When it comes to customer service solutions, Zendesk is often the go-to choice. It’s one of the popular platforms worldwide, known for its modern, advanced features. Many businesses use Zendesk to streamline their customer support.
However, Zendesk comes with its own set of challenges. Users often face issues such as poor support, high costs, and a complicated feature set.
Small and medium-sized businesses struggle with affordable Zendesk plans that offer limited features. Meanwhile, larger enterprises pay a premium for more advanced features but still find them too complex and sometimes lacking.
In this blog, we discuss the Zendesk pricing plans to see how much it really costs.
Overview of top Zendesk features
Zendesk has been in the customer service industry for over 10 years, with their main focus on building technological features that streamline support operations.
Zendesk has help desk features including the ticketing system that converts all customer concerns into tickets and routes them automatically to the appropriate agents based on their abilities and availability.
To enhance real-time communication, Zendesk invested in a messaging feature that ensures they provide personalized and engaging interactions with their customers.
Additionally, Zendesk’s omnichannel support tool enables businesses to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, such as email and chat, from a single platform.
Zendesk also has knowledge base software that contains all the company’s information so that customers can find solutions independently.
Enhanced with automation and AI, Zendesk supports customers more promptly and efficiently.
While these may be considered the top features offered by Zendesk, the following are the other features they offer:
- Integrations
- Agent workspace
- Analytics
- Voice support
- Analytics and dashboards, etc.
Understanding Zendesk pricing plans better
Zendesk offers its users comprehensive features to cater to businesses and their needs. They have categorized their pricing into two broad categories, that is:
- Zendesk for service – The complete service solution
- Zendesk for sales – The modern sales solution
These Zendesk pricing categories are further subdivided into smaller groups, each Zendesk plan with different features and products designed to provide users with value for their money.
When choosing the right plan for your business, there are many factors to consider. Before committing to any Zendesk plan, always keep the following in mind:
- Total number of agents
- Business size
- Features offered in each Zendesk pricing plan
- Budget
Let’s break it down further to understand it better:
Zendesk for service plans
The Zendesk pricing plans are designed for businesses that need a customer service platform to manage their support tickets and communicate with customers.
These plans are suitable for companies looking to streamline support workflows and provide efficient, responsive service.
Zendesk pricing tiers
- Support Team: Starts at $19/month per agent (For small businesses)
- Suite Team: Starts at $55/month per agent
- Suite Professional: Starts at $115/month per agent
- Suite Enterprise: Contact Zendesk
Features found in the Zendesk support pricing plans
The Zendesk support pricing plans are divided into four different categories, each plan with its different features. Here is a summary of the key features under each Zendesk plan:
- Support Team: This is the most basic Zendesk plan, which includes email support, ticketing, Facebook and X integration, contact forms, and analytic dashboards.
- Suite Team: Adds features like automated workflows, multichannel support, AI, messaging with live chat abilities (email, chat, and social media), Google analytics, and everything offered by the support team.
- Suite Professional: This Zendesk pricing plan includes advanced analytics, ticket field customization, SLA agreements, and everything in the Suite team.
- Suite Enterprise: Talk to Zendesk experts to customize solutions that meet your needs.
Add-ons
These are additional advanced features that customers need to pay for separately. Zendesk offers separate pricing for these features, giving customers the option to enhance their existing plans. Let’s take a look at the features available and their respective Zendesk costs;
- Advanced AI: At $50/agent/month
- Zendesk workforce management: At $25/agent/month
- Zendesk quality assurance: At $35/agent/month
- Zendesk workforce engagement bundle: At $50/agent/month
- Advanced data privacy and protection: $50/agent/month
Zendesk for sales plans
These Zendesk pricing plans are for sales teams and consist of sales-related features they need to reach their monthly quotas and targets.
It’s a full package that consists of Zendesk’s support, sales, and customer engagement tools into a unified solution.
Zendesk pricing tiers
- Sell Team: Starts at $19/month per agent – $228/year/agent
- Sell Growth: Starts at $55/month per agent – $660/year/agent
- Sell Professional: Starts at $115/month per agent – $1,380/year/agent
- Sell Enterprise: Starts at $169/month per user
Key features provided in the Zendesk plan for sales:
- Sell Team: Includes customizable sales pipeline, sales dashboards, API cores, email and calendar integrations.
- Sell Growth: Adds sales forecasting, appointment setting, goal tracking, and everything in Sell Team plan.
- Sell Professional: Provides advanced analytics and sales reports, lead and deal scoring, advanced roles and permissions, and everything in the Sell Growth plan.
