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Birst vs Zendesk comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.3
Birst offers substantial returns by providing visualization tools that impact the organization through enhanced sales and data access capabilities.
Sentiment score
6.0
Zendesk delivers cost savings, boosts efficiency, and enhances ticketing and reporting with easy configuration and strong support functions.
I can tell you that we probably saved at least three employees full-time with the ticket management and the automation and the macros and the user follow-up being built in.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
Time saved is definitely a benefit because it puts all of our tickets in one spot.
Technical Solutions Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I feel that Zendesk helped us set up our platform for providing support way faster than other platforms due to its easy configuration.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.0
Birst's technical support is mixed; praised for responsiveness and customer service but faces challenges with time zones and reliance on forums.
Sentiment score
6.0
Zendesk offers responsive 24/7 support, rated highly for effectiveness, professionalism, and enhancing user satisfaction despite documentation reliance.
There appears to be a lack of connection between the bot and the agents, making it feel scripted rather than helpful.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
Customer Success Manager at Mimshackworks Endeavors
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.4
Birst's scalability receives mixed reviews; some praise it, while others face challenges, costs, and complexity, yet cloud solutions impress.
Sentiment score
7.0
Zendesk scales well, but larger teams may need adjustments; integration is straightforward, though pricing and customization can be challenging.
We have not hit a peak or a turn yet that Zendesk has not been able to go with us or been able to grow with us in the process, change or pivot that the company is making.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Zendesk's scalability is excellent.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.3
Birst users experience varying stability, with issues during upgrades and large datasets, though some report smooth performance improvements.
Sentiment score
7.8
Zendesk is stable, reliable, handles high traffic well, with rare outages and praised communication during maintenance and updates.
They are always informing us with a status update and an ETA, and the turnaround time is usually within the same day with no extended downtime that would cause a detriment to our company.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
Zendesk is quite stable; we experience major outages only once or twice a year, making it very reliable.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
I did not face any slowdown issue in Zendesk; it smoothly handles a lot of tickets.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Birst struggles with performance, customization, UI, visualization features, inefficiencies, and support, requiring enhancements and modernization in various areas.
Zendesk needs improved customization, user-friendliness, pricing clarity, mobile optimization, and expanded communication features for better user satisfaction.
Zendesk could actually support HTML on the tickets so we could format our text better than the current options such as size, bold, italic, or underscored, because the text processing is too simple.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
Zendesk is missing an AI aspect that could help provide quick answers based on the knowledge housed within the platform.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Zendesk is amazing, and because they are always working on a new upgrade or a new integration, they are very forward-thinking from an engineering perspective.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
 

Setup Cost

Birst offers market-standard pricing with a subscription model, providing comprehensive solutions and flexibility despite high entry costs.
Zendesk's pricing, viewed as expensive, varies with features and agents, and users should seek tailored solutions from Zendesk.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk shows that pricing is really affordable compared to other customer management software.
Dental Virtual Assistant at getreach.co
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
 

Valuable Features

Birst provides scalable data visualization, cloud-based architecture, and integrates ETL, reporting, and dashboards for efficient data-driven decisions.
Zendesk offers ease of use, powerful integrations, customizable dashboards, comprehensive ticket management, and robust security with seamless data exchange.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Zendesk is way cheaper than other ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, providing a good platform at a lower price so we could offer good support with a low budget for the license.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
Being able to put response counters on certain tickets and have certain ones that are high priority and have a tighter SLA than lower priority items, being able to categorize them as a question versus an urgent request, and being able to bucket them as feature requests or product enhancements.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
 

Categories and Ranking

Birst
Ranking in Reporting
26th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (20th)
Zendesk
Ranking in Reporting
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (2nd), CRM (5th), Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (8th), AI IT Support (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Birst is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 1.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk1.5%
Birst1.1%
Other97.4%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Principal Engineering Manager I at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Offers dashboards and self-service reports. The report performance is very slow.
Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain Most of our customers are interested in dashboards and self-service reports. We are able to offer them these features with this solution. Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution The report…
AmandaSanchez - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
Macros and automation have streamlined workflows and reduced manual effort across support teams
The ability to communicate on the Zendesk ticket through the actual user software, so TOPs, would have been helpful. Somehow seeing a user's ticket history within our app would have been beneficial. That is the only thing that I do not think existed at the time that might have been helpful. Some people struggled with Zendesk, but it was always easy enough to show them how to use it and what they were missing. The only times we really had people report concerns about it was when they did not understand that it could do that or how to use it in that way.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk shows that pricing is really affordable compared to other customer management software. The setup is pretty simple as well, but if ...
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
Regarding my main use case for Zendesk, it is really easy to use, but one of the cons I have with it is that it takes some time to load information. Most of the time, if a particular candidate has ...
What is your primary use case for Zendesk Support?
On a day-to-day basis, I use Zendesk to track, manage, and work on my cases. I also use it to upload information securely, and this is not only limited to documents but also to images and reports. ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Birst vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.