HubSpot vs Zendesk Comparison 2024: Which Is Better?

Who doesn’t adore a good comparison piece, yeah? Today we are undertaking a HubSpot vs Zendesk comparison. All right!

We’ll put these two software systems side by side, with an extra focus on the customer support modules. This means Zendesk for Service and HubSpot Service Hub. However, we will also touch on other feature sets from the worlds of marketing, sales, CRM, CMS, and more.

So, if you are ready to pit these SaaS titans one against the other, then you have landed on the right article. Onward and upward!

What is the difference between HubSpot and Zendesk?

The main difference between Zendesk and HubSpot is that HubSpot offers a range of modules for marketing, sales, service, CMS, operations and more. Zendesk, on the other hand, used to be strictly a help desk customer support app, though today it also offers a sales package.

Have you already familiarized yourself with a typical HubSpot review? You should. There you can read all about the CRM tools and other useful features offered by their series of Hub packages. Basically, you can learn all about how they define the total CRM system. It is a combo of marketing, sales, support and content management.

Meanwhile, over in your average Zendesk review, you get a different picture painted. One of the many praises sung about Zendesk is the omnichannel and multichannel communication options offered to users. This is a great way to streamline the cooperation between sales and customer support. 

In both cases, you will find quite a bit of overlap in the features and functionalities. Where possible, we will point that out, and say which platform did it better.

HubSpot vs Zendesk comparison chart

Before we get deep in this bag, let us cast a glance over at this nice table which summarizes everything. You’ll see the categories we’ll be comparing, who is the instant winner, and even get links to their sales pages in case you want to subscribe right away.

HubSpot vs Zendesk pricing

There are many ways to compare the pricing between HubSpot and Zendesk. This is due to their many packages. For the purpose of this comparison, we will compare HubSpot Service Hub and Zendesk for Service pricing plans.

HubSpot Service Hub has two paid plans. The Starter plan starts at $18 per month billed annually for two users, and $9 per month for extra users. The Professional plan starts at $450 per month, billed annually for five users, and $90 per month for additional users. 

HubSpot offers a special HubSpot CRM Suite tier that combines tools from HubSpot Sales Hub, HubSpot Marketing Hub, and HubSpot Service Hub, among other tools. 

Zendesk has a basic tier for customer service as well as a Zendesk Suite package. The Starter plan is $19 per month per user billed annually, the Support Professional plan is $55 per month per user billed annually, and the Support Enterprise plan is $115 per user per month billed annually. 

All these plans cover up to five users. Meanwhile, Zendesk Suite plans begin at $55 per user per month, billed annually for five users, and then go up from there.

Winner: Zendesk

When it comes to pricing, Zendesk wins. Zendesk offers a bit more flexibility in their customer service software pricing packages. Zendesk also provides a more affordable low-end package. 

Zendesk vs HubSpot free versions

Now on to free packages. HubSpot provides free versions on many of their platforms. For example, you can get the HubSpot CRM suite, which includes tools for marketing, sales, and customer service. This also includes CMS, operation, and commerce tools. 

Now, there is no free service on any of the Zendesk packages, meaning neither Zendesk Sales nor Zendesk Support have toolkits free of charge. 

However, to reiterate, the Zendesk platform offers a basic plan with a decent feature set that is affordable. Unlike Zendesk, HubSpot's free plan may not meet everyone's business needs.

Winner: HubSpot

In the category of free plans, HubSpot has free tools, whereas Zendesk does not. So, this is an easy category to name a winner.

Customer support

Let us discuss customer service from real support agents. Zendesk offers digital support during regular business hours. After that, you can get extra support via add-ons. There is the premiere plan support and engagement that is 24/7. You can also add custom on-demand training and professional services for a fee. 

HubSpot Service Hub offers basic customer service similar to other HubSpot packages. All starter plans get email and chat support. Professional and enterprise accounts get added phone customer service with speedier response times.  

Winner: HubSpot

When it comes to providing you with the best customer experience regarding seeking support, HubSpot is slightly superior to Zendesk. 

Knowledgebase & learning

Sometimes, you don't want to bother with lengthy support and just want to help yourself. HubSpot has many resources for self-service. There is a community forum, a robust knowledge base, a customer blog, and even training videos with HubSpot Academy.

HubSpot is like Zendesk in this regard. There is a well-maintained Zendesk Help Center for useful guides, FAQs, and articles. Zendesk also allows its users to access a community forum.

Winner: HubSpot

HubSpot is again the winner. But Zendesk doesn't do too poorly in this category either. Just when it comes to self-service tools as part of any help desk software, HubSpot offers several channels more than Zendesk.

HubSpot or Zendesk for ease of use?

The category of simplicity is never easy. Both HubSpot Service Hub vs Zendesk for customer service provide a UX that is easy to use, no doubt. In both cases, you have a set of powerful tools that do not require too much effort to learn. 

