Freshsales vs Zendesk comparison

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Freshsales

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Freshsales and Zendesk are competing in the customer relationship management and customer service spaces. While Freshsales offers competitive pricing and responsive support, Zendesk's robust feature set makes it an attractive option for those who prioritize capabilities.

Features: Freshsales provides intuitive lead scoring, seamless email tracking, and a built-in phone system tailored to boost sales team efficiency. Zendesk is equipped with a strong ticketing system, automation capabilities, and multichannel support, all of which are beneficial for extensive customer service operations.

Room for Improvement: Freshsales could enhance its enterprise-level features to cater to larger businesses more effectively. Zendesk might focus on simplifying its deployment process for non-technical users and providing more pricing flexibility for smaller organizations. Freshsales can also work on expanding its range of customizations, while Zendesk could improve on its initial setup to ease the onboarding process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Freshsales impresses with its straightforward deployment and highly responsive customer service, making onboarding seamless for new users. Zendesk, while offering comprehensive resources and support channels, can be more complex to deploy without technical support, making it more suitable for larger teams with technical expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Freshsales is valued for its cost-effective pricing, offering good ROI for budget-conscious businesses. Zendesk, despite its higher costs, provides a justified ROI through its expansive functionalities and support, beneficial for companies requiring advanced support tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Freshsales vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: March 2026).

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Freshsales vs. Zendesk

March 2026

Helped 884,873 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Freshsales

Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers

9th

Ranking in CRM

23rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Opportunity Management (10th), Sales Force Automation (11th)

Zendesk

Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers

4th

Ranking in CRM

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Help Desk Software (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (10th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (20th), AI IT Support (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of Freshsales is 2.9%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 8.2%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CRM Customer Engagement Centers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Zendesk	8.2%
Freshsales	2.9%
Other	88.9%

CRM Customer Engagement Centers

Featured Reviews

Manojkumar Reddy

Associate Technology Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Automation has boosted sales efficiency and improves follow-ups across multiple customer segments

The automation runs whenever a certain trigger point is met. For example, if the person details captured indicate they are interested in proceeding further, then when we update the particular field, it automatically goes to the next person at a higher level, and then the status gets changed. There are many features including recently enabled AI that gives a brief description to the contact person about what that particular promotion is about. There are also features like auto email getting triggered and marketing emails. All of those features are part of Freshsales.

Read full review

AmandaSanchez

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is its well-organized sales cycle, which is important to us."

"One of the most valuable features is the ability to divert deals based on the potential revenue or specific market to certain sales teams."

"I like Freshsales because it's integrated with Shopify which we use to host our website."

"The solution is a low-cost CRM product compared to other CRM alternatives."

"Email integration is easy."

"Freshsales has impacted us positively; it has saved time, increased sales, and improved customer relationships."

"Freshsales is user-friendly, scalable and stable."

"Freshsales is very simple to use, but it's fairly limited in its functionalities, and it's very cheap."

"It has good management, the ability to sign tickets based on content, the multi-channel support, the self service portal, the integration with Salesforce, the setup process, and the product features as we are currently using them."

"The most valuable feature was its simplicity as it was made easy to use."

"Our company is based on this model and wouldn't be as successful as we are today without this support structure in place."

"If their price is acceptable, I would recommend using Zendesk to all companies whose clients and employees need a simple way of raising issues."

"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."

"Zendesk was chosen because it is the most user friendly."

"Zendesk might seem a bit pricey at first, but once you get down to what value Zendesk can provide your company - both in terms of saved working hours, happier customers and CX data from multiple channels, it's well worth it!"

"My advice to others looking into using Zendesk is that if you are looking for a tool that is cheaper than others but provides a good solution, I would let them know that Zendesk is the best option."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"We have a problem with the time to delivery for our customers, although this is not specific to this solution. Time to delivery can be 90 days."

"The price of this solution could be improved as well as the reporting functionality."

"The solution needs to improve the user experience and leads capture."

"We can use only one domain in the basic package."

"The licensing costs should be based on the amount of data and number of clients that one can insert into the application."

"It lacks customizability for complex and larger use cases."

"The reporting for this solution across all their products could be improved. Currently, we have clients who export their data from Freshservices to third party solutions such Power BI to create more comprehensive reports."

"One of the drawbacks of Zendesk is that it doesn't provide a secure way for us to send data. So, we usually use a secure SharePoint folder link. We put that in the Zendesk ticket so that the requester has a secure way of getting to their data."

