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SugarCRM Platform vs Zendesk comparison

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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

"Available source code, good documentation, training programs, and a relatively active community, provide the hallmarks for a successful open source effort."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"The performance and stability are fine."
"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."
"The most valuable features of the SugarCRM platform include its flexibility in customizing fields, layouts, and dashboards."
"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"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."
"The outcome: Better workflows, more control, a better understanding of reports and numbers in general."
"Zendesk was chosen because it is the most user friendly."
"In a nutshell, it's a great tool that allows you to manage all your customer service issues in one location."
"Ticket submission has been completely streamlined and our ability to respond has been greatly simplified coming from our past solution (Sharepoint-based)."
"As per my experience Zendesk is a very impressive, efficient and convenient web based help desk application."
"The benefits I have seen from using Zendesk include faster response times; as a CSM, faster response is the goal, which solves the customer's challenge in a timely manner, and Zendesk offers that capability, which is beneficial."
"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."
 

Cons

"At the moment, there is a complicated flow in regards to the user's permissions and what they can see."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"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."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"Functionality and features are well suited for small business companies only."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"It is easy to use, however, it is not quite as powerful as many other ticketing systems out there."
"There are some edge cases where the simplicity of the platform prevented some unusual workflows, but we worked around it without much hassle."
"If you are only using it for the knowledge base, it may not be the best product."
"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."
"I would like to see improvement in the "trigger" sections and "macros" as well."
"The reports could be more fine tuned to enable better handling of tickets by individual agents and teams."
"I would love to see an easier way to add users to Zendesk as well as a way to BCC people on tickets."
"Partitioning rules and triggers need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The price is very competitive."
"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."
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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.
912,006 professionals have used our research since 2012.