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Jive 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Jive
Ranking in Knowledge Management Software
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (28th), Web Content Management (20th), Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (6th), Enterprise Social Software (8th), Enterprise Intranet (6th)
Zendesk
Ranking in Knowledge Management Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (3rd), CRM (5th), Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (7th), AI Customer Support (6th), AI IT Support (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Knowledge Management Software category, the mindshare of Jive is 3.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 10.6%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Knowledge Management Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk10.6%
Jive3.1%
Other86.3%
Knowledge Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

GD
VP - International Business at Amtex S.A.
A flexible solution that improves our administrative efficiency
We use Jive-n for followups on details regarding purchase orders, shipping documents, and other information We are able to handle more than one hundred POs at any given time with their shipping docs and info, with only one person in charge. This solution provides great flexibility of permission…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We recently rebranded our organization and used this tool as our primary channel."
"Jive-n offers the best curated experience of the social-based content for enterprises."
"The platform works well to collaborate with creating documents or media for a specific goal."
"In comparison to other platforms, Jive-n provides the fastest way to integrate new affiliates into your organization."
"We are able to handle more than one hundred POs at any given time with their shipping docs and info, with only one person in charge."
"Various business groups were able to collaborate effectively using this tool."
"Colleagues are more informed, it is easier to find content, and silo breaking has significantly improved our collaboration."
"Jive came out on top for feature, price, and ability to meet regulatory needs."
"What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool."
"The initial setup was incredibly simple: choose your integration method, set up your fields and workflow, and it’s running."
"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."
"We have found the stability to be quite good."
"It's very great for tracking your customer service activities, building reports, and gaining satisfaction from responses."
"Our company is based on this model and wouldn't be as successful as we are today without this support structure in place."
"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."
"Zendesk has positively impacted my organization because the interface is quite good, easy to use, and has a user-friendly UI."
 

Cons

"A visual navigator would be very useful as many colleagues have an issue to find their way and connect the dots."
"We had major performance issues when our user base went up."
"Create a better way of adding users in bulk by email address."
"The mobile app could be better."
"Jive-n can improve their integration, plugins and democratize their configuration abilities."
"The search engine could be improved and also provide some kind of indexing."
"Stream activity could be better organized."
"Standard Silver technical support is similar to standard support by all vendors, i.e., not quick enough."
"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."
"Zendesk has not positively impacted my organization."
"Many channel inquiries are not possible to collect into a single interface."
"We have been quite frustrated lately with Zendesk, to the point where we are actually considering switching to different software that is more intuitive and better organized."
"Recently they have been under some stability issues, but they do have @ZendeskOps to keep us posted on Twitter when they have issues."
"Additionally, "Internal note" is never just an internal note, it is sent to all recipients on the ticket, which has led to quite a lot of miscommunication and frustration."
"Zendesk Guide's customization could be improved. I would like it to be easier and maybe open-sourced, so that if you have a developer in your company, you can do it yourself. Right now, that isn't allowed, so you need to have it done via the integrator. Another improvement—this is nit-picking—is that it could be less easy to make changes. Some things are so easy that they sometimes look a little amateur-ish. Most of the templates are built-in so they can be used directly, so they are very simple."
"I really wish they had a chat feature - like Olark for example."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."
"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."
"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."
"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."
"The price is very competitive."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer with 51-200 employees
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
I actually have no idea about pricing, setup costs, and licensing. That was provided by our client, so they handled those kinds of things. We were only using the application, so I have no idea abou...
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
The time saved or how quickly we resolve tickets now compared to before depends on the situation we are handling. If a customer is facing issues that need some testing in the backend, it takes time...
What is your primary use case for Zendesk Support?
My main use case for Zendesk is for ticketing purposes. I was replying to customers over Zendesk, and I was also using Zendesk for live chat purposes. As a specific example, suppose a customer is f...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Clearspace, Jive SBS, Jive Engage, Jive-x, Jive-n
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eloqua, Hitachi Data Systems,T-Mobile, UBM, Thomson-Reuters, Groupon, Nike, Cisco, and others.
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Jive vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.