality leads for your business and improve your chances of closing a sale faster.

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. What makes it different from other help desk tools is the Answer Bot. This is an AI assistant that will help anyone navigate Guide by providing results as you type your query.

• Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, and respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles.
• There are several notable alternatives to Intercom in the customer support and engagement space, including Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, HubSpot, and Zoho Desk.
• With help centers in place, it’s easier for your customers to reliably find answers, tips, and other important information in a self-service manner.
• So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk.

Zendesk also has a clear and customizable interface, but it has more features, so it might take a bit longer to learn. Its easy navigability allows you to switch between different sections smoothly. 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.