Desk.com (discontinued) vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Desk.com (discontinued)
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Desk.com was a helpdesk, ticketing, and customer support product offered by Salesforce, and oriented towards the needs of small businesses. It is no longer sold and support has been discontinued. Salesforce recommends its modern Service Cloud as a replacement.N/A
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.2 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
Desk.com (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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
Desk.com (discontinued)Zendesk 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
Desk.com (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Desk.com (discontinued)
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
We liked it as a tool because of the ease and advantages offered by the tool compared to the other solutions evaluated.Due to its ease of implementation and ease of use it adapted very well to the needs of the company, that was the reason why we chose desk.com.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Desk.com and Salesforce Service Cloud can be very easily implemented, administered, and scaled across support teams within the organization. It is truly an industry gold standard as it has a lot of great out-of-the-box functionality and does not require as much customization …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
This one seemed to have the best Salesforce integration and seemed to be the best for having all of our different teams (sales, retention, support, marketing, SRM, etc.) in one place. Also, we were able to get a very good price. The other platforms seemed like they would be too …
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
Lower pricing per user. That's about it! Other companies have all-around better features and easier user interfaces, but Desk can beat them on pricing even at higher account tiers. Included knowledgebase tools are a plus, and fairly easy to manage.
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
The big turn off to this product was the price and poor integration to existing systems. We were in the process of launching a new CRM and needed a tool that would work well with this new tool. Desk.com is a partner and works closely where Zendesk did none of that
Chose Desk.com (discontinued)
  • Kayako
    • Interesting, but really clunky and unstable at the time.
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
Did not find other viable candidates that were as quick to implement and deploy as Zendesk. Salesforce has all the same power, but requires you to build out your support system.

We are now considering a migration to Desk.com as it provides greater integration with Salesforce, …
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
I've checked out Desk.com, but it doesn't fit our pricing model. I think Zendesk is the best solution and provides the most bang for the buck.
Chose Zendesk Suite
I've used Desk.com before. Desk is similar but I’m not a huge fan. I think Zendesk has a LOT more to offer.
Chose Zendesk Suite
While using Desk.com we were only able to use one client per account. We migrated over to Zendesk Suites so we could have an unlimited amount of clients in one portal. This has been a game-changer for our company. While Desk.com had great reporting and capabilities for tags, …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk support is your one-stop shop for managing customers via the customer support portal that has a slew of products available for use via several channels, depending on your particular need may it be email messaging, chat messaging, or voice, and it is quite superior …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk competitors include:
  • Microsoft Parature -- this product intreface is possibly the worst I've seen for customer service. Looks like a mid-90s enterprise application and is about as intuitive to use. We have help migrate dozens of instances away from Parature into Zendesk …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk had a better offer for us at the time, their customer service team was also really helpful in guiding us through the product and clearly outlined how they could improve certain aspects of our business. Zendesk was also more user friendly so we felt the team would easily …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk, Desk.com, Jira
Chose Zendesk Suite
Other platforms I have evaluated: Kayako, Fogbugz, Bugzilla, Assembla, FreshDesk.

