SugarCRM Platform vs Zendesk comparison

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SugarCRM Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

SugarCRM Platform and Zendesk are competitive products in the CRM and customer support software category. SugarCRM has an edge in pricing and support, while Zendesk excels due to its feature richness.

Features: SugarCRM includes customizable CRM options, essential CRM functions like lead and account management, and marketing automation capabilities. Zendesk offers an efficient ticketing system, integration possibilities with tools like JIRA, and a comprehensive self-service portal.

Room for Improvement: SugarCRM could improve its user interface and ease of deployment. It may also benefit from enhancing its integration capabilities. Zendesk can develop more robust reporting features, simplify its pricing structure, and improve the flexibility of its help center design options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SugarCRM provides strong support with adaptable deployment models requiring effort for customization. Zendesk offers seamless cloud-based deployment and ongoing customer service excellence, preferred for ease and efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: SugarCRM typically presents a lower upfront cost with good ROI due to its adaptable capabilities. Zendesk has a higher initial cost but offers cost-effectiveness over time with comprehensive features and reliable service.

To learn more, read our detailed SugarCRM Platform vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: December 2025).

SugarCRM Platform vs. Zendesk

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Helped 879,425 peers since 2012

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

SugarCRM Platform

Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers

11th

Ranking in CRM

25th

Ranking in Sales Force Automation

6th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Marketing Automation (10th)

Zendesk

Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers

4th

Ranking in CRM

8th

Ranking in Sales Force Automation

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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 CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 3.1%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 6.9%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CRM Customer Engagement Centers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Zendesk	6.9%
SugarCRM Platform	3.1%
Other	90.0%

CRM Customer Engagement Centers

Featured Reviews

reviewer1345677

Senior Manager / IT Planning & Architecture Services at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Easily customizable, automation enhances the marketing campaigns but support is the main hiccup for us

It has been effective in managing customer relationships. It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory. And there are centralized reports for the CEO and the general managers. We work with automation for these marketing and email campaigns. It sends out emails to prospective customers related to sales offers automatically. And it copies the sales team so that they can follow up. They are tracking the sales leads. So, the automation within SugarCRM enhances the marketing campaigns. For now, my work is done because I am the IT strategy and planning manager. I just try to deliver the solution according to the requirements of the business. From my side, it's implemented already, the requirement related to the sales funnel. But if they have any other requirement from the business side, they will submit it to me, and then I will look for a suitable solution.

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AmandaSanchez

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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."

"The most valuable features of the SugarCRM platform include its flexibility in customizing fields, layouts, and dashboards."

"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost."

"It works well with Jira. You can customize it to fit your needs."

"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."

"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."

"My advice to others looking into using Zendesk is that if you need an alternative to GitHub Actions or GitHub issues, this is worth looking at."

"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 use, and I haven't encountered any issues with delays or communication gaps in ticket resolutions."

"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."

"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use. If you take the standalone product, it is so easy to use, but if you want a tailor-made Zendesk Guide, you can't do it yourself. However, you can use a template that already exists—they have a lot, and they're very cheap, around 300-400 euros—and use it on all your brands. It's a very easy product to use."

"The collaboration between agents is impressive, and I also use Zendesk Workspace, which provides a seamless experience when communicating through chat and email."

"I love how the tickets would auto-populate very quickly in Zendesk, especially when a call comes in."

"Its agility and simplicity are the most valuable features. This tool is very user-friendly."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"Sugar Enterprise could improve by removing bugs and glitches. For example, a comment was made but in the comment section, it was never displayed. However, the problems we faced might not be the fault of the solution."

"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."

"While it is already user-friendly, a slight enhancement in UI design, especially in terms of color combinations, could make the platform more visually appealing and comfortable to use."

"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."

"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."

"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."

"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."

"My experience with Zendesk's customer support has not been positive. When I open a ticket for a bug, it often does not expedite the resolution process."

"There could be improvements in integration, which can be achieved with APIs or tools like Zapier."

"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."

"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'm going to piggyback on what I said regarding Freshdesk concerning what could be better in Zendesk: incorporate more AI."

"The price of the solution should be reduced."

"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."

"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 of its capabilities."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The price is very competitive."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Engineering Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	35
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sugar Enterprise?

All are almost the same pricing. Maybe the cheapest is Salesforce, I believe.

What needs improvement with Sugar Enterprise?

The only challenge was that we implemented it in our on-premise data center instead of using it in the cloud. That was a little bit of a challenge. But it was overcome with the help of SugarCRM com...

What advice do you have for others considering Sugar Enterprise?

To start with, SugarCRM is a very good platform. It's easy to implement and easily customizable. Might be later when you want to scale, then I would recommend Salesforce. Overall, I would rate it a...

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...

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Product Reports

SugarCRM Platform

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Download Zendesk product report

Also Known As

No data available

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Overview

SugarCRM is a versatile CRM solution that facilitates communication and organization within a company. Its primary use case includes call and comment logging, account relation, customer detail storage, verification handling, transaction tracking, marketing material management, and payment transaction handling. The most valuable functionalities include customizable exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks, as well as its scalability, stability, and low cost. It integrates well with Jira and can be easily configured. The platform improves efficiency, productivity, collaboration, communication, and coordination within organizations, while also providing valuable insights and data analytics for informed decision-making.

SugarCRM

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

Sample Customers

Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber

SugarCRM Platform vs. Zendesk