Salesforce Experience Cloud vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Salesforce Experience Cloud
Score 8.3 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 8.1 out of 10
N/A
The Zendesk Support suite is a cloud-based customer support software built for better customer relationships. Designed to improve customer satisfaction and to support customers on any channel: text SMS, web, mobile app, phone, email, social media. The vendor states more than 200,000 companies such as Uber, Groupon, Box, Airbnb, and Slack are using Zendesk to lower their support costs, raise productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. Zendesk offers a full suite of products to meet customer…
$55
per month agent
Pricing
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Support Team (Foundational Support Only)
$19
per month agent
Suite Team
$55
per month agent
Support Professional
$55
per month agent
Suite Growth
$89
per month agent
Suite Professional
$115
per month agent
Support Enterprise
$115
per month agent
Suite Enterprise
$169
per month agent
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 Details
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

Top Pros
Top Cons
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
8.0
108 Ratings
2% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.3107 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.067 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.273 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.669 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.9108 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.7107 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
7.7
96 Ratings
4% below category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings7.692 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings7.887 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Experience Cloud
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
7.6
106 Ratings
5% below category average
Customer portal00 Ratings7.283 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings7.235 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.065 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.3104 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.278 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Small Businesses
WordPress VIP
WordPress VIP
Score 8.8 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.1 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(51 ratings)
8.0
(146 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(40 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(4 ratings)
10.0
(19 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(5 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
7.7
(17 ratings)
9.0
(29 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.4
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Salesforce Experience CloudZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Salesforce
Salesforce Experience Cloud is well-suited for organizations that have clients who periodically or routinely need to access historical data or documents. The product also offers an exceptionally effective tool to engage with customers around support/service issues and the entire Case management functionality built into the Salesforce platform. The product might be less well-suited in environments where there is exceptionally high staff turnover within customer accounts, or where there is a substantial lack of very basic computer skills.
Read full review
Zendesk
The ability to Merge tickets is a good to have feature. Navigation is easy from one ticket to another ticket without having to go back to the list. Admin options should be more clear, internal menu navigation is complex and creates more confusion while arranging the sections and articles. Channel Management is good but Forum management can be brought in with more flexibility. More Apps integration or flexibility in APIs so that a newbie can also integrate the application into the software. A redundant software that brings in 360-degree communication of support/service concepts into practicality however if the option to compile texting with platforms like ringcentral, Twilio or Dialpad will be an awesome thing to share ticket updates with custom templates.
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Pros
Salesforce
  • Complete integration with the Salesforce ecosystem. Data displayed in your Community portal reflects records from a Sales Cloud organization
  • Highly customizable. A Community Cloud portal can be totally customized both visually and with different funcionalities with little to no coding skills required
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Reporting and Analytics
  • Ease of Agent Training and Use
  • Able to add multiple brands with related custom reports and dashboards
  • Adding a new brand and basic help center is easy to do without the need of an expert or web team
  • Ability of agents and supervisors to see customer history across multiple channels
Read full review
Cons
Salesforce
  • The documentation for implementing Experience Cloud can be a bit confusing as their rebranding hasn't made it's way into all articles, resulting in different terminology being used to refer to the same thing
  • Some things are not as intuitive regarding their customizability, so there's a bit of a learning curve (i.e. Lightning apps can't be used to customize layouts in Experience Cloud)
Read full review
Zendesk
  • I think the Graphical User Interface could use a facelift. It not the most aesthetically pleasing platform in my experience.
  • Particular things like where the default is when you click on each and every dropdown menu.
  • The macro integration could be a little more simplified.
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Likelihood to Renew
Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
Zendesk is super easy to use and navigate. I really enjoy the sleek layout, the ability to tailor tickets, the macro option, and the quick key guide they have to make your use of time even more effective. My whole team loves working with Zendesk and rarely ever has problems.
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Usability
Salesforce
Usability is pretty streamlined, especially if you're familiar with other Salesforce products, but even if not, take it from me, as I just entered the technological space about two years ago, that this product is pretty simple to learn. You don't have to jump in with your head underwater. Small wins and learnings along the way are what foster long-term understandings and enable your evolution alongside the product. I definitely recommend Salesforce Trailhead along with it
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Zendesk
As an agent it's very simple to use. As an admin it's also easy to use, but sometimes lacks some functionality that would be nice to have such as expanded native 2 way sync functionality for many major apps that are commonly used today like HubSpot and Salesforce. The ability to add followers to tickets to they get updates and are in the know without the customer seeing this agent cc'd is a nice touch. This ensures additional visibility and easily following the communication without having to appear as a CC to the customer, who could accidentally remove that person in a response, thus breaking the visibility
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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
It's delivered on our original requirements and we've found ways to grow its usage. We continue to build on our original success and we can report our data out to leadership to show a true return on investment which is great for growing support and expanding uses for the system.
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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
We have weekly calls with our Salesforce reps. They bring new ideas to the table and help with taxonomy builds. They have also answered many questions and connected us to the right people for us to grow our knowledge and utilization of the platform. They are a good partner overall in comparison.
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Zendesk
Every time I contacted them they were not only very responsive and knowledgable, but always seemed to have a positive upbeat attitude. It probably helps that we did not have significant service outages or sev 1 level issues, but even my lower severity issues were quickly answered. And the positive and upbeat attitude really made things feel comfortable.
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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
I have used Datatel/Colleague/Recruiter before. There were issues because only one person at the institution was able to have the student's record open at a time. This was problematic when collaboration between departments was necessary especially in the case of admissions, financial aid, and registration. We also had to do our work and then log out before asking a questions of another department. Sometimes simultaneous use was necessary. However, this was years ago and they may have since updated the program.
Read full review
Zendesk
Although a bit pricey, it does the job well. We are happy with the results it provides; our team is also quite satisfied on how easy it is to use, login and start working. Compared to the other two we have tried, Zendesk takes the cake. It makes Customer Management much easier, more efficient, and more effective.
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Return on Investment
Salesforce
  • Improved online admission application completion rates from mid-60%s to mid-80%s.
  • Positive user experience from start-to-finish to leverage one data system for all prospective student data
  • Fewer data integrations transforming and loading sensitive student data by leveraging Salesforce Community Cloud to access already existing data
Read full review
Zendesk
  • The positives weigh more than the negatives here, as it gives us a one-stop portal where we can tend to customer needs using one web app
  • It has also helped us identify areas of improvement based on the reporting feature
  • The value it provides outweighs any missing or lacking features that I'm sure will be available in the future
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ScreenShots

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