I ended up picking Zendesk for several reasons, but there was really 3 reasons why I ultimately picked them:
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Desk.com (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.2
113 Ratings
4% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.5112 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.269 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.475 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.171 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.2113 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.8112 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.1
100 Ratings
4% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.096 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.289 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.1
111 Ratings
5% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings7.685 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.136 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.367 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.7109 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.679 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Desk.com (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Desk.com (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(38 ratings)
8.3
(151 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(14 ratings)
10.0
(40 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(19 ratings)
7.7
(24 ratings)
Availability
1.0
(2 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(21 ratings)
9.0
(29 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Desk.com (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
Once I had to search the logs to find cases and data on a particular keyword, but I was not able to do so as there was no search tool available, nor was there a sort or filter tool. I was totally frustrated as I had to skim through the data to complete my task manually.
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Zendesk
Inbound messaging it is top notch, it does it well and couldn't imagine anyone's program doing it better. Like I said before been using ZenDesk for over 7 years and absolutely love it. We use the talk feature with the phone very limited so Zen works fine for us, but if I was running an inbound or outbound call center I don't believe Zen has all the functions I would want as a manager. For limited phone use and mostly email, text, and even web chat, ZenDesk works great. Having the iOS App is so great and flexibility with notifications allows my team to be "on call" anytime without unnecessary interruptions
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • Desk.com automatically tracks analytics on all cases coming in and going out.
  • Desk.com helps prevent multiple people from working on the same case. However, it does allow us to assign the case to someone else if we feel that person is more qualified to address the case.
  • Desk.com has very few bugs or server issues that we've seen. This helps prevent any delays in communicating with our customers.
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Zendesk
  • Reporting and Analytics
  • Ease of Agent Training and Use
  • Able to add multiple brands with related custom reports and dashboards
  • Adding a new brand and basic help center is easy to do without the need of an expert or web team
  • Ability of agents and supervisors to see customer history across multiple channels
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Cons
Discontinued Products
  • Internal knowledge tools are clunky and annoying to access, outside the regular workflow of everyday staff
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in business rules and custom fields
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in case handling - for example, if you begin a case as a phone call you CANNOT email the customer from the case. As though no one working at Desk has ever sent a follow-up email...?
  • Not very good for B2B, mid-to-large businesses. Difficult to set business rules based on company information (for example, service level/tier) and nearly impossible to track key stakeholders and get clear insight into the relationship at a high level
  • Reporting tools are clunky, slow, and just all-around pretty useless
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Zendesk
  • I think the Graphical User Interface could use a facelift. It not the most aesthetically pleasing platform in my experience.
  • Particular things like where the default is when you click on each and every dropdown menu.
  • The macro integration could be a little more simplified.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
We will be very likely to renew our contract with Desk.com. It is easy to use, and provides us with everything we need to keep our customers and employees happy. They have also been very helpful in catering the application to our specific and unique needs, including working across brands and adding specific content for our products
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Zendesk
Zendesk is super easy to use and navigate. I really enjoy the sleek layout, the ability to tailor tickets, the macro option, and the quick key guide they have to make your use of time even more effective. My whole team loves working with Zendesk and rarely ever has problems.
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Usability
Discontinued Products
Desk.com and Salesforce Service Cloud's usability is seamless to get up and running, administer, and scale across the organization. It allows us to get up and running in days rather than weeks and has transformed our customer support teams globally into efficient, world-class teams. The best practices that the Salesforce and Desk.com teams provide are also very valuable, as we have the right case studies and tips to implement right away in our organization.
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Zendesk
As an agent it's very simple to use. As an admin it's also easy to use, but sometimes lacks some functionality that would be nice to have such as expanded native 2 way sync functionality for many major apps that are commonly used today like HubSpot and Salesforce. The ability to add followers to tickets to they get updates and are in the know without the customer seeing this agent cc'd is a nice touch. This ensures additional visibility and easily following the communication without having to appear as a CC to the customer, who could accidentally remove that person in a response, thus breaking the visibility
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Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
We've never had a problem with Desk.com's availability.
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Zendesk
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
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Performance
Discontinued Products
Fast, responsive, gorgeous, and fun. It's always run like a thoroughbred for me.
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Zendesk
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
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Support Rating
Discontinued Products
Their support leaves much to be desired. They do not respond quickly and do not follow up with feature requests. There is also a lack of on-demand or live training available for the teams to use as they learn a new tool. Because there is so much customization, a lot of questions do come up regularly.
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Zendesk
Every time I contacted them they were not only very responsive and knowledgable, but always seemed to have a positive upbeat attitude. It probably helps that we did not have significant service outages or sev 1 level issues, but even my lower severity issues were quickly answered. And the positive and upbeat attitude really made things feel comfortable.
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Online Training
Discontinued Products
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.
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Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
As I stated earlier, implementation of Desk.com went more smoothly than most. The resources in the "Support Center" are fantastic, and I never ran into anything that left me stumped, angry, or disappointed.
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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
Discontinued Products
Overall, it performs a lot better than all three combined, with a lot fewer glitches and a lot more user-friendly and user experience efficiency. Any new link that needs to be done, takes a lot less time to execute on desk compared to the three others. Simply advanced when it comes to execution this platform is.
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Zendesk
If spoken honestly Intercom is a level-par with any nearest competitor, Tools like Zendesk has to catchup with them in speed. However, there is an advantage to Zendesk with its simple and easy-to-get software which falls in every mid and small-size business pocket wherein Intercom is way too expensive and needs a tech admin to customize the product. The kick-starting feature with negligible configuration made Zendesk the ideal choice of our organization + the budget fell under our expenses.
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Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • Better customer service and employee efficiency when dealing with cases
  • It's so universal, meaning that everyone can use it and it's easy to understand.
  • The only negative impact is that our IT department who is assigned tickets has responded to customers instead of to the local reps and we have to ensure they know to change the email if it's assigned to them.
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Zendesk
  • The positives weigh more than the negatives here, as it gives us a one-stop portal where we can tend to customer needs using one web app
  • It has also helped us identify areas of improvement based on the reporting feature
  • The value it provides outweighs any missing or lacking features that I'm sure will be available in the future
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ScreenShots

Desk.com (discontinued) Screenshots

Screenshot of Desk.com ConsoleScreenshot of Desk.com Issue ScreenScreenshot of Desk.com Reporting and Analytics

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