ThoughtSpot vs. Zendesk Explore

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ThoughtSpot
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
ThoughtSpot is an Agentic Analytics Platform for enterprises where users ask data questions using natural language and get answers with AI. Code-first for data teams and code-free for business users, ThoughtSpot can handle large, complex cloud data at scale.
$50
per month (billed annually) per user (25-1000 users)
Zendesk Explore
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk offers Explore, a business intelligence and customer analytics tool which integrates with the Zendesk suite featuring ticket analytics, custom fields, dashboards, and other features. Zendesk is migrating customers of the BIME analytics product, which is approaching end of support, to Zendesk Explore in 2019.N/A
Pricing
ThoughtSpotZendesk Explore
Editions & Modules
Thoughtspot Analytics - Pro
$50
per month (billed annually) per user (25-1000 users)
Thoughtspot Analytics - Enterprise
Custom
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ThoughtSpotZendesk Explore
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ThoughtSpotZendesk Explore
Considered Both Products
ThoughtSpot
Chose ThoughtSpot
I think PBI was terribly slow and clunky. UI was outdated. Solution was expensive for what we needed. ThoughtSpot was worlds different (in a better way).
Chose ThoughtSpot
They’re for different use cases. When I want a dynamic way to quickly obtain the data I need, I’d go with ThoughtSpot.
Chose ThoughtSpot
It is more flexible and PowerBI, easier work online, and share information with many users. Also the dashboards and beautiful, and the user experience is better. Performance used to be faster.

We use Looker for different use cases but, when it comes to reporting and sharing …
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot's user friendly interface, faster and accurate results, low-code support for building insights and vast availability of native charts, AI powered dashboards helps in faster decision making and helps in driving better business results. The mobile APP that ThoughtSpot …
Chose ThoughtSpot
It is more cost effective when compared to Tableau and more easy to use. ThoughtSpot integrates well with modern cloud data platforms like Snowflake, Google, and Bigquery, making it easy to analyze large datasets in real time. Sync insights into cloud tools. Users can sync …
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot provided a twist on the typical Analytics / report builder interface. The natural language query building is just so much easier to use.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is easy to build charts and it is probably the easiest tool to build things quickly. The quality of the charts is middle if not lower pack compared to others. The dbt integration is wildly oversold and does not add any value.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot can handle large datasets A LOT better.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot was much easier from an end-user perspective. Looker and Tableau allowed for more customization and detailed dashboards.
Chose ThoughtSpot
Thoughtspot is a fairly new tool when compared to Tableau. I'll just list the benefits of each one of threse below -
Tableau -
1. Much more customizable the Thoughtspot
Chose ThoughtSpot
Have not used as much, tried ThoughtSpot out for the first time for evaluation and testing purposes to see if this type of software would be helpful.
Chose ThoughtSpot
we were looking for something which provides self service capabilities and something which very eay to use from users perspective.
Chose ThoughtSpot
I liked thought spot because of the ad-hoc capabilities and their search functionality.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is more powerful of a tool than something like QlikView or QlikSense with the correct training.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is my top choice from the above two as the UI is the most modern and user-friendly as well.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is the leader in embedded analytics and is much easier to work with massive volumes of data. None of the other tools listed had both of those functionalities, which were most important to us. There are other features that they have such as easier drill down, …
Chose ThoughtSpot
much more extensible and much easier to embed
Chose ThoughtSpot
Compare to Kibana, which was we used previously, ThoughtSpot is definitely better in terms of UI, visualizations, usability, and the SpotIQ/ML components. The only disadvantage for ThoughtSpot is the lack of drill-down function/click-on filters.
Chose ThoughtSpot
The main reason for selecting Thoughtspot was to share reporting with other external vendors and ease of doing business.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We have been using tableau as the enterprise reporting tool and felt sending data to external people had few restrictions hence we tried with ThoughtSpot.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot can similarly generate tables, visuals, and dashboards in Tableau, but in a faster and easier way.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We liked the support we were getting in the sales process (this has continued to be fantastic), I personally knew several people in the company. In the pilot we ran, our devs enjoyed working with ThoughtSpot.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We have multiple BI Applications that are used based on the needs of the different business users.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We selected ThoughtSpot with the promise that it would evolve into a Google search for business insights. To date, it has not gotten close in my opinion.
Zendesk Explore
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore stands out against Freshchat and Freshdesk for it's deeper analytics capabilities and seamless integration with Zendesk ecosystem. While Freshdesk offers reporting, it lacks on the same level of granular insights and customization that Zendesk Explore provides. …
Chose Zendesk Explore
I selected Zendesk Explore only to provide an easy and quick access for my managers and supervisors regading metrics and volume trends. Is not the most flexible nor complete data visualization tool, but works well for day-to-day follow ups.
You need to use another tool if you …
Chose Zendesk Explore
N/A - the company had already implemented Zendesk Explore when I was hired.
Chose Zendesk Explore
What's good with Zendesk Explore is that data is already provided since it's included in the package. We get the data from Zendesk Support and make a report in Zendesk Explore.

