Picking the right CRM feels like choosing between two awesome video games, right?
You know you need one, but HubSpot vs Zendesk?
Imagine picking the wrong one.
You’re stuck with a system that’s clunky, hard to use, and doesn’t really fit your needs.
Good news! We’re going to break down HubSpot vs Zendesk in simple terms.
Overview
We’ve spent considerable time diving into both HubSpot and Zendesk.
Our team rigorously tested each platform, exploring their core features and user interfaces.
This hands-on experience allows us to provide a practical, real-world comparison.
Ready to grow your business with a powerful all-in-one platform? Get started with HubSpot’s tools today.
Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $15/month.
Key Features:
- CRM
- Marketing Automation
- Analytics & Reporting
Ready to see if Zendesk is your perfect match? Check out our in-depth Zendesk review!
Pricing: It has a free trial. The premium plan starts at $19/month.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel support
- AI-powered bots
- Advanced analytics
What is HubSpot?
Now, let’s switch gears to HubSpot.
Think of it as your all-in-one growth platform. It’s not just support.
It handles marketing, sales, and service. It helps you attract and keep customers.
Also, explore our favorite Hubspot alternatives…
Our Take
HubSpot is a powerful platform with many features, but you must consider your budget and needs before committing. It’s a good choice for businesses that want a comprehensive solution & are willing to invest in it.
Key Benefits
- Free CRM: Start with a free plan with basic CRM features.
- All-in-one platform: Access a marketing, sales, and service tools suite.
- Extensive community and resources: Benefit from a wealth of knowledge and support.
- Inbound marketing focus: Attract and engage leads with valuable content.
Pricing
- Free Tools: Free for up to two users.
- Marketing Hub Starter: $15/seat/month.
- Starter Customer Platform: $15/seat/month.
- Marketing Hub Professional + three seats: $800/month, additional seats at $45/month.
Pros
Cons
What is Zendesk?
Okay, let’s talk about Zendesk. It’s a support powerhouse.
Think of it as a super-organized help desk.
Customers reach out, and Zendesk tracks everything.
It makes handling customer issues much easier.
Also, explore our favorite Zendesk alternatives…
Key Benefits
Zendesk helps you make customers happy and helps your team work better.
- Makes Customers Happier: Businesses using Zendesk see customers get 25% happier. That’s a big deal!
- All Talks in One Spot: Handle all messages from one place. No more jumping around.
- Smart Help: It does easy tasks for you. This lets your team fix harder problems.
- Self-Help Guides: You can make a help page. Customers can find answers themselves. This reduces questions by 15%.
- AI Smart Tools: It uses smart computer help. This means quicker and better answers for customers.
Pricing
All the plans will be billed annually.
- Support Team: $19/month.
- Suite Team: $55/month.
- Suite Professional: $115/month.
- Suite Enterprise: Talk to Sales.
Pros
Cons
Feature Comparison
This evaluation pits HubSpot, the platform famous for its easy-to-use hubspot crm and unified growth suite.
Zendesk, the industry leader specializing in top-tier customer service operations and ticket management.
This feature comparison clarifies which platform better handles your support tickets, customer service tools, and reporting needs for your growing service teams.
1. Primary Platform Focus
- HubSpot: Built as a comprehensive crm tools and marketing system, with its Service Hub designed to integrate customer support directly into the central hubspot crm platform. The focus is on linking support to sales and marketing data.
- Zendesk: Built from the ground up as a dedicated customer service solution. Its core strength lies in optimizing customer service operations, managing high-volume support tickets, and providing multi-channel support.
2. Core CRM Functionality
- HubSpot: The hubspot crm is native and free, providing a complete view of all hubspot customers across sales, marketing, and service interactions. It minimizes the need for separate crm tools.
- Zendesk: Has robust crm tools for contact management but operates primarily as a helpdesk. While it manages customer data efficiently, integrating it fully with external sales processes often requires separate tools or deep integrations.
3. Support Ticket Management
- HubSpot: Manages support ticket creation and resolution efficiently within the Service Hub, focusing on automation and self-service via a knowledge base. It is ideal for mid-volume, integrated support operations.
- Zendesk: Excels in complex support tickets routing, automation, and channel flexibility. It is the industry standard for high-volume customer service operations that need granular control over every step of the support process.
4. Knowledge Base and Self-Service
- HubSpot: Offers a clean, integrated knowledge base builder within the Service Hub, allowing users to quickly create self-service content to reduce the volume of support tickets.