- Suite Enterprise: Talk to the sales team about the Zendesk enterprise suite pricing and to provide you with customized features that fit your business.
Which Zendesk plan is right for your business?
Choosing the right Zendesk plan depends on your company size, the complexity of your support operations, and your budget.
Here are a few guidelines to help you make the right choice:
For small businesses or startups
If you’re just starting out and need a simple, cost-effective way to manage customer support, the Zendesk Support Team plan (starting at $19/month per agent) could be ideal. This Zendesk pricing plan covers the basics, like email support and a simple knowledge base.
Growing companies
If your business is growing and you need more robust tools like automation, reporting, and multichannel support, the Support Team or Suite Professional Zendesk plans (starting at $19 or $55/month per agent) would be a great fit.
Medium to large businesses
If you need advanced features like custom roles, AI-powered tools, and detailed reporting, the Suite Professional or Suite Enterprise Zendesk plans (starting at $115) are the best options.
Large enterprises
For highly customized solutions, advanced reporting, and complex workflows, the Zendesk Enterprise or Zendesk Suite Enterprise plans (starting at $99 or $150/month per agent) offer everything your organization needs.
Advanced needs
For a custom Enterprise Zendesk plan tailored specifically to your needs, consider contacting Zendesk.
Why Zendesk can be more expensive than you think
Zendesk offers various features that may initially seem appealing to customers, especially with a starting cost of $19 per agent. However, this Zendesk pricing plan can be misleading for several reasons.
- Expensive with poor value for money: The per agent per month Zendesk pricing model is not at all favorable for growing businesses. The lowest Zendesk plan ($19 per agent/month) comes with a ticketing system as the major feature that lacks essential features required by most businesses as they grow. This forces companies to upgrade to more expensive Zendesk plans that include extra features, even if they don’t need all of them as indicated in this G2 review.Restricted customization options: The lower-tier Zendesk pricing plans have limited features with restricted customization options as well, which makes it extremely difficult to tailor Zendesk to meet the business needs and demands.
- Lack of transparency: To access Zendesk’s advanced features (Zendesk support plans), you have to pay for them separately, priced under their Add-ons plan. The extra hidden Zendesk costs makes it more expensive because soon, customers realize that they must pay more to utilize the meaningful features available.
Community insights: What are Zendesk users saying?
Zendesk provides users with some of the most advanced features to handle their support operations. This, in return, comes with certain benefits for customers, making it an integral part of their ecosystem.
For instance, most of their features, from their ticketing system to reporting features, are highly advanced.
This means customers have access to some of the most intuitive and powerful features that enhance seamless collaboration between departments, ease of use, and better ticket handling, among other advantages.
Here are the negative reviews shared by Zendesk users:
Expensive
Users have also complained countless times about the Zendesk costs. Despite providing highly advanced and modernized features, they have included add-ons (features) to their tiered plans that customers have to pay extra for access.
Missing and limited features
For smaller and medium sized companies, Zendesk prices are relatively high with limited features making it a very expensive investment with little value to the end user.
Larger enterprises, on the other hand, have complained of missing features that make it extremely difficult for them to operate, and all this still comes at a very high cost. This is one of the customer reviews shared in Capterra.
Poor support
Another issue with Zendesk is its customer service. Many users have reported long wait times and poor support, which can be frustrating and costly.
One customer shared their experience of unprofessional treatment, highlighting the impact of slow responses and lack of effective help terming it as ‘Terrible product, the company should be ashamed of themselves.’
Complex features
A major downside of Zendesk is the complexity of its features. Many users need to hire experts to train their agents, which adds extra costs.
Small businesses or those on a tight budget can’t afford this, making it difficult for them to fully use Zendesk’s features due to the steep learning curve.
Why BoldDesk is a better alternative to Zendesk
BoldDesk is a Next Gen AI-powered customer service software, best known to provide top-quality functionalities at very affordable pricing plans. It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes, and includes simple, reliable and intuitive functionalities, with a user-friendly interface.
These are the reasons why BoldDesk is one of the top Zendesk alternatives to consider:
- Clear and transparent pricing plans: BoldDesk has categorized their pricing plan into; agent-based for small businesses, team-based for medium businesses, and unlimited agents for large enterprises. This ensures that whether you are a startup or a large enterprise, you get to enjoy our services without feeling robbed.
- Budget-friendly costs: Unlike Zendesk and other solutions, BoldDesk does not have additional fees on features in the form of add-ons. All the BoldDesk pricing tiers are publicly displayed, allowing our customers to choose a plan based on their budget with a guarantee of no hidden costs whatsoever.
