Zendesk Pricing: Is it Worth The Money? [2024]

If you're wondering if Zendesk's pricing works for your brand, then this guide is for you.

In this article, we'll go over Zendesk's pricing model, pricing tiers, and add-ons.

TL;DR

• Zendesk bases its pricing on $ per agent per month - from $55/agent/month to $115/agent/month on non-custom plans.
• Pricing increases the more agents you have employed and the more features you require.
• There are AI-powered add-ons that also cost $ per agent per month - from $25/agent/month to $50/agent/month.
• Zendesk's Enterprise Suite plan can cost more than 6 figures a year if you are a large organization.
• It is not uncommon for Zendesk to raise contract prices when renewing based on user reviews.

At the end of this guide, we’ll introduce a new AI-powered tool that can help cut Zendesk costs by reducing the number of support tickets in your store.

Zendesk Pricing Plans

The Zendesk Suite is a customer support platform that combines several Zendesk products and features, such as:

• Ticketing system.
• Chat support.
• Reporting and analytics.
• Automations and macros.
• Help desk.

The tool has 4 paid plans as well as add-ons that are paid separately.

The way Zendesk's pricing model works is that you pay $ per agent per month based on what features you want.

The platform's pricing increases the more agents you have employed, and the more features you require.

Here’s a little sneak-a-peek into Zendesk's Pricing:

Does Zendesk Have Free Tools?

Zendesk does not offer free tools and does not have a free plan as of 2024.

But start-ups are eligible to get Zendesk free for 6 months.

You have to apply on their website and meet the requirements:

• To be a new Zendesk customer.
• Employ fewer than 50 employees.
• To have raised outside funding (Angel, Pre-seed, Seed, and Series A rounds).

Apart from that, Zendesk offers a free trial period of 14 days to test the platform.

Zendesk Suite Team

Zendesk's Suite Team plan costs $55/agent/month and offers the most fundamental features of the platform.

You'll get access to all the essential tools to deal with customer tickets:

• Ticketing system for customer support.
• Omnichannel customer support across email, social media, chat, and voice.
• Help center for your customers.
• Pre-built analytics dashboards and macros.
• Access to their 1,000+ integrations.
• Custom business rules - triggers and automations.

You'd also get access to Zendesk's new feature, AI agents, that aim to resolve common customer concerns.

This pricing tier is also eligible for workforce management ($25/agent/month) and quality assurance ($35/agent/month) add-ons.

The add-ons give you access to agent performance reporting, AI-powered forecasting, and the ability to analyze conversations between agents and detect issues.

Drawbacks

#1: Steep learning curve

The learning curve for new users can be steep, with some users reporting challenges in fully utilizing the platform's capabilities.

Zendesk Suite Growth

The Suite Growth plan from Zendesk comes at $89/agent/month and gives you bonus customer support functionality:

• Multiple ticket forms so customers can submit different kinds of requests.
• Light agents where your team can input information on the tickets, but without having to take up a seat.
• Service level agreements.
• Customer satisfaction ratings.
• Multilingual support and content.
• Self-service customer portal to serve as a dedicated space for your customers to manage their support requests.
• The ability to define business hours.

Drawbacks

#1: Basic Data Management

Some users find it either hard or impossible to pull more specific data they need from the platform, such as exporting a list of triggers.

#2 Customer Support Quality

There are complaints about customer service quality, specifically regarding difficulties in managing subscriptions and payment issues.

Zendesk Suite Professional

Zendesk's Suite Professional plan would cost you $115/agent/month but comes with greater customization and AI capabilities.

• Customizable analytics so you can build your own metrics and reports of your team's performance.
• Side conversations so non-agents can answer customer questions.
• Skills-based routing so tickets can go to the right agent.
• Integrated community forums.
• The ability to specify where your customer data is located.
• HIPAA enabled.
• Access to Sunshine Conversations so you can design rich interactions from scratch to drive revenue.

In this pricing tier, you'd be eligible for Zendesk's advanced AI add-on, which costs an additional $50/month/agent.

The algorithm can understand common user issues and route tickets and give your teams actionable insights.

Drawbacks

#1: Technical Issues

There are user reports of technical issues that can disrupt workflow, such as glitches in the software that require frequent troubleshooting.

Zendesk Suite Enterprise

Zendesk's Suite Enterprise plan has custom pricing and offers access to more AI features and customizations.

• The ability to try out features and workflows in a sandbox testing environment.
• AI-powered content cues - create help center articles by automatically identifying common topics.
• Content blocks - re-use and update content that can live across multiple help centers.
• Custom agent roles to specify permissions.
• Dynamic, contextual workplaces - present ticket tools and features based on specific workflows.

In tier, you'd be eligible for Zendesk's Advanced Data Privacy and Protection add-on that will give you more advanced encryption, redaction, and an access log.

Drawbacks

#1: Pricing Gets Expensive

Zendesk’s enterprise customers feel that the costs are quite significant and may not be suited for smaller companies.

How Much Zendesk's Enterprise Plan Actually Cost?

According to Vendr, the pricing of Zendesk's enterprise plan is based on the organization's size.

Here are some examples of reported figures:

• Headcount of 200: Prices range from $17,300 to $35,600.
• Headcount of 1,000: Expect prices from $43,700 to $100,200.
• Headcount of more than 1,000: Between $61,400 and $116,300.