- Zendesk: Provides extremely powerful and flexible knowledge base software that allows for complex structuring, localization, and robust analytics tools to track content effectiveness and improve self-service rates.
5. Multi-Channel Support
- HubSpot: Provides native support for core channels like email, chat, and phone calls but often relies on third-party integrations for advanced or highly specialized channel management.
- Zendesk: Offers seamless, native integration across virtually all channels, including social media, embedded chat, email, and voice, positioning it as the ultimate hub for all customer service operations.
6. Reporting and Analytics
- HubSpot: Provides detailed service analytics reports focused on the speed and efficiency of the service pipeline. Reports are user-friendly, helping service teams understand core metrics.
- Zendesk: Offers deeper, more customizable analytics tools specifically tailored for customer service operations, including agent performance, customer feedback analysis, and ticket trend forecasting.
7. Customer Feedback Mechanisms
- HubSpot: Provides integrated features for gathering customer feedback through surveys (CSAT, NPS) and linking that data directly back to the contact record within the hubspot crm platform.
- Zendesk: Offers powerful and dedicated tools for sending surveys, collecting detailed customer feedback, and automatically turning feedback into actionable tasks for service teams.
8. Customization for Service Teams
- HubSpot: Highly flexible for customization across objects and dashboards, making it easy for service teams to prioritize tickets and offer personalized support based on hubspot customers’ previous activity.
- Zendesk: Offers deep customization of the ticketing system, workflows, and agent interface, allowing customer service tools to be perfectly molded to complex, specialized support operations.
9. Overall Value Proposition
- HubSpot: Offers better overall value for businesses seeking a single, integrated crm tools platform where customer service operations are tightly linked to sales and marketing data. Ideal for holistic growth tracking.
- Zendesk: Offers superior value for dedicated service teams and organizations whose primary need is complex, high-volume support operations and achieving the highest levels of personalized support.
What to Look For in a CRM Software?
- Scalability: Can it grow with your business?
- Integration: Does it connect with your existing tools?
- Ease of Use: Is it intuitive for your team?
- Reporting: Does it provide actionable insights?
- Customer Support: How reliable is their support?
- Specific Needs: Does it meet industry-specific demands?
- Mobile Access: Can your team access it on the go?
- Scalability: Can it grow with your business?
- Integration: Does it connect with your existing tools?
- Ease of Use: Is it intuitive for your team?
- Reporting: Does it provide actionable insights?
- Customer Support: How reliable is their support?
Final Verdict
So, which Zendesk vs HubSpot wins? It really depends on you.
If you need a powerful customer service platform for lots of tickets, Zendesk is great.
It has strong service tools.
However, HubSpot is a better fit for a system that integrates sales, marketing, and support.
If you are already using Hubspot, then Zendesk and Hubspot service hub is a no-brainer.
For most businesses, especially those focused on growth.
We lean towards HubSpot.
You can trust our insights because we’ve been in the trenches, trying these tools ourselves. We know what works.
More of Hubspot
Here’s a brief comparison of Hubspot with these software solutions:
- HubSpot vs GoHighLevel: Hubspot is an all-in-one platform for agencies, with strong marketing automation and white-labeling options.
- Hubspot vs Pipedrive: It is a sales-focused CRM known for its visual sales pipeline management and intuitive interface, which makes it ideal for tracking deals. Hubspot provides a more comprehensive, all-in-one platform that encompasses sales, marketing, and customer service.
- Hubspot vs Keap: It (formerly Infusionsoft) specializes in CRM and marketing automation, particularly for small businesses looking to streamline sales processes. Hubspot offers a wider range of marketing, sales, and service features.
- Hubspot vs ActiveCampaign: It excels in email marketing and marketing automation, with advanced segmentation and conditional logic. However, Hubspot provides a more extensive all-in-one platform that encompasses lead generation.
- Hubspot vs Clickfunnels: It is dedicated to creating high-converting sales funnels, focusing on landing pages and sales processes. Hubspot, on the other hand, is a broader marketing and sales automation platform.
- Hubspot vs Folk: It is a simpler CRM solution that excels in straightforward contact management and organization. It is suitable for small teams that prioritize ease of use.
- Hubspot vs Instantly: It specializes in cold email outreach and lead generation automation. Hubspot provides a much broader suite of tools, including a full CRM, comprehensive email marketing with advanced design capabilities.
- Hubspot vs ClickUp: It is primarily a project management tool with extensive customization and collaboration features. It allows users to manage tasks, documents, and goals. While it offers some CRM functionalities through custom fields.