"I would like easy access for the mobile app as it can take quite a while to load the data."

"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."

"Zendesk Guide's customization could be improved. I would like it to be easier and maybe open-sourced, so that if you have a developer in your company, you can do it yourself. Right now, that isn't allowed, so you need to have it done via the integrator. Another improvement—this is nit-picking—is that it could be less easy to make changes. Some things are so easy that they sometimes look a little amateur-ish. Most of the templates are built-in so they can be used directly, so they are very simple."

"If I write an article, and I have a team of 30 people, and they all have a Zendesk account, when I write an article, I send them an email. "Hey guys, I just wrote this article. It's one of the most popular topics this month on which we are not covered. Please check it and make sure that you include it in your resolutions". The issue is, once I send it to those 30 people, and they open it, the next morning, that article is the most popular article."

"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."

"It would be easier to setup if there was metadata available and an API guru resource available."

"My experience with Zendesk's customer support has not been positive. When I open a ticket for a bug, it often does not expedite the resolution process."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is not that expensive."

"If one is a very low price and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a three."

"The price for this solution is good in general, but in Brazil we do pay additional taxes."

"The basic price is affordable. The add ons are expensive."

"Freshsales is an economical product."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."

"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."

"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."

"The price is very competitive."

"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Insurance Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	1

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Freshsales?

The licensing costs should be based on the amount of data and number of clients that one can insert into the application. The number of clients in the tool is 500, which is less in number.

What is your primary use case for Freshsales?

I use the solution in my company since we are interested in the application and all the activities that salespeople do. We track the email, then the appointment, and the feedback from the appointme...

What advice do you have for others considering Freshsales?

I can tell others that it is a good product and it is perfect for medium and large-sized companies because the setup phase is fast, and you don't need to do many customizations apart from the confi...

What do you like most about Zendesk Support?

I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?

From what I recall, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive and that is what prohibited us from expanding usage of it into more users and using more o...

What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

I wish there was a more easily dynamic tool. Currently, it is quite difficult because not all the tools are labeled. A feature that would be beneficial is if hovering over an icon would tell you wh...

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Apollo.io vs Freshsales

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Compared 13% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs Zendesk

Compared 6% of the time

Freshservice vs Zendesk

Compared 6% of the time

Freshdesk vs Zendesk

Compared 3% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs Zendesk

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Freshsales product report

CRM

March 2026

Download Zendesk product report

February 2026

Also Known As

No data available

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Overview

Freshsales is a single solution CRM designed for high-growth, high-velocity sales teams. The software includes integrated phone and email, user behaviour tracking, and lead scoring on one platform. Users can track events and manage a visual sales pipeline, as well as view custom reports and analytics. Email tracking features enable users to know when and how many times an email was opened, or a link was clicked on. Users can effectively engage with prospects by targeting the next set of email actions, and create personalised sales campaigns from email templates. Insightful email metrics tell users which emails are performing well and which aren’t. The Awaiting Response feature automatically lists contacts that need to be replied to. Freshsales enables direct calling with a simple click on a contact’s phone number. The solution records the entire conversation history including email conversations in one place. Users can add notes, schedule tasks, as well as make appointments. Freshsales also offers personalised welcome and voicemail messages for greeting customers. In-depth customer insights on prospects allow users to plan relevant conversations, and keep track of touch points using the activity timeline. Freshsales collects data and segments activities based on a contact’s behaviour. Users can get perspective on leads with advanced lead scoring, and prioritises important follow-ups. The visual sales pipeline provides complete visibility of deals across various stages. Users can sort and filter by close dates, helping to make more guided decisions for climbing up the sales ladder. Freshsales’ drag and drop navigation tool enables users to move deals across the sales pipeline into any stage. Users can call or email prospects directly from the deals dashboard for a non-interruptive workflow. Visual sales reports and revenue analytics monitor sales progress and identify successful campaigns by source, sales rep, territory, and more. Freshsales mobile apps for iOS and Android let users access deals while on-the-move and stay up-to-date on prospects at all times. Freshsales is part of the Freshworks product family, whose products include Freshdesk Customer Support Software, Freshservice IT Service Management Software etc. – with more than 100000 customers worldwide, including Cisco, Honda, 3M, The Atlantic, and QuizUp.

Freshworks

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

Sample Customers

Caratlane, Pykih, Buying Show, INTUO, WallyPark, Exploring Vacations, Raved, Forest, Ascendore, MagePlaza, Vacasa,

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber