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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
8th
Ranking in CRM
25th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Automation (10th), Sales Force Automation (4th)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
3rd
Ranking in CRM
6th
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 (8th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (6th), AI IT Support (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 7.4% 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

"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
"Affordable and commercial open source solution is good for organizations with budget constraints."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"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 aspect of this solution is its low cost, and it works well."
"The most valuable features of the SugarCRM platform include its flexibility in customizing fields, layouts, and dashboards."
"Zendesk has had a positive impact on my company by increasing efficiency and also increasing customer satisfaction."
"Zendesk is a great product but find a software package that will work best for your team and company."
"Zendesk was chosen because it is the most user friendly."
"Zendesk has been invaluable in automating communications such as email and phone calls."
"Even though I haven't tried other solutions, I think this product is very useful and easy to use."
"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 product offers very good management. It has a great ability to assign tickets based on content."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"Pipelines, forecasts, and reporting in general, are not that good in the free version."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"It could use better analytics for trend tracking as well as the ability to tie the customer support and sales items together."
"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 price of the solution should be reduced."
"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."
"The more customization you do, the slower it will be. Maybe this could be improved."
"There are some edge cases where the simplicity of the platform prevented some unusual workflows, but we worked around it without much hassle."
"It's expensive."
"There is always a network issue with Zendesk. But we don’t know whether it is managed. The network issue is that when I call, it does not let us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
16%
Engineering Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing 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 Enterprise11
 

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.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.