Kayako vs. Zendesk Chat

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Kayako
Score 2.0 out of 10
N/A
Kayako is a help desk / ticketing product and is available is both SaaS and on-premise configurations. Is is built in PHP and uses my SQL. The product competes with HelpSpot, ZohoSupport, Freshdesk and Zendesk. The Kayako Engage edition may be deployed as a live chat system without ticketing at a reduced cost, featuring click-to-call and site visitor monitoring for customer targeting and engagement.
$29
per month
Zendesk Chat
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) is a live chat tool developed by the Singaporean company also called Zopim, acquired by Zendesk in April 2014.
$11.20
per month
Pricing
KayakoZendesk Chat
Editions & Modules
Inbox
$15.00
Per User Per Month
Growth
$30.00
Per User Per Month
Scale
$60.00
Per User Per Month
Lite
$0
per user
Basic
$14
per user
Advanced
$25
per user
Premium
$55
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KayakoZendesk Chat
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsThe pricing above is price per user per month. You will get a discount when you opt for annual payment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KayakoZendesk Chat
Considered Both Products
Kayako
Chose Kayako
Kayako's interface is far less complex than Zendesk, so it looked like a good platform. Unfortunately, the features didn't work and their support team is the worst. I went back to Zendesk and I got everything to work including their chat function. Zendesk just works. You don't …
Zendesk Chat

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
KayakoZendesk Chat
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Kayako
2.0
11 Ratings
119% below category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets1.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory1.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation1.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission7.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response1.011 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Kayako
1.0
9 Ratings
154% below category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
External knowledge base1.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base1.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Kayako
1.0
10 Ratings
154% below category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Customer portal1.07 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR1.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration1.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support1.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration1.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KayakoZendesk Chat
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Gist
Gist
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KayakoZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
1.0
(22 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.8
(11 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
7.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
2.1
(4 ratings)
8.4
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KayakoZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
Kayako
When it works, It's without a doubt a great help desk solution. It is perfect for our usage, and have rolled it out company-wide. It's great if you have multiple departments. We have it set up so most items come through a single desk that then hands out tickets to their proper department. There may be cheaper options for smaller organizations but for one that is as service-driven as ours, we really think Kayako is a great fit.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk Chat is suited for all the support teams that provide real-time assistance. Like if someone wants to block the debit/credit card, it is a high-priority case that needs real-time assistance. Whereas issues like close my account, and invoice request doesn't need real-time assistance, where Zendesk tickets support will be perfect.
Read full review
Pros
Kayako
  • Gives a very good report on an individual level of what is being done for a customer or corporate issue.
  • Easy to understand who has what, what the tickets are about, how long they have been opened and how many times the customer/employee have gone back and forth with each other.
  • Nice dashboard view.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Extremely fluid chat interface allows for easy communication.
  • It can be used directly on a website page or as a widget.
  • Allows the end user to translate the chat into their own native language.
  • Notifies you with pending chats via on-screen notifications and sound effects.
Read full review
Cons
Kayako
  • Departments need a bit of work. Even though you can have multiple departments, the only changes that can be made are globally. If you want independent queues within the departments, you have to do a lot of work that can be very confusing.
  • Survey system is not up to speed. Kayako really needs to add Net Promoter Score into their system. Also, if a staff user removes their name from an incident ticket, it removes them from the survey so you really can't even get a good estimate of how well your staff is in the eyes of the customer.
  • Very difficult to implement when you already have a customer base. Setting them up in organizations is difficult. Also, the sign-up for new customers is quirky. If you send an email to Kayako, it will say you are not an authorized user, however, it will store your email address. If you try to send an email a second time, it will go through. This is one of many reasons why we decided to move from Kayako to Oracle Service Cloud.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Linking with a telephone, so the agent is only working on 1 channel at a time
  • More simplified way to create and use templates
  • Link users who may have provided us a new/different email from what we have on file for them
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Kayako
  • We are grandfathered in on their old Software-assurance pricing and our continued use costs us only a few hundred dollars a year (excluding hosting expenses)
  • Our team's processes are now heavily ingrained in the system
  • We have not been shown a more compelling option that is more cost-effective while still offering all the features we've come to expect
Read full review
Zendesk
Due to staffing issues, we have temporarily stopped offering chat as an available channel. We're also interested in the best ways to integrate chat with our FAQs and AI to provide quick responses, either during off-hours or prior to speaking with a live agent. I've also found that reporting is rather limited where some of the interesting and useful data made available and visible during the chat cannot be pulled post-chat; it would be great to pull a high-level report so we can analyze this data.
Read full review
Usability
Kayako
I did not come from an IT background and I picked this program up quickly
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Kayako
They are really good, but it takes a while to get back, because of the large time difference to the Eastern US. However, they are very helpful.
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Kayako
  • We didn't have to use support too much, but when we did, they were able to assist us and help us make everything work.
  • Mostly we used their Online KB and step by step instructions to get all of our issues resolved.
Read full review
Zendesk
Getting assistance and/or troubleshooting anything with Zendesk can be quite frustrating. In my years of experience with Zednesk, I have almost never found the answer to my question without going through multiple articles, ultimately getting frustrated and reaching out to our contact for more assistance. So for a consumer, the support is not as relieving as Zendesk Chat is to our customers in getting the questions answered by us.
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Implementation Rating
Kayako
Three years in we are about as happy with Kayako as we could be. We've had several employee's leave and on-boarding new hires was easier than it has ever been as things are uniform and consistent across the entire application.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Kayako
We were using Spiceworks for a few years before switching to Kayako but found that it wasn't as customizable or as user friendly for our customers. The SNMP scanning and inventory features with Spiceworks was nice but we needed more of a Help Desk that would allow us to scale our services to more companies.
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Zendesk
I prefer Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) over Talkdesk, as it provides customers with written proof of their conversation and customers are able to rate the conversation once it is done. Also, it's easier to find a previous conversation in Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) than in Talkdesk.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Kayako
  • Tickets were definitely responded to faster once we implemented the audible alarm that would go off when new tickets came into the queue. This was possible because of the API.
  • Since the system was email based we could set our monitoring software up to generate tickets automatically via email for customers when it found something out of the ordinary.
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Zendesk
  • Positive impact - Compared to our old system, this newly updated system provides features and functionality that has increased our agent productivity and provided customer insight like we've never had before. This has resulted in fewer hold times and higher customer satisfaction.
  • Negative impact - Our reporting team still struggles with obtaining the right information from time to time with the chats. This leads to loss of productivity and more resources dedicated to reporting.
  • Positive impact - Due to Zopim's embed, we are able to more successfully place them on the appropriate self-service portals and pages, reaching a larger audience, and being more readily available to answer our client's questions. This has resulted in an increase in our self-service portal usage, driving down the phone and email support channels, which in turn reduces support costs.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Zendesk Chat Screenshots

Screenshot of How Zopim Chat Widget looks on the website.Screenshot of This is how the chat window looks like to your visitorsScreenshot of This is a screenshot of the visitor list.Screenshot of