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Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) vs. Zendesk Suite

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ARadian6 was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2011 and - along with Buddy Media - became Salesforce Social Studio. The product was retired in November of 2024.

    $1,000

    Per Org Per Month

    Zendesk Suite

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AZendesk 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 Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
    Editions & Modules
    Basic
    $1,000.00
    Per Org Per Month
    Pro
    $4,000.00
    Per Org Per Month
    Corporate
    $12,000.00
    Per Org Per Month
    Enterprise
    $40,000.00
    Per Org 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
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Zendesk 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 Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Zendesk
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    87%
    Would buy again
    123 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    85%
    Delivers good value for the price
    108 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    131 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    85%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    94 Answers
    Features
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
    Listening/monitoring
    Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    8.8
    11 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Zendesk Suite
    -
    Ratings
    Boolean keyword searches8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Filtering out noise/spam8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Sentiment analysis9.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Broad channel coverage10.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing
    Comparison of Publishing features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    8.0
    11 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Zendesk Suite
    -
    Ratings
    Content planning and scheduling8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audience targeting8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content optimization8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow management8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Engagement
    Comparison of Engagement features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    9.0
    10 Ratings
    10% above category average
    Zendesk Suite
    -
    Ratings
    Automated routing and prioritization9.99 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customer interaction histories7.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk actions10.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Marketing
    Comparison of Marketing features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    8.5
    10 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Zendesk Suite
    -
    Ratings
    Lead generation9.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content marketing9.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Paid media management8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    Campaigns and promotions8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Channel coverage/integration
    Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    8.3
    11 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Zendesk Suite
    -
    Ratings
    Twitter8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Facebook8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    LinkedIn10.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    Google+6.86 Ratings00 Ratings
    Instagram9.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pinterest6.54 Ratings00 Ratings
    YouTube10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting/analytics
    Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    8.3
    10 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Zendesk Suite
    -
    Ratings
    Campaign success analytics8.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Real-time tracking9.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Competitor analysis8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
    Account management
    Comparison of Account management features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    8.5
    10 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Zendesk Suite
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions & privileges8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile access9.010 Ratings00 Ratings
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Zendesk Suite
    8.6
    187 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.1186 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings7.9127 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.8131 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.3186 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings9.0185 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Zendesk Suite
    8.5
    169 Ratings
    6% above category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings8.5163 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.4156 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Zendesk Suite
    8.4
    182 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Customer portal00 Ratings9.1150 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings8.076 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings7.4119 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings9.2178 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.4138 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
    Small Businesses
    Sendible
    Score7.2 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Emplifi
    Score8.9 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Sprinklr Social
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (52 ratings)
    8.7
    (225 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.8
    (38 ratings)
    10.0
    (43 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (10 ratings)
    8.6
    (98 ratings)
    Availability
    9.6
    (5 ratings)
    9.1
    (14 ratings)
    Performance
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    9.1
    (11 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    5.5
    (31 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.6
    (6 ratings)
    6.4
    (10 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.8
    (6 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
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    If you're tasked with publishing content to social on behalf of your organization then this tool is certainly worth considering. You have quick and easy capability to schedule across multiple platforms with drag-and-drop simplicity. It ties into Salesforce's real strength of its CRM platform so you can quickly tie social activity and leads to those already in your database. And it does a good job at monitoring and analyzing brand and competitor content across multiple media types. Having said that, if you're into deep-dive and full functionality SaaS tools then this might not be for you as it covers three areas adequately, but not in enough detail or strength to make it a star performer