It provides suggested templates and report formats also which you don't get on the other platforms. …
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore is more user friendly and the software plus maintenance cost is less. The report section is more detailed and no lag while creating report for a large data source. The report segments and formats are editable which make it more convenient to make a report …
Chose Zendesk Explore
We tried other reporting and Zendesk Explore was by far the best as it was already implemented into our support system we were already using; Zendesk. The main selling point for us, is that all of the reports are customizable and that no coding knowledge is needed to build out …
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore is better than Freshservice Analytics. In Freshservice, even though the interface is more attractive, the functions are not as good as Zendesk Explore. Reports and dashboards are hard to build, and the materials to learn are not as good as the materials on …
Chose Zendesk Explore
For support data, we have only used Explore because it came with our ZenDesk membership. So I can't speak to other solutions! That said, it's awesome to have Knowledge Base and support data in one place.
Features
ThoughtSpotZendesk Explore
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
ThoughtSpot
7.6
Ratings
7% below category average
Zendesk Explore
9.0
Ratings
10% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports6.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.70 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
ThoughtSpot
7.7
Ratings
5% below category average
Zendesk Explore
8.3
Ratings
3% above category average
Drill-down analysis9.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages5.40 Ratings4.80 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.90 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
ThoughtSpot
8.8
Ratings
6% above category average
Zendesk Explore
8.4
Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web8.50 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.40 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Versioning7.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.10 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.10 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
ThoughtSpot
8.0
Ratings
0% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.1
Ratings
12% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.70 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.80 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.00 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining7.60 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
ThoughtSpot
8.5
Ratings
0% above category average
Zendesk Explore
9.1
Ratings
7% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.60 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.60 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.50 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.30 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
ThoughtSpot
7.5
Ratings
4% below category average
Zendesk Explore
7.8
Ratings
0% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.10 Ratings6.10 Ratings
Mobile Application7.10 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
ThoughtSpot
6.5
Ratings
18% below category average
Zendesk Explore
5.9
Ratings
28% below category average
REST API5.10 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Javascript API4.80 Ratings5.90 Ratings
iFrames8.30 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Java API7.00 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.00 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)7.10 Ratings7.00 Ratings
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User Ratings
ThoughtSpotZendesk Explore
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
5.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ThoughtSpotZendesk Explore
Likelihood to Recommend
By using the power of cloud platforms like bigquery or snowflake, ThoughtSpot can deliver performance at scale ensuring that even the largest organization can quickly analyze and visualize data. The ability to seamlessly share live dashboards fosters collaborations, ensuring everyone in the organization is working from the same data source and aligned in decision making.
Read full review
Compared to other analytics functions of other Ticket Management System, Zendesk Explore is the easiest to learn. Moreover, the learning curve is high. Once you pick up the fundamentals, you will be able to create all types of analytic reports. In addition, if you know basic coding or SQL, you can create your own metrics and attributes to capture extremely specific elements such as the tickets that contain a certain word or etc.
Read full review
Pros
  • Beautiful visualizations. The visuals are distinct, clean, and easy to discern from one another.
  • Intelligent querying functionality. When looking to manipulate the data, the search function makes it easy to manipulate the features in the data, along with aggregating them in the way you'd like.
  • Embedding! It has been a smooth process thus far for our product & technical teams to work with ThoughtSpot and bring it into our product.
Read full review
  • As with most "suite" products, if you already use other Zendesk features (Chat, Talk, etc), then Zendesk Explore adds an extra facet to the customer experience. The more we know about our clientele, the better we can understand/anticipate their needs.
