Kustomer vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Kustomer
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Kustomer is a customer service CRM platform built for managing high support volume by optimizing experiences throughout the customer service journey. Kustomer was acquired by Facebook in late 2020, but spun out in 2023 and re-launched as an independent entity, Kustomer, LLC.
$89
per month per user
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk is a customer support solution with built-in ticketing, conversational messaging, and live chat, designed to help businesses of all sizes and industries deliver personalized service at scale. Zendesk's AI agents are trained in CX to help Service teams resolve customer issues faster and more accurately while still providing a human-centered experience. Zendesk ultimately aims to help businesses improve time to value, reduce effort per ticket, and keep costs low.
$69
per month per agent
Pricing
KustomerZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
Enterprise
$89
per month, per user
Ultimate
$139
per month, per user
Suite Team
$69
per month per agent
Suite Professional
$149
per month per agent
Suite Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KustomerZendesk Suite
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KustomerZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Kustomer
Chose Kustomer
Apps like Intercom, Zendesk, and Gorgios all treat customer inquiries as tickets, just tracking that one issue or interaction with a customer. Kustomer treats each customer as an individual, which allows us to provide top-notch customer service. Customers love that we're able …
Chose Kustomer
The organization has chosen Kustomer, and I believe that they have not made a mistake. I think that Kustomer is easy to use and understand. I have heard about Zendesk but I do not have any experience. In the future, I will definitely recommend people use Kustomer because of our …
Chose Kustomer
That fact that I had to add 3 tags for one tool says a lot. We had 3 different avenues with Zendesk. So not only was the order information, shipping information, and more in another site or page, so was the live support. This just created a lot of confusion, especially when …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is far more intuitive, personal, and holistic than Zendesk. As a company who has a lot of interaction with a single customer, it is such an advantage to take the customer approach rather than a single ticket approach. Zendesk was very limited in a lot of the actions …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer simply does more than any other platform I've been able to work with. Sure some others will give you a handful of neat tricks built in for managing a channel or two but those rarely offer any external integrative capacity or limit what you can do in connections. …
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer was better suited to the personalized nature of the service that we're trying to provide.
Chose Kustomer
Moving from Zendesk to Kustomer was driven by the clarity that the customer timeline brings for advocate engagement alongside the custom workflow abilities.
Chose Kustomer
Zendesk did not give a big picture of the customer. It was more of a ticketing platform, and only gave statistics of those conversations. We were unable to track customer sentiment, or other attributes of the customer.
Chose Kustomer
Kustomer is far more scalable and flexible than Zendesk, and it provides a real omni-channel experience far from the "Zendesk for mails, Zendesk Chat for chats" we were used to. On the automation and customisation features, it gets even clearer how Kustomer can deal with a lot …
Chose Kustomer
The sales rep did a great job of making us feel heard and instilling trust. We felt that we would be valued as a client instead of just one of thousands, and a small company at that. When we signed they promised and delivered on an additional channel that they hadn't previously …
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is very similar to the companies we listed, but, in my opinion, there are a lot of things that these companies do right that Zendesk Suite fails at. Particularly reporting and phone systems. We have looked into Five9 in great detail to replace our current phone …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
KustomerZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.2
18 Ratings
2% above category average
Zendesk Suite
8.7
154 Ratings
8% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.317 Ratings9.0153 Ratings
Expert directory8.314 Ratings8.0102 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications8.513 Ratings8.4106 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.013 Ratings8.4104 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission8.118 Ratings9.3153 Ratings
Ticket response8.318 Ratings9.2152 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.2
14 Ratings
6% above category average
Zendesk Suite
8.4
139 Ratings
8% above category average
External knowledge base8.114 Ratings8.4133 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.314 Ratings8.4127 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Kustomer
8.2
18 Ratings
6% above category average
Zendesk Suite
8.7
150 Ratings
12% above category average
Customer portal8.611 Ratings8.8121 Ratings
IVR8.310 Ratings8.459 Ratings
Social integration7.314 Ratings8.097 Ratings
Email support9.718 Ratings9.1147 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration6.913 Ratings8.9112 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KustomerZendesk Suite
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.8 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KustomerZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(39 ratings)
8.9
(192 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.9
(2 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(5 ratings)
8.8
(65 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(2 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
6.4
(2 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
9.6
(7 ratings)
6.4
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.6
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.3
(2 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.9
(2 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
7.9
(2 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KustomerZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Kustomer, LLC
I would say the greatest strength of Kustomer is its flexibility. In the hands of a skilled admin, it can be adapted to tons and tons of different use cases. I've been able to make custom displays for different groups of agents, produce complex cross sections of users, draw interesting data relationships combining marketing contacts and customer-initiated contacts. For example, there's really no other data source in our company which could tell you which users received a specific promo code and checked out with it, received their delivery within 14 days and then can related that to the number of times they contacted us about using our product. At the intersection of communication, marketing, data, and relationship-management, Kustomer shines at the center. I would say it falls short when you are trying to coordinate multiple "side conversations" with multiple sources to resolve an issue. This is a tough task for any type of platform, but if you're maintaining 3 different email chains with a 3PL partner, the customer, and a separate internal conversation, it would be confusing anyway!