What's more, both SaaS have a fair amount of customizable feature options that are easy to manage. This goes for tools like giving users the power to build custom workflows and other useful automations that fit your business requirements.

Winner: Tie

To help with managing customer sales or service issues with ease, both Zendesk's tools and HubSpot Service Hub's features are nearly equal in ease.

Zendesk vs HubSpot features & functionality

Now that we have looked at some basics, we really begin to do a side-by-side comparison of Zendesk and HubSpot’s tools.

These are the categories of advanced features that we will compare here:

• Online and desktop versions

• CRM features

• Marketing tools

• Sales features

• Customer service tools

• CMS

• Analytics and forecasting

• Mobile apps

• Integrations

Zendesk vs HubSpot online and desktop versions

Sometimes, you might think you want the option to have either a web-based SaaS or a downloadable desktop app. However, these days, most people opt for the web browser version, especially startups and small businesses.

Zendesk is an all-web browser version. It works with most major web browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, to name a few. If you want a desktop version of Zendesk, you will need a third party to achieve this.

HubSpot, on the other hand, has a tad more options. It, too, is almost entirely a web browser app. However, there are some extensions you can get as add-ons. For example, there is the HubSpot Sales Outlook desktop add-in. You can also use third-party apps to create a desktop version.

Winner: HubSpot

It seems that you get slightly more options when it comes to versions with HubSpot than you do with Zendesk, and for this reason, it wins this field.

CRM features

Both Zendesk and HubSpot can be used as CRM platforms.

Zendesk's CRM software is closely linked to its sales package. You can sync up your email with Zendesk to share contact data, create targeted audience lists for sales outreach, and create customizable email workflows. 

As for CRM data, Zendesk provides complete customer views on a unified dashboard. Here, you'll get access to pertinent customer information like purchase activity or communications.  

Now, on to HubSpot. With this SaaS, the CRM tools are also sort of spread across support, sales, and marketing. The customer data management has much functionality similar to Zendesk and many other competitors. You can use contact data to streamline marketing and sales efforts or to create detailed reports on certain contacts or groups.

Winner: Zendesk

Customer relationship management is not an easy category for us to crown a winner. This is the backbone of all SaaS. But Zendesk takes the cake by a tiny lead.

Marketing tools

HubSpot Marketing Hub has a hefty toolkit. You have options like ad targeting, SSL certificates, and even a team shared inbox feature. The email tool comes with an email health report. Other email marketing tools that the Hub provides are marketing automation for emails and forms, as well as email tracking reports. 

Finally, HubSpot offers SEO recommendations and website traffic analysis. All in all, it's a thorough package with a lot of must-have tools for marketing.

Now, as many of you might know, Zendesk does not offer a specific set of marketing features. Of course, sales teams using Zendesk will find some usefulness. You can automate some email workflows to help marketing and sales efforts. There are also email templates, email tracking, and calendar integration.  

Winner: HubSpot

This is a clear-cut category. HubSpot has dedicated marketing tools to help you manage things like brand awareness and lead outreach. For those already using Zendesk, however, you can get some marketing functionality too.

Sales features

Zendesk for Sales has an impressive feature set at a good price. For sales tracking, you get robust pipeline management. This includes many customizable deal pipelines, with added custom data like fields, filters and tags. 

There is a product and price catalog tool. You get analytics on lead scoring and deal scoring. Sales teams can collaborate with ease thanks to mentions and notifications. 

Finally, there are also Zendesk telephone sales tools, like text messaging, click-to-dial, scripts, call tracking, and call recording.

On to HubSpot Sales Hub. You can easily create and customize deal pipelines. Set up a product library to help showcase your wares and prices. There are tools to court and rate new pipeline prospects. 

Canned snippets are useful for keeping people engaged. As for multi-channel sales outreach, there is email with templates, as well as live chat. You also got some basic phone tools as well as video messaging if that helps. 

If you ever have complex issues that a third-party tool can help with, there is a Salesforce integration, too.

Winner: HubSpot

Whether we are talking about small businesses or looking at sales SaaS suited for larger companies, all in all, HubSpot edges past Zendesk as being the better overall selling software.

Customer service tools

Perhaps this part of our Zendesk vs HubSpot Service Hub is the most important one, as customer support is one of the biggest modules for both of these systems.

HubSpot Service Hub provides users with conversational bots to begin support triage quickly. From there you get robust CRM ticket system for your support team. The system allows users to connect to the front help desk office or seek out self service in many ways. 

There is a customer portal, a knowledge base, and omnichannel messaging. You also access live chat, team email, and a shared inbox. Additionally, the support module has an SLA tool, a reporting dashboard, and you get closed ticket reports to evaluate resolution rates.

Zendesk's ticketing system is very thorough as well. You got multi-channel comms with email, chat, social media, and voice. The help center functions along with standard bots. You can also employ pre-built macros for more automated responses to real-time queries. 

