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PagerDuty Operations Cloud vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.6
PagerDuty Operations Cloud boosts efficiency and uptime, improves incident handling, reduces fatigue, and enhances customer service, meeting SLAs.
Sentiment score
6.2
Zendesk delivers cost savings and efficiency with flexible pricing and integration, addressing operational needs despite ROI measurement challenges.
The escalation was not possible at all before, which led to the L1 team being under too much stress.
Software Developer at Webspruce
The automated system efficiently monitors the infrastructure and notifies us about problems, benefiting both our customers and the bank's reputation.
Senior Business Application Analyst (Product Team) at Kotak Mahindra Bank
Time to respond, time to initiate, and time to mitigate are key metrics influenced positively.
Lead Platform at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
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
7.9
PagerDuty Operations Cloud is lauded for prompt, knowledgeable customer service and efficient issue resolution, earning high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.4
Zendesk support is generally responsive and professional, with some users experiencing delays and a lack of 24/7 chat support.
we have never had an issue when reaching out to someone in customer service
Senior Cloud Operations Engineer at IMO Health
I have not needed to contact the customer support of PagerDuty Operations Cloud, as they provided thorough knowledge transfer once they handed over the services.
Senior Business Application Analyst (Product Team) at Kotak Mahindra Bank
usually, they respond and help us fix issues during integration.
Software Developer at Webspruce
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
7.6
PagerDuty Operations Cloud offers scalable, seamless expansion with flexible billing and integration, supporting large user bases effectively.
Sentiment score
7.4
Zendesk scales well across team sizes, despite challenges in backups, updates, customization, and larger organization's specific scalability needs.
The product was highly scalable, with no limits on the number of applications or event routing rules.
Sr Director - Global Support APJ at HashiCorp
The scalability of PagerDuty Operations Cloud is very good, and it can handle increasing traffic as our organization expands without any issues.
Senior Business Application Analyst (Product Team) at Kotak Mahindra Bank
PagerDuty Operations Cloud is scalable; we can easily add teams, manage tags, and create teams.
Software Developer at Webspruce
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
8.4
PagerDuty Operations Cloud is highly reliable, with rare issues quickly resolved, ensuring stable and efficient alert management.
Sentiment score
7.8
Zendesk is stable and reliable, with occasional outages swiftly resolved, making it ideal for small businesses and startups.
We have never experienced any downtime or latency issues from PagerDuty Operations Cloud.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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

PagerDuty needs better date/time functions, UI clarity, integrations, scheduling, app reliability, escalation policies, multilingual support, and pricing.
Zendesk users seek improved usability, better integration, enhanced reporting, customization, mobile support, streamlined management, and communication tools.
It would be useful to have a way to define all configurations in code that is similar to how Terraform operates.
Sr Director - Global Support APJ at HashiCorp
Once a user acknowledges the alert, it may be unnecessary to continue calling again and again, as it distracts from their work on resolving the issue.
Senior Business Application Analyst (Product Team) at Kotak Mahindra Bank
We could make that line more expressive to show who will get escalated if someone misses.
Software Developer at Webspruce
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

PagerDuty Operations Cloud is competitively priced, but costs vary by features and users, offering value despite possible licensing limits.
Zendesk's pricing can be high, impacting decisions, but offers flexibility and valuable CX features if negotiated effectively.
We have been using PagerDuty Operations Cloud for several years, so our pricing and cost have definitely increased over time, especially as we have hired additional engineers.
Senior Cloud Operations Engineer at IMO Health
Pricing, setup cost, and licensing were not my headaches, and the organization already provided me with everything set up.
Digital Specialist Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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

PagerDuty Operations Cloud streamlines incident management with automation, integration, and mobile features, enhancing efficiency and service reliability.
Zendesk excels in integration, user-friendly ticket management, automation, customization, and robust analytics to enhance productivity and user experience.
It integrates with multiple applications and is highly customizable, with policies, escalation procedures, and an event routing tool that ensures contacting the right person.
Sr Director - Global Support APJ at HashiCorp
In addition to those features, I also find the integration and reporting aspects of PagerDuty Operations Cloud valuable, as it records all triggered calls and incidents, enabling us to analyze patterns and identify the times when systems go down, thus assisting us in understanding and addressing the underlying causes.
Senior Business Application Analyst (Product Team) at Kotak Mahindra Bank
Before, setting up everything was very difficult. Now, we don't have to think about it. We can simply set it up in PagerDuty and it works.
Software Developer at Webspruce
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

PagerDuty Operations Cloud
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (11th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (1st), AIOps (14th), Critical Event Management (CEM) (1st)
Zendesk
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (15th), Help Desk Software (8th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (6th), Sales Force Automation (5th), Reporting (12th), Knowledge Management Software (4th), Community Platforms (2nd), AI Customer Support (9th), AI IT Support (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Systems Management solutions, they serve different purposes. PagerDuty Operations Cloud is designed for IT Alerting and Incident Management and holds a mindshare of 17.3%, down 24.6% compared to last year.
Zendesk, on the other hand, focuses on CRM Customer Engagement Centers, holds 7.1% mindshare, down 7.6% since last year.
IT Alerting and Incident Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PagerDuty Operations Cloud17.3%
Opsgenie10.9%
Rootly8.5%
Other63.3%
IT Alerting and Incident Management
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Zendesk7.1%
Microsoft Dynamics CRM16.3%
Salesforce Service Cloud12.5%
Other64.1%
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

Hempreet Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Digital Specialist Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
On-call automation has reduced downtime and has enabled faster incident response at scale
Even though PagerDuty Operations Cloud is a strong platform, many things can be improved. Analytic and reporting depth can be improved with better depth. Noise suppression and alert grouping robustness can be improved because sometimes the grouping becomes vague and somewhat unclear. Usability can improve, and user interface and user experience can improve because it becomes quite complex for new users. Integration and ecosystem limitations can be improved, as well as cost because for small or mid-sized organizations, it would become quite expensive to pay for this solution. Complexity for smaller teams or simpler needs can also improve. I think we can have richer analytics, and the reporting dashboards can improve. More robust noise suppression can help us. Native support for alert attachment can help us. A simpler user interface and user experience can be implemented, and pricing tiers and models should be more favorable. Accessible documents and easier onboarding can help a lot.
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
Performing Arts
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
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 Business15
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PagerDuty?
I do not have any information regarding the pricing, setup cost, or licensing, as those details are managed by the organizational leadership.
What needs improvement with PagerDuty?
I would suggest that the calling service could be adjusted since if a system goes down, the user receives continuous calls, which can be overwhelming. Once a user acknowledges the alert, it may be ...
What is your primary use case for PagerDuty?
My main use case for PagerDuty Operations Cloud is to set up alerts for any failures, such as when one server is down, a particular service is down, or when APIs are not responding due to technical...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

40% of the Fortune 100 TrustPagerDuty. Customers include: Slack, Intuit, Zendesk, Panasonic, Pinterest, Airbnb, eHarmony, McKesson, Comcast
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about PagerDuty, Splunk, Atlassian and others in IT Alerting and Incident Management. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.