Microsoft Azure vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.7 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
Microsoft AzureZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Suite Team
$69
per month per agent
Suite Growth
$115
per month per agent
Suite Professional
$149
per month per agent
Suite Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft AzureZendesk Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft AzureZendesk Suite
Features
Microsoft AzureZendesk Suite
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
8.4
28 Ratings
2% above category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.227 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing8.725 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.226 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.327 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.425 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.927 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.627 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.225 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
171 Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.2170 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.2117 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.6118 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.2121 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.4171 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.3170 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.4
155 Ratings
5% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.4149 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.5142 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
167 Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings9.0137 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.570 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.4111 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.3164 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings9.0127 Ratings
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Microsoft AzureZendesk Suite
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Enterprises
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User Ratings
Microsoft AzureZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(97 ratings)
9.0
(209 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(17 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(37 ratings)
8.8
(82 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(2 ratings)
9.1
(14 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(28 ratings)
5.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(19 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft AzureZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
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Zendesk
Being a customer support agent, I found it very good when it comes to send an email or call or chat- with the user. I can do all that from the one single platform which is so easy and time saving for you. It does not take much time to use this, We can chat- with the user and at the same time we can send an email to them as well.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
  • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
  • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
  • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
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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.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
  • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
  • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Is there a way for AEs and CSMs to be informed in a weekly summary of all their accounts and any tickets? Example: Disney submitted a ticket on XYZ. Google has an urgent issue on X still unresolved.
  • Is there a way for CSMs or AEs to have a Dashboard that's specific to their accounts instead of seeing all the tickets in the queue that are not relevant to them?
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
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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.
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Usability
Microsoft
As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
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Zendesk
Pros: The agent interface is sleek, contemporary, and relatively easy to learn compared to many other enterprise tools. For common tasks, admins are given point-and-click options- adding fields, modifying workflows, constructing macros. The knowledge base (Guide) editor is easy to use for non-developers. Drawbacks: Once you move past the initial things - complex automations, reporting/analytics in Explore, and/or customizations integrating the API, it requires much more advanced training to use successfully. Navigating between the different modules (Support, Explore, Chat, Guide) can feel very disconnected; often you are reminded that it really is a "suite" of products brought together -not really one unified platform. If you're using multiple brands managing simultaneous support tickets, or heavily customizing workflows to meet your brand, you may run into a bit of struggle with usability. So: it's a lot more user friendly than the palaces (Salesforce Service Cloud, ServiceNow), but is not used as quickly or with as much streamlined flow as a product made for a small shop. So if you are looking for a great balance, this is a good option if you are a net new organization or an organization on their way to scaling from 15 - 50 employee. Expect some elbow grease from the admin team once learning, adapting, and working efficiently once you move past the basics with your support tickets and initial customizations.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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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
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
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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
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
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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
Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
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Zendesk
The customisable reporting every time. Our leadership reply on me to run my team and want to know what customers are telling us so they can elevate our products. We have extensive custom reports that tie up all aspects of our product and customer journeys. I've not found another product that allows me as much freedom as Zendesk Suite explore does, so far.
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
  • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
  • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
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Zendesk
  • Integrating other AI solutions for an organization with high volumes can cost about USD5000 monthly. With Zendesk AI and by building onto the same with AI powered apps built for Zendesk Suite we save a projected USD4000 monthly.
  • Robust Zendesk APIs have enabled us to integrate our internal system with a customized app saving us hundreds of hours every quarter spent loading customer profiles that are not loaded instantly from the app.
  • Plug and play apps like Round robin save us weeks of sprint delay timelines as they do not require additional coding or developer support to install and start using.
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ScreenShots

Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of the 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