- Hubspot vs Monday CRM: It.com is a work operating system focused on project management, collaboration, and workflow automation. In contrast,
- Hubspot vs Capsule CRM: It is a simpler, user-friendly contact manager and sales tracker, ideal for small businesses needing organized customer information and clear pipeline views.
- Hubspot vs Insightly: It combines CRM with strong project management features, making it versatile for businesses requiring both.
- Hubspot vs Freshsales CRM: It is a sales-focused CRM emphasizing AI-powered lead scoring and sales automation for efficient deal management. Hubspot provides a more extensive all-in-one platform with robust marketing automation features integrated alongside sales and service tools.
- Hubspot vs Salesforce: It is a powerful, highly customizable enterprise-grade CRM with robust reporting and forecasting capabilities, ideal for large organizations with complex needs.
- Hubspot vs Zendesk: It is a specialized customer service and support platform, excelling in omnichannel support, ticketing, and advanced AI capabilities for issue resolution.
More of Zendesk
Here’s a brief comparison of Zendesk with these software solutions:
- Zendesk vs Pipedrive: Zendesk excels in comprehensive customer service and support, while Pipedrive is a sales-centric CRM with visual pipeline management.
- Zendesk vs Gohighlevel: GoHighLevel helps marketing groups and small business owners. It’s a full sales tool. It helps your own business grow. Zendesk is mostly a customer help tool. It helps your support team handle customer questions.
- Zendesk vs Keap: Zendesk specializes in robust customer support and ticketing; Keap offers extensive sales and marketing automation for small businesses.
- Zendesk vs ActiveCampaign: Zendesk is a dedicated customer support platform with ticketing; ActiveCampaign specializes in email marketing automation, lead nurturing, and CRM integration.
- Zendesk vs HubSpot: Zendesk provides strong customer service and support ticketing, whereas HubSpot is a comprehensive suite that encompasses sales, marketing, and service hub features.
- Zendesk vs Clickfunnels: Zendesk is a customer service solution with ticketing and live chat; ClickFunnels is a sales funnel builder for creating landing pages and automating sales.
- Zendesk vs Folk: Zendesk offers powerful customer support for diverse interactions; Folk emphasizes collaborative contact organization and streamlined relationship management.
- Zendesk vs Instantly: Zendesk focuses on customer support and ticket management; Instantly specializes in automated cold email campaigns and lead generation.
- Zendesk vs ClickUp: Zendesk is a customer support system, while ClickUp is a versatile work management platform that can function as a CRM, project management tool, and task tracker.
- Zendesk vs Monday CRM: Zendesk is a customer service platform with ticketing; Monday CRM is a highly visual and customizable workflow management tool with CRM capabilities.
- Zendesk vs Capsule CRM: Zendesk provides robust customer support and ticketing; Capsule CRM is a simplified contact management and sales tracking system.
- Zendesk vs Insightly: Zendesk focuses on customer support and service tickets; Insightly is a more comprehensive CRM with strong sales pipeline and project management features.
- Zendesk vs Freshsales: Zendesk emphasizes strong customer support solutions, while Freshsales CRM is designed for sales automation, deal tracking, and lead management.
- Zendesk vs Salesforce: Zendesk offers a specialized customer service platform; Salesforce is an extensive enterprise-level CRM with broad sales, marketing, and service clouds.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the key differences between Zendesk and HubSpot Service Hub?
Zendesk vs HubSpot Service Hub boils down to focus. Zendesk excels in dedicated customer support, offering features such as robust ticketing. HubSpot Service Hub is also a support tool, but it’s part of a wider CRM platform, offering a comprehensive customer view.
Is Zendesk better for large support teams?
Yes, Zendesk is often preferred for large teams. Its robust ticketing and automation make handling high volumes of support requests efficient. Zendesk also offers advanced reporting and analytics, which are crucial for managing big teams.
Can Zendesk integrate with other CRM systems?
Yes, Zendesk can integrate with various CRM systems. However, its strength lies in its support features. If you need tight integration with your existing CRM, check if it’s compatible.
Is HubSpot Service Hub suitable for small businesses?
Yes, especially if they already use HubSpot’s CRM or marketing tools. Its user-friendly interface and integrated approach make it easy to manage customer support alongside other business functions.
Which platform offers better AI features?
Both platforms offer AI, but Zendesk uses AI more heavily for automation and ticket routing. HubSpot uses AI to personalize customer interactions and leverage CRM data.
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