No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Intercom Customer Communications Platform vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

Intercom Customer Communica...
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
8th
Ranking in CRM
23rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (6th)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
3rd
Ranking in CRM
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (11th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (7th), AI IT Support (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of Intercom Customer Communications Platform is 3.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 8.7%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk8.7%
Intercom Customer Communications Platform3.8%
Other87.5%
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

Esse Wognin - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Partner Support Analyst at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
AI support has transformed customer loyalty and has maintained high satisfaction levels
I would recommend that Intercom Customer Communications Platform increase its database capacity to manage more than 1,000 partners, considering that each partner can send approximately 10 requests daily. When partner numbers exceed 1,000, we sometimes experience complications in quickly processing all the queries we receive. I believe Intercom Customer Communications Platform could perform better for larger companies like mine to coordinate and manage all our partners across the world.The second suggestion concerns the complexity of pricing. Intercom Customer Communications Platform has very complex pricing structures. While this was not a real issue for my company, as someone interested in entrepreneurship and starting a business, Intercom Customer Communications Platform is very costly for startups and people wanting to launch businesses. If Intercom Customer Communications Platform reviews its pricing and creates plans specifically for startups, I am certain they would reach a much larger market. The integration of Intercom Customer Communications Platform is great because we have more than 100 integration options available. When it comes to user interface, it is more intuitive but somewhat difficult. When I started my job without prior CRM knowledge, it took me approximately two weeks to understand the platform and use it at full capacity. I believe they could improve the user interface by collaborating with users and gathering suggestions. I am very happy to provide this feedback to Intercom Customer Communications Platform and work with them on the user experience side to ensure the app is ready to use for people without customer management experience. I will give eight out of 10 for integrations and six out of 10 for user interface.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Intercom Customer Communications Platform has played a key role in customer loyalty, trust building, and market reach."
"With Zendesk, we have much more signals that we could use to understand better our client patterns."
"The feature we appreciate most about the Intercom Customer Communications Platform is the messenger functionality, allowing users to have conversations without entering their details repeatedly."
"The live chat is pretty good because you can create a macro, which is a predefined input we can give customers."
"The stability and performance have been perfect."
"We have found the stability to be quite good."
"It forced the organization to rethink sub-par work processes and enabled us to work smarter."
"The way it’s set up makes it very easy for agents, end-users, and administrators to use."
"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."
"Zendesk has helped us to increase productivity and has reduced the time between when a ticket is opened and when it is completed."
"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."
"The ROI is amazing."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, the solution lags and takes time to update something."
"Intercom Customer Communications Platform has very complex pricing structures and is very costly for startups and people wanting to launch businesses."
"It would be beneficial if there was a way to train the AI to better understand customer language."
"The problem with Intercom Customer Communications Platform was a little bit of the implementation. It was complicated to use to actually get the automations and everything."
"It needs to have a more intuitive application of macro’s in changing ticket statuses."
"The look and feel could use a little more polish."
"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."
"It's expensive."
"The reports could be more fine tuned to enable better handling of tickets by individual agents and teams."
"One of the drawbacks of Zendesk is that it doesn't provide a secure way for us to send data."
"Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries."
"The stability was a problem as our help desk grew. The product would need work on its stability (system hangs) and being able to handle larger groups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is very competitive."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CRM Customer Engagement Centers solutions are best for your needs.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Intercom Customer Communications Platform?
I would recommend that Intercom Customer Communications Platform increase its database capacity to manage more than 1,000 partners, considering that each partner can send approximately 10 requests ...
What is your primary use case for Intercom Customer Communications Platform?
I have been using Intercom Customer Communications Platform for almost three years before my company switched to Zendesk. When I joined the company, we were using Intercom on a daily basis.For thre...
What advice do you have for others considering Intercom Customer Communications Platform?
The integration of Intercom Customer Communications Platform is great because we have more than 100 integration options available. When it comes to user interface, it is more intuitive but somewhat...
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...
What is your primary use case for Zendesk Support?
I have been using Zendesk for approximately five years now. I use Zendesk for keeping track of emails and customer tickets. Whenever a customer has issues or questions about our product, they email...
 

Also Known As

Intercom
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expensift, Moz, Invision, Salesforce, Droplr, Vend, BugHerd, Ghost, Put.io, Codeship
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Intercom Customer Communications Platform vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.