Pega CRM vs Zendesk comparison

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Pega CRM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Pega CRM and Zendesk are competing products in customer relationship management. Pega CRM appears to have an advantage in offering more robust automation and customization features, whereas Zendesk tends to be favored for its ease of use, straightforward implementation, and superior customer service.

Features: Pega CRM offers advanced automation tools, customizable workflows, and robust analytics that cater to enterprises seeking tailored solutions. It excels in flexibility, allowing businesses to define complex processes and rules. Zendesk provides streamlined case management, comprehensive ticketing systems, and multi-channel support. It is particularly known for its simplicity and intuitive user interface, making it accessible for a wide range of businesses.

Room for Improvement: Pega CRM can be complex to configure and may require significant time and resources for deployment due to its customizable nature. It might also face challenges with usability for those unfamiliar with CRM systems. Zendesk could enhance its offerings by providing more advanced customization options and deeper integration capabilities to suit complex enterprise environments. Additionally, expanding its analytics features could better support data-driven decisions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zendesk offers a cloud-based deployment model that reduces setup complexity and integration challenges. Its strong customer support system enhances the overall deployment experience and boosts customer satisfaction. Pega CRM may require more detailed configuration and integration efforts due to its comprehensive customization options, potentially leading to longer deployment times.

Pricing and ROI: Pega CRM's pricing is reflective of its enterprise-level features, leading to higher initial setup costs. However, the potential for significant ROI is high for businesses that utilize its tailored solutions. Zendesk generally offers lower setup costs and a quicker ROI due to its straightforward pricing model and rapid deployment, making it appealing for businesses with more immediate needs for a CRM solution.

To learn more, read our detailed Pega CRM vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: March 2025).

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Pega CRM vs. Zendesk

March 2025

Helped 839,422 peers since 2012

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

Pega CRM

Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers

5th

Ranking in CRM

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zendesk

Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers

6th

Ranking in CRM

20th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Help Desk Software (9th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (7th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), Community Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of Pega CRM is 9.5%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 5.6%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CRM Customer Engagement Centers

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Ganisetti

AVP/Sr Analyst Apps at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Case management feature is valuable but the pricing is expensive

I would like to suggest the solution but it really depends on your specific requirements, your business use cases and future plans. There is a significant investment involved in this solution and therefore it is very crucial to reevaluate your future necessity including automation potential and modernization plans. I would suggest that you select any kind of solution and explore alternatives of similar functionalities at a lower cost. This might help you to achieve more with less. In my experience, I would rate it between seven to eight because it offers robust capabilities. But please be aware that other BPM tools are emerging with similar features at a lower cost. Pega CRM is perceived as bulk care compared to order tools, as many of its capabilities are potentially underutilized. I would rate it 7 out of 10.

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Ahmed Nassar

Technical Consultant at Spectrum Group

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pega offers a clear parent-child case relationship that's easily created and maintained. Dependencies can be configured, where reaching a specific stage in a parent case automatically triggers a child task in a child case, while the parent case remains on hold until a certain condition is met before moving forward. This configuration allows multiple users to work on cases in parallel. Many of these settings are readily available within Pega case settings. Overall, Pega's case management is unparalleled compared to other options."

"One of the most valuable features of Pega CRM for our team's productivity is its ease of setup, thanks to its configuration-driven approach."

"The case management feature is really valuable."

"It also reduces the duration per call, and it ensures a first time resolution of the issue."

"The product's deployment phase was easy."

"We can effortlessly manage the data within it, and it offers ease of use and high flexibility to present the data across various vendors."

"Great flexibility and its locking mechanism enable multiple users to work on the same case seamlessly."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to pull information about the customer on-the-fly so they feel the interaction is more personal."

More Pega CRM pros

"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."

"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."

"Its agility and simplicity are the most valuable features. This tool is very user-friendly."

"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."

"The product offers very good management. It has a great ability to assign tickets based on content."

"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."

"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."

"The most valuable features of Zendesk Support are collaboration, reports, and a self-service portal. The customer and team can see all the information needed from the portal."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"There has been a common acknowledgment among customers that this solution is an expensive tool and they often opt for cheaper tools like Comodo"

"It would be beneficial to enhance the pricing and support implementation options as they are currently quite expensive."

"The UI should be improved."

"The solution has room for improvement around decisional and real-time data analysis."

"The disadvantage of the tool stems from the fact that it does not allow users to make database-level modifications."

"Price is always a concern for many organizations. They often think Pega is expensive, and sometimes they don't fully understand the pricing model."

"The UI is lagging and needs to be improved."

"For many of the clients, they have a separate system or separate layer of UI and a separate layer of the business rules engine, which Pega has taken care of in the recent releases."

More Pega CRM cons

"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."

"As per me, there arent much significant issues or areas for improvement with Zendesk, as my usage of it is limited. I appreciate its ability to organize tickets effectively based on tags, allowing me to easily gather and analyze customer feedback and requests."

"The price of the solution should be reduced."

"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."

"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."

"They have something called Zendesk Explore, which isn't as good as what they had in place previously."

"Sometimes if there was a way to just flag the actual issue out of those email chains - that would be really helpful."

"You couldn't give administrative access to new hires."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive."

"We have numerous uses of the solution in our organisation. Almost 72 applications are integrated with Pega CRM, and some of them are shutting down for various reasons including the high licensing costs. There is a strong focus in the market and offices on cost reduction."

"The pricing is on the higher side."

"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."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The price is very competitive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

14%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pega CRM?

The product's deployment phase was easy.

What needs improvement with Pega CRM?

The disadvantage of the tool stems from the fact that it does not allow users to make database-level modifications. In Siebel CRM, you have complete control over your database, you can do any datab...

What is your primary use case for Pega CRM?

Pega CRM uses a layer cake architecture. Basically, the tool is a convenient application to use even if you are not a technical person, like a business analyst. I use the solution for the CRM modul...

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 ...

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Pega CRM product report

Pega CRM

February 2025

Download Zendesk product report

February 2025

Also Known As

Chordiant

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Overview

Pega BPM streamlines your operations so you can reduce costs and improve business agility. Pega is recognized by leading analyst firms as the most comprehensive and unified BPM platform.

Pega

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

Sample Customers

The State of Maine, Aegis, Aegon, AIG Japan, ING

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber