This Zendesk pricing guide is for companies unsure whether it’s the right solution for them. We’ll explain the platform’s features and subscription tiers, highlighting Zendesk costs in the process. We’ll also compare Zendesk to three competitor solutions to position the platform in the current market. Vertice works entirely independently to bring you closer to the software tools you need and optimizing vendor management. 

What Zendesk can do for you

Zendesk is a customer service solution designed to enrich the customer experience. Used by businesses of all sizes, the Zendesk platform harvests data generated by customer interactions to capitalize on leads and boost sales. 

The platform is split into seven key features:

1. Messaging and live chat:

• Provide instant customer support on all your channels: website, mobile apps, social media and business platforms like Slack;
• Develop customer relationships with contextual, timely interactions;
• Empower customers to resolve their own issues whenever possible, triggering agent support only when necessary;
• Leverage data insights to personalize conversations to customer needs;
• Enlist the help of 24/7 AI chatbots that can answer common questions across all channels;
• Collate conversations in a centralized workspace to equip agents with the context they need to personalize their support.

2. AI and automation:

• Zendesk AI is built on billions of real customer service interactions across a range of industries;
• Enrich the support of your agents with AI tools that provide context and guidance on how to approach specific interactions;
• Take advantage of generative AI and send personalized replies to customer queries in seconds;
• Assign repetitive requests to your chatbots and reroute sensitive topics to appropriate teams;
• Free up time for your agents so they can focus on more important tasks.

3. Data privacy and protection:

• Take control of customer data with bring your own key (BYOK) encryption options to hide customer data from third parties;
• Automatically delete the data you don’t need and establish boundaries for the data you do;
• Monitor the location and device from which data is being viewed;
• Establish role-based access controls (RBACs) to help protect all customer data.

4. Help centre:

• Give customers the freedom to help themselves on their own terms;
• Reduce support costs and ticket volume to allow agents to focus on bigger problems;
• Develop a help centre for your own support agents by collecting and sharing their expertise;
• Create multiple help centres that cater to different audiences, regions, languages and brands.

5. Agent workspace:

• Empower agents to deliver support without switching between dashboards or asking customers to repeat information;
• Receive live updates about incoming messages from email, chat, phone and messaging sources;
• Adapt workspaces to your agent’s workflows and requirements with easy drag-and-drop customization;
• Add tools from the Zendesk App Marketplace to allow agents to pin their favourites to sidebars.

6. Voice:

• Sync your channels with Zendesk’s cloud-based voice solution to see all customer information at once;
• Handle all calls, voicemails and texts in the same place;
• Integrate with your call centre solution or plug into 90+ telephony providers to build your own integration;
• Use advanced call transcription, redaction and quality assurance to extend voice capabilities;
• Set maximum queue and waiting times and allow callers to request a callback rather than holding the line;
• Use analytics tools to compare voice performance with other support channels.

7. Workforce engagement:

• Automatically evaluate 100% of all interactions and use insights into team performance to prevent service issues before they occur;
• Design coaching initiatives around common topics of difficulty.

Zendesk pricing structures and tiers

Zendesk pricing comes in two categories — one for customer service teams and another for sales teams — with various subscription tiers available within each. Subscriptions can be billed on a monthly or annual basis, but cost savings are available for those who opt for the latter.

Let’s take a look at these price points. 

Zendesk pricing — Zendesk for service

Zendesk for service plans combines the platform’s ticketing, messaging, help centre, voice and AI capabilities into one solution. There are four tiers:

• Suite Team: $55 per agent per month (pppm);
• Suite Growth: $89pppm. Additional features include multiple ticket forms, service level agreements, customer satisfaction ratings, multilingual support, and a self-service customer portal;
• Suite Professional: $115pppm. Additional features include live customized analytics, skills-based routing, and community forums;
• Suite Enterprise: contact sales. Additional features include AI content cues, customized agent roles and dynamic, contextual workspaces.

Customers can also enquire about the Suite Enterprise Plan — a bespoke solution catering to specific needs.

