If you still compare Kayako to Zendesk or are considering a switchover, this article is for you. Let’s take a closer look at today’s leader and veteran of the help desk software market.
Kayako vs Zendesk: The History and Background
Kayako
Number of employees: up to 80
Notable customers: Acer, Peugeot, FedEx
Integrations: 70
Kayako was launched in 2001 and is one of the oldest help desks. When it started, the help desk tools were clumsy and difficult to use. Varun Shoor, the company's CEO, felt the need of the market and launched software that was easy to use for agents and customers. He has never been to college but managed to build a successful and self-funding company.
Zendesk
Number of employees: 1,600
Notable customers: Uber, Slack, Shopify, Loreal
Integrations: 249
In 2007, three former freelancers from Copenhagen founded Zendesk. They were united by the idea of bringing more Zen into customer service, that is, letting companies concentrate more on relationships with customers and less on managing the software.
Their start was impetuous, and in just a year, they reported about acquiring the 1000th customer.
In contrast to Kayako, Zendesk adds Professional Services to its feature set. The varied services are designed to help customers launch, optimize, reconfigure integrations, and even migrate help desk data. This way, they can save time and resources, but Professional Services are expensive: you can pay at least $8K per instance. But, if you just need to move customer data to Zendesk from another customer service solution, choose Help Desk Migration.
The fee for data migration is based on the number of exported records and goes from $39. But the price isn’t the only Help Desk Migration benefit. With the automated migration service, you can merge various service desk or help desk solutions apart from Zendesk.
Pricing Plans Variety
Both Zendesk and Kayako offer a detailed description of every pricing plan to help you do a thorough review.
Both Kayako and Zendesk offer multiagent plans meaning the number of agents is not limited by the plan. Kayako offers three plans, the cheapest being $20 per agent per month (billed annually). Zendesk pricing is more flexible and includes five plans starting at $5.
Both companies offer even multi-channel support within the cheapest plans. You can communicate with the customers via email, chat, X, and Facebook, and offer a knowledge base that lets them solve issues by themselves.
Comparing pricing plans side by side is not easy and doesn’t make sense after all. Focusing on business tasks but not features simplifies the choice and helps you pick the right software and the right plan. Here is a short table that shows how important features are distributed between different plans.
| Kayako | Zendesk | |
| Multiple languages | From $40 | From $49 |
| Light agents/Collaborators (bring other people from the company to solve the issue) | For free (starting from 3 in the $20 plan). | From $49(for additional fee) |
| Multiple business hours | From $40 | From $99 |
| Multi-brand | Two and more brands from $40 | From $49 |
As you see, one feature can impact the price significantly. For example, if you have offices in different time zones and need to specify different business hours, the Kayako plan would be twice as low as Zendesk.
Some Zendesk functionality, Such as phone support, CTI integrations, and proactive chat, is offered for an additional fee. If you purchase the Zendesk $20 plan or higher, you can extend the functionality with multiple apps from the Zendesk marketplace.
Both companies offer a detailed description of every pricing plan to help you make a thorough review.
What is special in the feature set?
One of the functionalities that make Zendesk stand out from the crowd is the ability to create community forums. This feature is available in the plans starting from $49. Besides an extensive set of features that come out of the box, Zendesk offers multiple integrations with productivity, eCommerce, and social media apps.
The Kayako interface may seem outdated compared to Zendesk. But Kayako has advantages, too. In addition to the SaaS product, they offer an on-premise version with phone support functionality. Charity organizations and open-source projects can use Kayako for free.
The Last Lines
Zendesk is obviously one of the leaders in the helpdesk software market. But on the other hand, Kayako has enough functionality to be trusted by such giants as FedEx, Peugeot, Toshiba, and Acer.
If you are still deciding between Kayako and Zendesk, try both solutions in real life. Kayako offers a free 14-day trial for all plans, and Zendesk can be tested for free for 30 days starting from the Professional $49 plan. Go ahead and find the best solution for your company.
