The Best 8 Zendesk Alternatives and Competitors [Complete Guide for 2024]

Looking for Zendesk alternatives to improve customer interactions?

Although they’ve recently added AI capabilities, support tools like Zendesk are great for post-order customer service but don’t help stores with pre-purchase interactions and product discovery.

If you want more sales and fewer support tickets, keep reading. New solutions like BigSurAI offer chatbot capabilities that support customers' post- and pre-purchase needs.

This guide reviews the 8 best alternatives to Zendesk, including their top features, pros & cons, and pricing models.

But first, let's go over why e-commerce managers have been looking to switch from Zendesk.

Why Should You Look for Zendesk Alternatives?

Zendesk has been a household name for years, and its customers have been satisfied with its:

• Omnichannel support capabilities.
• AI-powered chatbots and self-service portal.
• Integrations with other popular tools, such as Salesforce.

But following Zendesk's acquisition in 2022, things have not been the same for the brands' users.

We went over Zendesk's reviews on popular platforms and found these complaints to be recurring:

Reason #1: Zendesk Offers Limited Customizations

Users of Zendesk note that the platform is not very customizable.

These claims go forward and to the platform’s analytics, which users mention that it’s not customizable, and very clunky to use.

Reason #2: Zendesk Can Very Expensive

Zendesk caters to enterprise-level brands.

That said, the platform’s costs can rapidly scale up and become too expensive if you add more of their features.

Zendesk's pricing starts at $55/agent/month for its essential features in the Suite Team plan.

If you want more advanced customer support features, such as a self-service customer portal and skill-based routing, you'll be looking at their $89/agent/month or $115/agent/month plans.

Reason #3: Bad Customer Support

The lack of proper customer support in Zendesk is a common concern across the brand's clients.

When we review customer support software, we usually ignore ''lack of customer support'' as an argument.

But with Zendesk, you’d find many users complaining about their unhelpful customer support that takes too long to respond.

Ironically, customer support statistics from Zendesk show that 73% of consumers would switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences.

As a result of those 3 cons, and the emergence of better and cheaper alternatives, Zendesk has been slowly losing interest over the last 5 years:

Reason #4: Merchants want more than a customer service chatbot

With the ever-increasing AI capabilities, chatbots are not only used to handle commonly asked questions with pre-built answers.

They can help customers along their shopping journey and support them during product discovery, which some of the tools showcased below can do.

What Are The Best Alternatives to Zendesk in 2024?

The best alternatives to Zendesk depend on what kind of customer experience you want to bring to your online store, but here are the best ones that came on top for us:

#1: Big Sur AI - Increase your store’s conversion rate by bringing in an AI-powered shopping assistant.

#2: Intercom - Equip your sales agents with an all-in-one platform that is powered by AI to scale personalization.

#3: Zoho Desk - Integrate your help desk with CRM and Analytics.

#4: Kustomer - Build an omnichannel customer service platform that provides a 360-degree view of all customer interactions.

#5: Richpanel - Build a self service portal that minimizes your customer support costs.

#6: Gorgias - Set up an AI chatbot in your e-commerce website to help consumers resolve common problems.

#7: Help Scout - Set up automated actions at scale to deal with consumer problems and support your agents.

#8: Gladly - Build a personalized self-service portal that is AI-powered and has access to your customers’ history with the brand.

#1: Big Sur AI

Big Sur AI is the best Zendesk alternative (or complement) for E-Commerce managers who want to assist their customers resolve their problems and choose the right products.

It’s an AI-powered sales agent that tries to solve a problem that has been prominent in online stores:

The ability to talk to a qualified sales assistant to help you alongside your shopping or post-shopping journey.

Full disclosure: While Big Sur AI is our software, we strive to provide an unbiased perspective on why Big Sur AI is the best Zendesk alternative or complementary product on the market.

