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Everbridge IT Alerting vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Everbridge IT Alerting
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
IT Alerting and Incident Management (8th)
Zendesk
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (21st), Help Desk Software (11th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (9th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (2nd), Community Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Everbridge IT Alerting is designed for IT Alerting and Incident Management and holds a mindshare of 14.5%, up 9.0% compared to last year.
Zendesk, on the other hand, focuses on CRM Customer Engagement Centers, holds 7.5% mindshare, down 14.2% since last year.
IT Alerting and Incident Management
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

CQ
We have seen substantial savings with its usage as it drives down our MTTR
The automated escalations are the most valuable feature. We program in our escalation chains for each individual IT group. Being able to go out and request a resource from that team, and if they don't respond, that automated escalation makes it very hands off. So, our major incident managers and our network operations center can focus more on the other work that they need to do rather than chasing down those resources. They can rest assured that somebody will be answering. Another valuable feature is the ease of integration into our ServiceNow platform, where we are doing all of our work between two teams. They are able to make requests from within the tickets that we can manage rather than having to use another portal or logging into Everbridge directly. Reliability is their biggest value.
Ahmed Nassar - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable tool, making it reliable for handling tasks but difficult initial setup
It has a huge problem regarding the price. The price increases every year. Every year, they raise the price of the licenses, which makes a lot of limitations, and you have to pay more. So that's some conditions. Actually, most of the companies that use Zendesk need a customer experience or customer care department. However, Zendesk only works with chatbox or emailing services, but it can also use Genesys, VoIP, or voice sensors. Additionally, Zendesk needs the administration panels to be easier because it's a very complex panel. You need to search for a lot of things to do, like a small job. So you have to do a lot of setup regarding the integration, and it's a little bit challenging to integrate any software in the vendor.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Valuable features include incident management and ease of integrations."
"A robust solution with multiple modules that can be leveraged."
"Our performance showed us that, for major incidents, we spent over 40 minutes just making manual call-outs. That is why we implement the tool in the first place and that time has been cut down to two or three minutes."
"The response time is real-time alerting. It is very helpful, because it makes things a lot easier. All we have to do is put a circle around a geo-fence and shoot off a message."
"It's mainly for mass notification and pooling of contacts. Pooling of customers is valuable."
"The system has a lot of great features and they keep adding to it."
"The most important features are the scheduling capability and the integration with ServiceNow."
"One key aspect of the solution is that it can send information very quickly and is connected to different nodes."
"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."
"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."
"It has good management, the ability to sign tickets based on content, the multi-channel support, the self service portal, the integration with Salesforce, the setup process, and the product features as we are currently using them."
"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use. If you take the standalone product, it is so easy to use, but if you want a tailor-made Zendesk Guide, you can't do it yourself. However, you can use a template that already exists—they have a lot, and they're very cheap, around 300-400 euros—and use it on all your brands. It's a very easy product to use."
"I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to use, and I haven't encountered any issues with delays or communication gaps in ticket resolutions."
"What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool."
"I love how the tickets would auto-populate very quickly in Zendesk, especially when a call comes in."
"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."
 

Cons

"What I would like to see is vendor alerting. It's not structured to take into account that users outside of our environment, users outside of IT, may not be in the group. IBM is an outside vendor for us, and we have IBM CEs who come in on a regular basis. If there's a problem, we call those vendors in. That should be tied into the system where we can say that vendors A, B, and C have these users and we want them available to come into the office when there's an issue. We want to be able to alert them in the same way we alert internally."
"With their templates, you can only have a maximum of three phases: new, updated, and resolved. It's not always that easy when we open up a call, that we identify who we need, page out, and we're good. A lot of time it requires multiple page-outs. Being restricted to those three phases, there's no way to say, "I want this variable to be persistent, and this one to not be." ...I would like to see a bit more flexibility and tighter control over the templates and the variables you can create."
"I would like them to add GPS going forward."
"The ability for members to change their schedules, and change the person their swapping with, could use improvement. The GUI is a little tough to navigate. It's not very straightforward when someone is trying to change schedules."
"I know that we get frustrated at the capacity of SMS messages. It's not very long, and if you want to send a long message, they end up sending you a link to the rest of the message."
"I swapped two people's weeks, and at least from what I saw, I had to do each day individually. It would be nice if I could swap two people's weeks without having to do it each day."
"The company would like to have super detailed analytics, as we integrate this with our security software."
"You have to create schedules in Everbridge. It would be better if it could tie into an existing solution, such as Microsoft Exchange or Google Calendar, so that you don't have to create it in both places. That's one thing it lacks right now. You can't just say, "Hey, look at this Microsoft calendar. That's what we want to use." You have to create it in Everbridge."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."
"The data you get when logged in to Zendesk Support differs from the data you get when you programmatically query Zendesk Support through its API because of a sync time delay."
"Zendesk Guide could be improved by allowing us to put our assets in one location. What happens now for each article, for example, is we have to upload the images for that article to that location, so the image reuse is still not something that they have perfected. If they could allow us to update all the images in one location, and then pull the image from there, it would be easier when working on Multibrand projects. There are no Multibrand updates available—we have to update each brand manually. For my company, I have come up with an API tool which allows me to push the content to multiple brands together, but if you don't have something like that, you have to manually do it."
"You couldn't give administrative access to new hires."
"They have something called Zendesk Explore, which isn't as good as what they had in place previously."
"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."
"Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing cost is driven largely by the number of users in the platform including admins, group managers, and message senders, so you want to consider your needs there."
"For us, the pricing is a good value. I can't say whether or not their list pricing looks favorable to everyone who's checking, but I can say that the process of sourcing and procurement with them was very professional, comfortable, and friendly. The negotiations were done well on both sides, and in the end, I'd say the price was very effective... I think that people will find that Everbridge is a great listener and is willing to meet in the middle."
"For the one-way license, which refers to someone is just on the receiving end, it's very affordable. I was actually surprised that it was a really good price. The two-way license, like an on-call resource who is actually going to be in a calendar and be paged, it is a bit more expensive, but for the gains that we've realized, it's certainly worth the price."
"I do not know about the licensing costs, but I know they're in groups, and there are permission caps. For example, you can have five admin accounts, and anyone can receive a notification. There's a mobile component too, which I find particularly useful, but it has to be a part of the contract."
"The annual cost is $125,000 USD. That is for everything. It includes the 11,000 mass notifications. Technically, we have 500 licenses for IT Alerting."
"Their call structure is based on how many people are IT alert people and who is on the calendar, and the cost will be driven by those numbers versus if you are using it for the non-IT alert. As you look at the competition and other vendors, make sure you truly understand your cost structure with them."
"Everbridge is not an inexpensive tool, but as the adage says, you get what you pay for."
"As far as I'm aware, there are no costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."
"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."
"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."
"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"The price is very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
22%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Everbridge IT Alerting?
It's mainly for mass notification and pooling of contacts. Pooling of customers is valuable.
What needs improvement with Everbridge IT Alerting?
The solution's non-targeted communication with external parties could be enhanced.
What do you like most about Zendesk Support?
I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
I am not currently aware of the exact pricing, but since we are still using Zendesk, it appears to be at a reasonable price point.
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries. It would be advantageous to have an AI layer that can analyze incoming requests and generate summaries, as ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Choice Hotels, Alexion, Navy Federal Credit Union, EastWest Bank, IBM, Core Logic, Paypal, Charter Communications, Lowes, Express Scripts, Finastra, Worldpay
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about PagerDuty, Atlassian, Splunk and others in IT Alerting and Incident Management. Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.