What is Zendesk? An Overview of Top Features & Functionality
See how Zendesk improves customer service and sales metrics, its key features, pricing plans, top competitors, and how to secure the best deal.
Zendesk is a powerful customer service and sales platform that helps teams improve across essential retention-related metrics, including productivity, customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and response times.
However, with its wide range of tools, integrations, and pricing plans, Zendesk’s offerings are hard to navigate and assess.
In this guide, we’ll:
- Break down how Zendesk works
- Highlight the key features across its two key areas
- Give you a detailed pricing breakdown you can understand
You’ll understand the kinds of operations Zendesk is most suited to and find out about some of its top competitors.
What is Zendesk? An overview
Zendesk is a customer service and sales platform that helps you manage customer communication and support processes across multiple channels within a single, consolidated space.
It offers a range of products that enable teams of all sizes to provide personalized support, automate workflows, and improve response times.
The platform is split into two key areas — Zendesk for service and Zendesk for sales — each primarily designed to meet the needs of customer support and sales teams. Below is a closer look at each product’s key functionalities.
Zendesk products and features
Here’s an at-a-glance breakdown of selected Zendesk features and functions.
Zendesk for service
Zendesk for service offers tools to manage customer and employee interactions across channels and streamline support processes. Key features include:
- Omnichannel support: Messaging and live chat, social and business channels, and voice capabilities for seamless communication across platforms
- Self-service and knowledge management: Help center, community forums, and knowledge management tools to empower customers and reduce support requests
- Automation and AI: AI agents, workflows, automations, and intelligence to speed up response times and improve efficiency
- Agent productivity: Agent workspace with customer context, collaboration tools, and change management features to help your team work smarter
- Customization and scalability: Custom apps, integrations, developer tools, and the Marketplace to tailor Zendesk to your business needs
- Data and insights: Reporting, analytics, and data tools to track performance and optimize your customer service operations
- Advanced messaging: Sunshine Conversations for automated customer interactions across channels and low-code customizations
Zendesk for sales
Zendesk Sell, Zendesk’s CRM platform, helps your sales team track leads, automate processes, and manage customer relationships. Key features include:
- Sales automation and activity tracking: Automates repetitive tasks and tracks activities to keep deals moving through the pipeline
- Sales engagement tools: Tools to streamline communication with leads and customers, including email tracking and task sequences
- Account and sales management: Manages customer accounts, tracks sales progress and organizes key information in one place
- Collaboration and communication: Shared access to customer data and integrated communication tools, including mobile support for sales reps on the go
- Customization and integrations: APIs, apps, and integrations to connect Zendesk with your existing tools and workflows
- Data and reporting: Insights into sales performance through advanced reporting and data tools
Zendesk pricing and plans
Here’s an overview of Zendesk’s pricing structure across its two key areas. For more information, including discount levers and a pricing comparison table, see our Zendesk Buyer Guide.
Zendesk for service
You can see how the basic plans are organized below, with add-on plans such as Advanced AI and Zendesk Workforce Management available separately.
Note: Vendr data shows that the Support Professional tier, part of Zendesk’s standalone support offerings, charges $49 per agent per month, equating to $5,880 per year for a team of 10 agents. The Support Enterprise tier charges $99 per agent per month, resulting in an annual cost of $11,880 for a team of 10 agents.
- Support Team: $19 per agent/month billed annually
A ticketing system for managing inquiries across channels. Customer details in a unified workspace, with automation tools like predefined responses and triggers. Prebuilt analytics, app integrations, and on-demand training with online support.
- Suite Growth: $89 per agent/month billed annually
Additional features for scaling companies, including multiple ticket forms, customer satisfaction tools, multiple languages, a self-service portal for customers, and business hours.
- Suite Team: $55 per agent/month billed annually
Everything in Support Team, plus AI agents, a knowledge base, Google Analytics, live chat, and proactive messaging. Supports phone and text messaging, social platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, with call routing and recording features.
- Suite Professional: $115 per agent/month billed annually
Live and custom analytics, skills-based routing, side conversations, and customer satisfaction surveys. Service level agreements, light agents, multiple ticket forms, a self-service portal, business hours, IVR phone trees, HIPAA compliance, and multilingual support.
