ServiceNow vs Zendesk: In-Depth Guide

Zendesk and ServiceNow are two of the biggest names in the service management space. Each platform offers a distinct slant on similar core functionality, including service desks, request management, ticketing, and related ITSM, ESM, or external-facing service workflows.

Which is not to say that one platform is necessarily better than the other. Rather, each one is optimized for its own target organizations, teams, and use cases.

In this guide, we’re diving deep into what each one offers, who it’s aimed at, where it’s a viable option, and what practical considerations we’ll need to make before rolling it out. By the end, you’ll be fully equipped to make a decision based on your own real-world requirements.

Specifically, we’ll be covering:

• Background and platform overviews
• Target users, pricing and implementation
• Managing services and IT workflows

We’ll also wrap up by seeing what Budibase brings to the table for managing IT workflows.

Let’s jump right in.

Background and platform overviews

We’ll start by checking out the basics of each platform from a high level, across positioning, functionality, and target uses, in order to give us a good grounding for more granular comparisons later.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is probably the most ubiquitous ITSM platform on the market today, although it also offers capabilities for a wider range of solutions, including customer service management, enterprise service management, and IT operations management.

It’s one of the most enterprise-centric platforms in this space, with customers including the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies.

To reflect this, the ServiceNow platform offers massive scope for configuration and customization. So, in addition to its core service management products, there are a range of tools aimed at automation, app building, and more general process management.

Additionally, it’s hugely scalable and suitable for multi-departmental workflows within large organizations, with dedicated tools for the likes of compliance and risk management.

Most importantly for our purposes today, ServiceNow is one of the most comprehensive service desk management offerings around, including a range of dedicated tools for ticketing, request management, virtual agents, predictive intelligence, and much more.

You might also like our round-up of the top ServiceNow alternatives .

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk is a slightly different proposition. Like ServiceNow, it offers a comprehensive, enterprise-friendly service desk management platform. However, despite offering functionality for IT teams, this is not the main focus.

Rather, it’s better known as a customer service management platform. It’s also suitable for a wider range of organizations, including enterprises as well as SMEs.

So, Zendesk’s core value-add is providing a singular, omnichannel platform for delivering services efficiently, including tools to streamline processes along with intuitive, user-friendly interfaces.

As we’ll see later, another core selling point is a relatively short time-to-value. As a cloud-based solution targeting common CSM workflows, Zendesk is a strong option for out-of-the-box functionality.

In addition to CSM, Zendesk is a popular option for internal employee services management, particularly in the domain of HR.

Take a look at our guide to the top Zendesk alternatives .

Target users, pricing & implementation

Now that we have a good grasp of each platform’s core offering, we can start to compare them in more detail.

First of all, we’ll consider this from the point of view of their core uses. Later, we’ll drill more concretely into specific functionality.

Target usage

We’ve pointed to some of the key points about where ServiceNow and Zendesk sit in the market. Let’s consider what this means in more practical terms.

ServiceNow

As we said earlier, ServiceNow is the preferred option for many large enterprise IT teams. So, we’ll consider this first of all, before thinking about what it offers for CSM and which organizations this could be a better fit for compared to Zendesk.

In particular, it positions itself toward teams with complex, comprehensive IT processes, including large, multifaceted estates, service portfolios, and environments.

For example, if you need advanced capabilities around automations, workflow orchestration, or integration with other enterprise platforms like AWS, SAP, or the Microsoft ecosystem.

But, by the same token, this means that it can also be favored by teams with more extensive existing internal IT resources. As we’ll see, implementing ServiceNow could be a relatively large undertaking, which we’ll need the resources to manage.

More specifically to CSM and other non-IT service management, ServiceNow is highly suited to situations extending beyond straightforward helpdesk workflows.

In particular, it’s an attractive option for implementing proactive issue resolution, AI-driven self-service, and extensive automations in cases of cross-functional workflows.

For instance, large SaaS vendors or major enterprises that require a high degree of alignment between customer service, IT, or other internal departments.

Zendesk

Whereas ServiceNow offers clear benefits for large enterprises, Zendesk may have broader appeal in terms of its ideal organizations, from SMEs to enterprises.

Instead, it’s primarily targeted at teams who need an intuitive service management solution that requires relatively little lift to implement.

