Salesforce vs Zendesk CRM Comparison

We've tested the best helpdesk and customer service solutions currently available, and we found that Zendesk is a better option than Salesforce — but not by much.

While Salesforce offers great customization and is the more recognizable of the two brands, Zendesk has the cheaper helpdesk solution, plus has a wider range of communication channels available on more pricing plans than Salesforce, making it our overall winner.

Our impartial research revealed that Zendesk is also the best option for smaller businesses that need a customer service solution that will grow with them.

Salesforce vs Zendesk: Key Differences

Zendesk has more built-in communication channels than any other CRM competitor we tested, making it ideal for businesses looking to improve customer retention and scale growth. Salesforce, on the other hand, has excellent team management features and a big catalog of useful integrations, making it a good choice for larger businesses that have already experienced rapid growth and are now enterprise-sized entities with big customer service teams.

In this guide:

• Salesforce vs Zendesk: Key Differences
• Salesforce vs Zendesk Pricing
• Multi-Channel Support
• Managing Teams
• Features for Growing Businesses
• Integrations
• CRM Alternatives
• Verdict: Which One is Better?
• Frequently Asked Questions

Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the most recognizable names in the customer service software space and has a myriad of products you've probably heard of before. Today we're looking at the Salesforce Service Cloud — Salesforce's Helpdesk solution — but you can use our comparison tool to work out which software is right for your needs.

Although Salesforce Service Cloud is one of the more expensive options out there, the price tag isn't unwarranted. By some way, it's the best vendor out there for businesses that have large teams and require software to match. By that, we mean Salesforce is highly customizable and has all the tools you'll need to resolve all sorts of issues your customers may have.

Zendesk

Zendesk's helpdesk offering is an excellent option for small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to expand and want software that can grow them.

Zendesk's core strengths are its wide range of communication channels that provide a platform for conversations with customers online and offline. Businesses, as well as customers, have their preferred channels of communication, and thanks to Zendesk's diversity on this front, you won't be disappointed.

Why Are We Comparing Zendesk with Salesforce Service Cloud?

Zendesk – the one we're discussing in this article – is a customer service software solution and one of the best that we've tested at Tech.co. This is different from Zendesk Sell, a CRM software made by the same company for sales teams looking to capture more leads.

Zendesk Sell, despite the name, is noticeably lacking in sales features that other competitors operating in the same market space. However, it is one of the cheapest options available and it's pretty easy to use, so it's still applicable to small businesses.

Salesforce has a number of products — including Salesforce Essentials (CRM for small businesses) and Salesforce Sales Cloud (a sales-focused CRM) — but today we're looking at Salesforce Services Cloud, a fully-featured helpdesk solution geared toward large businesses.

Confusingly, Salesforce Essentials is advertised as a standalone small business CRM product but is also the name of the first pricing plan on both Salesforce Service Cloud and Salesforce Sales Cloud. In reality, it's a stripped-down version of both. If you want more service-based features you'll need to upgrade to Service Cloud's second plan (the Professional Plan) and if you want more sales features the next plan (also called the Professional Plan).

About Our Research

There are hundreds of sites out there comparing software and services, and sometimes it can be hard to work out who actually knows what they're talking about – and who to trust. Not all websites research the products they talk about (or have even used them, for that matter).

Here at Tech.co, we do our own research. We're lucky enough to have an insights team that collects all the data we need to review the products we talk about. They collaborate with our expert writers to bring you accurate, up-to-date rundowns of exactly what you'll get out of a product, service, or software program – and for what price.

Salesforce vs Zendesk: Pricing Plans

Let's cut to the chase: Zendesk is the cheaper product in this head-to-head and is actually one of the better providers to the CRM market when it comes to value for money. Here's a closer look at their pricing:

Salesforce Pricing

Salesforce has four plans in total, Essential ($25 per user, per month), Professional ($80 per user, per month), Enterprise ($165 per user, per month), and Unlimited ($330 per user, per month). All Salesforce pricing plans offer a fully featured contact base with contact profiles, communications histories, and duplicate detection functions.

Salesforce provides a wider variety of data management tools than other helpdesk solutions do, and it has a broad range of customer support options (for you as a Salesforce customer) if you ever get stuck. There's also a massive library of integrations to choose from (more on this later) and a host of useful team management features.

Aside from custom permissions not being available on the Essential plans, there's a great range of security features including multi-factor authentication, IP restriction, and role-based data restrictions – and with data breaches now so common, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Zendesk Pricing

All of Zendesk's pricing plans are for an unlimited amount of users, and the service-focused (i.e. not Zendesk Sell) plans are split into two distinct sub-categories – Support plans and Suite plans. Zendesk has three Support plans on offer, including the Support Team plan for ($19 pu/pm) Support Professional for ($49 pu/pm), and the Support Enterprise plan ($99 pu/pm). These are excellent customer service solution options – and all offer a 30-day free trial.

However, the Support options require an integration to offer customer service over the phone, and there are no instant messaging app options. There's also no agent monitoring or email templates, and you get fewer ticketing channels and offline customer service options than the Suite plans.

The Suite plans include Suite Team ($49 pu/pm) the Suite Growth plan for ($79 pu/pm), the Suite Professional plan at ($99 pu/pm), Suite Enterprise ($150 pu/pm), and Suite Enterprise Plus ($215 pu/pm). These packages offer every single communication channel you could ever ask for, a complete set of team management features, multi-team features, and 227 app integrations — although none of these are helpdesk-specific. That shouldn't matter too much though because the feature selection Zendesk provides is both vast and useful.

