Top 8 Zendesk alternatives: A comparison guide for 2025

Zendesk has become a staple of customer service software, with thousands of customers touching countless industries. The platform helps organizations maximize client interactions and build a positive customer experience.

That said, expensive add-ons, limited customer support, and a steep learning curve and setup process are just some of the dissatisfactions users bring up online and on review sites. Aside from Zendesk, there are alternative support platforms on the market, the trick is just knowing which ones are a good fit for your organization.

This guide will introduce you to eight of the best Zendesk alternatives. We’ll look at the benefits and disadvantages of Zendesk, and examine how some of the alternatives, like monday service, can make for a better fit for many teams.

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk has made a name for itself as one of the most popular customer service platforms. Thanks to an intuitive interface, tons of customizable tools for customer service operations, and integration capabilities, Zendesk has become the go-to service solution for various businesses.

The software uses advanced AI tools to connect human-led service with AI workflow automation and efficiency, a combination that helps teams deliver faster, more personalized customer journeys. Over 100,000 companies, including Uber, GrubHub, Shopify, and others, rely on Zendesk to deliver superior service to their customers.

Pros and cons of Zendesk

Zendesk has undeniably enabled a lot of businesses to succeed in delivering quality customer experiences, however, that doesn’t mean it’s the right solution for every organization. There are some great benefits to using Zendesk, but there are also some significant drawbacks.

Pros

• The interface is very customizable, making it easy for teams to tailor workflows
• Helps teams work more efficiently and productively while organizing service tasks
• Everything from customer texts to emails and social media messages are held in one platform
• User-friendly features that are easy to navigate and implement

Cons

• Can be expensive for small and medium businesses, with advanced tools such as AI as extra add-ons
• Some users on Zendesk’s G2 review page note that customer service could be improved
• Long onboarding time due to complex features and a relatively steep learning curve
• Some users find its automation and customization options less flexible than competitors

What to look for when choosing a Zendesk alternative

There are a lot of different elements to take into account when looking at Zendesk alternatives, or any customer support platform for that matter. A good way to find the platform that will best fit your team is to first determine what features your team needs most based on current and future business goals, workflows, and preferences. Some of the most important things to look for in a Zendesk alternative include:

• How easy a platform is to use: First and foremost, you want to make sure the interface is quick to pick up and not too complicated to use so that your service teams can get a handle on it fairly quickly and without a steep learning curve
• Built-in AI tools: The bulk of customer support platforms today have some AI features, but you want to make sure a platform has the ones you really need, whether it’s AI agents, AI-powered chatbots, internal AI assistants, AI-enabled automation, or anything else
• What workflows you can automate: One of the core functions of a customer support tool is its ability to automate repetitive tasks, like ticket management, so look for a platform that allows you to build the automations you really need
• Whether the platform can easily scale: You don’t want to switch from Zendesk to a new platform only to outgrow it in a couple of years, so make sure the solution you choose today can grow with your team and easily handle increased ticket volume during peak periods
• Options for reports and insights: With the right service platform, you can get deep insights via reports, dashboards, and AI-driven analytics, making it important to choose a solution with advanced reporting features
• Multi-channel support options: You want to be able to see all your customer interactions in one place, which is why it’s important to find a platform with a unified inbox, multichannel integrations for data syncing, and easy categorization

8 of the best alternatives to Zendesk

Zendesk remains a reliable customer support solution for many organizations, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best fit for everyone. Some teams need a very simple customer service platform, while others need more complex solutions for ITSM and other services. Below are our top recommendations for the best Zendesk alternatives out there.

1. monday service

monday service is an all-in-one customer support solution built on the monday.com Work OS. The platform offers an AI-powered no-code platform to manage customer interactions, automate workflows, and improve team collaboration. Featuring an intuitive interface that’s easy to use with plenty of customization options, monday service enables businesses to build tailored support processes that fit their unique needs.