Disclaimer: The sources are anonymous, and we could not verify these numbers.

Any Reported Surprises at Renewal?

Vendr has also featured some users who report price increases during contract renewals.

A Zendesk user has reported a 15% increase in the unit rate after they tried to descope the project.

Another one was a bit luckier, re-negotiating an early renewal offer so they wouldn't get a contract increase in 2024.

Apparently, Zendesk planned to increase the contracts in 2024, and some of their clients secured legacy pricing in 2023 by extending their contracts.

Zendesk’s Basic Support Plans

For the brands that are only looking for a basic ticketing platform, they do not need to sign up for the Suite plans.

Zendesk offers a more basic pricing structure called Support that is ideal for setting up a unified platform and ticketing system to deal with customer support.

The pricing model is similar to the Zendesk Suite with $ per agent per month.

There are 3 pricing tiers:

• Support Team - $19/agent/month, giving you access to the ticketing system, social media channels, and AI features.
• Support Professional - $55/agent/month, providing you with multilingual support, and customer satisfaction surveys.
• Support Enterprise - $115/agent/month, where you can get advanced data privacy and a sandbox testing ground.

You can also access Zendesk's Advanced AI add-on for an additional $50/month/agent which gives you access to actionable insights, generative AI tools, and macro insights.

Looking for a Zendesk Alternative in E-Commerce?

Are you looking for a Zendesk alternative that has a better pricing model for your e-commerce brand?

Or, perhaps, you're looking for a customer experience platform that helps you drive more sales and fewer support tickets.

New customer support solutions like Big Sur AI offer chatbot capabilities that support customers' post- and pre-purchase needs.

Let's go over Big Sur AI's key features:

AI Sales Agent

Instead of relying on human agents and ticketing systems, Big Sur AI offers an AI-powered conversational experience that is similar to an in-store shopping assistant.

• 24/7 Real-Time Assistance: Your customers can have natural language conversations with our AI bot as if they are speaking to a knowledgeable sales assistant.
• Customized to your online store: You control the AI experience of your customers. The tool is fed and trained with your store’s information.
• Optimized for conversions: Our platform has been designed to provide relevant product recommendations and propose follow-up questions on a data-driven basis to increase the conversations' conversion rate.
• Set up on Shopify takes minutes: The chatbot can get up and running in less than 5 minutes on Shopify without developer support.

💡 Zendesk customers are adding Big Sur’s AI capabilities to reduce the number of customer tickets and support shoppers before they make a purchase.

Why this is important: You can solve product discovery problems and make sure that your consumers find the best fit for their needs.

Merchant Insights

Learn what pre-purchase questions people have about your products and be data-driven about your customer conversations.

Our Merchant Insights provides you with a set of analytics and insights on the conversion rates of the different questions our chatbots or customers ask.

Get insights into what products in your store are frequently bought together to help you improve your online store’s customer experience.

You can also evaluate the performance of the funnel for users who have interacted with the AI Sales Agent:

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

AI Product Recommendations

Our AI Sales Agent helps your consumers find the best product for their specific needs.

When a customer goes to conventional stores, they have certain considerations:

• Features they are looking for.
• Their attributes, such as height, weight, or age group.
• The price of the different options.

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

And since this is a conversational experience, the customers can ask follow-up questions on the recommendations, such as comparing them.

For example, if you were looking for an e-bike for all terrains and you wanted to compare 2 of the bikes, the chatbot will give you a breakdown of both bikes:

Why this is important: Take the heavy lifting of product comparisons away from your customers who have to do it manually.

Big Sur AI has 3 recommendation modules:

• Picked just for you: Products picked for your customers based on what they are most likely to buy, using first-party data.
• Frequently bought together: After your users add a product to the cart, the tool features products that other consumers typically buy along with that product.
• Top sellers: Display the bestseller in the category your user is browsing.

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

How Big Sur AI's Pricing is Different From Zendesk

Big Sur AI does not need to be operated by human agents, which is why it has a pricing model different from Zendesk.

Our tool has 2 pricing models:

• Commission-Based Model - Pay only when you get conversions attributed to the AI Sales Agent.

This is a pay-for-performance model, where merchants only pay a commission for the sale of their products.

This is when the customer interacts with the AI Sales Agent and then converts.

There is a conversion window that 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 can choose between paying per unique visitor to your website or a commission for each sale driven by the chatbot.

Big Sur AI’s pricing can be results-based and connected to your bottom line, while Zendesk's pricing is based on your amount of agents and company size for the enterprise plan.

Get Started with Big Sur AI Today

Set up Big Sur AI on your store to bring sales assistant-like conversations to your customers and increase your store's conversion rate.

Our AI-powered chatbot can guide your customers through their buying journey with the right question prompts and product recommendations.

Big Sur AI can be an alternative to traditional ticketing systems like Zendesk, or it can complement them.

💡 Check out our detailed comparison between Big Sur AI, Zendesk, and Gorgias.

Equip your agents with a tool like Zendesk for post-purchase customer support, and your marketing team with a pre-purchase customer support tool like Big Sur AI.

Get in touch with us to learn more about Big Sur AI and how it can help your brand increase conversions while providing a better experience to customers throughout their buying journey.