No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SugarCRM Platform vs Zendesk comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 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

SugarCRM Platform
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
11th
Ranking in CRM
29th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Automation (16th), Sales Force Automation (7th)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
2nd
Ranking in CRM
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (7th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (8th), AI IT Support (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 4.6%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 8.8%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk8.8%
SugarCRM Platform4.6%
Other86.6%
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1345677 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost, and it works well."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
"The most valuable features of the SugarCRM platform include its flexibility in customizing fields, layouts, and dashboards."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
"Good, basic out-of-the-box solution, however, in my estimation not a long term play as the design flow and user interface make it a true chore to enter data."
"Available source code, good documentation, training programs, and a relatively active community, provide the hallmarks for a successful open source effort."
"By default, it comes with a really good model where you can start working with it without having a lot of developers in your team."
"Zendesk is a great product for managing and maintaining requests from users."
"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."
"We used to spend two to three working days to solve around 100 tickets and after we used Zendesk the turnaround time has been improved approximately 50%."
"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."
"The stability and performance have been perfect."
"The ROI is amazing."
"We were able to get up and running with Zendesk in a very short time and build a robust web app including help desk functionality that makes the product owner and client very happy."
"Zendesk saves us over $50,000 per year and can be maintained in-house by our staff."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"Putting so many things into SugarCRM became a much-hated task, mainly because of the horrible UI."
"Functionality and features are well suited for small business companies only."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"At the moment, there is a complicated flow in regards to the user's permissions and what they can see."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"There are some edge cases where the simplicity of the platform prevented some unusual workflows, but we worked around it without much hassle."
"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."
"We work in print so being able to preview files attached and having larger files (larger than 7MB would be great) would be a welcomed improvement."
"The stability was a problem as our help desk grew. The product would need work on its stability (system hangs) and being able to handle larger groups."
"They need to fix the email thread response problem."
"Most of the time, if a particular candidate has too many documents, it really takes some time to load."
"It's expensive."
"The dashboard could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The price is very competitive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CRM Customer Engagement Centers solutions are best for your needs.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Engineering Company
8%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise12
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk shows that pricing is really affordable compared to other customer management software. The setup is pretty simple as well, but if ...
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
Regarding my main use case for Zendesk, it is really easy to use, but one of the cons I have with it is that it takes some time to load information. Most of the time, if a particular candidate has ...
What is your primary use case for Zendesk Support?
On a day-to-day basis, I use Zendesk to track, manage, and work on my cases. I also use it to upload information securely, and this is not only limited to documents but also to images and reports. ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about SugarCRM Platform vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
912,517 professionals have used our research since 2012.