So, it offers generally applicable workflows for CSM and some internal services straight out of the box, in a ready-to-use cloud platform. This is centered around a comprehensive, omni-channel platform for managing customer interactions.

While customization options aren’t as advanced as ServiceNow, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that Zendesk doesn’t still offer teams extensive configuration options.

So, we can easily connect to external communication platforms, implement AI chatbots, and automate key workflows with relatively little technical knowledge.

Notably, compared to ServiceNow, Zendesk offers less extensive ITSM functionality. More advanced IT use cases might require integration with third-party tools to achieve the desired result.

As such, for ITSM specifically, it may be an attractive option for more basic use cases or teams that don’t require as in-depth enterprise capabilities.

Pricing and implementation

We can also consider ServiceNow and Zendesk from the perspective of their relative costs - both in terms of their direct licensing costs and indirect factors.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow’s pricing model is not publicly advertised. Instead, licenses are offered on a custom basis. This can draw on a range of factors, including the size of your organization, the specific features you need, user volumes, and non-functional requirements.

Notably, ServiceNow’s constituent tools are built on a unified platform, but they are still offered on a modular basis.

In other words, it’s possible to pay for only the aspects of the platform that you actually need - for instance, ITSM, CSM, ITOps, HR, or other solutions. So, we have a degree of flexibility in terms of scoping the right solution for our needs.

ServiceNow can be purchased directly or via a third party.

In either case, we’ll also need to factor indirect costs along with the time-to-value of any service management solutions we’re considering.

Compared to some other platforms in this space, implementing ServiceNow can be a relatively involved process - both in terms of turnaround time and the required internal or external IT resources.

We’ll need to include this in any decision relating to the lifetime cost of the platform, as well as its expected time to value.

Zendesk

By contrast, Zendesk’s pricing is more transparent, with fixed, publicly advertised license tiers. These are billed on a monthly or annual per-agent basis.

These start from $19 per month for core support functionality, including ticketing, social media support, pre-built analytics, and custom business rules triggered on ticket status changes or time-based rules.

However, we’ll need to upgrade to a more expensive license for other important functionality, such as SLAs, AI agents, or custom ticketing forms.

Enterprise licenses are available from $115 per agent per month, billed annually, introducing custom agent roles, skills-based routing, automatic ticket queues, and approval workflows.

Some other features, such as workforce management or quality assurance, are available as optional add-ons.

On the whole, this has the potential to be a highly scalable model, depending on your specific requirements.

Generally speaking, Zendesk should be comparatively easy to implement and maintain. It’s a wholly cloud-based platform, and we can carry out most configurations we may need with native admin settings without requiring much technical expertise.

As such, indirect costs should typically be lower, as well as resulting in a shorter time to value in many cases.

You might also like our round-up of the top open-source Jira alternatives .

Managing services and IT workflows

Now that we have a good understanding of where both Zendesk and ServiceNow sit in the market and which kinds of teams they’re generally aimed at, we can start to break them down more granularly from a functional perspective.

For ease of comparison, we’ve broken this down into a few key clusters.

Data

First of all, we can think about each platform’s respective capabilities around managing service data.

ServiceNow

The ServiceNow platform is built on RaptorDB, a Posgres-derived RDBMS. This provides a highly scalable, performant data layer for service management solutions.

Notably, it also offers us a high degree of flexibility and customization. Specifically, it provides a familiar, tabular structure for defining and modifying the underlying data schema to suit a wide range of business processes.

ServiceNow also offers exceptional data connectivity.

One important aspect of this is its connectivity for external databases. There are a range of options for two-way connections to a range of SQL and NoSQL tools, including the low-code IntegrationHub, custom REST and SOAP API calls, or utilizing JDBC and MID servers.

It’s also worth noting that, as an ITSM platform, ServiceNow offers a robust, built-in configuration management database, including extensive dependency mapping.

From an analytics perspective, ServiceNow also provides highly advanced tools for extracting insights from data, including highly customizable reporting and dashboards, as well as AI-powered predictive analytics and forecasting.

Zendesk

Zendesk also offers a strong amount of configurability for our service management data but in a more focused and potentially more user-friendly manner.

Its internal data model is comparatively fixed. Within core workflows, such as ticketing, we can create custom fields, including for front-end interfaces like forms, as well as system or custom ticket statuses.

We can add custom ticket fields with minimal technical skills under Admin Center.

