Gist vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Gist
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Gist is a unified marketing, sales, and support platform. It includes live chat, a help desk, knowledge base, email marketing, marketing automation, opt-in forms, and more.
$29
per month
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk is a customer support solution with built-in ticketing, conversational messaging, and live chat, designed to help businesses of all sizes and industries deliver personalized service at scale. Zendesk's AI agents are trained in CX to help Service teams resolve customer issues faster and more accurately while still providing a human-centered experience. Zendesk ultimately aims to help businesses improve time to value, reduce effort per ticket, and keep costs low.
$69
per month per agent
Pricing
GistZendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
Professional
$29.00
per month
Premium
$99.00
per month
Suite Team
$69
per month per agent
Suite Growth
$115
per month per agent
Suite Professional
$149
per month per agent
Suite Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GistZendesk Suite
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GistZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Gist
Chose Gist
Gist is a much more robust software with a variety of marketing tools in its arsenal. Things like website tracking is also extremely robust and it has many more features.

The ease of setup is also more enjoyable and intuitive in Gist so the overall result is that you can learn …
Chose Gist
Gist is much more affordable, but intercom is a better product. I recommend going for Gist to begin, and then migrating if you need more.
Chose Gist
Gist is more refined and its tools are very well integrated overall. However, its pricing is on the expensive side and this doesn't really help it stand-out. HubSpot has significantly more generous Free plan, while Dashly offers many of the Premium Gist tools at a fairer price, …
Chose Gist
My main use for Gist is live chat. I personally find their live chat to be one of the best, and their mobile app to be invaluable for small businesses on the go. I can receive and response to messages wherever I am, which is imperative for my use case.
Chose Gist
Intercom increases its price on a monthly basis. Besides they don't offer some features as Gist, specially about on forms.
We think Gist is targeted to SMB companies, differentially from Intercom that seems to be appropriate for larger companies.
One main difference between then …
Chose Gist
Gist is only a few years old, so it lacks some of the features of Drip and ActiveCampaign, but I believe they will get there.
Chose Gist
Hubspot and Salesforce are great and powerful, they are just so much more expensive than what I need.
Chose Gist
We went with Gist because it had the features we needed at a price we liked. The feature list has grown over time, which is really appreciated. We joined Gist a long time ago (it was still called ConvertFox back then) and have been happy customers for a long time. Happy with …
Chose Gist
Gist is much more than a basic mailing list system with chatbot integration and automation that connects you to your prospects in real-time live from your website.
Administering your contacts on Gist is much easier with less hassle.
And Gist can integrate with most of the major …
Chose Gist
Gist is slightly slower than ActiveCampaign but MUCH easier to use than Mailchimp. Overall, you can't beat the bang for the buck you get with Gist. And its messenger bot is the best I've used, it works on not only our main site but also our subdomains, kicking the competition …
Chose Gist
We've used Dashly and Tawk.to. Gist looks better than Tawk and that's the reason we switched from Tawk to Gist. But the feature that puts Gist above Dashly is the ability to collect user names and emails before they start the chat automatically. It is important for our business …
Chose Gist
They both seem to have parity with each other with each having their own small advantages. I went with Gist because it was more affordable.

Infusionsoft customer for almost 5 years and it seemed I was always working more on getting it to work instead of getting work done. Gist …
Chose Gist
Gist is better because easy of use and pricing. Hands down. It has an unbeatable cost-benefit ratio. Customer service has been with us since we started using it. That's great. For us, shortcomings such as no CRM are manageable. We like its front end appearance and customization …
Chose Gist
Gist is my first email and chat multi-purpose automated SAAS tool so can't really comment on others I've tried. They came recommended to me by an entrepreneurial group I am a member of. Anecdotally I evaluated it against ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp and it was far better in …
Chose Gist
Gist a more integrated and unified product for Sass companies. Some competitors don't have strong chat + email automation + help desk. Other competitors have the features, but they are not well integrated. Gist has integrated complete customer contact with a very finished …
Chose Gist
Gist is much more complete than other tools like Crisp, Customerly, etc, at a cheaper price. The perfect deal for your business.
