Tidio and Zendesk are great tools to enhance the customer support for your business. Both the tools offer a shared inbox for you to integrate multiple support channels on a single dashboard. But a few differences between Tidio vs Zendesk will help you make the right decision when choosing between them.
Finding the right ecommerce help desk that fits your needs will help you:
- support more customers
- speed up responses
- save the time your support team spends on managing queries and tracking orders
- And offer the best customer experience that you possibly can.
So let’s get started with finding the customer support tool for your store.
Overview - Tidio and Zendesk
Before we get into comparing Tidio and Zendesk, let’s get a bit of context for both the tools to start.
Tidio is a great live chat solution to help ecommerce companies have better conversations with their customers. You can use Tidio to connect with your customers and solve their queries quickly and efficiently. At the moment, it’s also the highest-ranked live chat app on the Shopify store.
Zendesk is a multi-billion dollar SaaS company that helps organizations with customer support software. Zendesk comes with an exhaustive set of features, integrates with almost all the apps in your stack, and caters to industries across the board. If you think of customer service software as an industry, Zendesk would be at the top.
Top Differences Between Tidio and Zendesk
Let’s get right into the major differences between both of these shared inbox tools for your Shopify store.
Ecommerce viability
Neither Tidio nor Zendesk are specifically built for ecommerce or Shopify.
But the feature set of Tidio is more akin to the needs of a small or medium-sized ecommerce business. The main areas their tool covers include:
- Live chat
- Chatbots
- Email marketing
Now, it should be said that Zendesk’s product has similar capabilities as well. But their offerings are much better suited for large enterprise-level businesses.
Ecommerce viability: Tidio ✅ | Zendesk ❌
Channels
Customers might reach out to you from any channel they prefer, and you need to reply within that channel.
With Tidio, you can manage support on live chat, email, and Facebook. Whereas Zendesk allows you to support your customers across those channels as well as Instagram and Twitter.
Channels: Tidio ❌ | Zendesk ✅
Supporting Platforms
Although Shopify is pretty much what everyone talks about when it comes to starting an ecommerce store, other platforms also cater to this market. The most popular ones are BigCommerce, WooCommerce, PrestaShop & Magento.
Tidio supports Shopify, BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento, and but doesn’t support WooCommerce.
On the other hand, Zendesk supports all of the above except BigCommerce.
Platforms: Tidio ❌ | Zendesk ✅
Integrations
You want to be able to seamlessly integrate the existing tools you use with the ecommerce helpdesk solution you choose. And that's possible on both Tidio and Zendesk.
However, there's a vast difference in the number of integrations.
Tidio has around 20 integrations. While Zendesk has more than 200 on their marketplace.
Integrations: Tidio ❌ | Zendesk ✅
All-in-one support
Tidio is a great tool to manage your ecommerce support. And it has one of the best Shopify live chat apps there is. But without their live chat function, it’s unlikely you’d select Tidio as your support tool.
Zendesk, on the other hand, might be a better option if you're looking for an all-in-one customer service tool to serve as your CRM, ticketing software, live chat, and messaging platform, etc.
All-in-one support : Tidio ❌ | Zendesk ✅
Knowledge Base
Zendesk offers knowledge management software that is simple to customize and use - as either an internal knowledge base, an IT knowledge base, a support agent-only knowledge base, or a customer-facing FAQ tool.
Tidio doesn’t have such a feature.
Knowledge Base: Tidio ❌ | Zendesk ✅
Shopify reviews
Before picking any software, you’ll want to see what existing and past users had to say about their experience.
We’ll jump into the good and bad reviews of both at a later section but let’s give you a quick overview of their Shopify app store ratings.
Tidio has over 1,1000 reviews and an average rating of 4.7. In fact, it’s the highest-rated live chat app on the Shopify store.
Zendesk on the other hand has about 130 reviews and an average rating of 2.5. So while there’s no doubt it’s a great tool, it does not seem to be a good fit for Shopify store owners.
Shopify Reviews: Tidio ✅ | Zendesk ❌
Pricing
The price of the tool should fit your budget and requirements. Buying in on an overpriced tool will only eat away at your ROI.
Tidio has four different pricing plans including a free one. Their plans are sold completely independently of each other. Here’s a complete breakdown of Tidio’s pricing plans.
Zendesk for customer service starts at $49/user/month, with unlimited conversations. This is fine if you’re not in ecommerce and an SME where you don’t need more than 1 seat. It can get significantly expensive as you scale your ecommerce business.
There's no winner here as it really comes down to your specific needs and preferences.
Top Similarities Between Tidio and Zendesk
Multi-channel support
Both Tidio and Zendesk offer multi-channel support to help you respond to your customers across multiple channels. You can reply to your customers over email, live chat and Facebook using both.
Internal collaboration
Collaboration is an integral part of effective support. And features like ticket assignment, private notes, mentions, and tags help you do just that.
In addition to all of the above, you can create separate inboxes for different teams and set user roles & permissions on both Tidio and Zendesk.
