Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better? 2023

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• Posted on June 23, 2025July 27, 2025

Zendesk vs Intercom Comparison 2024: Which One Is Better?

Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Zendesk and HubSpot are two of the best marketing CRMs, with Zendesk being the best for boosting conversions and HubSpot being the best for cross-channel lead nurturing marketing. However, HubSpot beats Zendesk for its comprehensiveness and free version offering.

Set automatic triggers so that certain events send push notifications to targeted customers, or use them as part of communication campaigns and series, and run A/B testing to compare two notifications. Design and send out mobile push messages–phone pop-ups containing text and images that prompt customers to take action and redirect to a specific app page when clicked. Agents can use the desktop chatbox to respond to customers in any outbound channel. Before you start, you’ll need to retrieve your Zendesk credentials and create a Zendesk API key.

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🎟️ Welcome to the The Ticket podcast, featuring conversations with the customer service leaders and CX thinkers who are shaping the future of support. You can follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice. Both Zendesk Support and HubSpot Service Hub enable smooth integration with third parties. Developers can also use API to build custom integrations for unavailable apps. However, HubSpot enables pre-built integrations with more apps and has a more extensive Application Programming Interface (API).

This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here.

How Zendesk and HubSpot Stack Up

Its self-service platform lets you automate workflows, measure success metrics, and manage SLAs, which allows you to stay on top of your customer support strategy. FreshDesk also has an AI-powered support chatbot with predictive support capabilities and a service field management platform. If you’re looking for an AI-powered chatbot to be the new front line of your customer experience, Ada has the solution for you. Not only is our AI chatbot highly customizable, but it also improves the customer experience by reducing costs and driving revenue. No coding skills are required, allowing you to set up your chatbot quickly and free up your agents to make a greater impact. While Zendesk’s chat widget is rich with features such as shortcuts, automated triggers, and live chat analytics, the default design looks outdated compared to Intercom’s.

The admin and manager dashboard provides a zoomed-out view of all activity taking place in each inbox, for whole departments and individual agents. Intercom offers admin full visibility and control over all company inboxes, as well as agent access controls and role management. Agents can respond in any channel by typing in the text box and have access to deep customer experience history and background in the right-hand column.

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Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. Send surveys at key points throughout the customer buying cycle, utilizing multiple types of question formats. Surveys turn customer insights into action, with triggers and campaign response adjustments depending on customer responses. If a customer isn’t satisfied with Answer Bot’s response, Answer Bot quickly routes them to an agent best suited to help. Zendesk for Sales, or Zendesk Sell, is Zendesk’s sales pipeline and CRM tool with its own dashboard for lead generation and conversion. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms.

Zendesk’s chatbot, Answer Bot, automatically answers customer questions asynchronously in up to 40 languages–via any text-based channel. The ticket display’s Side Conversations tab allows agents to initiate internal conversations via email, Slack, or ticketing system notes–without leaving the ticket. Agents can choose if the message is private or public, upon which a group thread is initiated in the ticket’s sidebar, where participants can chat and add files. Automatic assignment rules establish criteria that automatically route tickets to the right agent or team, based on message or user data. Operator, Intercom’s automation engine, empowers Intercom chatbots to gather key information from each website visitor to qualify leads and route customers to the right destination. If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges.

Intercom vs Zendesk: Pricing and Plans

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. In the Response section, you can map data from the Zendesk API response to Conversation or People attributes. This section is crucial for creating automated workflows and can be used to save important information from the API response to a specific attribute, making it easily accessible in future interactions. Month-to-month billing plans are also available for HubSpot and Zendesk CRM, but prepare to pay between 10% to 24% extra per month.

• And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team.
• Intercom’s role-based permissions allow administrators full control over each department’s and agent’s capabilities, and access to channels and information.
• For Intercom’s pricing plan, on the other hand, there is much less information on their website.
• You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced.

You can publish your knowledge base articles and divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. They’ve been rated as one of the easy intercom and zendesk live chat solutions with more integrated options. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time.

Customer stories: Learn why so many businesses are choosing Zendesk

It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. Though the Intercom chat window says that their customer success team typically replies in a few hours, don’t expect to receive any real answer in chat for at least a couple of days. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company.

Intercom isn’t quite as strong as Zendesk in comparison to some of Zendesk’s customer support strengths, but it has more features for sales and lead nurturing. One place Intercom really shines as a standalone CRM is its data utility. As with just about any customer support software, you can easily view standard user data within the messenger related to customer journey—things like recent pages viewed, activity, or contact information. You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare.

What Zendesk Offers:

Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. We have numerous customers that do this and benefit greatly from our out-of-the-box integration with Intercom. Yes—as your business’s needs grow, you will require a more sophisticated case management system. But that doesn’t mean you have to completely switch from your current provider if you’re not quite ready. Like so many others, Monese determined that Zendesk was the best solution to provide seamless, omnichannel support because of its scalability and reliability.

Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. While it excels in interactive and engaging communication, especially on mobile, some businesses might find its focus on chat-based interfaces limiting if they need extensive email or voice call support.

While Zendesk can be integrated with third-party email marketing tools like MailChimp, Intercom may be your best bet if regular communication with your customers is a priority. Another feature Intercom offers that Zendesk doesn’t is email marketing tools. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers.