Olark vs. Zendesk Chat

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Olark
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Olark is a website live chat tool for engaging website visitors while they browse. It can be used to to track leads, drive sales, provide support.
$15
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
OlarkZendesk Chat
Editions & Modules
Self Service
$19.00
Per Agent Per Month
Lite
$0
per user
Basic
$14
per user
Advanced
$25
per user
Premium
$55
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
OlarkZendesk Chat
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details—The pricing above is price per user per month. You will get a discount when you opt for annual payment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
OlarkZendesk Chat
Considered Both Products
Olark
Chose Olark
Our organization just made the switch over to Zendesk and Zendesk Chat less than a month ago, so it is difficult to provide an accurate comparison. I will say though, that Zendesk has more robust reporting and far more options for integration. I am confident that Zendesk Chat …
Chose Olark
Olark really doesn't stand up against these options. It feels outdated compared to most of them. All of the competition offers page breaks, while Olark does not. I don't really understand why they don't have this simple feature. I can only guess that it's a methodology thing, …
Chose Olark
Olark is more user friendly and very affordable for our purpose of use.
Chose Olark
I have not used zopim extensively, but my company has been looking into converting to ZenDesk. The one positive difference I did notice with zopim was the ability to easily email a transcript of a chat - and the user has the option to request it independently of the operator.
Zendesk Chat
Chose Zendesk Chat
Olark Chat - Not as many customization options as Zendesk
Salesforce - More expensive
Syntellect - Old application based system instead of a cloud based software
Chose Zendesk Chat
Zendesk is one of the most expensive providers on the market, but also the most functional one. We have 6 business facts. Based on them we composed 17 needs (functions) from the chat provider. Zendesk was one of the leaders in the overall evaluation, while it was cheaper than …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
OlarkZendesk Chat
Small Businesses
Gist
Gist
Score 9.6 out of 10
Gist
Gist
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
OlarkZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(17 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(5 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(2 ratings)
8.4
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
OlarkZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
Olark
Olark chat is easy to set up and use. You can have more than one user logged in to monitor the chat on different computers. This makes a fast response time more likely. Although you have to be sure to keep your volume up on the computer so you hear the sound letting you know there's a chat waiting. I like that you can see the customers path through the website and you can put clickable links while you are in a chat to guide the customer to a product or a help page. Plus you can see if they actually went there. This makes it easier to upsell
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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.
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Pros
Olark
  • Olark is user friendly for both sides of the CHAT conversation. If you are initiating the chat, or the one receiving the chat, it is extremely easy to follow and use. There are many different levels of computer use comprehension and Olark is for every level.
  • Olark has reporting features to allow you to check the quality of your employees chat abilities as well as their productivity. It provides feedback for the employee themselves to also see how they are doing and take any suggestions the customer may leave for them regarding their chat experience.
  • Olark is very affordable and offers you the option, at a low cost, to look bigger and more professional that you even are. We were a smaller company and has the chat option with Olark and now have grown tremendously and STILL have the Olark chat option. Olark allowed us to grow and provide professionalism to our customers .
  • The Olark program allows you to set up quick responses to keep your customer from waiting, and to allow your employees to not have to retype the same response over and over. It is a great program that the employees really enjoy as well. It reminds you if you forgot to log out when you left your desk and provides your customer a quick note giving them the option to send the chat as an email inquiry instead, so you don't miss a thing.
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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.
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Cons
Olark
  • Not really an area of improvement for Olark specifically, but I will offer that it is incredibly important to keep in mind your company's "shopping hours" or peak traffic times (there is a Reports feature on the software that allows you to analyze peak traffic times).
  • Transcript history can be a little tricky - if you're searching for a specific past conversation, sometimes you may get multiple search results and have to sift through them until you find exactly what you're looking for.
  • I'd also offer that you will occasionally come across folks that are on your site to cyberbully or say nonsensical things. While there isn't an absolute fullproof way to deal with this, Olark does offer a nice "block" feature to disregard any unwanted conversations.
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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
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Likelihood to Renew
Olark
To be honest, renewal decisions are not currently within my power. Hypothetically speaking, I'm very comfortable with the platform, have used it daily for nearly a year, and would see no reason to switch to anything else. The small criticisms I had are not significant enough to deter me from using Olark. It's a user friendly, effective tool for our department.
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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.
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Support Rating
Olark
Our organization does not have any complaints about Olark's Support. Anytime we reached out to them for assistance, we received a prompt, helpful reply! As mentioned previously, we used Olark fairly basically so we didn't have too much need to work with their support team other than a few general questions here and there. They were always pleasant to work with.
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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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Alternatives Considered
Olark
Olark has an easier implementation process and has better functionality such as the ability to send commands through the platform to either create a ticket in your CRM or push an opportunity to salesforce; you're even able to 'push' the end user to a web page. Implementing their SDK is a snap as well.
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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.
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Return on Investment
Olark
  • Olark allows my customer support team to respond to inquiries much faster than before.
  • We have seen an uptick in sales as we are able to address more questions from website visitors.
  • We have changed the design of our website based on chat feedback and questions obtained through Olark.
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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.
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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