Macros and Automation
More often than not, support reps end up answering the same questions every day. Questions like, “Where’s my order?” “What’s the delivery time?” are surprisingly common. Macros can help answer these recurring questions. Macros are premade responses you can create to resolve your customer queries faster.
Plus you may want to automate your team’s workflows for optimum efficiency and to ensure your customers get the best experience possible by setting rules to do things like automatically assign, close & tag conversations, mark conversations as priority etc.
Fortunately, both Tidio and Zendesk support this to help your customers save time and increase productivity.
Reporting
When it comes to Reporting, both Tidio & Zendesk excel at it. Both tools let you check response times, resolution times, customer satisfaction scores reports on macros and the lot.
Collision Detection
When more than one support agent can reply to the same customer message simultaneously, it’s a problem. In such cases, if you aren’t aware of who’s responding to the customer, it might get awkward at best, and at worst, the customer might get confused if two agents reply simultaneously. Luckily, both Tidio and Zendesk are equipped with collision detection to help your agents know when another agent is working on a ticket.
Mobile application
If you’re traveling or not in front of the laptop, you can’t respond to customer queries. And every question is a lost opportunity to make a sale or to delight an existing customer.
Thankfully, both Tidio & Zendesk come with mobile apps for Android & iOS. This will help you respond to your customers on the go.
Customer Reviews
As we said earlier, it's important to see what actual users of the product say about their experience. Below we've highlighted some of the good and bad comments left by real users for Tidio and Zendesk on the Shopify marketplace.
Real customer reviews for Tidio
The good:
“I use this app to get my customers to contact me faster and it does, the customer service is responsive too. One of the best apps on my site.” - Brumina
“I use this app for live chat. Great experience. I would highly recommend people to use for any kind of Live interaction which you want to have directly with your visitors.” - ThePetCare
“This app is really great for enhancing the customer experience. Our customers are loving the bot interactions and it has improved our conversion rates.” - Happy Ratio
The bad:
“Tidio is a great free chat app, but once you want some extra features, the extra charges per service are ridiculously insane.” - 3D Printernational
“BEWARE - Tidio code completely stuffed up our theme and cart. It caused a major malfunction. Their support is non-existent. Do not use.” - TheCustomGoodsCo
“Completely unreasonable and unscalable pricing. Please don't be roped into installing this app. Fantastic features, which I was willing to pay for, even with a hefty subscription. Then they go and cap each level of the subscription by restricting the number of visitors.” - SnuggleDogz
Real customer reviews for Zendesk
The good:
“We receive so many messages that it helps a lot if we can tell right off the bat if the sender is an existing customer. Not everyone includes order numbers, so this helps reduce tracking down and connecting messages with their appropriate orders.” - Gunskins
“Can't live without it. Helps so much with customer support.” - Mypleasurebox
“Saves a lot of time, especially during non-business hours.” - Quality Golf Cart Covers
The bad:
“Was charged full price when I thought I was paying month by month. The service never worked. Was very difficult to operate. When I asked to have their team fix the issue they went on to send links to blog posts rather than fixing the issue themselves. Wouldn't refund even after months of having a chat that didn't work.” - Epic Game Tables
“Flimsy integration with Shopify, I had a lot of problems, technical support was weak and inefficient even if I had a paid plan. Still waiting for them to be fixed. Ironically it is a customer support solution company but customer support is very bad.” - IMG Home
“Terrible support! I want to delete the app but the widget stays on my website no matter what I do. Support tells me my issue is resolved when nothing is resolved! Even if you submit a query/complaint/support ticket on their website it does not go through.” - MilaMela
FAQs
1. If I just started my ecommerce store, should I go with Tidio or Zendesk?
If you work on a Shopify store, we’d suggest you use Tidio given their pricing and features. But it’s still worth noting that their best features are reserved for expensive plans. In that case, you can take advantage of DelightChat, an ecommerce helpdesk solution built for SME ecommerce & DTC brands.
2. I need a live chat for my site. Which one should I go for?
Although both Tidio and Zendesk allow you to add a live chat, we recommend going with Tidio because its live chat is highly customizable. Moreover, Tidio’s happens to have one of the best live chat apps for ecommerce.
3. Can I set up Tidio or Zendesk by myself or do I need external help?
Yes, both Tidio & Zendesk are self-serve tools, and they got extensive documentation for the complicated stuff (if any). Plus, there are enough tutorials on YouTube that help you set up either of the software for your ecommerce store. Additionally, their knowledge base is quite expensive.
4. How much does Tidio cost?
Tidio has four different pricing plans including a free one. Their plans are sold completely independently of each other. Here’s a complete breakdown of Tidio’s pricing plans.
5. How much does Zendesk cost?
Zendesk has three pricing plans with their cheapest plan starting at $49/agent/month.
Considering better & more affordable options?
As Shopify store owners, customer support takes hours of your time. And you don’t want something to add to your busy schedule.
Now, both Tidio and Zendesk are great choices.
But their complicated and expensive pricing, lack of deep Shopify integration, and internal collaboration features may be a deal-breaker for you.
If that’s the case, you may consider DelightChat, an affordable helpdesk solution built for SMB ecommerce stores.