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    Zendesk is good for small teams where work is not passed along to internal teams or situations where escalations lead to further customer interactions and no further oversight is needed. It is weak as a product for larger and medium-sized companies, where processes are in place that are not aligned with its workflow, as it is a very rigid tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • The amount of the information that radian6 can pull from multiple social platforms is absolutely phenomenal. Its just not only the pull but the way the information can be presented in dashboards was way good. It helped us understand in various aspects of our social presence.
    • Multiple profiles helped us to break down the Big/Huge social buzz cloud to smaller and more manageable pieces. This helped us concentrate on the lows and helped us to plan better on turning them to highs.
    • Radian6 allowed us to follow thru the crowd trends with the latest information presented in a single view. This also helped us to collect the social opinion on the product releases.
    • The ease of use, one need not be an expert to start using this platform. The interface is easily understandable by anyone.
    • A keyword can be edited quickly to tailor the needs and the results were quick.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    • Merging of the tickets with similar issues, it is easy to avoid confusion
    • Al global team somehow gets connected with different ways like Slack, with the Zendesk Suite which is so easier to highlight & the issue quickly
    • The best thing is that this tool gives you to send the message via chat-, email, call through the one single platform
    • Now AI has been added so it works good
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • Instagram Social Listening - it currently does not offer much social listening in terms of Instagram.
    • Instagram Owned - It currently stops pulling once an update is "old" by their standards, even if it receives recent comments. They can force pull, but you have to work with their tech team to do so.
    Incentivized
    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?
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    I spent a lot of time researching the right platform for me and our organisation (thanks to the other reviews on TrustRadius also). Having used other platforms when I found frustrations getting my everyday work done, I knew exactly what I wanted and this is why I chose Social Studio. While there have been a few hiccups, the quarterly update releases and the outstanding tech support have kept me more than happy.
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    • Would rate this a 6. The User Interface is pretty intuitive, but the platform was still considered pretty intimidating by our non-technical staff when they first saw it. It took a while to get used to it and feel comfortable. There was quite a lot of setup work in the beginning (for example, we had to build our own reports using a canned report as a template, and this was not simple). Although it took a while to get it setup correctly, it’s quite intuitive once that work has been done.
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    The platform is rarely down
    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
    Discontinued Products
    No issues with performance.
    Read full review
    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
    Discontinued Products
    As mentioned previously, it can be hard to get through to people who can help you. On occasion when I have spoken to customer service/tech support, they all seem nice and try to be helpful, however instead of admitting the system cannot do certain things, they will persist it saying that it can, which results in many wasted hours overall.
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    • We initially received dedicated online training for our team which was delivered by our account rep. This was pretty effective since it happened after our data had been loaded into the system and it had been configured for specific needs our organization. The training was perhaps a bit shallow though, as it was only an hour long. Online videos are available to be taken individually, and these have been useful.
    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.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Implementation was pretty simple. Just a matter of giving the account rep a list of our search terms and having him set the system up to pull the data we wanted to see. Once this had been done, we tweaked it with his help. Process was pretty smooth, although there was some back and forth until it worked the way we wanted.
    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
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Compared to Radian6, I found Meltwater Buzz, Simply Measured, and Sprout Social to be much more user friendly. Meltwater Buzz and Radian6 are very similar products with many of the same functionalities but Buzz presents your analytics in a way that is much easier to understand. I did a two week trial with Sprout Social and absolutely loved the product but our company needed the capability to connect to Salesforce, which is available on R6 and Buzz. Simply Measured is my all time favorite but I have only used the free version so I am not completely sure how it stacks up to Radian6
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    At the time of evaluation, Dynamics had extremely limited knowledge and support capabilities. The UI is clunky, and reporting requires a deep understanding of the underlying data structure. Ongoing maintenance was costly and didn't provide a positive ROI in any sense of the term.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Zendesk
    WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • Monitoring social brand awareness is not something you can consider to have a meaninful impact in your business ROI short term, however it's a must for taking care of long term relationships and customer intimacy.
    • Radian6 connects with other analytical tools like webtrends, Google Analytics, etc..however it's not directly linked to a revenue driven platform, you can´t see the immediate ROI generated in the tool.
    • If you bet for social relationships you should consider this tool, no question on that. Social Commerce might be of course impacted postively by the proper use of this tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    • More than anything, provided a boost to our perceived professionalism. The portal is a massive improvement on email only support.
    • Workflow optimization via macros and automations has enhanced response times and raise our 'first call resolution' metric.
    • Speaking of metrics; having them at all! Before Zendesk Suite we were email only so had no insight into agent and vendor performance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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