Chose Gist
Having a support ticket system is good and will help you resolve issues but, having an all-in-one tool that can let you not only resolve an issue but also to go above and beyond with customer support that later on translates into sales is priceless. That is the kind of tool …
Chose Gist
You can do everything you can with AC or Mailchimp (minus dynamic cart recovery for ecom) at a fraction of the cost, and you can do MORE -- better integration with FB ads than MailChimp, more powerful workflows, unified inboxes, live chat and chatbot, etc. It's just a more …
Chose Gist
I have a lifetime deal with Gist so I may be a bit biased, but Gist is quite easy to use and has a free tier so it's worth a serious look compared to the other players on the market. Personal preference does play a big role in your final decision, as feature-wise, Gist has most …
Chose Gist
Intercom was pricy and less user-friendly in comparison to Gist. It did have a broader range of features that we could use in our plan. However, we didn't see any return of investment in having many features to choose from if the price was too high for what was being offered at …
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
I haven't really used other services of this kind for some time now, but that is simply because Zendesk Suite has provided us with everything that we have needed, and have also continue improving a developing new features through time.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Hands down winner. Not even a competition.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite seemed to have a lot more customization and flexibility. We have multiple "brands" that need to follow different flows and have different needs and Zendesk Suite allowed us to easily do that. We also had strong needs for a help center and liked how their worked …
Chose Zendesk Suite
We appreciated the app features and the overall features so we decided to stay with Zendesk Suite for our business needs
Chose Zendesk Suite
Although Zendesk Suites has a higher value when it comes to it's pricing, Zendesk offers more features and functionality also Zendesk Suites has already established it's name and is trusted by many businesses and organizations. Other similar products maybe cheaper and simple …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Just a simpler experience that doesn't need all the bells and whistles of a fully ITIL based platform.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is very similar to the companies we listed, but, in my opinion, there are a lot of things that these companies do right that Zendesk Suite fails at. Particularly reporting and phone systems. We have looked into Five9 in great detail to replace our current phone …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite comes with a complete package. Right from receiving customer calls to responding emails. Managing tickets and following up with customers for required information. This tool feels like the place where you can Manage more of the things
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite ultimately is very capable and highly configurable. When you really get to know what options exist, there are a lot of workflows you can build for your support operation that can improve agent efficiency, and lead to higher CSAT.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Create mobile-friendly, personalized support request forms with Formstack’s easy-to-use builder ,Auto-add new support tickets to Zendesk CRM and alert your first available team member Build better customer relationships by storing everything in one, secure place and improving …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is way less complicated than Salesforce. The response from the team is prompt if the company is in need. It's all in one place. Commercial friendly as well. Cost effective to what we pay. Used by MNC's hence better clarity of the suite even brand wise. Zendesk …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Netsuite has basic case management suits and it lacks essential features for CX purposes. From reporting prospective, it lacks basic requirements. Zendesk Suite, however, comes with feature rich cx experience for the team as well as users. On the self help portal, users have …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Gorgias is easier to set-up and use on a basic level, however doesn't offer as many customizations. Zendesk Suite is a better choice for our scale, and the needs of reporting.
Chose Zendesk Suite
The customisable reporting every time. Our leadership reply on me to run my team and want to know what customers are telling us so they can elevate our products. We have extensive custom reports that tie up all aspects of our product and customer journeys. I've not found …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite provides a unified agent workspace and advanced AI agents, flow builders, customer intent as well as triggers, automations and rules that drive efficacy unlike Freshdesk.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Suite is exceptionally user friendly and highly customisable. Free training for all levels and roles of users which is easy to follow and engaging for users is particularly helpful along with the added support behind the scenes from Zendesk support and the Zendesk …
Chose Zendesk Suite
We used Zendesk Suite initially to bring live support to our customers and it was a success, however we have since migrated away from Zendesk Suite in favour of Genesys Cloud CX. Our IT team had previous experience with this platform for our phone system and it offers many …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk was the most organized, integrateable option between the other options I've used before.
