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Salesforce Community Cloud vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Salesforce Community Cloud
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Community Platforms (3rd), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (5th)
Zendesk
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (4th), CRM (9th), 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

While both are Customer Relationship Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Salesforce Community Cloud is designed for Community Platforms and holds a mindshare of 19.3%, up 16.7% compared to last year.
Zendesk, on the other hand, focuses on IT Service Management (ITSM), holds 4.8% mindshare, up 3.9% since last year.
Community Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Community Cloud19.3%
Sprinklr16.1%
Zendesk13.5%
Other51.099999999999994%
Community Platforms
IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk4.8%
ServiceNow15.8%
JIRA Service Management7.3%
Other72.1%
IT Service Management (ITSM)
 

Featured Reviews

Julio Divietro - PeerSpot reviewer
Customer success manger at Peletex
Helps us with sales management of customer life cycles with good business intelligence
Our primary use case for the solution is sales management of customer life cycles. We deploy the solution on cloud The stability and ease of use are valuable. Additionally, the granularity of the tool provides a great experience because of the several variables we can manage during the process.…
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

"All the business intelligence included in the tool gives more information about the cycle of the sales stage."
"What I found most valuable in Salesforce CRM is its reporting feature because it's extensive and it's very accurate. I also like that you can move opportunities by stages. I find that feature very important and very useful because it helps you understand where opportunities get stuck, and at what stage it is currently."
"As per my experience Zendesk is a very impressive, efficient and convenient web based help desk application."
"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."
"Our company is based on this model and wouldn't be as successful as we are today without this support structure in place."
"It's very great for tracking your customer service activities, building reports, and gaining satisfaction from responses."
"We used to spend two to three working days to solve around 100 tickets and after we used Zendesk the turnaround time has been improved approximately 50%."
"Zendesk has helped us to better connect and respond quicker to our clients."
"I'd say that the integration options that Zendesk offers are the most valuable features to our team."
"Zendesk is a great product but find a software package that will work best for your team and company."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement in Salesforce CRM is that there's still a lot of manual input you need to make. If it could pick up things automatically from an email and auto-populate, that would make the tool better. Another area for improvement is that the Salesforce CRM connector for G-suite does not work effectively."
"The user interface can be improved."
"I would love to see an easier way to add users to Zendesk as well as a way to BCC people on tickets."
"I would like to see more freedom when creating "Triggers" and "Automations"."
"Reporting by Tags – this is not as effective as allowing reps to disposition tickets themselves."
"Recently they have been under some stability issues, but they do have @ZendeskOps to keep us posted on Twitter when they have issues."
"Sometimes if there was a way to just flag the actual issue out of those email chains - that would be really helpful."
"Many channel inquiries are not possible to collect into a single interface."
"The reports could be more fine tuned to enable better handling of tickets by individual agents and teams."
"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Salesforce CRM is extremely 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."
"The price is very competitive."
"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."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software 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

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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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brown-Forman, GE Aviation, Pernod Ricard, Toyota, Virgin America, GE, IAVA
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce Community Cloud vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.