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Salesforce Community Cloud vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Salesforce Community Cloud
Ranking in Community Platforms
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (3rd)
Zendesk
Ranking in Community Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (21st), Help Desk Software (11th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (9th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Community Platforms category, the mindshare of Salesforce Community Cloud is 18.4%, down from 34.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 26.3%, up from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Community Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Julio Divietro - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 11, 2023
Helps us with sales management of customer life cycles with good business intelligence
Our primary use case for the solution is sales management of customer life cycles. We deploy the solution on cloud The stability and ease of use are valuable. Additionally, the granularity of the tool provides a great experience because of the several variables we can manage during the process.…
Ahmed Nassar - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 17, 2023
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

"All the business intelligence included in the tool gives more information about the cycle of the sales stage."
"What I found most valuable in Salesforce CRM is its reporting feature because it's extensive and it's very accurate. I also like that you can move opportunities by stages. I find that feature very important and very useful because it helps you understand where opportunities get stuck, and at what stage it is currently."
"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."
"I love how the tickets would auto-populate very quickly in Zendesk, especially when a call comes in."
"The feature to move over my customer experience team tickets for different specialists is very valuable for my team."
"The product offers very good management. It has a great ability to assign tickets based on content."
"The stability has been very good."
"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."
"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."
"It's very convenient to use."
 

Cons

"The user interface can be improved."
"An area for improvement in Salesforce CRM is that there's still a lot of manual input you need to make. If it could pick up things automatically from an email and auto-populate, that would make the tool better. Another area for improvement is that the Salesforce CRM connector for G-suite does not work effectively."
"Sometimes if there was a way to just flag the actual issue out of those email chains - that would be really helpful."
"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."
"Zendesk's stability on inbound calls could be improved as compared to Talkdesk."
"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 could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"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."
"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

"Pricing for Salesforce CRM is extremely expensive."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The price is very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
22%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Salesforce Community Cloud?
All the business intelligence included in the tool gives more information about the cycle of the sales stage.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Community Cloud?
The user interface of the screenshots feature is a little bit old and hasn't been updated for a long time.
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Community Cloud?
Our primary use case for the solution is sales management of customer life cycles. We deploy the solution on cloud.
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 hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive. One of the reasons for shifting from Zendesk to Talkdesk was cost efficiency.
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
Sometimes, the calls do not record, and your conversation is cut midway. When you want to do a call calibration, you realize that the call is incomplete. Zendesk's stability on inbound calls could ...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brown-Forman, GE Aviation, Pernod Ricard, Toyota, Virgin America, GE, IAVA
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce Community Cloud vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.