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Five9 vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Five9 enhances efficiency and revenue through features and CRM integration, boosting growth and optimizing marketing and appointments management.
Sentiment score
6.2
Zendesk delivers cost savings and efficiency with flexible pricing and integration, addressing operational needs despite ROI measurement challenges.
I can tell you that we probably saved at least three employees full-time with the ticket management and the automation and the macros and the user follow-up being built in.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
I feel that Zendesk helped us set up our platform for providing support way faster than other platforms due to its easy configuration.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
We were able to offer a seamless 24/7 support experience and meet all our SLAs due to the robust nature of the platform.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Five9 support varies from satisfactory to excellent, with responsiveness and communication praised but some report delays and mixed experiences.
Sentiment score
6.4
Zendesk support is generally responsive and professional, with some users experiencing delays and a lack of 24/7 chat support.
The technical support for Five9 has been exemplary.
Five9 offers multiple support options.
They were good about hosting regular, recurring meetings, understanding priorities, and getting things escalated that were appropriate to escalate.
CX Intelligence Analytics at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There appears to be a lack of connection between the bot and the agents, making it feel scripted rather than helpful.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
Customer Success Manager at Mimshackworks Endeavors
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Five9 is praised for scalability and adaptability, though some users experience challenges with large-scale feature additions.
Sentiment score
7.4
Zendesk scales well across team sizes, despite challenges in backups, updates, customization, and larger organization's specific scalability needs.
We face scaling issues, especially when trying to scale up bigger contact centers.
We have not hit a peak or a turn yet that Zendesk has not been able to go with us or been able to grow with us in the process, change or pivot that the company is making.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Zendesk's scalability is excellent.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Five9 is generally stable, offering quick resolutions to issues, though updates occasionally cause challenges, with room for improvement.
Sentiment score
7.8
Zendesk is stable and reliable, with occasional outages swiftly resolved, making it ideal for small businesses and startups.
In my experience, I have not encountered major downtime.
Sr Specialist - Analytics Metrics and Reporting at Mercer
During training and demos, resiliency tests failed, which was not ideal.
They are always informing us with a status update and an ETA, and the turnaround time is usually within the same day with no extended downtime that would cause a detriment to our company.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
Zendesk is quite stable; we experience major outages only once or twice a year, making it very reliable.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The stability has been quite reliable.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
 

Room For Improvement

Five9 needs enhancements in call quality, reporting, integration, UI, support, costs, international compatibility, and workflow tools.
Zendesk users seek improved usability, better integration, enhanced reporting, customization, mobile support, streamlined management, and communication tools.
I would like a feature where reports such as AHT or workforce-related reports can be generated automatically without starting from scratch.
Sr Specialist - Analytics Metrics and Reporting at Mercer
Five9 should provide free training resources for end users, including agents, supervisors, and admins.
The solution lacks versioning in scripting, making it crucial to manually back up scripts to prevent rollbacks from causing issues.
Zendesk could actually support HTML on the tickets so we could format our text better than the current options such as size, bold, italic, or underscored, because the text processing is too simple.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
Zendesk is missing an AI aspect that could help provide quick answers based on the knowledge housed within the platform.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Zendesk is amazing, and because they are always working on a new upgrade or a new integration, they are very forward-thinking from an engineering perspective.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
 

Setup Cost

Five9's pricing, though initially high, is cost-effective and scalable, with cloud benefits offering value and flexibility for enterprises.
Zendesk's pricing can be high, impacting decisions, but offers flexibility and valuable CX features if negotiated effectively.
They just rent the specific resources they need, which reduces high costs from hardware, software licenses, and operating systems.
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
 

Valuable Features

Five9 offers cloud-based CRM integration with AI features, enhancing service levels, efficiency, and user satisfaction through comprehensive tools.
Zendesk excels in integration, user-friendly ticket management, automation, customization, and robust analytics to enhance productivity and user experience.
The ability to automatically populate borrower details when the call comes in using the Loan Pop feature enhances call efficiency dramatically.
Five9 provides powerful CRM integration capabilities with platforms like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Oracle Service Cloud, making it highly valuable for large companies.
It pre-fills variables from a form and routes to the correct agent, reducing handling times and increasing single-call resolution.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Zendesk is way cheaper than other ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, providing a good platform at a lower price so we could offer good support with a low budget for the license.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
Being able to put response counters on certain tickets and have certain ones that are high priority and have a tighter SLA than lower priority items, being able to categorize them as a question versus an urgent request, and being able to bucket them as feature requests or product enhancements.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
 

Categories and Ranking

Five9
Ranking in Sales Force Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Contact Center Platforms (3rd), Workforce Engagement Management (2nd), Contact Center Infrastructure (1st), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (3rd)
Zendesk
Ranking in Sales Force Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (4th), CRM (8th), Help Desk Software (4th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (6th), Reporting (10th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), Community Platforms (1st), AI Customer Support (7th), AI IT Support (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Sales Force Automation category, the mindshare of Five9 is 1.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 5.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Sales Force Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Zendesk5.0%
Five91.7%
Other93.3%
Sales Force Automation
 

Featured Reviews

NS
Sr Specialist - Analytics Metrics and Reporting at Mercer
Real-time monitoring and reporting help with better operations
The Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) feature helps to monitor the agents. We can see if an agent is getting stuck. For example, if an agent has not been logged out properly, we can log out that particular agent from a particular session because it hampers productivity. It helps us to be more productive. Our call center agents use the Agent Assist feature. Our call center leaders are also using it to monitor agents' quality metrics. We are also using Qlik Sense along with Five9. Five9 is for monitoring, and Qlik Sense is for service-level reports. Five9 provides us with real-time information, whereas solutions like Verint take a lot more time. Qlik Sense can have intermittent logging issues where it might not work properly, whereas Five9 works properly. Among these three, Five9 is the best. Five9 also gives more bifurcation options. Five9 is good and intuitive. It helps to know how things are. I love it and use it every day. There are always new reports to generate. There are a lot of opportunities within Five9. Additionally, the real-time agent monitoring and ability to skill agents based on calls in the queue are invaluable and much easier than previous solutions like the AWS application. Previously, using the AWS application involved cumbersome steps to manage users and agents, making Five9 a welcome change. Overall, Five9 has made my job easier compared to before, and I do not struggle with it. Five9 has helped improve our call center’s speed to answer. Our leaders are using Five9 to monitor everything. It is not a time-consuming application.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Five9?
I like the capability of call and screen recording. It has helped us to hold our agents accountable to the expectations for the role. It creates a clearer picture than giving feedback that is just ...
What needs improvement with Five9?
Five9 ( /products/five9-reviews ) should improve its omnichannel feature, allowing partners to manage all tenants with a single account rather than needing multiple accounts for each customer. Addi...
What is your primary use case for Five9?
We deploy Five9 ( /products/five9-reviews ) for our customers who use it as a contact center solution.
What do you like most about Zendesk Support?
I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
From what I recall, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive and that is what prohibited us from expanding usage of it into more users and using more o...
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
As of right now, I have nothing that comes to mind as an improvement needed or a feature that could work differently or be enhanced. I think across the board, Zendesk is amazing, and because they a...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Agilysys, BISSELL, From You Flowers, SumUp, Kyndryl, PING, Alaska Airlines, Omaha Steaks International, NextRep, AdventHealth
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Five9 vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,477 professionals have used our research since 2012.