Front vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Front
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Front is a communication hub that helps businesses keep the human touch in every interaction.
$19
per month per user
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
FrontZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
Starter
$19
per month per user
Growth
$49
per month per user
Scale
$99
per month per user
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
FrontZendesk Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsWe're happy to talk you through what would work best for your business — just reach out at sales@frontapp.com.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FrontZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Front
Chose Front
The tagging feature stands out. Their tagging can be quite deep and effective if it's set up properly. For example, I can pull out all the clients who [have] an issue with billing. Or better yet valued clients who [have] a specific MRR that has an issue with billing that needed …
Chose Front
Front was not designed as a ticketing system and doesn't have great reporting tools, but the commenting and draft features were important and other platforms' versions of these features were weak or unintuitive.

It should be noted that we ended up developing our own messaging …
Chose Front
Zendesk is by far the market leader here and offers a tremendous solution. It is, of course, very expensive -- especially if you require multi-brand support. Many of the other solutions (except Groove) offer some flavor of multi-brand support but they are not as good as Zendesk.…
Chose Front
Front is a flexible and quickly growing tool that integrates with almost every system we use. Front have been our go-to support system since we started and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Zendesk Suite

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
FrontZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Front
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.1
109 Ratings
1% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.4108 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.268 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.374 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.970 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.1109 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.8108 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Front
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
7.9
97 Ratings
0% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings7.893 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.088 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Front
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
7.9
107 Ratings
0% below category average
Customer portal00 Ratings7.384 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings7.735 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.366 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.5105 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.579 Ratings
Best Alternatives
FrontZendesk Suite
Small Businesses
EZ Texting
EZ Texting
Score 8.8 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quadient Inspire
Quadient Inspire
Score 9.4 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Quadient Inspire
Quadient Inspire
Score 9.4 out of 10
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FrontZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(27 ratings)
8.3
(147 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(40 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
6.9
(20 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(5 ratings)
9.0
(29 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
FrontZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Front
I had a customer who has an urgent concern about their account. They already reached out to different departments but their resolution is unsatisfactory. [Its] good thing they tried to reply to our email campaigns and when a member of our team received it, it was answered and resolved quickly. Fronts really is a good tool to ensure timely resolution.
Read full review
Zendesk
The ability to Merge tickets is a good to have feature. Navigation is easy from one ticket to another ticket without having to go back to the list. Admin options should be more clear, internal menu navigation is complex and creates more confusion while arranging the sections and articles. Channel Management is good but Forum management can be brought in with more flexibility. More Apps integration or flexibility in APIs so that a newbie can also integrate the application into the software. A redundant software that brings in 360-degree communication of support/service concepts into practicality however if the option to compile texting with platforms like ringcentral, Twilio or Dialpad will be an awesome thing to share ticket updates with custom templates.
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Pros
Front
  • Even if you are just trying to compose a single email, Front gives a smart system that has options such [as] organized templates, tags, alerts, [and] changing your outbound dpt email.
  • Tasks- with Front you will not miss any interaction. When you are required to get assistance from a coworker, you only need to mention him/her and that notification will appear automatically in their inboxes.
  • Smart Notifications- sometimes we are just overwhelmed about the several notifications on our devices that we tend to miss some of them, but Front offers a new way to notify every email, discussion, mentioning, or tag that you really would not want to miss.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Cons
Front
  • Their integration to Salesforce is lacking. As the owner of our productivity tools and how they are used, I have very little control over what things to enforce, or even change what objects are available. For example, we don't use Cases in Salesforce but with the Salesforce integration the Cases object shows up. There's no need to have that there. I've heard there is a roadmap improvement forthcoming.
  • One of our uses is for our sales development reps to prospect with visitors. Because of the high volume of inquiries it's difficult for our reps to efficiently manage all their follow ups. It would be nice if we could run a "scheduled campaign" where a predesigned cadence of email follow ups can be sent automatically. To be clear, they do have a scheduling capability, but it just can't be used as a prebuilt option.
  • Integrations to other systems require you have a user account to those systems. We have SSO and therefore we don't always have a user account. For example, out integration to Jira uses SSO so we don't each have individual Jira logins. This is an outage for us.
Read full review
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
Front
No answers on this topic
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
Front
It's very easy to understand and use by new customer support agents as well. Be it a technology, product, or marketing person, we have trained most of the company folks to read and respond to customer conversations in their free time with the help of the Front app. It is also easy to set up for an admin and manage his/her team with communication rules.
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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
Front
No answers on this topic
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
Front
No answers on this topic
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
Front
The support is good, and it's definitely prompt, but still lags when it comes to technical requirements, as I guess they are slow in developing newer features fast. So no complaints in terms of responsiveness, but yeah, at times it's not very helpful when you need certain features or are blocked on things which can't be unblocked.
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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
Front
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
Front
No answers on this topic
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
Front
I have only used Gmail in the past and Front is any day better than Gmail in terms of the interface and ease of usage. The ability to send scheduling links and comments between the email threads makes it better than Gmail. The shared inbox also makes it easier for the entire team to understand the kind of email each CSM is receiving and sending
Read full review
Zendesk
Although a bit pricey, it does the job well. We are happy with the results it provides; our team is also quite satisfied on how easy it is to use, login and start working. Compared to the other two we have tried, Zendesk takes the cake. It makes Customer Management much easier, more efficient, and more effective.
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Return on Investment
Front
  • Saved our executive team considerable amount of time chasing support questions through different channels.
  • Gave our team clear accountability for who was lead on a support issue and how to escalate.
  • Customer regularly say our support is the best in the industry.
Read full review
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
Read full review
ScreenShots

Front Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

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