- Save 100% on AI Copilot and AI Agent tools: With BoldDesk, the AI Copilot and AI Agent tools are included as free add-ons alongside other help desk tools, unlike in Zendesk where the advanced AI tools are priced separately as add-on features.
- Free migration: Transfer all your data from other help desk solutions at no cost. Yes, you read it right! Compared to other solutions, BoldDesk offers a full migration of all your data (regardless of the plan) from other solution free of charge. This ensures a smooth transition and a smooth switching process to BoldDesk.
- Effortless onboarding: BoldDesk boasts of a quick customer onboarding process and very direct, eliminating the need to spend a lot of time on it. This, in comparison to Zendesk, is a viable option given that they charge additional fees for onboarding, and it also takes longer due to the complexity of their features.
- 30-day money back guarantee: BoldDesk assures its customers of a full refund of their money within 30 days of their purchase if they are not satisfied with the services offered. The refund is issued immediately with no questions asked as part of BoldDesk transparency and accountability when it comes to serving our customers.
- Best-in-class support for all customers: With BoldDesk, customers get to experience BoldDesk’s dedication and commitment to good customer service every step of the way. Irrespective of the communication channel used, customers don’t have to upgrade to or be in a higher-tier plan to use a specific channel or receive comprehensive support. Customers always have omnichannel options such as live chat for real-time support, SMS, emails and more. Every customer is treated equally, with all their concerns given the same undivided attention and time they deserve. There’s also an option to book a live demo or start a free trial in case of doubts.
These are considerations that you cannot ignore when making your decision. Always keep in mind that with Zendesk, there will always be obstacles to your productivity starting from their expensive packages to very complex features that require a lot of time for training.
BoldDesk pricing
If you’re looking for a reliable customer service software with both basic and comprehensive features; BoldDesk is your go-to ticketing system.
It streamlines customer experience by skipping complicated setups, long onboarding, and high costs. Let’s look at BoldDesk’s pricing plans:
Free for startups
As part of the initiative to support startups, BoldDesk has provided them with a free momentum plan that covers up to 10 agents for a whole year.
It is meant to streamline their operations and help them scale and grow into formidable and reputable businesses without having to struggle in the process.
Agent-based plans
- Scale: $12/agent/month
- Momentum: $25/agent/month
- Enterprise: $39/agent/month
Team-based plans
- Scale: $49/month (Includes 10 agents)
- Momentum: $129/month (10 agents)
- Enterprise: $199/month (10 agents)
Note: This can be tailored based on the number of agents in a team.
Unlimited agents
- Essential: $799/month
- Pro: $1999/month
- Business: Talk to us
Comparing BoldDesk and Zendesk Pricing
Generally, everything about BoldDesk makes it a great Zendesk alternative. From the simple setup process to the easy-to-use BoldDesk features and the user-friendly interface, BoldDesk has it all!
In terms of pricing, what really sets BoldDesk apart? Affordable pricing designed for businesses of all sizes—especially smaller businesses—ensuring you get great value for your investment while enjoying scalable growth.
Save 67% with BoldDesk!
An all-in-one simple and very affordable Help desk software with all the features you want.
Enjoy value for money and time, with zero hidden costs. Sounds interesting?
What’s more, the transparency of the pricing plans with no hidden costs, free migration, free trial, startup programs, and more, gives it an upper hand.
Here’s a summary table of how BoldDesk compares to Zendesk pricing plans:
| Save with BoldDesk |   67% |  |
|---|---|---|
Number of agents: 10 | $390/month | $1,150/month |
Number of agents: 1 | $39/month | $115/month |
Number of agents: 3 | $117/month | $345/month |
Number of agents: 5 | $195/month | $575/month |
Number of agents: 10 | $390/month | $1,150/month |
Number of agents: 15 | $585/month | $1,725/month |
Number of agents: 25 | $975/month | $2,875/month |
Final remarks on Zendesk pricing
You may still be asking yourself if Zendesk is worth it. To put it directly, no. Zendesk remains a top product in the market, but due to its complexity, high prices poor support, etc., having a better alternative can save you a lot.
Whether a small startup or a large enterprise, BoldDesk’s flexible pricing and powerful features streamlines support operations with minimal hitches.
By selecting the right BoldDesk pricing plan, you’ll be well on your way to delivering exceptional customer service and building stronger customer relationships.
Always remember that when it comes to an ideal help desk software, BoldDesk is your better option. Book a live demo today and discover how BoldDesk can transform your business instantly.
To enjoy exemplary customer service and learn more, create a BoldDesk account and experience our tried-and-tested solutions.
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