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk is above and beyond better than Goldmine. We still use it for historical purposes, but for all new trouble tickets it's definitely Zendesk Suite all the way. The only advantage goldmine has over Zendesk Suites is that our sales people can access information about …
Chose Zendesk Suite
The fact that Zendesk will allow us to integrate a lot of apps by our own, to create rules, triggers, automation and severall other features by our own was a great opportunity. - even in the situation we are, that we are not having the people available to adjust the support …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Freshdesk lacks the integration across channels. Their chat and email experience feels disconnected. Their reporting lacks customizability and some data is just not available.
For agents pulling in external information is more complex due to it's lack of fully integrated apps …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Zendesk suite provides assistance; you can chat, email, call, keep track of all the business SLAs, productivity, and customer messages, and send and share links to easily access our website. It is very important in rearranging our workflow, minimizing breaching tickets, and …
Chose Zendesk Suite
Although these newcomers have great UIs and are excellent products (particularly Intercoms AI Fin agent), Zendesk still offers a robust stability I find more secure to use, particularly for companies with strong ISO compliances to cater to and uphold. Zendesk is still in a …
Chose Zendesk Suite
we have chosen to use Zendesk because we have read reviews from other companies, we have researched so we would exactly how it works and what benefits it would bring to our business to better our customer's experience without any hassles or difficulties and without delaying the …
Chose Zendesk Suite
In my opinion, comparing with intercom Zendesk Suite is far superior in every customization, automation and escalation aspect
Features
GistZendesk Suite
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Gist
8.9
Ratings
3% above category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Chat history and transcripts8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat reporting8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat and web analytics8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
Ratings
9% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.5
Ratings
8% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
9.0
Ratings
15% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GistZendesk Suite
Small Businesses
Olark
Olark
Score 10.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GistZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.7
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
5.5
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GistZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Gist is perfect for SaaS I'd say, and perfect for long sales cycles with lots of lead nurturing involved, and for scenarios where you re-market via FB ads, because there's FB custom audience integration built into the workflows. Perfect for customer service and support. Really outstanding there. It's a little less suited to ecom but they're hammering out the finishing touches to make ecom cart recovery easier.
Read full review
Benefits of Zendesk Suite:
Support across channels In the case of a retail company with chat, email, WhatsApp and social DMs all piling up together, agents do not have to change tabs - everything comes into one screen in the Suite.
An example could be a representative for this e-commerce company on a sale weekend when they have live chat up, and also must deal with emails and complaints on social. Zendesk Suite handled all of this interaction seamlessly.
Knowledge base + self service: A SaaS platform receiving constant flow of "how do I reset my password" questions. You set up a help centre once, and are able to deflect hundreds of tickets for months and years.
Even better when combining with Answer Bot, where the bot begins suggesting articles without even a human interacting with the tickets.
Scaling customer service teams: A startup that has just expanded from 5 customer service representatives to 50 customer service representatives. Zendesk Suite automates routing, SLAs, macros, and analytics, when it could never work with Google Workspace + sticky notes.
This is especially helpful when managers want to be able to report or analyze ticketing conversations to see trends in perhaps their backlog, or a customer service representative is running into consistent workflows.
Globalization: A company with support teams that are spread across time zones and languages. Zendesk Suite enables for business hours, language packs, and localized help centers. It even comes with routing either by skill or region
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Pros
  • Gist provides endless ways of interacting with customers. I can chat and email with them, track their usage on my site, qualify them, add tags and other profile information, and so much more.
  • There is even an awesome live view that lets me spy on visitors to see how they're using the site.
  • The tools are powerful, easy to use, and constantly getting improvements. It seems like every week there is another update being rolled out that substantially extends the functionality or usability of the features in Gist.
Read full review
  • UI/UX; mature macros and automations, slick and well thought out UI.
  • Reporting, reporting, reporting. With user, org, and ticket level tags, we can track every aspect of our ticket flow.
  • Extensibility; the app marketplace is a great resource for expanding functionality from the baseline offering.
Read full review
Cons
  • Free plan limits are too low.
