Atlassian Confluence vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Confluence
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Confluence is a collaboration and content sharing platform used primarily by customers who are already using Atlassian's Jira project tracking product. The product appeals particularly to IT users.
$10
per month
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
The Zendesk Support suite is a cloud-based customer support software built for better customer relationships. Designed to improve customer satisfaction and to support customers on any channel: text SMS, web, mobile app, phone, email, social media. The vendor states more than 200,000 companies such as Uber, Groupon, Box, Airbnb, and Slack are using Zendesk to lower their support costs, raise productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. Zendesk offers a full suite of products to meet customer…
$55
per month agent
Pricing
Atlassian ConfluenceZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Free for 10 Users
Standard
$5
Per User Per Month
Premium
$10
Per User Per Month
Server
$10
10 Users - Perpetual License
Server
$2,700
25 Users - Perpetual License
Server
$5,300
50 Users - Perpetual License
Server
10,200.00
100 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
15,000.00
500 Users - Annually
Server
19,800.00
250 Users - Perpetual License
Server
30,000.00
500 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
30,000.00
1,000 Users - Annually
Server
45,000.00
2,000 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
52,000.00
2,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
79,200.00
3,000 Users - Annually
Server
90,000.00
10,000 Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
105,600.00
4,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
132,000.00
5,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
143,000.00
10,000 Users - Annually
Server
150,000.00
10,001+ Users - Perpetual License
Data Center
154,000.00
15,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
165,000.00
20,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
176,000.00
25,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
187,000.00
30,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
198,000.00
35,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
209,000.00
40,000 Users - Annually
Data Center
220,000.00
40,001+ Users - Annually
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Support Team (Foundational Support Only)
$19
per month agent
Suite Team
$55
per month agent
Support Professional
$55
per month agent
Suite Growth
$89
per month agent
Suite Professional
$115
per month agent
Support Enterprise
$115
per month agent
Suite Enterprise
$169
per month agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ConfluenceZendesk Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Atlassian ConfluenceZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Confluence
Chose Atlassian Confluence
We really only use Confluence because we use JIRA and Hipchat and it seemed to work well within the suite of Atlassian products. I would personally prefer a custom made internal website for our organization plus the integration of google docs/hangouts (or the use of something …
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is the industry leader in terms of the number of other platforms you can connect it with (CRM's, Customer Success Tools, Billing Tools, etc)—this makes it extremely sticky and a core part of your workflow. Zendesk also offers a variety of channels all in the one …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Salesforce is far more established but the price tag was too high for our small team. I would be surprised if we didn’t migrate to Salesforce when our team reaches a certain size
Chose Zendesk Suite
I prefer Zendesk, though I find engineers are often in Jira. Zendesk is, in my opinion, far easier to navigate, but that might just be my personal preference and comfort with the application. Both maintain a history/record of who and what, but I think Zendesk is more intuitive, …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk has a more simple and modern look and feel while ServiceNow seems less intuitive and more antiquated. Zendesk has a better UI and sleeker design. Zendesk fits our company's needs, serving both the external and internal customer.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk was a lot more user-friendly than Service Cloud or Desk.com. We ultimately chose Zendesk for that reason. We felt like all of the platforms we were considering were going to be able to help us accomplish our main goal of handling inbound support tickets, but we felt …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is much cleaner, simpler, and the support staff is faster to respond with actual solutions than the larger solutions. It is also a lot cheaper, both in license cost and in cost to implement. There are also a number of additional support channels (which I am not …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Salesforce is a more robust tool with back-end SQL reporting functionality and numerous plugins, but with this comes cost. Most startup organizations do not want the expense, at least not at the beginning of the product life cycle.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Mojo HelpDesk, Zoho... I picked Zendesk because it felt the most intuitive, powerful and seemed more polished.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Atlassian ConfluenceZendesk Suite
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.1
110 Ratings
11% below category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Task Management6.288 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts7.912 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling7.221 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation6.159 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access7.683 Ratings00 Ratings
Search7.0108 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual planning tools7.787 Ratings00 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.7
110 Ratings
4% below category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Chat6.415 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications8.1108 Ratings00 Ratings
