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Workday Adaptive Planning vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 21, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Adaptive Insights offers significant ROI and savings through efficient budgeting, reporting, and enhanced planning within the first year.
Sentiment score
6.0
Zendesk provides significant ROI with cost savings, efficient features, and streamlined operations despite challenges in measuring returns exactly.
I can tell you that we probably saved at least three employees full-time with the ticket management and the automation and the macros and the user follow-up being built in.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
Time saved is definitely a benefit because it puts all of our tickets in one spot.
Technical Solutions Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I feel that Zendesk helped us set up our platform for providing support way faster than other platforms due to its easy configuration.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Adaptive Insights' customer service is lauded for quick, efficient responses, knowledgeable support, and valuable resources, despite occasional delays.
Sentiment score
6.1
Zendesk's customer service is reputable for quick, courteous support but inconsistent ticket handling and knowledge base completeness frustrates some users.
There appears to be a lack of connection between the bot and the agents, making it feel scripted rather than helpful.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
Customer Success Manager at Mimshackworks Endeavors
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Adaptive Insights offers strong scalability and efficiency, though integration and implementation efforts vary across different organizations.
Sentiment score
7.1
Zendesk is praised for scalability and customization, despite occasional data migration challenges and pricing considerations.
We have not hit a peak or a turn yet that Zendesk has not been able to go with us or been able to grow with us in the process, change or pivot that the company is making.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Zendesk's scalability is excellent.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Adaptive Insights is highly stable with quick issue resolution, praised for reliability, version control, and minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
7.8
Zendesk is stable with minor outages and bugs, effectively managing high volumes, maintaining efficiency appreciated by most companies.
They are always informing us with a status update and an ETA, and the turnaround time is usually within the same day with no extended downtime that would cause a detriment to our company.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
Zendesk is quite stable; we experience major outages only once or twice a year, making it very reliable.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
I did not face any slowdown issue in Zendesk; it smoothly handles a lot of tickets.
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Adaptive Insights must enhance pricing, integration, data visualization, planning features, UI, support, and functionality for better competitiveness.
Zendesk requires improvements in customization, integration, interface usability, pricing, mobile functionality, and incorporating AI for better user experience.
Zendesk could actually support HTML on the tickets so we could format our text better than the current options such as size, bold, italic, or underscored, because the text processing is too simple.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
Zendesk is missing an AI aspect that could help provide quick answers based on the knowledge housed within the platform.
Technical Support Engineer/ QA at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Zendesk is amazing, and because they are always working on a new upgrade or a new integration, they are very forward-thinking from an engineering perspective.
Project Manager III at City of Union City Government
 

Setup Cost

Adaptive Insights offers competitive subscription pricing with efficiency benefits, though costs vary by user type and quantity.
Zendesk pricing is flexible but can become expensive, necessitating careful evaluation of needs to choose a cost-effective plan.
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
 

Valuable Features

Adaptive Insights delivers scalable cloud solutions with integrated reporting, enhancing business planning through consolidation, forecasting, and ERP integration.
Zendesk offers intuitive interfaces, rich integrations, and strong automation, streamlining workflows and enhancing productivity for diverse teams.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
CEO at Etcetera Networks
Zendesk is way cheaper than other ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, providing a good platform at a lower price so we could offer good support with a low budget for the license.
Junior system analyst at Wevt clous
Being able to put response counters on certain tickets and have certain ones that are high priority and have a tighter SLA than lower priority items, being able to categorize them as a question versus an urgent request, and being able to bucket them as feature requests or product enhancements.
Consultant and Startup Founder at AimHi Enterprises
 

Categories and Ranking

Workday Adaptive Planning
Ranking in Reporting
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (10th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (4th), Data Visualization (21st), ESG Reporting Software (13th)
Zendesk
Ranking in Reporting
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (3rd), CRM (5th), Help Desk Software (3rd), IT Service Management (ITSM) (5th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), AI Customer Support (6th), AI IT Support (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Workday Adaptive Planning is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 1.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zendesk1.4%
Adaptive Insights1.7%
Other96.9%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew Rosenberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Adaptive Planning Manager at Alight
Adaptive scales well, simple to create new budget versions and models
For the organization I used to work at, it streamlined the process of creating budgets. It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday. So that made it easy. Reporting was pretty easy to set up as well. It streamlined the amount of time it took to do the budget as well as kind of making it simple to implement a rolling forecast process. So, it really was more just a productivity increase and time shortening for the budgeting and forecasting process.
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.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
 

Also Known As

Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Discovery , Workday Adaptive Planning
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Cisco Systems 2. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated 3. Deloitte 4. DocuSign 5. Dropbox 6. Electronic Arts 7. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation 8. Fitbit 9. Fossil Group 10. Groupon 11. Hilton Worldwide 12. HP Inc. 13. Intuit 14. Johnson & Johnson 15. LinkedIn 16. Lyft 17. McAfee 18. Medtronic 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. Pandora 22. PayPal 23. Pinterest 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. ServiceNow 27. Slack Technologies 28. Spotify 29. Symantec 30. Tableau Software 31. Twitter 32. Workday
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Workday Adaptive Planning vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
905,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.