The reason we put it on #1 is that Big Sur AI's advanced AI capabilities reduce the cost of customer service tools like Zendesk because by reducing the number of tickets to customer service agents.

Let's go over the 4 standout features of Big Sur AI that compete best with Zendesk:

Big Sur AI Features

AI Sales Agent

Recreate the in-store sales assistant experience with Big Sur AI's AI Sales Agent.

Consumers miss the experience of talking to a knowledgeable and assistive salesperson to help them with their buying journey.

• 24/7 Real-Time Assistance: Enable your customers to have a natural language conversation with our AI bot. They'll be able to ask different questions, follow up, and get instant answers.
• Customized to your online store: You control the AI experience of your customers. The software would be fed and trained with your store’s information.
• Optimized for conversions: Our AI Sales Agent has been designed to provide relevant recommendations and propose follow-up questions on a data-driven basis to increase your conversations' conversion rate.
• Set up on Shopify takes minutes: If your store is on Shopify, you can enable the AI Sales Agent within minutes to transform your customer experience immediately.

Instead of searching for software to deal with dissatisfied customers' tickets, you can use a pre-purchase chatbot like Big Sur AI to guide your customers to the right product.

This way, you can solve product discovery problems and ensure that your consumers are finding the best fit for their needs.

Conversion Optimized AI Prompts

Similar to an in-store sales assistant, our AI tool will prompt your consumers to ask the right questions.

These are suggested questions embedded on your product and collections pages, which are personalized for your customers.

The questions are based on their shopping journey on the website and are optimized for conversions based on what topic will likely lead to a purchase.

💡This means different users would see different questions.

The more knowledgeable your customers are about your products' capabilities, the more likely they are to see their value, leading to a conversion.

Merchant Insights

Be data-driven about your customer conversations with Big Sur AI's Merchant Insights.

Our software provides you with a set of analytics and insights so you can compare the conversion rates of the different questions our bots ask.

You could also get insights into what products are frequently bought together to help you improve your store’s user experience.

Lastly, you can evaluate the performance of the funnel for users who have interacted with the AI Sales Agent, for factors like:

• How many customers queried?
• How many of them added an item to their cart?
• How many of them placed an order?

AI Product Recommendations

Let our AI Sales Agent help your customers find the best product for their needs.

When customers go to conventional stores, they have certain considerations, such as:

• Features of the products.
• Their attributes, such as height, weight, or age group.
• Price of the products.

With our AI Product Recommendations feature, our chatbot will guide your customers to the right product on your website.

For example, if your customers were to ask our chatbot to recommend them a makeup routine to enhance their natural skin:

Your consumers can receive these product suggestions on your product pages or during a conversation with the AI Sales Agent bot, thus increasing conversion rates and basket sizes.

How Does Big Sur AI Compare to Zendesk?

Zendesk has incorporated AI into its sales agent experience, but it remains best at handling post-purchase customer tickets.

In this context, Big Sur AI complements Zendesk.

Big Sur AI's conversations are optimized for conversions by our data-driven approach of prompting customers to ask the right questions and helping them choose the right product.

That means Big Sur AI can serve as a pre-purchase chatbot that guides your customers through product discovery to ensure they find the best product for them.

Big Sur AI Pros and Cons

✅ Advanced AI Chatbot that serves as the real-time sales assistant to your customers.

✅ Data-driven approach to optimizing for conversions with questions and product recommendations.

✅ Seamless integration with Shopify - setup takes less than 5 minutes.

❌ Takes a few days to set up on platforms that are not Shopify.

Big Sur AI Pricing

Big Sur AI has 2 pricing models:

• Commission-Based Model - pay only when you get sales by the AI Sales Agent.

This is a pay-for-performance model, where you only pay a commission for the sale of your products where the customer interacts with the AI Sales Agent and then converts.

The conversion window is negotiated but it’s typically 30 days.

• Tiered Pricing Model - recurring monthly payment based on the average volume of unique visitors per month.

Think of these pricing models as if you’re hiring a salesman.

You choose between paying per unique visitors of your website, or a commission of each sale attributed to the chatbot.

Contact our team for a product demo!

#2: Intercom

Best for: Equipping your sales agents with an all-in-one platform that is powered by AI to scale personalization.

Similar to: Zoho Desk, Richpanel.

Intercom is an all-in-one customer support platform that combines the traditional ticketing system with AI capabilities to streamline your customers' conversations.

The platform's cloud suite is a direct competitor to Zendesk, and it proves to be a proper alternative by being cheaper, simpler to set up, and better at utilizing AI to ensure speedy responses.

Top Features

• Fin AI Agent - an AI chatbot that provides instant, accurate answers for customers 24/7. Intercom claims that its AI agent bot can resolve half of the customer's problems.
• Fin AI Copilot - your agents can ask questions and get real-time assistance to support their efficiency.
• AI Insights & Reporting - data on your agents' conversations, such as satisfaction rates, the median time to close, and the median first response time.
• Automations - you can automate repetitive tasks by setting up triggers, conditions, and rules.

Pricing

The software has 3 pricing tiers:

• Essential Plan: $39/user/month: includes all of the basic features to set up a shared inbox and ticketing system.
• Advanced Plan: $99/user/month: adds multiple team inboxes and workflow automations.
• Expert Plan: $139/user/month (minimum 10 users): adds workload management features and the ability to create separate knowledge bases for your different products and brands.

Pros and Cons

✅ AI-powered platform that increases productivity and problem resolution time.

✅ Co-pilot for agents where they don't need to ask a higher-up for advice every time.

✅ Embedded chats with history.

❌ Clients report technical problems with updates and server-side issues.

❌ Cheaper than Zendesk but still expensive compared to other tools.

#3: Zoho Desk

Best for: Integrating your help desk with CRM and Analytics.

Similar to: Intercom, Kustomer.

Zoho Desk is a customer service and support platform that helps you with customer ticket management and setting up macros.

The software makes up a solid Zendesk alternative because it offers the same standard features but at a lower price point while offering a higher level of customization.

Top Features

• Get access to a wider range of tools, including ticket systems and multi-channel support.
• Integrations with over 200 popular third-party apps and 45 Zoho Apps - including Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics.
• Advanced automations and process management - set up workflow rules, macros, and time-based rules.
• Help your agents with contextual AI features - auto-tag tickets, perform sentiment analysis, and train your ticket fields to predict customer questions.

Pricing

Zoho Desk has 3 pricing tiers:

• Standard: $14/agent/month, covering all the essential features, such as ticket management, macros, and analytics.
• Professional: $23/agent/month, covering a higher number of automation and agent permissions.
• Enterprise: $40/agent/month, covering all advanced functionalities, such as advanced AI and customization.

Pros and Cons

✅ Get the majority of features in the Standard plan.

✅ The richness of integrations lets you fulfill tasks in a better way.

✅ Quick to set up.

❌ Technical bugs where admins cannot assign tasks to their teams.

❌ UI failures, as reported by a few of their clients.

#4: Kustomer

Best for: Building an omnichannel customer service platform that provides a 360-degree view of all customer interactions.

Similar to: Richpanel, Zoho Desk.

Kustomer is a customer engagement platform that allows you to deliver a consistent customer experience across all your channels.

The platform proved itself to be a viable Zendesk alternative as it excels at automations and its ability to reduce ticket volume.

Top Features

• KIQ Customer Assist - an AI-powered chatbot that lets your customers get instant and personalized support 24/7.
• KIQ Agent Assist - empowering your agents to leverage internal knowledge bases by prompting AI while conversing with customers.
• Unified customer view across all channels that consolidates customer conversations from various channels - gives your agents a more comprehensive picture of the customer's history with your brand.
• A self service portal that can help your website to reduce contact rates that is easy to navigate.