Discussions6.4102 Ratings00 Ratings
Surveys7.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase8.9102 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts9.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.7
110 Ratings
5% below category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Versioning7.693 Ratings00 Ratings
Video files7.670 Ratings00 Ratings
Audio files7.564 Ratings00 Ratings
Document collaboration8.5105 Ratings00 Ratings
Access control8.5103 Ratings00 Ratings
Advanced security features8.379 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive6.748 Ratings00 Ratings
Device sync7.049 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.7
148 Ratings
11% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.0147 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.097 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.4103 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.399 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.3147 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.1146 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.4
133 Ratings
10% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.3127 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.4121 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.6
144 Ratings
13% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.5116 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.555 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.092 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.0141 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.9106 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Atlassian ConfluenceZendesk Suite
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Troop Messenger
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Score 9.8 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kanban Tool
Kanban Tool
Score 9.2 out of 10
Front
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Score 8.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
Atlassian ConfluenceZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(127 ratings)
8.7
(186 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(19 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(13 ratings)
8.7
(59 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(3 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
5.4
(25 ratings)
6.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.8
(4 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Atlassian ConfluenceZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Atlassian
It has a comment option on the page, where you can tag other teammates tagging them. it sends the mail notification. Comment at the page end is pretty good for referring to other stakeholders and future references of the topic on the page. Creating the highlights of the discussions, and meeting held points with highlighted tagging. Easy shortcuts such as to add a date just type "//". The interface is cool and has easy shortcuts for quick page making.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk is well suited when dealing with a customer who does not know English. This way, they can copy the email sent and translate it into their home language for better understanding. Zendesk is less appropriate when a customer sends their personal details, such as their bank details. Sometimes, a seller may want us to return their documents, which is also inappropriate.
Read full review
Pros
Atlassian
  • QUICK How-to Guides that can be generated and share instantly
  • One can subscribe to the pages and spaces and receive updates in the feed on their home page
  • Automatic Email notifications of new updates in the Confluence area
  • The platform integrates easily with other Atlassian platforms including third-party apps thus improving its reliability
Read full review
Zendesk
  • UI/UX; mature macros and automations, slick and well thought out UI.
  • Reporting, reporting, reporting. With user, org, and ticket level tags, we can track every aspect of our ticket flow.
  • Extensibility; the app marketplace is a great resource for expanding functionality from the baseline offering.
Read full review
Cons
Atlassian
  • Navigation. Similar to other Atlassian products, users have complained that aspects of Confluence are difficult to learn right away[.]
  • An issue that users can face when using Confluence is attempting to edit a document while someone else is editing. Although users can access the document and save it, they are unable to see the changes happening in [real-time] that other users are implementing until they refresh their page. Some users have also noted that this can result in loss of edits.
  • Another drawback of using Confluence is its specific organizational structure. All information is stored within one page or project, although the page is able to be broken up into sections, some users do not prefer this style. Users can use the ‘page tree’ on each page to organize the different elements of each project.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • The development of messaging out of the earlier Chat module is clunky and still has limitations for multi language flows.
  • When creating queries in Explore, you can't search for 'or' conditions, only 'And', meaning you have to build multiple queries and manually add them.
  • You can't download the charts in the reports, they come down as tables and then you have to make your own charts.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Atlassian
I am confident that Atlassian can come with additional and innovative macros and functions to add value to Confluence. In 6 months, Atlassian transformed a good collaborative tools into a more comprehensive system that can help manage projects and processes, as well as "talk" with other Atlassian products like Jira. We are in fact learning more about Jira to evaluate a possible fit to complement our tool box.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk is an amazing tool for communicating with your customers easily. The communication tickets from sellers to us or from us to sellers are stored, and there are statuses used to make communication easy. We have internal conversations between departments, linked with useful software such as Zingtree, Talkdesk, and Webs.
