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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 (4th), IVR Systems (2nd), Live Chat (3rd), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (6th)
Zendesk
Ranking in Knowledge Management Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (20th), Help Desk Software (10th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (8th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Community Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Knowledge Management Software category, the mindshare of NICE CXone is 4.7%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 15.8%, down from 20.1% 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 has the ability to edit the HTML, as well as the WYSIWYG."
"Customer support is terrific. The team is personable, informed, and responsive."
"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'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."
"We are able to see the calls in queue and able to see if someone is available or not."
"I have found the ease of use of the ACD to be most valuable along with the inView dashboard."
"Being able to listen in on a call, which is exceptionally good with training."
"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."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."
"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."
"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."
"Its agility and simplicity are the most valuable features. This tool is very user-friendly."
"I love how the tickets would auto-populate very quickly in Zendesk, especially when a call comes in."
"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."
"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."
 

Cons

"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."
"inContact should offer a way to send faxes."
"It could improve the quality of calls."
"It is a hassle, if you are busy and caught up with something, that it will log you out."
"Your docs go on their servers and getting them out is difficult, especially if you want to switch to another authoring format, e.g., Markdown. There are no converters and an automated extraction of the docs from the CMS is not available."
"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."
"The dashboard could be better."
"Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries."
"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had a custom setup that cost us some money."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Educational Organization
13%
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.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.