Best for Multi-Channel Support: Zendesk

Zendesk excels when it comes to the number of channels you can interact with customers on — a crucial part of good customer service software. You'll be able to reply to comments on social media sites, speak to people on the phone & via email, and instantly chat with them via a live chatbot on the website if you select Zendesk's Suite Team package or higher.

Email and website live chat — as well as support for Facebook and Twitter — are available on all of Zendesk's plans. What's more, all four of its Suite plans include the full range of contact avenues plus support for WhatsApp, WeChat, and Twitter DMs.

Email and website live chat — as well as support for Facebook and Twitter — are available on all of Zendesk's plans.

Salesforce has everything Zendesk has but enforces limits or it costs extra. For example, Website Live chat is limited to one license on the Salesforce Essentials plan, isn't available on the Professional plan, and costs extra if you want it on the Enterprise plan.

There's no instant messaging app available on the Professional plan and integration is required if you want to offer phone support on any Salesforce plan. You're also limited to a maximum of two social accounts, regardless of what Salesforce plan you opt for.

Best for Managing Teams: Salesforce

Salesforce is the better option if you'd like team management features, and according to our research, only MS Dynamics offers a better selection. Aside from Salesforce Sales Cloud's first pricing plan, the Essentials Plan, Salesforce will allow you to set up a user hierarchy that can demarcate management accounts from other team member accounts. You'll also be able to monitor the live conversations of staff members as they chat with customers.

With Salesforce, you can set individual targets for your team members and track employee progress.

There's also an internal knowledge base — a place where you can create articles on how to solve specific customer service dilemmas or cases — that all staff can use as a resource during their working days. . These kinds of team management features are perfect for large businesses that have big customer service teams.

Zendesk also doesn't have a calendar whereas Salesforce does (although there's an integration available on Zendesk for this) and there are a couple of features missing from all of Zendesk's plans (such as a task dashboard) and others absent from Zendesk's cheapest plans (such as team communication tools). Both of these are available on Salesforce essentials.

Zendesk puts limits on how many Team SLAs you can set up and track on three of its plans, whilst Salesforce doesn't on any, and you can't monitor agents on Zendesk's first three plans either.

Best for Growing Businesses: Zendesk

Zendesk has more built-in communication channels than any other competitor we tested — including Freshdesk, MS Dynamics, and Salesforce Service Cloud too. Zendesk offers communication with customers via messaging apps, social media, live chat, email, and phone, whilst Salesforce doesn't provide messaging apps.

This puts Zendesk ahead in terms of growing your business — the quality, diversity and the sheer number of channels you can use to communicate means you'll have room to expand in a variety of different directions and offer even more avenues for support. Let's say you suddenly get some traction on social media – you can easily shift your resources into this space with Zendesk.

Salesforce, on the other hand, is a much more customizable platform with a better selection of tools that will help you manage a team, so it's already geared to support large businesses.

Best for Integrations: Salesforce

Salesforce rules the roost when it comes to integrations — the list is almost endless, both in terms of third-party CRM integrations and third-party helpdesk integrations. There's an enormous catalog of apps available on Salesforce's website, covering absolutely everything you could need to create a positive experience for customers.

There's a whole host of apps that are completely free for customers of Salesforce, so you might even be able to find what you're looking for without spending anything extra!

You can search for Salesforce apps that have editions for the plan you're currently on too, and there are even some discounted apps available for non-profits. Plus, there's a whole host of apps that are completely free for customers for Salesforce too, so you might even be able to find what you're looking for without spending anything extra!

Zendesk, on the other hand, doesn't have any helpdesk integrations — so it's immediately on the back foot in that regard. It could be well argued that Zendesk doesn't need all that many helpdesk integrations because it's a fantastic all-in-one solution, and besides, it still has 227 CRM app integrations available.

How Do Salesforce and Zendesk Pricing Compare With Other CRM providers?

Although Zendesk is marginally better than Salesforce — and we consider both providers top-tier helpdesk solutions — these aren't the only two helpdesk solutions available on the market. In fact, there's plenty more to choose from — so here's a closer look at two of the best.

Zoho (Desk)

Zoho is now a significant player in a variety of different software verticals — the provider makes everything from invoicing to project management software. Out of all the CRM programs we tested, Zoho CRM came out on top thanks to a myriad of customization options, excellent customer support, and the fact it's so easy to use.

Zoho Desk, the company's helpdesk solution comes with onboarding assistance and training options for staff, an easy-to-navigate customer contact database, excellent offline customer service provision, and integration with 25 apps including Zoho CRM. There's a decent range of team management features — but not as many as Salesforce or Zendesk.

As a helpdesk solution, one place where Zoho Desk can't compete with either Salesforce or Zendesk is the communication channels it offers. Whilst both Zendesk and Salesforce have multiple avenues through which you can contact customers, Zoho Desk users are pretty much limited to email, Twitter, and Facebook.

HubSpot (Service Hub)

HubSpot's Service Hub is another close competitor to Zendesk and Salesforce. Like Zoho Desk, it has an excellent customer contact database and functions that will allow you to compile customer feedback. It also has onboarding assistance available and staff training too — although the latter costs an additional fee.

HubSpot — like Zoho Desk — is made by a company that manufactures more than one type of business software. That means that opting for HubSpot over a provider like Freshdesk will mean you have a wealth of first-party integrates to choose from, and over 71 third-party apps too (with 15 helpdesk-specific integrations too).

HubSpot offers email, phone, and website live chat, so is a serious one to consider if these are your main avenues for contacting customers. HubSpot is a no-go if you'd like to branch out to social media, however, and isn't made for brands that pool most of their customer interactions on apps like Facebook and Twitter.

Frequently Asked Questions