- Suite Enterprise: $169 per agent/month billed annually
A sandbox environment for safe testing, custom agent roles, AI-powered content cues, and content blocks. Audit logs, approval workflows, dynamic workspaces, up to 300 help centers, ticket queues, business rules analysis, and visual data alerts.
What you actually pay depends on your agent count, plan tier, and add-ons. Ruth, Vendr's free AI pricing agent, can show you what companies your size are paying for Zendesk.
Zendesk Sell
Zendesk Sell integrates natively with Zendesk’s support solutions, providing seamless CRM and customer service integration. However, these require additional subscriptions. Also, note that all your users have to be on the same pricing tier.
- Sell Team: $19 per agent/month billed annually
Up to two customizable sales pipelines, email and calendar integrations, task and appointment setting, and call tracking with recording and text messaging. Pre-built sales dashboards and core APIs for integration.
- Sell Growth: $55 per agent/month billed annually
Up to 10 customizable sales pipelines and pre-built sales dashboards. Core and premium APIs, product and price book, advanced sales reports, sales forecasting and goals tracking, and prospecting and enrichment credits (1000). Sequenced emails of up to 50 recipients/user.
- Sell Professional: $115 per agent/month billed annually
Up to 20 customizable sales pipelines. Sequenced emails of up to 300 recipients/user. Prospecting and enrichment credits (3500). Lead and deal scoring, power dialer and call scripts, task automation based on custom triggers, and multi-level data permissions with organizational charting.
- Sell Enterprise: $169 per agent/month billed annually
Unlimited customizable sales pipelines and sequenced emails. Prospecting and enrichment credits (10000). Increased data storage capacity and direct dial phone number.
Combining Zendesk Sell with a service plan adds complexity to pricing. Get a free estimate based on your setup.
Is Zendesk right for your business? Pros, cons, and fit
As you can see, Zendesk offers a huge range of benefits, including:
- Seamless integrations
- Diverse functionality
- A well-developed analytics platform
- Ability to scale as your business grows
However, it can be relatively expensive and its onboarding process may be complex for some teams.
Therefore, Zendesk is a great fit for medium-to-large organizations that plan to scale and are seeking a comprehensive customer service solution.
On the other hand, small businesses with limited budgets or those requiring only basic functionality might want to explore other options.
5 top competing tools (and how they measure up)
Here are five alternatives to Zendesk, all with pricing data available through Vendr:
- Freshdesk
Offers a similar range of customer support tools as Zendesk, with strong ticketing, automation, and multichannel support. It can be a more cost-effective option for small to mid-sized businesses, but lacks Zendesk’s advanced customization.
- Intercom
Focuses heavily on live chat and customer engagement, making it ideal for businesses that prioritize real-time communication. It’s strong on messaging and proactive support, but doesn’t offer as robust a ticketing system as Zendesk.
- Help Scout
Help Scout is great for small teams looking for a lightweight, affordable solution. However, it lacks the scalability of Zendesk and doesn’t have advanced features for larger businesses.
- Gladly
Puts a heavy emphasis on personalized customer service by focusing on seamless conversation history across channels. It’s excellent for businesses that value customer experience, but it’s not as feature-rich in terms of automation as Zendesk.
- Front
Offers a shared inbox experience designed to streamline team collaboration. It can manage high volumes of email and simple customer interactions, but isn’t as extensive a full-suite support solution as Zendesk.
For more information on each of these Zendesk competitors, including detailed pricing information and key feature breakdowns, see our Zendesk competitors article.
Get the best price on Zendesk and save time on negotiations with Vendr
Zendesk pricing depends on your agent count, plan tier, add-ons, and contract length — and list pricing rarely reflects what companies actually pay. With an average contract value of $161K, there's significant room to negotiate.
Ruth, Vendr's free AI pricing agent, uses data from hundreds of real Zendesk deals to show you what similar companies are paying and walks you through the negotiation — what to ask for, where there's room to save, and how to structure your contract.
Get your free Zendesk price estimate
For an in-depth writeup on discount levers and negotiation tactics, see our Zendesk Guide.