Key features

• AI service workflows: Automate repetitive tasks and build custom service workflows to put ticket management on autopilot
• Self-service customer portal: Build customizable self-service portals to offer customers resources to solve issues independently
• Smart AI ticketing: Leverage AI to categorize and prioritize incoming customer tickets and route them to the right agent

What makes monday service a strong alternative to Zendesk?

monday service stands out for its highly customizable interface and drag-and-drop no-code automation, making it easy for any customer support team to tailor workflows without technical expertise. Additionally, for teams looking for end-to-end business solutions, monday service pairs seamlessly with monday.com’s other products, such as monday CRM and monday work management, making it simple to unify customer data and open new projects directly from customer tickets.

monday service pricing

• Starting price: $29/seat/month
• Three plans to choose from: Standard, Pro, and Enterprise
• 14-day free trial available

2. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a part of the Zoho suite of products and relies on AI to power its help desk software. The software helps organizations improve the efficiency of their customer support workflows with a seamless ticketing system, extensive automations, and self-service options. Zoho Desk is both affordable and scalable, making it a great option for companies of varying sizes.

Key features

• AI-powered assistant: Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, helps teams analyze customer interactions to determine sentiment and suggest the next course of action
• SLA rules: Align the platform with your service level agreement (SLA) rules and automatically escalate violations when they come up
• Real-time analytics: Oversee performance and monitor tickets with dashboards that provide real-time insights

What makes Zoho Desk a strong alternative to Zendesk?

For starters, Zoho Desk is more affordable than Zendesk. The platform also integrates with Zoho’s other products, such as applications for sales, marketing, project management, and more, reducing the need for third-party tools. Organizations already part of Zoho’s ecosystem will enjoy seamless data synchronization and workflow integration.

Zoho Desk pricing

• Starting price: $7/month/user
• Four plans to choose from: Express, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise
• 15-day free trial available

3. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub is a customer service platform that ties directly into HubSpot’s other products, such as its CRM, providing a cohesive view of customer interactions. The platform itself helps organizations deliver high-level customer experiences through AI tools. HubSpot Service Hubs helps companies provide personalized service while helping them engage and retain more customers.

Key features

• AI agent and chatbot: Offer quick solutions with an AI-powered agent and chatbot customers can use for self-service
• Knowledge base: Reduce support requests by creating self-service resources customers can access at any times
• Omni-channel messaging: Engage your customers where they are by collecting messages from multiple channels in one inbox

What makes HubSpot Service Hub a strong alternative to Zendesk?

Like Zoho Desk and monday service, HubSpot Service Hub also integrates perfectly with HubSpot’s other products, giving customer service teams full context on customer interactions without switching platforms. Zendesk focuses more on ticketing, while HubSpot Service Hub emphasizes customer relationship management, making it a better option for businesses looking to house sales, marketing, and support workflows under one roof.

HubSpot Service Hub pricing

• Free forever plan with limited features
• Starting price: $15/month/seat
• Choose from multiple plans for individuals, small teams, and enterprises

4. Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud is an AI-driven customer service platform aimed at larger teams and enterprises. With advanced automation, AI insights, and a range of robust features to personalize every interaction, Salesforce Service Cloud is a highly sophisticated support solution that gives companies a unified platform for service management.

Key features

• AI case management: By using build-in AI tools, the platform can instantly prioritize and distribute cases to the right agent or department
• Omnichannel ticket routing: Route customer inquiries from any channel, such as calls, email, chat, and social media channels
• AI-generated resolutions: Solve tickets in an instant with service replies generated by AI to speed up handling time

What makes Salesforce Service Cloud a strong alternative to Zendesk?

Salesforce Service Cloud offers excellent AI-driven automation and scalability, making it a good fit for large organizations and enterprises with more complex customer service needs. Compared to Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud is better equipped to handle high volumes of inquiries with smart automation.