💡According to Microsoft, 72% of consumers expect businesses to know who they are, their interests, and their purchase history when they contact your customer service.

By equipping your agents with a unified overview of your customers, they can serve your customers better.

Pricing

Kustomer only has 2 pricing tiers:

Enterprise Plan: Starts from $89/agent/month, covering multi-channel communication, integrations, custom reporting, and sentiment analysis.

Ultimate Plan: Starts from $139/agent/month, covering enhanced routing, sandbox access, and live agent auditing.

Note: Kustomer offers a separate plan only for their AI-fuelled Customer Assist and Agent Assist features for $0.75 per resolution and $39 per user.

Pros and Cons

✅ User-friendly UI which is better than Zendesk.

✅ AI-powered features that help your agents to efficiently answer queries and help customers.

✅ Reduce dependency on agents with their chatbot and self-service portals.

❌ Clients complain about needing out-of-the-box integrations that don't require programming.

❌ Not compatible with mobile - Kustomer does not have a dedicated mobile app.

#5: Richpanel

Best for: Building a self-service portal that minimizes your customer support costs.

Similar to: Intercom, Kustomer.

Richpanel is an AI-fuelled customer support platform that automates repetitive queries by empowering customers to self-serve, therefore making agents' lives easier.

The platform is a good alternative to Zendesk with its superior self-service portal feature and agent productivity tools.

Top Features

• Self-Service Portal that lets your customers resolve common issues independently without the need for agents.
• AI-Assisted Draft Responses that provide personalized and accurate responses to customer inquiries.
• The ability to automate repetitive tasks, such as order updates and refunds, to streamline the support process.
• Seamless integrations with popular e-commerce platforms, including Shopify and Magento.
• Access to agent productivity tools such as chat summaries, automated workflows, and real-time analytics.

Pricing

Richpanel separates its Help Desk and Self Service functionalities and treats them as 2 different products.

Here's the pricing for their Help Desk:

• Incubator: $9/agent/month, covering all the essential features, such as a shared inbox, AI-assisted replies, and AI Summaries.
• Pro: $50/agent/month, giving you access to their automations and chat campaigns.
• Pro Max: $100/agent/month, providing you with multiple brands, white-labeling options, and unlimited online stores.

And their subscription model for their Self Service:

• Incubator: $0/month, covering order tracking and serves as an FAQ app.
• Pro: $100/month, giving you access to unlimited resolutions and the ability to change the shipping address flow.
• Pro Max: $300/month, allowing you to do everything from Pro, but at a larger scale.

Pros and Cons

✅ Customizable automated chat flows.

✅ Automate repetitive tasks, such as order updates and refunds.

✅ Clients are satisfied with how user-friendly and easy it is to learn how to use.

❌ Enterprise clients note that Richpanel is a hosted platform so they cannot get to own the IP.

❌ Self-service portal is hard to set up.

#6: Gorgias

Best for: Setting up an AI chatbot for e-commerce websites to help consumers resolve common problems.

Similar to: Big Sur AI, Help Scout.

Gorgias is a traditional customer engagement platform that has incorporated AI into its software to help e-commerce brands deliver personalized and efficient customer support.

The platform is a viable alternative to Zendesk for e-commerce brand owners who want to streamline their customer conversations while setting up automation to minimize the time it takes to resolve issues.

Top Features

• Gorgias Helpdesk - manage your customer conversations across email, chat, social media, and SMS from a single platform.
• Gorgias Automate - leverage AI to resolve repetitive tickets so your agents can spend more time on more complicated queries.
• Gorgias Convert - increase your online store conversion rates with AI prompts that appear when your consumers are browsing your product pages.
• Build product recommendation campaigns - and then evaluate its results with Gorgias' analytics of conversions and engagement.

Pricing

Gorgias bases its pricing on ticket volume.

In their Basic Model, you'd have to pay $300/month to use the software if you receive 1,000 monthly tickets.

