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SugarCRM Platform vs Zendesk comparison

 

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
9th
Ranking in CRM
24th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Automation (11th), Sales Force Automation (6th)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
3rd
Ranking in CRM
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (7th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (6th), AI IT Support (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 4.4%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 8.7%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk8.7%
SugarCRM Platform4.4%
Other86.9%
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 performance and stability are fine."
"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"Affordable and commercial open source solution is good for organizations with budget constraints."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
"It works well with Jira. You can customize it to fit your needs."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"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."
"If you are looking for a simple ticketing system that anyone can understand and implement (support personnel who is not tech-savvy) then this is the one."
"To be honest with you, I thought Zendesk was a very good product."
"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."
"I'd say that the integration options that Zendesk offers are the most valuable features to our team."
"Our CS team has been able to quickly and effectively run through customer inquiries using the Zendesk platform."
"This feature allowed our team organize and assign certain members to a particular group."
"Ticket submission has been completely streamlined and our ability to respond has been greatly simplified coming from our past solution (Sharepoint-based)."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"Putting so many things into SugarCRM became a much-hated task, mainly because of the horrible UI."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"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."
"At the moment, there is a complicated flow in regards to the user's permissions and what they can see."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
"One of the drawbacks of Zendesk is that it doesn't provide a secure way for us to send data. So, we usually use a secure SharePoint folder link. We put that in the Zendesk ticket so that the requester has a secure way of getting to their data."
"The data you get when logged in to Zendesk Support differs from the data you get when you programmatically query Zendesk Support through its API because of a sync time delay."
"I would like to see improvement in the "trigger" sections and "macros" as well."
"I really wish they had a chat feature - like Olark for example."
"It could use better analytics for trend tracking as well as the ability to tie the customer support and sales items together."
"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."
"The support is not on chat often which is quite frustrating if you want immediate answers but they do respond to tickets within 24 hours."
"Ticket forwarding and the ability to add subscribers to tickets as some back and forth correspondence needs to be brought to attention of several team members, sometimes across different departments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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
18%
Construction Company
16%
Engineering Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 Enterprise21
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?
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

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: June 2026.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.