It's a tough choice, isn't it? Should you choose Front or Zendesk?
Over the years, I've spent a lot of time working with both Front and Zendesk. I've set them up from scratch, guided teams as they helped customers, and even used both help desks myself as an agent. They've both got their ups and downs, and I've learned a thing or two about what makes each of them shine (and where they fall short).
Short on time? From my experience, Front is awesome for small to medium-sized teams who want a shared inbox experience. They're really good at keeping things personal across multiple channels, but that simplicity might not be the best fit for bigger teams.
On the other hand, Zendesk is perfect for large to enterprise teams who need a super powerful support platform with all the bells and whistles. Zendesk is incredibly powerful, but it can also be a bit tricky to set up and use every day.
Want to know how I reached this conclusion? In this blog post, we'll directly compare Front and Zendesk, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses.
In this head-to-head comparison between Front and Zendesk, we'll score each tool on the following parameters: ease of use, support channels, help center capabilities, automations, reporting, tagging and organizing tickets, popular integrations, interface options, level of provided service, and pricing.
Each parameter will get a score on a 1-10 scale, and we'll also share how we came to those conclusions so you can make your own informed choices between Front and Zendesk.
With this information, we hope to make your research and decision-making easier to find the perfect help desk solution for your company.
When we're talking about "ease of use," we're looking at it from the lens of two different roles: agents and managers/operations. How easy is it to see the needed information and to reply quickly? How easily can you get to team reporting and monitor all your various metrics? What is the experience involved in operationally managing areas like automations and platform settings?
Front specifically describes its product as being built for visibility and efficiency, and that’s definitely evident when you’re using it. You’ll find a fairly simple interface for agents, where they can focus solely on providing personal high-touch support without tons of clutter complicating the screen.
Managers and admins will find a similar experience when changing settings or reviewing reporting. There’s lots of white space to give you an uncluttered view and an intuitive design to make it easy to find things.
Front also offers a slick views feature that allows customers on their higher-tier plans to create specific queues. This means an admin could create a high-priority view or a view of messages only from specific customer types and assign agents to work just from that view.
I’ve found that new users of the app can get started without ever needing to look at help docs or asking for help, which is a great sign of an easy-to-use platform.
Zendesk is a powerful help desk, but sometimes with that power comes added complexity. Learning to use Zendesk as an agent isn’t overly complicated, but it’s not immediately intuitive. New team members may need specific software training or classes to help get started. Different areas that they may need to pay attention to can all blend together into the sidebars.
Managers will find that the Explore reports and dashboards give them a quick overview of what’s happening.
Admins, though, may find Zendesk overwhelming. While each specific setting isn’t overwhelming, there are quite a lot of them. The sidebar of settings keeps scrolling for a while, and I tend to find it challenging to find anything without using their settings search.
We give Front a score of 9 and Zendesk a score of 6. If a clear, intuitive interface for agents and admins is your main goal, Front is the clear winner.
Test drive Front for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Alternatives To Zendesk
The next feature up for discussion is the communication channels each support service offers — especially of the most commonly used types.
We expect to see at least email, chat, and phone as supported channels in any support platform. We’ll also be impressed if they offer additional channels like public and private social media messages without third-party integrations, SMS, or WhatsApp. In this case you’ll find Front is lacking in phone support, although they do offer multiple integrations with phone services which will work for many teams. Zendesk has all three of our minimum requirements built in.
Front is a strong omnichannel provider with built-in email and chat and loads of integrations to add on SMS, WhatsApp, social channels, and phone providers. You will find, though, that the specific channels and number of channels you can use is limited by the plan you’re on.
Where Front really excels, though, is in how they integrate those third-party and built-in channels. Your team will seamlessly see one inbox with everything mixed together, and when they reply, their replies are sent to your customers formatted correctly for the channel you’re replying on.
Zendesk is a leader in omnichannel support, and their supported channels show that. In addition to our minimum channels, they also have built-in connections with Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook to allow you to manage both public posts and private messages. Their optional Talk feature lets you add SMS messages as well.