Salesforce Service Cloud pricing

• Starting price: $25/user/month
• Choose from five plans: Starter Suite, Pro Suite, and Enterprise, Unlimited, and Einstein 1 Service
• 30-day free trial available

5. Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management is a modern IT service management (ITSM) platform by Atlassian that’s geared towards IT and operations teams. It enables businesses to handle service requests both internally and from customers, as well as incidents, and change management all in one platform.

Key features

• AI-led ITSM: Automate IT routine tasks and operations like ticket escalation, resolutions, predictions, and approvals with AI
• Customized help center: Build your own help center that customers can use to get more information and solve issues
• Engineering support: For teams looking for an internal support tool, the platform can manage customer requests and collaborate with dev teams

What makes Jira Service Management a strong alternative to Zendesk?

For IT and DevOps teams, Jira Service Management is a better choice compared to Zendesk. While Zendesk focuses on general customer support, Jira excels in IT service workflows, making it ideal for businesses that need a robust incident management solution. Additionally, for DevOps teams that already use Jira to track bugs and manage software projects, Jira Service Management allows teams to link requests to Jira issues.

Jira Service Management pricing

• Free forever plan for 3 agents including basic features
• Starting price: $19/month/agent
• Four plans to choose from: Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise
• 7-day free trial available

6. Help Scout

Help Scout is a customer service platform that’s ideal for small to mid-sized businesses looking for a simple support system solution that can scale. It offers a user-friendly interface, collaborative tools, and strong automation features.

Key features

• AI writer: Compose email replies in seconds to improve response time and personalize messaging
• Beacon live chat: Use AI to chat with customers and solve issues on the spot and redirect customers to agents when necessary
• Shared inbox: Keep all your customer conversations in one place with a shared inbox for email, social, live chat, and voice interactions

What makes Help Scout a strong alternative to Zendesk?

Help Scout is more lightweight than Zendesk, making it a great solution for small teams that want a simple yet powerful support tool. Help Scout keeps customer support streamlined and focused on multichannel, providing a solution that’s straightforward and without too many bells and whistles.

Help Scout pricing

• Free forever plan for unlimited users with basic features
• Starting price: $50/month
• Three plans to choose from: Free, Standard, and Plus

7. Intercom

Intercom describes itself as an AI-first customer service platform, leveraging an advanced AI agent to help with all aspects of support workflows. Offering a human-quality AI service agent, Intercom aims to empower companies to deliver high-quality customer service with any help desk or existing platform.

Key features

• Fin AI agent: Provide customers with instant, personalized, and accurate answers 24/7 with an AI agent that sounds human
• Copilot: A personal AI assistant helps guide support agents with relevant resolutions, responses, and ticket actions
• AI analysis: Use AI to generate smart reports to get valuable insights into team performance, response time, and where to make improvements

What makes Intercom a strong alternative to Zendesk?

Intercom shines when it comes to real-time engagement thanks to its Fin AI chatbot and automation tools that make customer interactions more dynamic, which is essential for e-commerce businesses and SaaS companies. Zendesk is more ticket-focused, while Intercom provides a more conversational approach. Additionally, Fin AI Agent can be added to your existing platform, making Intercom a flexible add-on to platforms like Zendesk for the best of both worlds.

Intercom pricing

• Starting price: $29/seat/month
• Three plans to choose from: Essential, Advanced, and Expert
• Fin AI Agent add-on starts from $0.99 per resolution
• 14-day free trial available

8. HappyFox

HappyFox is a one-stop shop for help desk and ticketing software that also offers solutions for teams like marketing, HR, IT, and facilities management. With tools for automation, self-service knowledge bases, and comprehensive reporting, HappyFox is a great choice for businesses of different sizes who want to prioritize real-time communication and quick resolutions.

Key features

• Customizable interface: Build your own custom fields and workflows, set roles and permissions, and even define shifts for a personalized work experience
• Self-service tools: Reduce agent workload with chatbots, automated responses, multilingual knowledge bases, and entire support portals
• Powerful automation: Assign tickets, set smart rules based on conditions, automate SLA escalations, and get notified on ticket updates all automatically

What makes HappyFox a strong alternative to Zendesk?

HappyFox provides a cost-effective and user-friendly alternative to Zendesk with strong automation capabilities. HappyFox offers an all-encompassing solution that can fit small businesses and enterprises, with plenty of features, automations, and seamless integration options to fit a range of organizations.

HappyFox pricing

• Starting price: $21/agent/month
• Four plans to choose from: Basic, Team, Pro, Enterprise Pro
• Free trial on demand after a demo

Why choose monday service as an alternative to Zendesk?

Selecting the right AI customer service platform for your business is a project in itself, but it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. Aside from looking for the features you need and testing different software through free trials, a good way to make your selection is to opt for a solution that offers plenty of flexibility, scalability, and extensive customization options so that you can form the platform to your business requirements. monday service offers all that and more, making it a good fit for a wide range of service applications.

monday service is an all-encompassing AI-powered customer service solution that’s easy to use but doesn’t skimp out on advanced features. With a drag-and-drop interface users love, and customizable workflows, automations, and boards, monday service is made with every service team in mind, whether you’re focused on customer support, ITSM, facilities management, or HR.

We already mentioned some of monday service’s great features, but let’s look at a few more that make it a standout platform.

• monday service’s AI agents use ticket history and knowledge base articles and resources to provide personalized, accurate resolutions
• Integrate over 200 of your favorite work tools like Slack, Trello, DocuSign, and others to easily sync data and workflows
• AI suggestions offer instant resolution options on every ticket, helping teams close customer issues with one-click replies

• Leverage AI analytics through reports and dashboards to get insights into performance and service trends for real-time decision-making
• Analyze sentiment using AI from customer feedback or interactions to improve customer satisfaction levels
• Let AI take the reigns on categorizing and prioritizing incoming tickets so you can save time and instantly identify or escalate pressing customer issues

• Build a knowledge base for your agents so that they can quickly pull up documents and articles to guide them through more complex customer tickets
• Enterprise-grade security features to make sure your sensitive customer data is always kept safe
• Organize internal IT tickets from any department, such as HR, marketing, operations, finance, or others

• Set advanced permissions for different agents on your team so your more sensitive data stays secure
• Mobile app to stay connected to critical customer issues at anytime and from anywhere

One of the biggest selling points of monday service is that you can seamlessly connect with other monday.com products. Since it’s hosted on the monday.com work OS, monday service can be connected with platforms like monday CRM, monday dev, and monday work management. You can create new projects or open dev requests directly from customer tickets, expanding productivity to multiple departments.

Try monday service

How to migrate from Zendesk to monday service

Migrating customer service platforms may seem like a headache, but with the right planning, it can be a relatively smooth transition. Here’s how you can do it in a few straightforward steps on how to migrate from Zendesk, or any other customer service platform, to monday service:

1. Plan your migration: Identify key data to transfer, such as tickets, contacts, and automation rules
2. Export Zendesk data: Download customer information, ticket history, and knowledge base content in CSV or JSON format
3. Configure monday service: Set up your workflows, automations, and custom fields in monday service to match your team’s support process
4. Import data: Use monday service’s import tools or APIs to upload tickets, customer records, and help desk settings
5. Train, test, and optimize: Train your agents on monday service, verify that all data migrated correctly, and run test cases based on your original workflows
6. Monitor and go live: Fully switch to monday service while continuing to monitor performance and make necessary adjustments

For more complex migrations, the monday.com support team is on hand to help you with a more guided transition to your new monday service platform.

Set yourself up for success with the right Zendesk alternative

Organizations that want to succeed the first time with customer service software need to pick the right platform. A solution like monday service is entirely customizable to each team’s unique workflows and can easily scale as businesses evolve. Thanks to advanced AI tools and an interface that’s simple for anyone to use, monday service empowers any organization to optimize customer support processes.