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Zendesk
One specific thing I love about Zendesk Suite lately is the ability to use AI "Enhance writing" it allows me to freehand a response and then have it help me sound more formal or friendly, this is very useful, not only for those free handed ones, but also when you need to repeat the same information to a customer, it can help you make it sound slightly different. I don't like that when a ticket comes, even if you have the shortcut to toggle between chat and email, it doesn't actually toggle.
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Pros
Kustomer, LLC
  • All customer data (past orders, communication with customer service, rewards account data) is in one place. This helps agents avoid confusion and reduces the number of tabs they need to open.
  • The Knowledge Base (or K Base) is very helpful. Any time we roll out a new policy or have a limited-time promotion, we can add all the relevant information and worksheets there for the convenience of the agents. That way they can stay in a chat while looking up the answer to a question.
  • We can seamlessly move from chat into email if the customer leaves or the queue times are too long. All the interactions will stay on the customer profile page, so they are kept up to date.
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
Kustomer, LLC
  • Small chat window--maybe the ability to chat in real-time with the person who received your ticket would help.
  • Different teams could have differently colored notes.
  • The notification bell could be a bit bigger. It's hard to keep track sometimes, when a lot of notes pile on.
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
Kustomer, LLC
I believe at this time, Kustomer is doing a good job. I really love its functionality at the moment.
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
Kustomer, LLC
There is a learning curve, but it is more than worth it, especially to have a dedicated resource pointed at Kustomer and any other software it interacts with. The basic implementation is useful, and powerful - certainly a MASSIVE upgrade over taking care of your customers in an email inbox or shuffling between multiple windows and applications! It is also set up really well to grow and reconfigure with your business. I'm a big fan.
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk Suite is a straightforward solution that provides agents with everything they need on the same screen. Allowing an agent to navigate one tab, one screen and switch between features, pin favorite features while viewing the customer profile and details in 360degrees. A view like this empowers agents to support customers better and in a more composed state.
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Reliability and Availability
Kustomer, LLC
I gave it a 10 rating because it is very helpful and the availability is there when needed. I have never had issues with application errors or unplanned outages so far.
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
Kustomer, LLC
Kustomer Performances need improvement. The pages do load very slowly but that might be because of the information they carry. If Kustomer integrates with other software or systems it does slow the performance. They need to find a solution to this.
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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.
Read full review
Support Rating
Kustomer, LLC
I did not reach out to Kustomer support when we had an issue. Still, whenever we provide feedback to our manager regarding what can improve based on our experience using Kustomer, our manager always comments that Kustomer support always replies with some positive feedback based on our suggestions.
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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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In-Person Training
Kustomer, LLC
Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Kustomer, LLC
The best training I did was online. Videos teach as well as explain how everything works and what Kustomer's functions are.
Read full review
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
Kustomer, LLC
Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
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
Kustomer, LLC
Apps like Intercom, Zendesk, and Gorgios all treat customer inquiries as tickets, just tracking that one issue or interaction with a customer. Kustomer treats each customer as an individual, which allows us to provide top-notch customer service. Customers love that we're able to be more conversational and informal, while still solving their issues quickly. It also helps us build relationships with customers and increases repeat orders.
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.
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Scalability
Kustomer, LLC
Because customer is flexible and scalable
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Kustomer, LLC
  • We’re getting so much positive feedback — which is not something you traditionally associate with a customer care team — because we’re making it effortless for customers to deliver both positive and negative feedback, and we can now resolve the bad feedback really really quickly.
  • Primarily from our increased efficiency with Kustomer, we’ve seen a significant reduction of $3 to $4 for every cost per contact.
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Zendesk
  • We have been able to deliver IT accurately and onetime
  • Our customers have been able to provide feedback on a given ticket and helped us build a better support structure
  • Zendesk Suite has allowed us to be more efficient in our every day operations
Read full review
ScreenShots

Kustomer Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a customer profile within Kustomer.Screenshot of Example of how Kustomer’s automated chats can save agents time by handling less complex requests automatically.

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