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

SugarCRM Platform vs Zendesk comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

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

SugarCRM Platform
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
11th
Ranking in CRM
27th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Automation (16th), Sales Force Automation (7th)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
3rd
Ranking in CRM
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (8th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (10th), AI IT Support (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 4.6%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 8.9%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk8.9%
SugarCRM Platform4.6%
Other86.5%
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1345677 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager / IT Planning & Architecture Services at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Easily customizable, automation enhances the marketing campaigns but support is the main hiccup for us
It has been effective in managing customer relationships. It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory. And there are centralized reports for the CEO and the general managers. We work with automation for these marketing and email campaigns. It sends out emails to prospective customers related to sales offers automatically. And it copies the sales team so that they can follow up. They are tracking the sales leads. So, the automation within SugarCRM enhances the marketing campaigns. For now, my work is done because I am the IT strategy and planning manager. I just try to deliver the solution according to the requirements of the business. From my side, it's implemented already, the requirement related to the sales funnel. But if they have any other requirement from the business side, they will submit it to me, and then I will look for a suitable solution.
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

"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost, and it works well."
"Good, basic out-of-the-box solution, however, in my estimation not a long term play as the design flow and user interface make it a true chore to enter data."
"Available source code, good documentation, training programs, and a relatively active community, provide the hallmarks for a successful open source effort."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"We loved the notifications and the way to build custom views for a specific user's open tickets and to see how long they have been open, how long it was since the last request."
"It is a scalable solution."
"We tried to find a solution better and cheaper than Zendesk locally and we have not found any solution so complete and flexible as Zendesk."
"The initial setup was incredibly simple: choose your integration method, set up your fields and workflow, and it’s running."
"Zendesk saves us over $50,000 per year and can be maintained in-house by our staff."
"Our company is based on this model and wouldn't be as successful as we are today without this support structure in place."
"The feature to move over my customer experience team tickets for different specialists is very valuable for my team."
"If you are looking for a simple ticketing system that anyone can understand and implement (support personnel who is not tech-savvy) then this is the one."
 

Cons

"Sugar Enterprise could improve by removing bugs and glitches. For example, a comment was made but in the comment section, it was never displayed. However, the problems we faced might not be the fault of the solution."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"At the moment, there is a complicated flow in regards to the user's permissions and what they can see."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"There is always a network issue with Zendesk. But we don’t know whether it is managed. The network issue is that when I call, it does not let us."
"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."
"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."
"I really wish they had a chat feature - like Olark for example."
"We work in print so being able to preview files attached and having larger files (larger than 7MB would be great) would be a welcomed improvement."
"An area of opportunity for Zendesk is probably just when there's a long email chain and everything gets forwarded to support, I know it can be time consuming for them to extract the important information from the email chain."
"It could use better analytics for trend tracking as well as the ability to tie the customer support and sales items together."
"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CRM Customer Engagement Centers solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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. ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about SugarCRM Platform vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.