At the more advanced tier, Zendesk offers features for SLAs and CSAT feedback tests. To streamline support team collaboration, it offers side conversations and skill-based routing. You can also use workflows to escalate high-priority tickets.    

Winner: Zendesk

While we've barely been able to go over every single customer service and support tool on both of these software solutions, it is generally known that Zendesk is a more favored app for customer support. 

CMS

CMS means content management system. Not all CRMs include CMS tools. HubSpot does. 

You get basic CMS features as part of the general HubSpot Suite, including the free tier. The CMS UI has drag-and-drop functionality for website building, pre-built themes and templates, web hosting, and custom domains. You can also use HubSpot CMS as a blogging tool.

Now, Zendesk does not offer any specific CMS package. Too bad. You can, of course, integrate your Zendesk with another third-party CMS app through connecting tools like Zapier.

Winner: HubSpot

This should not require much explanation as HubSpot has dedicated CMS tools, and Zendesk doesn't. So that's that.

Analytics and forecasting

This comparison piece has touched on reporting a bit so far. Time to look deeper into the world of data analytics and, on top of that, forecasting tools.

Starting with Zendesk. There are a series of analytics features for both sales and customer service. When it comes to forecasting, you can get intelligent suggestions for things like a sales deal volume, as well as for revenue stream flows, whether up or down. 

You also got serious pipeline analytics that is customizable in many ways with or without pre-built dashboards.

HubSpot also offers a fair amount of analytics-based forecasting to help your business. You can create and run forecasting data with some amount of customization. At the more advanced level, you get AI-powered predictions too. This can work for individuals, teams, and across team hierarchies. 

As for more broad analytics, HubSpot has sales and service analytics. It also provides sales and marketing content analytics. This is to see how successful your content is, like email sequences or templates.

Winner: Zendesk

At first glance, it seems these two platforms are pretty well matched when it comes to forecasting. However, Zendesk’s intelligent predictions generally get more favorable results than those of HubSpot’s, according to many users. 

Mobile apps

It should be little surprise to know that both of our platforms today offer great mobile app experiences. 

Beginning with Zendesk, you get all the basic tools in a nice UI. The Zendesk mobile app has offline mobile access so you do not have to worry about losing data if you drop that signal. It also offers geolocation services to help sales team members on the road. 

Along with that, you get visit tracking and GeoVerification, which is great for managers who need to keep an eye on their traveling reps.

HubSpot also has a mobile app for iOS and Android. It covers the standard toolkit, giving you overviews of contacts and pipeline health stats. You can also use it for team communication. 

Other interesting features for HubSpot's mobile apps include caller ID tools, a business card scanner, and other useful features. 

Winner: Zendesk

If you want to take your selling or customer support up to the next level, then mobile apps are key for that kind of scalability. Zendesk and HubSpot are both great contenders. In the long run, though, Zendesk's mobile app wins because its UI is just that much more intuitive. 

Integrations

Finally, we turn our sights onto the topic of integrations. 

The HubSpot App Marketplace is a great place to start digging into the terms of integrations here. You got everything from Gmail, Shopify, WordPress, Outlook, Zapier, and more. For ads, there are Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Google Ads. You get extra tools with Slack, Mailchimp, and Microsoft Teams, to name a few.

Now, let us turn to the Zendesk app marketplace for integrations. Popular apps include Mailchimp, Shopify, Slack, and Tables. 

Otherwise, Zendesk organizes its app integrations by category, like analytics and reporting, email and social media, marketing, lead generation, IT and project management, e-commerce, CRM, and productivity apps.

Winner: Tie

Both of these platforms integrate very nicely with a wide variety of other tools. Whether you are using Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, or Service Hub, or rather, if you have Zendesk for Service or Zendesk for Sales, you can always do some scaling up to higher functionality with new integrations.

A note on HubSpot Zendesk integration 

What's more, there is indeed a Zendesk HubSpot integration available on both libraries. You can use this to fill in any gaps in customer support tools that either platform is lacking. 

For example, you may want to beef up HubSpot Sales Hub with Zendesk sales and dashboard features or add to Zendesk for Service with some HubSpot Service Hub functions. 

Is HubSpot better than Zendesk? Our conclusion

And so we arrive at the conclusion. What have we learned today? For the most part, HubSpot still beats out Zendesk. This should be partly obvious by the fact that HubSpot has a free pricing tier, and Zendesk does not. What’s more, HubSpot has more dedicated tools for business departments like marketing and CMS that Zendesk is sorely lacking.

But what about using either of these platforms to manage remote work teams? Sure, they both do the job, as do so many other of the best RMM solutions out there. Now, neither of our two platforms is on this particular list. But with a bit of imagination, you could easily see how they’d get the job done.

So that about wraps it up. If you’ve been weighing the pros and cons of Zendesk and HubSpot for a long time now, we sincerely hope this article puts your mind at ease.