KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade distribution with minimal end-user disruption, featuring remote replication for multi-site upgrades and rollouts. KACE SMA may be bundled with KACE Cloud Mobile Device Management (MDM) to form a complete UEM…N/A
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.4 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
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)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
KACE Systems Management ApplianceZendesk Suite
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Zendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
KACE Systems Management Appliance
Chose KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that …
Zendesk Suite

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Zendesk Suite
IT Asset Management
Comparison of IT Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
8.6
12 Ratings
12% above category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Software and hardware inventory tracking10.012 Ratings00 Ratings
License management9.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset lifecycle monitoring8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Contract management6.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset relationship management10.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.4
115 Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.8114 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.570 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.576 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.272 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.4115 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.0114 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.3
102 Ratings
9% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.298 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.491 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.1
113 Ratings
8% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings7.887 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.239 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.269 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.7111 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.581 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Zendesk Suite
Small Businesses
ConnectWise RMM
ConnectWise RMM
Score 7.2 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.6 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Score 9.6 out of 10
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Zendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(12 ratings)
8.5
(153 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(40 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(3 ratings)
8.4
(26 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
9.5
(4 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
KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)Zendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Quest
I think it has added value for any organization. It reduced our Tech Support cost by: -Supporting users anywhere -Reducing users downtime as well keep them informed with the status of their tickets -Managing software and hardware actively -Processing automation -deploy mass software installs, patching or updates - Provide approved software's to users to install without IT help
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Zendesk
Zendesk works best when you have end users reaching out to a dedicated team of support reps. Leveraging AI & Bots to help gain efficiency comes naturally to Zendesk. Teams that rely on dedicated support from an individual tend to struggle more, pushing against the theme of democratized support. Teams that do a lot of outbound communication generally find challenges with things like reporting on SLAs unless they are at the enterprise level. Works great for startups and non-profits alike!
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Pros
Quest
  • Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
  • Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
  • Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.
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
Quest
  • The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
  • The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.
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
Quest
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
Quest
Overall, the software is simple to understand and use. That said, most vendors have been slowly updating their user interfaces to HTML5 so that they have a clean updated look and feel. This is where KACE falls short in that the UI is great for a packaged software 10 years ago. This isn't a major limitation as the software is really meant primarily for technology users.
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Zendesk
ZenDesk Suite is very easy to use, it is intuitive and requires little formal training if you don't want it. It has taken years to get one of the main functionality that I want (initiate outbound text) and still is just promised in Q3 of this year. So seems kind of slow to respond to customers needs in this regard. Same with outbound calls from iOS, the first ticket requesting it is a couple years old and as far as I know there is nothing in the pipeline to bring this to life.
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Reliability and Availability
Quest
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.
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Performance
Quest
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.
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Support Rating
Quest
KACE does exactly what you need it to do, it maintains your computer environment. You can set patch schedules, inventory computers, setup software catalogs; basically everything you need to ensure the computers on your network are being actively managed. This is all with little need for constant configuration or updating the setup.
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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
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Online Training
Quest
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
Quest
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
Quest
We have selected this software because it rolls several different systems into one. We have a helpdesk system with this and an asset and inventory management system as well. We pay one price for the whole system instead of paying multiple companies different amounts that would have totaled more than we pay for the single system.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Quest
  • KACE has saved us from having to spend several days of employee hours in crafting DVDs and duplicating them (100+ DVDs)
  • KACE has saved us on the postage required to send out those DVDs for every update (monthly) to all of our customers electronically
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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

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