  • Chatbots should work not only for Gist's native online chat, but also for the other chat-based channels such as Facebook. (instead of having to use another software for that purpose)
  • Pricing structure - Support bot should not be an add-on but a core feature.
Read full review
  • The development of messaging out of the earlier Chat module is clunky and still has limitations for multi language flows.
  • When creating queries in Explore, you can't search for 'or' conditions, only 'And', meaning you have to build multiple queries and manually add them.
  • You can't download the charts in the reports, they come down as tables and then you have to make your own charts.
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Likelihood to Renew
Gist is a quite reliable service with a lot of added values. We don't need to pay for different Saas for these important features. If I had an issue the team was super responsive and helpful, that is essential for every business. The email delivery is great, so virtually no email has landed into spam folder
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Zendesk is super easy to use and navigate. I really enjoy the sleek layout, the ability to tailor tickets, the macro option, and the quick key guide they have to make your use of time even more effective. My whole team loves working with Zendesk and rarely ever has problems.
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Usability
Gist does pretty much anything you want it to when it comes to managing your contacts. Sometimes I wish it updated faster, but wait a few beats and it gets there. I really love that I can show a colleague how to use the chat messenger and they understand it right away. Very user friendly!
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I used to work without a ticketing service, and everything was handled on an email provider, this made it very difficult to track, no integrations to the software complicating the use of internal tools or other software like Guru, Zendesk Suite wasn't hard to learn, in fact it was very easy, very straightforward, and I was an admin learning to use several tools at the same time.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
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Support Rating
I have communicated with their team multiple times and every time they have been very responsive, knowledgeable, and polite. They work to make sure you are happy and informed of what is going on. Better their team keeps up to date with their app, giving you new features, and keeping you notified and educated about what they are and how to use them. A+
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We rarely need to contact their support team, but when we do they are responsive. However there have been notable times when communication between myself and the support rep was challenging despite me providing clear explanation of the issue, screenshots, and a thorough explanation of the goal we hope to achieve. It took several back and forth attempt, on a few occasions, to get resolution on an otherwise simple request
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
There is not a lot of implementation, it's all setup and you just start using it. We did do some email to ticket setup and that worked really well. The only thing that didn't work for us was the Salesforce integration, maybe your mileage will vary.
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Alternatives Considered
They both seem to have parity with each other with each having their own small advantages. I went with Gist because it was more affordable. Infusionsoft customer for almost 5 years and it seemed I was always working more on getting it to work instead of getting work done. Gist is so intuitive I had it setting up and running the basics in a few hours.
Read full review
Even these two have a ticketing system but that I also used previously but Zendesk Suite has a very clear ticketing system - it does not take much time to understand and use it, the interface is easy and the automation system also works up to the expectation, it is not just easy for the users but for us from the backed support as well, it is so user-friendly.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
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Return on Investment
  • Our ROI has increased significantly because of Gist's chat and app integration into our website. Contact forms are great but a real-time conversation means you can be more effective in meeting your customer's needs.
  • The additional features in the recent upgrade mean we can use Gist for more. They have always been effective for email campaigns, but the addition of the knowledge base and more effective workflows means we can automate more. This has saved us from buying more software.
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  • Customer Success looks at ticket resolution surveys as part of their CSAT scores and either thanks their customer for a positive review or reaches out if it's a negative review.
  • Sales uses Zendesk to make sure their new prospects are getting POCs properly set up quickly and fix any issues while they do a trial of our tool.
  • Onboarding uses Zendesk to quickly make sure new customers implementations and user access are set up to help them start implementation faster.
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ScreenShots

Gist Screenshots

Screenshot of Live ChatScreenshot of Email MarketingScreenshot of Marketing Automation WorkflowsScreenshot of Knowledge BaseScreenshot of Meetings

Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of the Zendesk Agent WorkspaceScreenshot of Omnichannel MessagingScreenshot of Zendesk TicketingScreenshot of Bots powered by Zendesk AIScreenshot of Tone shift with Zendesk AIScreenshot of Zendesk ticketing side conversations