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NICE CXone vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 17, 2025

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

NICE CXone
Ranking in Knowledge Management Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Workforce Engagement Management (3rd), IVR Systems (2nd), Live Chat (3rd), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (6th)
Zendesk
Ranking in Knowledge Management Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (6th), CRM (20th), Help Desk Software (9th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (7th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Community Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Knowledge Management Software category, the mindshare of NICE CXone is 4.7%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 13.8%, down from 20.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Knowledge Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

James Arvidson - PeerSpot reviewer
A software that enables centers to operate more efficiently, increase the quality of every customer interaction, create new pathways to profit, and ensure ongoing customer-centric business improvemen
One of the best aspects of CXone is its omnichannel experience. It treats all contacts, whether phone, chat, email, or SMS, through the same system, allowing for consistent reporting and a true omnichannel experience. The platform is very flexible. You can customize it to do almost anything as long as it's based on logic, which has been incredibly valuable. In terms of analytics, CXone offers consistent, accessible data across all channels. In the past, different systems like Avaya for phones or separate platforms for chat and email made it hard to compare performance across channels. With CXone, you get the same data points across all interactions, making decision-making much easier. It also allows for deeper reporting, like IVR reporting, where you can see what options people choose and create custom KPIs for better insight.
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

"It's easier as a supervisor to do your job more efficiently. You can have multiple things open at once to watch everything, being able to take one look at a page and see everything you need rather then having to flip through multiple programs. This is such a time saver. I get a lot more done in my day due to being able to keep my opened programs down to a minimum."
"Being able to listen in on a call, which is exceptionally good with training."
"It is easy to look up and playback calls with this system as it categorizes the different types of calls that come through my call center. I like that inContact is always updating and continues to improve. The quality of its recorded calls is among the best that I have had experience with."
"It has the ability to edit the HTML, as well as the WYSIWYG."
"We are able to see the calls in queue and able to see if someone is available or not."
"Customer support is terrific. The team is personable, informed, and responsive."
"I have found the ease of use of the ACD to be most valuable along with the inView dashboard."
"inContact has helped our organization greatly by allowing us to see at a glance which agents are available to receive calls and those who are not, we are able to see why not."
"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."
"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."
"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."
"The product offers very good management. It has a great ability to assign tickets based on content."
"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."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."
"Its agility and simplicity are the most valuable features. This tool is very user-friendly."
 

Cons

"MindTouch would greatly benefit by providing a GitHub pull request functionality to foster draft mode and open contribution writing."
"If you have hundreds of books, the initial download is slow."
"One of the biggest missing pieces is a link checker."
"I would like to see inView be a built-in feature of CXone rather than a separate platform, but everything else is terrific."
"It could improve the quality of calls."
"I have noticed that occasionally the dashboard will freeze and some things may get stuck for a while. For example, if I have a dashboard open that shows how many calls are in queue and how many are currently being handled by agents, sometimes a call that an agent is handling will get stuck on the dashboard after the agent ends the call and the dashboard will show that the call is still a live call. Our tech team has explained this to us as a ghost call. After some time (or maybe many screen refreshes) the call will go away like it has just ended."
"There are times when the data does not load and you have to keep hitting refresh. More colors and different layouts should be included in the next release."
"It is a hassle, if you are busy and caught up with something, that it will log you out."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries."
"If I write an article, and I have a team of 30 people, and they all have a Zendesk account, when I write an article, I send them an email. "Hey guys, I just wrote this article. It's one of the most popular topics this month on which we are not covered. Please check it and make sure that you include it in your resolutions". The issue is, once I send it to those 30 people, and they open it, the next morning, that article is the most popular article."
"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."
"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."
"There is always a network issue with Zendesk. But we don’t know whether it is managed. The network issue is that when I call, it does not let us."
"It wasn't easy to set up so we're only using a third of all of the features,"
"Zendesk's stability on inbound calls could be improved as compared to Talkdesk."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had a custom setup that cost us some money."
"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."
"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."
"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
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
23%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with NICE CXone?
One area where CXone could improve is in creating a more streamlined, user-friendly interface. While the interfaces are good, they can get a bit dated over time, though NICE is usually good about u...
What is your primary use case for NICE CXone?
I chose NICE CXone because it had the best return on investment and could scale effectively. After setting it up, I was so impressed that I went to work for NICE for three years, implementing their...
What advice do you have for others considering NICE CXone?
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

NICE inContact, NICE CXone Workforce Optimization Pro, NICE CXOne WFO Pro, CXone Workforce Optimization, inContact Workforce Optimization, CallCopy, Discover, VPI Empower, Brand Embassy, goMoxie
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MoneyGram, Honeywell, Radisson Hotel Group, AAA, New Balance, MattressFIRM, Teleflora, Best Buy
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about NICE CXone vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.