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IBM Maximo vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM Maximo
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (1st), Billing Software (5th)
Zendesk
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (4th), CRM (8th), Help Desk Software (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (6th), Sales Force Automation (4th), Reporting (10th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), Community Platforms (1st), AI Customer Support (7th), AI IT Support (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Maximo and Zendesk aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Maximo is designed for Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and holds a mindshare of 16.0%, down 27.4% compared to last year.
Zendesk, on the other hand, focuses on CRM Customer Engagement Centers, holds 6.9% mindshare, up 6.4% since last year.
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Maximo16.0%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management7.8%
IFS Cloud Platform7.4%
Other68.8%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Zendesk6.9%
Microsoft Dynamics CRM14.1%
Salesforce Service Cloud11.1%
Other67.9%
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2796087 - PeerSpot reviewer
Développement Fullstack at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Asset workflows have become highly customizable and have delivered significant downtime savings
IBM Maximo can be improved by providing developers with more documentation. I think IBM lacks a lot of documentation and hopefully the community who uses IBM Maximo can help if other developers have questions, but we really need official documentation because what is available on the internet is not official and we don't have strong documentation from IBM. I would also note that around usability, we see some lack of real custom needs in the applications of IBM Maximo Mobile. For example, in applications such as inspections, we cannot really sort by specific field and the search or filtering methods are not very clear, making it difficult to easily find what we are looking for.
AmandaSanchez - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
Macros and automation have streamlined workflows and reduced manual effort across support teams
The ability to communicate on the Zendesk ticket through the actual user software, so TOPs, would have been helpful. Somehow seeing a user's ticket history within our app would have been beneficial. That is the only thing that I do not think existed at the time that might have been helpful. Some people struggled with Zendesk, but it was always easy enough to show them how to use it and what they were missing. The only times we really had people report concerns about it was when they did not understand that it could do that or how to use it in that way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to correct maintenance."
"Provides great flexibility."
"IBM Maximo is a very strong and powerful tool in the market…Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"There are not many enterprise asset management systems on the market and not many that have the categories that IBM Maximo has."
"It can be particularly useful for power line operations, enabling linemen in the field to gather information and send it across the country as well as different parts of the world."
"They have a real strength of tracking the asset itself along with the condition of the asset, the maintenance of the asset and who has access to the asset, etc."
"Has a powerful audit combination that helps achieve high accuracy."
"IBM Maximo is the best software for assets management."
"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."
"Zendesk has been invaluable in automating communications such as email and phone calls."
"Zendesk has helped us to increase productivity and has reduced the time between when a ticket is opened and when it is completed."
"We loved the notifications and the way to build custom views for a specific user's open tickets and to see how long they have been open, how long it was since the last request."
"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."
"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."
"My advice to others looking into using Zendesk is that if you are looking for a tool that is cheaper than others but provides a good solution, I would let them know that Zendesk is the best option."
"The most valuable feature is the trackability of incoming requests. The system keeps a comprehensive history of work requests, making it a useful tool for our internal processes."
 

Cons

"Coding can be complex when customization is required."
"It needs full-service visibility. There are a lot of things that are hard for users to find out. For example, the Service Catalog is not too friendly. You really have to know what you're looking for."
"The mobile solution has a lot of room for improvement, especially in geopositioning capabilities, tracking capabilities, and configuration capabilities, in order to let the tech operate online and offline.​"
"The solution is not stable. We can have one day when it is stable and another day it is not. Sometimes it crashes or becomes very slow, and there are times we are not even able to download all the databases. Without the database, we cannot work on that application. These are the small glitches, and stability issues we are facing."
"Vendor management needs enhancement."
"There are always ways to improve and make things better."
"The standard reports that shipped with the package need to be enriched with more advanced reports, especially for the Inventory Management sections."
"IBM is a big company and they have a lot of products. Level One, the first level of tech support, is the one that is used to stop the tsunami. For everyone, it's always work to get past that."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"One of the drawbacks of Zendesk is that it doesn't provide a secure way for us to send data. So, we usually use a secure SharePoint folder link. We put that in the Zendesk ticket so that the requester has a secure way of getting to their data."
"Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries."
"Sometimes if there was a way to just flag the actual issue out of those email chains - that would be really helpful."
"Zendesk could actually support HTML on the tickets so we could format our text better than the current options such as size, bold, italic, or underscored, because the text processing is too simple."
"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."
"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."
"Zendesk Guide's customization could be improved. I would like it to be easier and maybe open-sourced, so that if you have a developer in your company, you can do it yourself. Right now, that isn't allowed, so you need to have it done via the integrator. Another improvement—this is nit-picking—is that it could be less easy to make changes. Some things are so easy that they sometimes look a little amateur-ish. Most of the templates are built-in so they can be used directly, so they are very simple."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The concurrent user license is much more effective in management and cost-wise, as it is more suitable for maintenance management."
"Explore the possibility of using DB2. You will avoid the cost of SQL Server or Oracle licenses."
"Where available, concurrent licenses can be more cost efficient and provide more flexibility."
"I do not know about the price of the solution. However, this has been an expensive project overall."
"IBM has changed the licensing policy. As I understand now, they are going from a complex way of licensing to a more simple way of licensing."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low and ten is high, I rate the pricing a nine. The price is very high."
"$USD700 per agent user."
"The price of IBM Maximo could reduce, it is expensive."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The price is very competitive."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Maximo?
IBM Maximo could be improved if they added a comprehensive finance module, as that would make it a more complete standalone application. Currently, if you need specific finance software, you need t...
What is your primary use case for IBM Maximo?
My main use case for IBM Maximo is managing maintenance. I used it first as an end user, and later joined the implementation team. Now I'm administrating and implementing IBM Maximo. The transition...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Maximo?
There are many good implemented functions in IBM Maximo, but I see these two functions as the most valuable ones from my point of view. My advice to others considering IBM Maximo is that top manage...
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?
From what I recall, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive and that is what prohibited us from expanding usage of it into more users and using more o...
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
As of right now, I have nothing that comes to mind as an improvement needed or a feature that could work differently or be enhanced. I think across the board, Zendesk is amazing, and because they a...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Maximo
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., DTE Energy, Swedish Match, Projetech, Fingrid, East Coast
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Prometheus Group, Infor and others in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). Updated: January 2026.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.