Two leading contenders in the customer service platform space, Zendesk and Intercom, have transformed businesses’ customer engagement by offering powerful software solutions that enhance support systems. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements.
In this article, we comprehensively do a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom, examining their key features, benefits, and industry use cases. By exploring their distinct offerings, we aim to assist businesses in making informed decisions when selecting a customer service platform.
Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, understanding the differences and strengths of Zendesk vs Intercom will empower you to take an informed decision.
Let’s begin!
Zendesk is a customer service software that helps businesses manage and improve customer support operations.
Its key features include a ticketing system for support management, a knowledge base for self-service, multichannel support, automation and workflow capabilities, robust reporting and analytics tools, and seamless integration with third-party applications.
What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability. It caters to a wide range of industries, particularly excelling in e-commerce, SaaS, technology, and telecommunications. It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams.
Use cases where Zendesk shines include efficient management of customer inquiries, order issues, and returns in e-commerce, providing prompt and efficient technical support for SaaS companies, and streamlining internal IT support requests for IT service management teams.
Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations.
Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Its key features include live chat and in-app messaging for direct conversations, targeted messages and campaigns for personalized engagement, chatbot capabilities for automation, and product tours to improve user onboarding.
Intercom excels in SaaS, technology startups, e-commerce, and online marketplaces. It is preferred by sales, marketing, and support teams, prioritizing personalized customer communication and real-time engagement.
Use cases where Intercom proves valuable include:
Overall, Intercom’s focus on personalized messaging, chatbots, targeted campaigns, and in-app communication makes it a popular choice for businesses aiming to enhance customer engagement and deliver exceptional support experiences.
What better way to start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? Here’s a feature-by-feature comparison of Zendesk and Intercom.
Here is a Zendesk vs. Intercom based on the customer support offered by these brands.
Zendesk has a help center that is open to all to find out answers to common questions. Apart from this feature, the customer support options at Zendesk are quite limited. First, you can only talk to the support team if you are a registered user.
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.
Users must also pay extra to get a real person to talk to them.
With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers.
Customers of Zendesk can purchase priority assistance at the enterprise tier, which includes a 99.9% uptime service level agreement and a 1-hour service level goal. At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements.
Intercom offers a range of customer support options to its users. Initially, they assist through email and live chat. They have a dedicated help section that provides instructions on how to set up and effectively use Intercom.
Intercom has a community forum where users can engage with each other and gain insights from their experiences.
Users can also access a resource library to stay updated on the latest trends, product announcements, and best practices. Intercom regularly hosts webinars that are recorded and stored for future reference.
Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience.
Zendesk has a variety of options when it comes to pricing. For smaller businesses, Zendesk offers basic plans. The basic plans come like this:
Support Team: $19 per agent/per month. Comes with a ticketing system, email, Twitter, and Facebook. Also has business rules, customer details and interaction history, reporting, and analytics.
Support Professional: $49/per agent/per month. Additional features like business hours, CSAT scores, multi-lingual support, and service level agreements.
Support Enterprise: $99/per agent/per month. Additional features like skill-based routing, custom agent roles, contextual workspaces, and sandbox.
The Zendesk Suite Plans look like this:
Suite Team: $49/per agent/per month. Comes with a ticketing system, help center, standard bots, pre-built analytics dashboard, and online support from the Zendesk team.
Suite Growth: $79/per agent/per month. Additional features include CSAT rating, business hours, and a self-service customer portal.
Suite Professional: $99/per agent/per month. Additional features like integrated community forums, data location options, and more.
Suite Enterprise: Custom pricing.
Intercom offers a 14-day free trial with two seats. Other pricing plans are:
Starter: $74/month. It comes with Fin AI, workflow basics, Intercom messenger, chat and email, office hours, saved replies, and many more.
Pro and Premium: Prices for these plans are custom-made for each customer based on fin usage resolutions, unique people reached, and the number of seats required. You get all advanced and basic features with these plans.
We’ve talked enough about Zendesk and Intercom features, pricing, and customer support. Let’s get to the point and find out whether Zendesk or Intercom fits the bill for you:
Zendesk is for you if you are a small to medium-sized business that is constantly growing.
There are quite a few reasons for it. Here are those:
Intercom is specifically designed to cater to the needs of enterprise-level businesses, offering advanced features and capabilities that are well-suited to their requirements. Here’s why enterprise businesses can benefit from Intercom:
| Intercom | Zendesk | |
| Features | Team macros Live chat and chatbot Fin- their own AI bot Curated reports on performance metrics | Single and multiple shared inboxes AI-powered chatbots for automating customer support Appealing data visualizations, such as charts and graphs |
| Pricing | Paid plans start at $74/user/month. | Starts at $19 per agent/per month. |
| Ease of Use | Easy to set up but does have a learning curve. | Setting up may require skilled professionals but is easy to use. |
| Integrations | Integration with most popular tools | Integrates with popular tools and Zendesk tools. |
| Customer Support | Different customer support options like live chat and email support. | Basic customer support is available but users have to pay extra for priority assistance. |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 on G2 | 4.3 on g2 |
Zendesk feels complicated, and Intercom does not fit your budget. Guess what? We have got the perfect alternative to both Intercom and Zendesk.
It is none other than the modern customer support software of Helpwise.
While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming. That is not the case with Helpwise. Helpwise is easy to use and will not feel overwhelming.
It’s simple; Helpwise can offer everything to Zendesk and Intercom but more simply and effectively. No more confusion or learning curves!
Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans. Its straightforward pricing structure ensures businesses get access to the required features without complex tiers or hidden costs, making it an attractive option for cost-conscious organizations.
Don’t just take our word for it. A Helpwise user on G2 said “One of the best Shared Inbox / Support Platform. Excellent support platform that provides shared email accounts, consolidated inbox from multiple channels and support ticketing. It also includes a live support chat widget as one of the channels. Helpwise can completely replace traditional help desk applications with a more modern and streamlined system.”
Try out Helpwise for FREE and see how we stack up again Zendesk and Intercom.
Intercom focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support.
Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. Choose based on your specific needs.
Yes, it is possible to use Intercom and Zendesk together. This means that Zendesk Intercom integration is available. For example, you can use Intercom for real-time customer communication and complex route issues or support tickets to Zendesk for detailed ticket management and tracking.
Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk.
Starting plan for Intercom is $74/user/month. Starting plan for Zendesk is $19/user/month.
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