LiveAgent vs Zendesk Comparison 2024: Which Is Better?

Come one, come all, to this spectacular LiveAgent vs Zendesk comparison.

In this article, we will pit two massive brand names against one another to see which customer support and help desk platform reigns supreme.

Get ready to find out which is better for your business needs. On with the show!

What is the difference between LiveAgent and Zendesk?

The main difference between Zendesk and LiveAgent is that LiveAgent is an all-in-one customer support solution offering as many channels as possible for their help desk. Meanwhile, Zendeskfor support is just one of the Zendesk products, the other being Zendesk for sales. Here, we consider the Zendesk support module. 

If you scope out a LiveAgent review or a Zendesk review, you will likely notice that they cover a lot of the same ground. This is all the more reason to do this comparison between Zendesk and LiveAgent, to show you where each software beats out its competitor. 

LiveAgent vs Zendesk comparison chart

Check out this table which summarizes our comparison categories.

LiveAgent vs Zendesk pricing

The cost of your live chat help desk software is where we will begin.

Zendesk has many plans for its platform. There are basic plans that start at $19 per user per month, billed annually. Then there are suite plans starting at $55 per user per month, billed annually. 

There are also add-ons for extra fees. For example, you get an advanced AI tool for $55 per agent per month. Another add-on is advanced data privacy and protection for $50 per agent per month.

LiveAgent has three basic pricing plans and then one final enterprise package. The plans go for $9, $29, and $40 per user per month when paying on a yearly basis. 

The enterprise package is $60 per user per month, billed annually. Of course, you can always pay for either of these brands on a monthly basis for a slightly higher price.

Winner: Zendesk

The main reason Zendesk wins the category of pricing is because they offer more options, from the cheaper plans to the uppermost premium level.

Zendesk vs LiveAgent free versions

Now, we will talk about free plans for both Zendesk and LiveAgent.

LiveAgent offers a free version of their support and help desk solution. It gets you a standard ticketing system. You also get a chat button, as well as some phone call center features. 

The free LiveAgent plan gives you some simple analytics and reporting, which are plenty useful.

Zendesk, on the other hand, does not offer a free version of its software. However, certain true startups can get access to Zendesk free of charge for up to six months.

Winner: LiveAgent

When it comes to free customer service software, LiveAgent is the obvious winner.

Customer support

What kind of customer support can you expect when you compare these two apps?

Zendesk offers digital support for handling serious issues that impact your operations. After that, you can get better customer service plans as add-ons. For example, there is 24/7 proactive support that has proactive engagement and faster response times.

LiveAgent has support via various channels like chat, email, phone and social media. Depending on your plan, it could be based on their best efforts in the free and small business plan, or 24/7 for the more premium plans.

Winner: LiveAgent

The fact that LiveAgent has free support while Zendesk makes you sign up for additional support packages makes LiveAgent the winner again.

Knowledgebase & learning

If you prefer self-service options to solve your problems, then here's what you need to know.

LiveAgent has a blog with many informative articles to help you resolve simple issues or better master the tools. They also offer a series of webinars and tutorials, some of them in video form.

With Zendesk, you get access to a community forum and help center, which serves as robust FAQs and how-to guides. There are also guided learning paths for more in-depth instruction.

Winner: Zendesk

When you combine all the self-help resources, Zendesk's knowledge base and guides seem superior to LiveAgent.

Zendesk vs LiveAgent features & functionality

Here are the specific tools we will compare between LiveAgent or Zendesk.

• Help desk channels

• Tickets and conversations

• Workflows and automation

• Analytics and reporting

• Mobile apps

• Privacy and security

• Integrations

LiveAgent or Zendesk for ease of use

Simplicity is a value for its own sake, and this adage is never more true than when comparing help desk systems.

Both LiveAgent and Zendesk are incredibly user-friendly from the get-go. Support agents generally report few to no problems learning the ins and outs of the tools. The user interfaces are clean and intuitive.

Winner: Tie

From a beginner to an expert, it's hard to pick a winner in the category of ease of use between these two platforms.

Help desk channels

The number and variety of ways that customers can reach out to your support team is a big deal when it comes to customer satisfaction.

Zendesk has the following multiple channels for communication avenues: People can reach out by email. You can create email addresses for this with no limits. 

They can also use social media like Facebook and Twitter. Zendesk offers a web widget for sending emails through your website. Then, there are mobile SDKs for iOS and Android.

With LiveAgent, you get contact forms and contact buttons for your website. There are incoming and outgoing email ticketing tools. 

You can connect with chats and call center features. People can use social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber. Finally, there are also WhatsApp and video calling tools.

Winner: Zendesk

While both platforms allow for multi-channel communication for their help desks, Zendesk's options and availability are a bit better.

Tickets and conversations

The ticketing system is the best method for handling customer queries in order to determine the problem and resolve issues quickly.

LiveAgent's ticket and conversation management gets you a detailed ticket history with all the necessary customer data. You can merge tickets and split tickets to ensure agents reduce time on triage. 

It is possible to create custom ticket fields as well as custom tags and filters. You can do ticket transfers to always route issues to the best rep. Finally, there is a ticket satisfaction survey for gathering useful feedback.

Likewise, Zendesk has a great unified ticketing dashboard replete with past conversations and rich customer data in one place. 

You can automate ticket sharing between multiple accounts with relevant information attached. It is also a snap to set up multiple ticket forms and conditional ticket fields.

Winner: LiveAgent

Managing customer conversations and streamlining tickets are areas where LiveAgent truly excels, though Zendesk ain't too shabby either.

Workflows and automation

The ability to automatically let the platform take over easier or repetitive tasks is a great way to improve many aspects of your operation.

LiveAgent makes it easy to personalize some workflows. You can create dynamic workflows based on things like event triggers, time rules, or SLA data. You can also apply automation to areas like canned messages, chat welcomes, or mass ticket actions, among other things.

Zendesk has many workflow tools. There is automatic conversation routing and service-level agreement management with triggers. As for automations, you get macro responses, customizable business rules, as well as AI, to help with triage, insights, suggestions, and more new macro recommendations.

Winner: Zendesk

Zendesk's suite of automation and workflow tools is bigger and better than LiveAgent by almost every metric.   

Analytics and reporting

Analysis of your business processes is how you can truly boost your productivity.

Zendesk offers a great analytics dashboard with the best customer service metrics. It displays real-time data that you can filter and analyze for more insights. You can also get an agent dashboard to show you the productivity levels of your team to identify who is overworked, underworked, or falling behind.

LiveAgent has a solid analytics overview dashboard, too, with real-time info flowing across the screen. It gets you reports on performance, agents, departments, channels, and tags. This data is useful for monitoring resolution times, rep productivity, and customer satisfaction.

Winner: Tie

Both Zendesk's and LiveAgent's reporting and analytics dashboards are incredibly effective at giving you the insights you need to not only offer better support but also improve marketing and sales.

Mobile apps

A great way to offer the best customer service interactions and streamline the way your team can collaborate is with mobile apps.

With LiveAgent's mobile app, you can manage chats, as well as get badges and push notifications. With the app you can respond to tickets, edit them, and transfer them among your team. You can also see and add tags and notes to tickets to keep everyone on your team updated with the latest data.

The Zendesk mobile app is available for iOS and Android. For ticketing, it lets you search, sort, filter and create new tickets on the fly. It's also easy to comment and update tickets, as well as get notifications on status changes.  

Winner: LiveAgent

While both mobile apps are good enough to get the job done, LiveAgent's app design is more intuitive and the tools are more clearly laid out with less clutter and confusion.

Privacy and security

You have got to ensure your customer data is secure, so let us look at this category now.

LiveAgent takes data privacy very seriously. There are data centers in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere with spam protection and password policy management. You have 2-step verification and HTTPS encryption. You can create a banned visitor's list and get audit logs, too. 

Zendesk offers many user verification methods like SSO and 2FA. You get IP restrictions, password complexity, and session length tools. There is automatic redaction and email archiving. Everything is HIPAA enabled with access logs and advanced encryption. There is also top-shelf data masking.

Winner: Zendesk

LiveAgent's data protection is perfectly fine, so do not worry. Zendesk offers slightly more features when it comes to privacy, security, and even compliance.

Integrations

Our final category today is integrations, the ability to connect tools between platforms with seamless workflows.

Zendesk has over 1,00 prebuilt app integrations that function nearly perfectly. You do not need to know any code. Some top integrations include Shopify, Salesforce, Mailchimp, and Jira. 

You can also search by categories like time tracking, collaboration, project management, and more. There is also a Zendesk app where you can build your own integrations. 

LiveAgent offers a mix of native integrations, externally built integrations, and even ones you can build through Zapier. Some popular integrations include Twilio, Telecube, Gmail, and Cisco Secure email. 

You can also browse the library by category or collection.

Winner: Zendesk

When we compare LiveAgent vs Zendesk for integrations, the Zendesk library and integration builder offer more options and are easier to use.

A note on LiveAgent Zendesk integration

There does not appear to be a native Zendesk LiveAgent integration. However, as most of you should know, you can use connecting tools like Zapier to build your own tools that operate between these two platforms. 

For example, you can set it up so that every time you get an incoming chat on LiveAgent, you can get a notification in your Zendesk dashboard or mobile app. 

Is LiveAgent better than Zendesk? Our conclusion

 Our final rating leaves Zendesk as the major winner here, but not by a lot. 

While Zendesk takes the lead in categories like pricing, knowledgebase & learning, help desk channels, workflows & automation, privacy & security, and integrations, LiveAgent doesn't lag far behind and notably stands out in the free version, customer support, tickets & conversations, and mobile apps domains.

However, choosing between the two shouldn't be merely about scores and categories won. It depends on the specific needs of your business, your budget constraints, and which features are most crucial for your operations. 

For instance, if you prioritize having a free version or superior ticket management, LiveAgent might be the way to go. On the other hand, if you value extensive integrations and a comprehensive knowledge base, Zendesk might be more suitable.

There are several other names you may want to check out on the list of the best helpdesk software. Take your time, and do your homework; it’s your business, after all.

In the end, what is important to remember is that a great customer experience starts and ends with amazing service and support.