And if you're a larger brand that needs to deal with 3,500 or more tickets, you'd have to be on their Advanced Plan and pay $900/month.

Note: Gorgias now charges $0.36 - $0.40 for each support ticket you receive over your plan's limit.

Pros and Cons

✅ Easy to use.

✅ Create macros and rules to streamline work.

✅ Increase your online store conversion rate with AI-fuelled campaigns.

❌ Reported issues with mobile compatibility on both Android and iOS.

❌ Can get quite pricey if you exceed the amount of tickets on your plan.

#7: Help Scout

Best for: Set up automated actions at scale.

Similar to: Gorgias.

Help Scout is a customer support platform that offers an email-based help desk to manage customer conversations in a shared inbox.

The platform proves to be a solid alternative for Zendesk with its automation workflows and detailed customer profiles that it provides to the agents.

Top Features

• Set up a ''Shared Inbox'' which consolidates your customer communications from email, social media, and live chat in one place.
• Personalize your users' experience by compiling customer information into detailed customer profiles to help your agents better understand your customers.
• Out-of-the-box and customized reporting features for keeping track of contact volume, response times, and channel usage.
• Set up a knowledge base to organize helpful content in 1 place.

Pricing

The software has 3 pricing tiers:

• Standard Plan: $22/user/month (up to 25 users): includes all of the basic features to set up multi-channel customer support.
• Plus Plan: $44/user/month: adds advanced collaboration and organization features.
• Pro Plan: $65/user/month (minimum 10 users): adds security features and hands-on support for large teams.

Pros and Cons

✅ User-friendly UI that is easy to understand and use by agents.

✅ Knowledge base to help your customers resolve their problems without having to speak to agents.

✅ Advanced and customized reporting and analytics.

❌ The API has been reported to have some limitations in trigger functionality for integrations.

❌ Clients complain about the inability to merge several tickets at once.

#8: Gladly

Best for: Building a personalized self-service portal that is AI-powered.

Similar to: Help Scout, Richpanel.

Gladly is a customer service platform that takes a different approach to the traditional ticket-based system by focusing on providing customers with a personalized self-service portal.

The tool is a proper alternative to Zendesk with its personalized self-service functionality, where the platform considers the customers' history and needs.

Top Features

• Upkeep a single lifelong conversation with the customers, where all customer interactions are consolidated into a continuous conversation thread.
• Customers are matched to the best-suited agent based on customer history.
• The platform integrates with various data points to give your agents an overview of your customers.
• Self-service Gladly Sidekick functionality where your customers are getting an AI companion to resolve their questions.

Pricing

Gladly only has 2 pricing tiers:

• Hero Package: Starts from $180/agent/month, covering multi-channel communication, people match, and integrations.
• Superhero Package: Starts from $210/agent/month, covering custom reporting and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Note: Gladly's Sidekick Built-In is on a usage base with $0.60 per assisted conversation. There's also a minimum volume commitment required.

Pros and Cons

✅ Keep all customer information organized in the customer profiles and consolidated conversations.

✅ Advanced AI capabilities that assist your customers on the go.

✅ Ideal for large brands looking for a personalized experience.

❌ The product is quite expensive, as you have to buy a minimum of 10 seats starting at $180/mo per agent.

❌ Technical errors exist where Gladly times out and clients complain that they are losing customer calls.

Guide Your Customers Through Their Buying Journey With Big Sur AI

Bring sales assistant-like conversations to your online store by utilizing Big Sur AI's sales agent to increase your store's conversion rate.

Our platform can guide your customers through their buying journey with the right question prompts and product recommendations.

Big Sur AI can be an alternative to, or a complement to, tools like Zendesk, Gorgias, and Gladly.

Our platform is best suited for helping your customers through their shopping journey and identifying the best product for them.

You can equip your agents with the feature-heavy software of Gorgias, Gladly, or Help Scout and your marketing team with Big Sur AI to increase conversion rates while collecting crucial consumer data.