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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
25th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Automation (12th), Sales Force Automation (4th)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
3rd
Ranking in CRM
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Reporting (11th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (7th), AI IT Support (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 4.5%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 8.7%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk8.7%
SugarCRM Platform4.5%
Other86.8%
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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost."
"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"Available source code, good documentation, training programs, and a relatively active community, provide the hallmarks for a successful open source effort."
"Its agility and simplicity are the most valuable features."
"Time saved is definitely a benefit because it puts all of our tickets in one spot."
"This is one of the better solutions on the market for SMBs."
"The stability has been very good."
"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%."
"Zendesk saves us over $50,000 per year and can be maintained in-house by our staff."
"It's an amazing product, it really helps out in organizing all our tasks."
"Zendesk is a great product for managing and maintaining requests from users."
 

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."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"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."
"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."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"They need to fix the email thread response problem."
"The reports could be more fine tuned to enable better handling of tickets by individual agents and teams."
"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."
"I would like to see improvement in the "trigger" sections and "macros" as well."
"It is easy to use, however, it is not quite as powerful as many other ticketing systems out there."
"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."
"As per me, there arent much significant issues or areas for improvement with Zendesk, as my usage of it is limited. I appreciate its ability to organize tickets effectively based on tags, allowing me to easily gather and analyze customer feedback and requests."
"It's expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
"The price is very competitive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
14%
Engineering Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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?
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?
I wish there was a more easily dynamic tool. Currently, it is quite difficult because not all the tools are labeled. A feature that would be beneficial is if hovering over an icon would tell you wh...
What is your primary use case for Zendesk Support?
I have been using Zendesk for approximately five years now. I use Zendesk for keeping track of emails and customer tickets. Whenever a customer has issues or questions about our product, they email...
 

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: April 2026.
895,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.