Salesforce Experience Cloud vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly Salesforce Experience Cloud or Salesforce Community Cloud) is an online forum powered by Salesforce that enables businesses to connect with their employees, customers, partner organizations, and prospects. Designed to help facilitate communication and information sharing, customers can ask questions and request help, administrators can integrate data from third-party apps, and employees can collaborate across projects and…N/A
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
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Overall, Salesforce is the most effective solution since it is part of an integrated stack to house and activate CRM audiences within an email, but also expand upon it via the DMP. This can allow for cross channel reach and exposure frequency measurement. If we were to partner …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
As our client already used Salesforce CRM, it is a simple integration tasks to link Community to CRM. As such this was a quick deployment with the base data already being present and easily linked to.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
I’m sure Salesforce does this as well but we were able to create many macros for Zendesk, that helped our agents interact with customers on a very consistent basis. We haven’t quite got that far in our organization, but I do think it would be useful to our agents.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
Zendesk was far better at case management.

Atlassian Confluence for knowledge base was not perfect but it was better than Community Cloud for search and appearance for the FAQ.
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
We were already using Salesforce for other reasons so this was a natural choice. We didn't see any huge advantages in the other products so it just wasn't any reason to consider other products seriously. The pricing is reasonable too. Salesforce is really good about keeping …
Chose Salesforce Experience Cloud
[We chose Salesforce Communities because of] Seamless integration with our CRM.
Zendesk Suite

No answer on this topic

Features
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
173 Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.3172 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.2118 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.7119 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.2122 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.4173 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.2172 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.2
157 Ratings
2% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.1151 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.3144 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
169 Ratings
9% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings9.1138 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.471 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.4112 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.3166 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings9.0128 Ratings
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Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
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User Ratings
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(71 ratings)
9.1
(208 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(15 ratings)
8.8
(82 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(14 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.1
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(18 ratings)
5.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 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
9.4
(4 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
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Salesforce
For well-suited, this product is great for your external clientele groups that you would not necessarily want to have a high user fee rate for. So basically general public or a group that will be authorized to come in and just do a few things here and there, but you don't necessarily want them access to all of your systems and your data points for groups that it would not be a great use for. I'd say probably your high level internal staff, they're going to be using a lot of the backend functionality automations, evaluating data, managing data, and doing custom inputs. That's just not what's intended for.
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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
Salesforce
  • Easy to use, just like Salesforce's other products. Many users can sit down and figure it out in no time, and with a little training become power users.
  • Fast and secure - Salesforce is a leader in the cloud world so you get consistently fast results and security that is top notch in the industry.
  • Accessible from anywhere - if you use cloud CMS already this is a no-brainer, but for those that do in-house CMS still, this is a major difference. Mobile access from anywhere on the planet without a VPN is something you just can't do without the cloud.
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.
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Cons
Salesforce
  • Unlike other CMS platforms like Wordpress and Adobe Experience Manager, Salesforce does not provide a fully featured editor with a drag-and-drop design tool.
  • Our content creators and marketing team often struggle with permissions and how to distribute content across different experience cloud sites.
  • Also, there is no side-to-side comparison view for content editors to update the content easily.
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
Salesforce
Renewal exercise is already underway. Platform is to ubiquitous to not leverage, especially at a Fortune 50 firm
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.
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Usability
Salesforce
Strengths: - Intuitive for Salesforce Users – If you’re already working within the Salesforce ecosystem, the Salesforce CMS is easy to navigate, with a clean UI, drag-and-drop content management, and reusable assets for quick updates. - Seamless Integration – Since it connects natively with Experience Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and CRM, it allows for efficient multi-channel content distribution without needing extra third-party tools. - AI-Powered Personalization – The ability to deliver dynamic content based on user profiles and engagement data is a huge plus, making content delivery more relevant and impactful. Challenges: - Learning Curve for New Users – If you're not already familiar with Salesforce, the interface can feel overwhelming, requiring training to fully leverage all features. - Limited Customization & Workflow Automation – While it works well for structured content, advanced approval workflows and deep editorial customization are limited compared to enterprise CMS platforms like Adobe Experience Manager. - Media & Design Limitations – Salesforce CMS is not as robust for managing rich media-heavy content, which can be frustrating for teams needing more flexibility in multimedia presentation.
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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
Salesforce
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
Salesforce
Again, since we provide and recommend solutions, I can't speak to every client's individual experience, but can offer general reflections as to keep their collaborations private, that they are satisfied with the experience. We hear a lot about how this system helps to encourage collaborations between their own business partners, customers, and internal members, and enables quality integrations with other products that help drive revenue.
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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.
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Support Rating
Salesforce
Although support from Salesforce itself can be quite unresponsive sometimes, the community hub is incredibly helpful. The large user base of Salesforce products contribute to troubleshooting and the forums are a powerful tool for finding solutions and possible bugs and response times can be quite fast compared to your regular support channels.
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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
Salesforce
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
Salesforce
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
Salesforce
Salesforce Experience Cloud was selected due to its tight integration with our existing Salesforce CRM platform. Customization of the portal was much, much simpler compared to Sharepoint - especially with role-based security parameters that are ultimately inherited based on attributes within the Salesforce CRM platform. Salesforce Experience Cloud was a natural fit for this customer-facing purpose.
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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
Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
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Return on Investment
Salesforce
  • Time savings for our customer success team - no need to continually follow up on tickets as customers have access to see status themselves
  • In the future, it will also allow us to create more impactful knowledge articles that will increase self-service over ticket creation
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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