Zendesk also has a number of third-party integrations to extend your channel functionality. You’ll be able to do things like switch your phone provider away from Zendesk Talk or integrate with Google Business to bring in your page reviews and questions.
We give Front a score of 7 and Zendesk a 10. If built-in channels are your main focus, Zendesk offers more flexibility and power. However, if a clean, easy way to mingle all those channels together into one inbox is your primary goal, Front is the better option.
Test drive Zendesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
The ability to create a knowledge base or help center for your customers is something I value a lot. It's one of the best tools you have to help customers, and when it's done well, it's an incredibly efficient support operation. In essence, a tool that allows you to do a fantastic job building that self-service content is vital in my eyes, but it may differ for you.
Front doesn’t offer a knowledge base at this time. That means if having a help center is something you value, you’ll need to look at third-party options. Sometimes this can be the better option if you want a high level of control or features, but it is something to consider. Front supports integrations with HelpDocs, Help Center, Guru, and others.
Zendesk offers a knowledge base called Zendesk Guide where you can create articles and structure them into categories and sections. Zendesk Guide lets you edit everything about the appearance of your help center and has a huge library of themes that are premade if you don’t have the resources to make your own from scratch.
It also offers features like Community, which allows your customers to ask questions publicly and interact with each other.
In this case we gave Front a score of 1 and Zendesk a score of 10. Since Front only offers integrations with third parties, Zendesk is the clear winner with their offering of a full-featured, extremely customizable help center. As odd as it may sound, if you opt for Front but you need a strong help center, Zendesk Guide would be a good option solely for your knowledge base.
Test drive Zendesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
When we talk about automations, we've combined a couple of different types: routing and other internal automations to prioritize and assign your tickets, and automated deflection, including chatbots and AI, meant to answer your customers without agent involvement. A scaling business or anyone with a large volume of support will find automations essential, and the amount offered often defines which platform is best for you.
Front offers powerful automation functionality with their rules feature. They give you the familiar “if this, then that” type of workflow that can look at your customer information or keyword-match the message itself and then assist you in routing tickets, automatically adding details, notifying people that a message came in, or adding tags to help you better report on ticket types.
Front also has nifty smart rules that allow you to set dynamic variables to target information that may shift from ticket to ticket.
Front doesn’t currently offer features meant specifically for deflection, though. They do have an AI composition feature in beta at this time of this writing, but it’s specifically meant for writing and summarizing responses rather than automatically sending them.
It's obvious that Zendesk has put time into automation functionalities. They have robust routing that can send customer questions to the right people based on a multitude of factors. That includes my personal favorite Zendesk feature, their skill-based routing. With it you can automatically route questions to different team members based on their knowledge or focus, which can bring efficiency to a new level.
Zendesk offers some degree of deflection with its Answer Bot feature. Answer Bot automatically suggests articles for customers based on the question they’ve sent in. This allows you to show customers FAQs that match their ticket content, and if it answers their question, the customer can close their ticket. Answer Bot is AI-driven and matches possible answers based on your customers' natural language. It is a bit manual, though, and you’ll need to set up your specific questions and answers, which can be time consuming.
We give Front a 5 and Zendesk a 7 in the automation category. While both have capable routing and general workflow automation features, they both have their positives and negatives. If automation itself is your main goal, either platform will perform well, but if automating deflection is your top feature, then Zendesk will be a better choice.
Test drive Zendesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Related Reading: Best Front Competitors
Do you want to know how your team is performing? How about your customers’ impressions of your service? Obviously! Team and ticket reporting is your way to keep track of KPIs and where your customers are getting stuck. Having powerful reports helps you monitor what matters without investing time in manual data analysis.
Like many of their features, Front offers a streamlined intuitive reporting solution. You can get the basic metrics in a couple of single views. They give you built-in reports with a full overview of everything as well as specific team performance metrics.
They also let you select your top four KPIs to have front and center in your reports view.
You’ll also have the ability to create separate reporting views to save specific timeframes or channels for easy access in the future.
With reporting and analytics, the first tool I hear discussed in support communities is Zendesk. It's the tool many companies gravitate toward because of its powerful reporting. You'll find that Zendesk offers basic reports via Zendesk Explore as well as expanded reporting that goes beyond the basics.
They have built-in dashboards to get a comprehensive view of team performance. While Zendesk Explore is very powerful and allows you to create a variety of reports, it comes with a steep learning curve and an intense time commitment. To get the most out of their reporting, you'll likely need a team member who is certified in Zendesk reporting and has invested a fair amount of time learning the tools. Alternatively, you may need to hire an external resource for your initial report setup.
We give Front a 7 and Zendesk a 9 when it comes to reporting. Both will be perfectly adequate for the average team’s needs, and smaller teams will likely prefer Front. However, Zendesk offers more power if reporting is a key need.
Test drive Zendesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
Adding tags and categorizing your customer conversations is vital to learning from your support data. It's a feature you can live without, but to grow your team or product, you'll want to have it. It enables functions like routing and different automations, which are vital to thorough reporting.
Within Front, organization is added with tags. They offer a custom fields option, but it’s built for the data you show about a customer rather than organization. Front displays tags clearly in every customer conversation.
When setting up tags, you’re also able to specify a tag color to make scanning messages easier.
Because of the shared inbox and integrations focus that Front offers, the tags you create will also sync with Office 365 and Gmail, which can be handy if your team has previously provided direct email support.
You’re able to use tags in their rules for automation as well as view them in reports, which makes them powerful for organizing and tracking data.
Zendesk displays tags on the side of the agent interface. Tags can also be added manually or automatically based on automations.
Zendesk additionally offers another bit of functionality here: ticket forms. You can create custom ticket forms and adjust the fields to include a drop-down menu, date, or any other type of information. This makes tagging tickets, controlling the input, and tracking them easier.
We give both Front and Zendesk an 8 when it comes to tagging and organizing messages. They both have their positives and negatives, but in the end, both do a competent job. If categorizing your tickets is your main goal, either help desk will offer what you need.
You likely already have a tech stack for your support team. Think about all the tools you use across your customer’s lifecycle. You probably use a CRM, marketing automation, and various project management tools — and those are just the company-wide applications. What about customer service-specific tools like CES reporting or health scoring?
Integrating these tools with your support platform gives you access to more information and the ability to better help your customers.
With Front, integrations are mainly communication channels. It’s no wonder, as a shared inbox is Front’s main feature. They don’t stop with channels for integrations, though. You’ll find dozens of integrations in a wide variety of categories, including productivity, CRMs, and billing.
As a market leader in the support space, Zendesk has an entire ecosystem of applications to extend their functionality or integrate with other tools. Companies themselves often build direct integrations, and this shows in Zendesk’s marketplace.
Integrations are installed by admins and can vary in complexity depending on the tool itself. That goes for which plans they’re accessible within, although all paid plans can install integrations.
We give Front an 8 and Zendesk a 10 when it comes to integrations. The ecosystem Zendesk has surrounding their product provides an obvious edge when it comes to integration, but it really comes down to what applications you need. If your main integration focus is on seamlessly using communication channels, Front is the clear choice. If your focus is syncing data back and forth, Zendesk takes the win.
Test drive Zendesk for free using TestBox and compare it side-by-side with other popular customer support tools.
When we talk about interface options, what we mean are the various and sundry ways your team can use the support platform. Are they tied just to the web app? Or are there other ways they can answer customers?
Front offers apps for both mobile as well as desktop use. This allows your team to focus only on the Front window without being distracted by other browser tabs, which can be key for productivity.
Zendesk offers mobile apps for both Android and iOS, but they take it a step further. Their mobile apps allow all agent functions, even live chat. If you use an iPad, they also have an iPad-specific app that takes advantage of the larger screen.
We give both Front and Zendesk a 10. They both know that work gets done in a variety of ways and from multiple places, and they’ve made it easy for your team to work from where it makes the most sense for them.
Service is a very subjective topic, as any customer support professional will tell you. What makes for standout service for one person is mediocre for another. However, getting help when you need it can make or break your experience so it isn’t something you can ignore.
In this case because I'm not currently using Front and Zendesk on a daily basis, I talked to current customers about their experience and the response times they generally experience.
Front offers different contact methods and SLAs based on the plan you’re subscribed to. All plans offer email support 24 hours a day, Monday-Friday, but their more expensive levels will also add in live chat and a dedicated account manager.
According to customers on G2 crowd, Front offers timely replies within a few hours and generally does a great job with detailed and comprehensive answers.
Zendesk has different levels of support depending on plans as well. Their standard level plans come with basic support during working hours. Once you move up to their enterprise plans, you’ll find yourself with a dedicated account manager and SLAs for how long responses take.
Current Zendesk customers routinely see responses to their emails in about 8 hours, depending on when they’re sent, and they’re typically efficient and offer the help needed. Enterprise customers report speedy responses, in under 15 minutes, but they have SLAs in that same range to enforce the response time.
In this case, we give both Front and Zendesk 10 points. They've both obviously invested in their teams and capabilities. If quick responses are of utmost importance on both platforms, we'd suggest selecting their top-tier Enterprise level plans.
No matter your choice, though, you can be assured that assistance will be readily available whenever you require it.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world with infinite budgets where a software decision would come down only to the right feature set for your needs. The reality is that price matters.
Comparing their entry-level price within TestBox Compare, Front comes out ahead with a beginning price of $19/agent per month, but that’s not the full picture.
Front currently has 4 different plans that allow you to choose the features your team needs. They begin at $19/seat per month for their Starter plan, which is ideal for small, two-person teams. Larger teams will find themselves starting on the Growth plan, which has a five-seat minimum and is $59/seat per month annually. Plans go up to their Premier plan with a 50-seat minimum at $229/seat per month.
Zendesk has a wide variety of plans. They start at $19/agent per month on their limited annual foundational support plan all the way up to $215/agent per month on their highest enterprise-level plan.
Most small to medium-sized teams will find themselves starting their Zendesk service with the Suite Teams plan at $49/agent per month or Suite Growth plan at $79/agent per month.
If Front is your other top option, you'll likely be looking at either Zendesk's foundational support plan or upgrading to the Suite Teams plan.
We give both Front and Zendesk a score of 9. Both have plans starting at $19 and increasing from there and have a variety of plans based on your needs. Which is best for you will come down to your budget and the features you’re looking for.
I know which is best for my team, but my conclusion might be completely different from yours.
We can give you our personal observations of their offerings, but the fact is there is no simple answer to which is better. Only you will know what weight you want to place on specific features, but we can give you some generalizations from our own experience.
If you’re a smaller team or part of a B2B agency team of any size, Front is ideal. If you use multiple communication channels and you want a unified view of them all, it’s a simple interface for your team.
Their focus on personalized support is perfect for an agency to communicate with their customers. If you’re supporting software or B2C support, though, Front may not have the features you’re looking for.
Zendesk offers a market-leading support platform that is the default for many businesses and therefore has the ecosystem that the default choice develops. They have plans that suit companies in every stage, from brand new startups with their foundational plans all the way up to large enterprises with complex needs.
Based on our analysis, we think Front is best for small to medium-sized teams looking to focus on email or for agencies looking to communicate with customers. They also offer an ideal product for any size team if your main aim is a simple shared email tool.
On the other hand, Zendesk is best for large to enterprise teams. They offer the power you’ll need to scale your support at that level, and the complexity that power comes with is easier to handle if you have a dedicated support platform operations team member. They’re also ideal for software support or B2C communications where volume is high and you are willing to trade some personalization for efficiency.
If you fall between those two company sizes, the best platform will come down to the specific features you’re focusing on. Both help desks will do an admirable job for you.
If you're looking to compare Front and Zendesk (or other platforms!), make sure you sign up for a TestBox account. You can test and compare Front and Zendesk side by side using TestBox Compare. And if you’re not quite sure those are your top two candidates, you can test our other supported platforms as well. It's 100% free to use for software buyers and it’ll save you considerable time and effort in your software search.
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