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Pega CRM vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
7th
Ranking in CRM
20th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
59
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 April 2025, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of Pega CRM is 8.9%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 5.4%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Ganisetti - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"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."
"The case management feature is really valuable."
"We can effortlessly manage the data within it, and it offers ease of use and high flexibility to present the data across various vendors."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"It also reduces the duration per call, and it ensures a first time resolution of the issue."
"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 most valuable feature is the ability to pull information about the customer on-the-fly so they feel the interaction is more personal."
"The product's deployment phase was easy."
"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."
"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."
"The stability has been very good."
"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."
"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's very convenient to use."
 

Cons

"The solution has room for improvement around decisional and real-time data analysis."
"The UI should 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."
"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 disadvantage of the tool stems from the fact that it does not allow users to make database-level modifications."
"The UI is lagging and needs to be improved."
"It would be beneficial to enhance the pricing and support implementation options as they are currently quite expensive."
"They should enable the data-driven streaming feature inside 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."
"The price of the solution should be reduced."
"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."
"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 dashboard could be better."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"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."
"Zendesk's stability on inbound calls could be improved as compared to Talkdesk."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
Comms Service Provider
5%
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 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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Chordiant
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The State of Maine, Aegis, Aegon, AIG Japan, ING
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Pega CRM vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.