Additionally, we can augment the default data model with custom objects. This gives good scope to expand our data layer to match existing business processes.

It’s also possible to connect to external databases in Zendesk, although native connectors aren’t provided. Rather, we’ll either need to rely on an API-based solution, or third-party apps to connect to external data.

However, Zendesk provides an impressive range of native integration options for existing systems, including most common SaaS tools.

As far as analytics, Zendesk provides a powerful yet user friendly experience for creating dashboards, as well as highly useful pre-built reports.

However, we’ll need a Professional license or above for real-time reporting, scheduled dashboards, or customized data exploration.

User experiences, app building, and front-end tools

Now that we’ve seen how data is handled by ServiceNow and Zendesk, we can move on to thinking about the experiences we can provide for our end users. This includes their core UIs, as well as how we can customize these or even ship custom interfaces.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow’s UX is based around the NextExperience UI, which provides a modern, unified experience for users to access services. More specifically to CSM, this includes configurable workspaces, allowing us to tailor experiences to the needs of a range of service users.

Within core interfaces, ServiceNow provides a huge degree of flexibility. The NextExperience UI framework provides developers with a suite of tools for creating custom interfaces and reusable elements, using modern web frameworks.

There’s also the WYSIWYG UI Builder tool, which allows us to create custom experiences for end users from scratch.

Additionally, ServiceNow offers dedicated no-code, low-code, and more in-depth development tools in the form of Creator Studio, App Engine, and ServiceNow Studio.

This positions it as a viable for empowering colleagues with a range of technical skill-levels to build fully custom interfaces, including professional developers and non-developers alike.

Zendesk

One of the reasons for Zendesk’s popularity is the modern, intuitive interface that’s offered out-of-the-box. This offers a highly user-friendly experience for service users and agents alike.

These also offer decent scope for configuration for specific workflows via admin settings rather than requiring extensive customization. For example, applying themes, adding form fields, or restricting UIs to specific user roles.

Zendesk also offers UI tools for more advanced customization. We can use the Zendesk SDK to alter aspects of existing designs, including applying custom CSS or themes.

Additionally, with the Zendesk Apps Framework and Zendesk Garden tools, users can create custom UIs, using reusable components and styling, as well as custom CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.

Zendesk has also recently announced its own no-code App Builder, offering a visual, AI-driven experience for building custom applications.

So, like ServiceNow, it offers a range of methods for creating custom end-user tools, to suit a variety of technical skill-levels.

Automations

Service management is one use case where automation capabilities are a particularly high priority. This is also one area where we can see some of the biggest divergence in terms of what ServiceNow and Zendesk can offer.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is an incredibly advanced offering for automating service delivery, including workflow automation, BPA, and agentic AI.

We can create no-code automation rules using Flow Designer. This offers a visual, flow-chart-based experience for defining tasks and rules, with reusable actions. We can also create complex logic with the built-in decision builder and dynamic subflows.

This is also impressive for creating working automation rules based on textual prompts.

For more advanced, end-to-end automations, ServiceNow also offers its own built-in BPA solution, Automation Hub, featuring API management, RPA, data capture automation, and more.

Within this, we can use Integration Hub to connect to and orchestrate a wide range of external platforms, giving us the scope to create highly advanced solutions for a wide range of use cases.

As we’ll see in the following section, ServiceNow is also a leader in the field of agentic AI for automation use cases.

Zendesk

Zendesk also offers powerful automation tools, but in a more focused manner, centered around its core CSM and ticketing use cases. These fall into a few key categories.

One is Triggers. These are event-driven rules that can be configured to carry out certain actions on tickets when they are created or updated. We can also define triggers based on events relating to sales, chats, messages, or custom data objects.

Similarly, Zendesk Automations allow us to define time-based. For example, automatically following up on tasks or escalating unresolved issues when they have been open for a certain length of time.

Each of these is effective for eliminating manual admin tasks within our CSM workflows. As we’ll see in the following section, Zendesk also features important AI capabilities for agent productivity.

Zendesk also has a useful Macros feature. This allows us to define repeatable actions that can be triggered by users with a button click. This could be adding a defined response or routing a ticket to a particular colleague.

Notably, each of these can be achieved with minimal technical effort, making Zendesk a highly attractive option for teams that want to implement practical, effective automation workflows without incurring large IT resources.