Read full review
Usability
Atlassian
Confluence can - and in my personal opinion, it will - be a bit hard to use in the first moment. Atlassian is a great company and is eager to help you with any question you have, though. The interface seems to be a bit clumsy at first but the customization options are enough to make it easier and simpler. In general, Confluence is easy to use when you understand what each section does, but this can take a while.
Read full review
Zendesk
I used to work without a ticketing service, and everything was handled on an email provider, this made it very difficult to track, no integrations to the software complicating the use of internal tools or other software like Guru, Zendesk Suite wasn't hard to learn, in fact it was very easy, very straightforward, and I was an admin learning to use several tools at the same time.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Atlassian
I do not recall having outages or applications error so far, very reliable and available.
Read full review
Zendesk
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
Read full review
Performance
Atlassian
Pages load very quickly, which makes it useful for quickly obtaining information. The search functionality is also very quick and is able to parse through all of the documents to provide the most relevant results for the query. Other information based software gets bogged down, but so far Atlassian Confluence maintains its performance.
Read full review
Zendesk
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
Read full review
Support Rating
Atlassian
This rating is specifically for Atlassian's self-help documentation on their website. Often times, it is not robust enough to cover a complex usage of one of their features. Frequently, you can find an answer on the web, but not from Atlassian. Instead, it is usually at a power user group elsewhere on the net.
Read full review
Zendesk
We rarely need to contact their support team, but when we do they are responsive. However there have been notable times when communication between myself and the support rep was challenging despite me providing clear explanation of the issue, screenshots, and a thorough explanation of the goal we hope to achieve. It took several back and forth attempt, on a few occasions, to get resolution on an otherwise simple request
Read full review
Online Training
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Atlassian
Overall, I am very satisfied with the initial implementation (and the subsequent upgrades and implementations made over the years).
This product has never rose to the level of being an major issue at an executive level. It has quietly and valiantly done it's job for our company!
Read full review
Zendesk
I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy
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Alternatives Considered
Atlassian
We used to use Google Drive to store all of our documentation, but it is disconnected from our every day working environment and it was easy to lose documents and become disorganized within the broad drive environment. [Atlassian] Confluence has kept us more organized and its tight coupling with Jira has made documents more accessible and more likely to be kept up to date.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk Suite is exceptionally user friendly and highly customisable. Free training for all levels and roles of users which is easy to follow and engaging for users is particularly helpful along with the added support behind the scenes from Zendesk support and the Zendesk community is second to none.
Read full review
Scalability
Atlassian
This tool is very adaptable. So much so we use it for three completely separate projects, in three very different ways.
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Atlassian
  • We've gone from folders and folders of Word documents and PDFs into a single system with a search feature to bring all of our data together and trackable
  • While onboarding took a bit longer for the company (to switch from a Word document centric mindset - to a web-based one), overall the company has embraced the features and power of Confluence within the working stack
  • However, as costs continue to climb for the Atlassian product, we are forced to continue our evaluation of the product - with replacing it a remote possibility if it begins to outprice its usefulness to us.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Integrating other AI solutions for an organization with high volumes can cost about USD5000 monthly. With Zendesk AI and by building onto the same with AI powered apps built for Zendesk Suite we save a projected USD4000 monthly.
  • Robust Zendesk APIs have enabled us to integrate our internal system with a customized app saving us hundreds of hours every quarter spent loading customer profiles that are not loaded instantly from the app.
  • Plug and play apps like Round robin save us weeks of sprint delay timelines as they do not require additional coding or developer support to install and start using.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of Zendesk Agent WorkspaceScreenshot of Omnichannel MessagingScreenshot of Zendesk TicketingScreenshot of Bots powered by Zendesk AIScreenshot of Tone shift with Zendesk AIScreenshot of Zendesk ticketing side conversations