  • I like that we can get as in-depth as we feel is necessary. For example, is just one customer having an issue? Or are many experiencing a similar problem? We can better rack this type of trend using Explore.
  • Our team can dive deep into the data based on exactly what we're looking for. If the marketing team wants a certain kind of segment, we can give them that info. If we want to sort by date or another set of parameters, we can do that as well.
Read full review
Cons
  • It would be great if ThoughtSpot can add the feature to filter by clicking on visualizations. i.e if I click on a particular data point in the chart if the full dashboard can filter just for that particular data point.
  • Color coding the heatmap with different colors like green to orange to red.
Read full review
  • More detailed pieces of training on where to find datasets/queries.
  • Have demo reports to do live trainings; instead of watching videos.
  • Have a key as to what all of the datasets mean.
  • Have a pop-up that analyzes the data "looks like your csat dropped this week!" etc...
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
We have had success with the initial use cases and there are more use cases that can receive return on investment. I don't give it a 10 because other products like Tableau are building functionality that may start to compete in the coming years.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Usability
The tool is easy to use if you know what you are doing and looking for. I know as they work towards improvements and simple language it will become even easier, but as of now they are doing a great job but there is room for improvement.
Read full review
I rate Zendesk Explore 8 out of 10 for it's overall usability because it offers powerful reporting and analytics with an easy to navigate interface and intuitive dashboards. It helps improve customer satisfaction by providing valuable insights into ticket handling, agent performance and customer satisfaction. Though the complex query builder can be challenging for non technical users.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
it's available unless there is a server or system update etc. sometimes the timing of this is bad (for example during a month end close)
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Performance
It does what it is supposed to. Would be nice to have a bit more insights
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
I give it this meeting because the team is not only help able to help us in the current solutions but also amazing and taking feedback and feeding it back to their development team which includes more products and features into ThoughtSpot
Read full review
Zendesk Community is extremely useful for Zendesk Explore beginners. The live support provided by Zendesk will also help a lot. If you don't know anything you can ask live support right away. However, one drawback of Zendesk Community and Support is the creation of complex reports on Zendesk Explore. Zendesk Community and Support cannot really help you much if you are trying to build a complex report as they are not a complete expert on it as well.
Read full review
In-Person Training
inhouse in-person training. Took a bit to long to get the basics.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Online Training
poor instructions
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Understand use case and model and design accordingly
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
It is more flexible and PowerBI, easier work online, and share information with many users. Also the dashboards and beautiful, and the user experience is better. Performance used to be faster. We use Looker for different use cases but, when it comes to reporting and sharing information, ThoughSpot is much better.
Read full review
Zendesk Explore stands out against Freshchat and Freshdesk for it's deeper analytics capabilities and seamless integration with Zendesk ecosystem. While Freshdesk offers reporting, it lacks on the same level of granular insights and customization that Zendesk Explore provides. Compared to Freshchat which focuses more on live chat and conversational analytics Zendesk Explore excels in historical trend analysis and comprehensive dashboarding. We choose Zendesk Explore for it's robust reporting and drill down capabilities.
Read full review
Scalability
Because it is very reliable, inside the situation, we need strong internet connection to access a lot of data but easily never had any downtime except during the upgrades
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Time to market ROI is massive vs hiring the full-time dedicated team to build and maintain a frontend multi-tenant SaaS data viz product.
  • It will be interesting to see over time how the advanced features play out in terms of usability and end value, such as Natural Search, which we are very excited about, and the machine learning tools.
Read full review
  • Positive impact of around 5 hours/week in Dashboard building and visualization
  • 10 hours from Product to review dashboards and find potential patterns
  • Enabler to find opportunities based on agents´ occupancy rates
Read full review
ScreenShots

ThoughtSpot Screenshots

Screenshot of the ThoughtSpot home screenScreenshot of SpotIQ, which offers AI-driven insightsScreenshot of the Spotter AI agent that surfaces insights through natural language queriesScreenshot of AI Assist producing SQL in real timeScreenshot of SpotIQ, which offers AI-driven insightsScreenshot of the integration with dbt models and metrics