From an integration perspective, Zendesk offers a huge range of integration options across common SaaS tools. This includes core customer service, sales, and marketing tools, along with more specific platforms for important ITSM use cases.

AI

In the past few years, most business software vendors have invested heavily in artificial intelligence. But, as you may know already, this looks very different from one platform to the next.

So, this is another area where we can see important differences between ServiceNow and Zendesk.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is widely recognized as a leader in the domain of AI and machine learning. It offers huge scope for creating custom, end-to-end AI-driven solutions, using a range of tools and models.

We can implement virtual agents across the platform, using natural language processing to handle requests across a wide range of service management workflows. There’s a built-in NLP model, along with support for external tools.

Alternatively, there’s a dedicated tool in the Predictive Intelligence Suite for building our own NLP model. AI tools are also available across Flow Designer, Automation Engine, and Integration Hub.

At a different level, can also be used to provide recommendations to support agents, offering context and other relevant information when dealing with tickets. We can use AI Agent Studio to create, customize, and manage agents.

Behind the scenes, Predictive Intelligence utilizes machine learning to classify, route, and prioritize requests, continuously learning from previous interactions and resolutions.

Another area where ServiceNow is a clear leader for AI capabilities is leveraging ML for analytics and uncovering insights, including for major incident detection, risk detection, customer segmentation, and forecasting.

Zendesk

As with automations more generally, Zendesk also offers a useful suite of AI tools, but these are somewhat more grounded in core service management workflows compared to ServiceNow’s more expansive, flexible capabilities.

On the whole, it’s a great option for teams that integrate AI tools into daily interactions between agents and service users, with relatively fast results.

Like ServiceNow, it offers highly effective AI agents, powered by a proprietary intent model. From a self-service point of view, these take the form of cross-channel chatbots that are connected to your knowledge articles.

Depending on the complexity of the request, Answer Bot can then either assist service users to resolve issues themselves or be used to gather important information and context before handing over to human agents.

AI agents also assist human agents by recommending macros, generating ticket responses, triaging tickets, or summarizing requests, including their content and intents. This has the potential to massively increase productivity for agents and admins alike.

While lacking some of ServiceNow’s functionality for creating fully bespoke AI solutions, Zendesk still offers us a lot of scope for configuration and customization.

For instance, we can create custom intents to be leveraged by our AI agents, helping to better optimize them for our real-world business processes. Or, we can customize AI agent personas to better reflect our brand.

Additional AI functionality, including leveraging external LLMs, can also be achieved with third-party apps and plug-ins.

Out-of-the-box workflows

Lastly, an important decision point when weighing up ServiceNow vs Zendesk is their out-of-the-box workflows. That is, to what extent can we simply roll out solutions for core tasks.

ServiceNow

Despite the perception that ServiceNow requires a relatively large amount of upfront work to configure, it does ship with a range of highly effective out-of-the-box workflows. In fact, it offers a range of ready-to-use tools for ITSM, CSM, and other service management use cases.

This includes user interfaces, workflows, and data structures.

What’s important to note is that these may still be more suited to large enterprise use cases. For example, ITSM solutions are generally ITIL-aligned, providing a scalable basis for more complex use cases.

Similarly, ServiceNow CSM offers out-of-the-box workflows for a range of use cases, such as case management, request escalations, and communications, aimed at managing core customer interactions with minimal configuration.

As we’ve covered already, ServiceNow then offers extensive customization on the back of this. This is obviously highly beneficial, but some smaller teams might find it more viable to opt for a solution that more closely fits their needs in the immediate term.

Zendesk

Zendesk is generally well-optimized for fast, easy implementation, with most functionality being ready to use straight out of the box. As we’ve seen already, the focus is on providing streamlined, configurable experiences for efficient customer services.

So, despite offering good scope for customization, as we’ve seen, most interfaces and data structures are broadly preconfigured and ready to use.

This includes core functionality, like ticketing, self-service, reporting dashboards, and more. As such, Zendesk ships as a totally viable helpdesk solution with minimal up-front configuration.

Even for design customization, we can access a wide range of customizable templates and themes to help us achieve the right look and feel for our brand. It’s worth noting, though, that many of these are billed separately.

As noted earlier, most core configurations can be set up using admin settings, meaning that even in cases where we need to modify out-of-the-box solutions, this requires relatively little technical expertise, resulting in a very short time-to-value.

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