Zendesk pricing — Zendesk for sales 

For sales teams, Zendesk subscriptions are available in three tiers:

• Sell Team: $19pppm. Features include email and calendar integrations, task and appointment settings, call tracking and recording, prebuilt sales dashboards, and the ability to customize up to two sales pipelines;
• Sell Growth: $55pppm. Additional features include advanced sales reports, sales forecasting, prospecting and enrichment credits, and up to ten sales pipelines;
• Sell Professional: $115pppm. Additional features include lead and deal scoring, task automation, advanced roles and permissions, and up to 20 sales pipelines. 

New customers can request a 14-day free trial of all Zendesk subscription tiers.

Additional Zendesk costs to consider

Zendesk pricing is easy to find online, with transparent cost breakdowns. Zendesk for service customers can also purchase a few additional features:

Advanced AI

Add-on cost: $50pppm

Leverage Zendesk’s AI capabilities to better understand customer issues, route tickets, review insights, and get support suggestions. 

Workforce management

Add-on cost: $25pppm

A scheduling solution with AI-forecasted predictions delivering real-time reports on team performance.

Quality assurance

Add-on cost: $35pppm

Automatically analyze 100% of your customer conversations across agents, channels and languages.

Data privacy and protection

Add-on cost: $50pppm

Support compliance and security policy obligations with extra layers of protection. 

Other vendors offering customer service solutions

Comparing platform capabilities is a vital part of the procurement cycle. Here are three alternatives to Zendesk that may better support your needs: 

Zendesk pricing vs Freshdesk

Zendesk and Freshdesk overlap in customer service software, with helpdesk, ticketing and self-service capabilities all available in the latter. Freshdesk also provides IT and CRM support which are available in separate subscriptions.

Freshdesk pricing for customer service solutions comes in four tiers:

• Free — limited capabilities for up to ten agents;
• Growth ($15pppm) — for growing customer service requirements;
• Pro ($45pppm) — for advanced automation capabilities;
• Enterprise ($76pppm) — for enterprise-level support.

Freshdesk comes with a 14-day free trial.

Zendesk pricing vs Salesforce Service Cloud

Pre-existing Salesforce customers looking to improve their service capabilities should consider expanding their stack to include Service Cloud — an AI-powered workspace that natively integrates with the Einstein 1 Platform.

The platform gives agents a complete view of every customer, automatically routing issues to the best team member for the job across any support channel. The price of a Service Cloud subscription depends on the Salesforce pricing tier companies already pay for, with increased functionality for premium subscriptions. 

Salesforce CRM has a 30-day free trial.

Zendesk pricing vs Help Scout

Help Scout’s customer service platform is designed for small to medium-sized businesses. It’s therefore cheaper than the other solutions mentioned here, but still contains the functionality required to improve customer service functions, including cross-channel support, conversation analytics, ticketing and more. 

Help Scout pricing subscriptions come in three tiers:

• Standard ($22pppm) — for growing teams with maximum agent capacity of 25;
• Plus ($44pppm) — for growing teams with unlimited agent seats;
• Pro ($65pppm) — security and scalability for larger teams.

New Help Scout customers can access a 30-day free trial.

Zendesk pricing — the Vertice verdict

By catering to both customer service and sales teams, Zendesk occupies its own territory in the market. The platform is suitable to businesses of all sizes and from all industries, with seven subscription tiers available depending on your business needs. 

Of the three other platforms discussed in this guide, Help Scout is the most similar to Zendesk, but its solution will best suit smaller businesses — its price points reflect this, coming in a little cheaper than Zendesk. 

Salesforce subscribers can integrate customer service support with their pre-existing plans through the Service Cloud solution, while Freshdesk customers also benefit from IT and CRM functionality. 

Our customer purchasing teams provide tailored support during SaaS contract negotiations, whichever solution you need. We benchmark prices from over 16,000 software vendors to ensure our customers never overspend on their SaaS licenses and software renewal.  

Vertice’s SaaS Purchasing Platform helps monitor and optimize every application in your stack. With these insights and enhanced SaaS visibility, the platform is able to cut annual SaaS spend by an average of 20-30%. 

Get in touch for more information.