Compare
Epkora vs Zendesk
The best known customer service suite, sold as a per-agent ladder from email ticketing up to a full contact centre.
Zendesk sells the same job in tiers: ticketing at one price, live chat and a knowledge base at three times that, and an AI copilot as a separate per-agent add-on. Epkora puts the whole desk in a free plan and the AI in a $20 workspace fee.
$55
per agent / month
Zendesk Suite Team, their published annual rate.
$20
per month, whole workspace
Epkora Pro. Unlimited seats — the amount does not move when the team grows.
$6,360
a year, at 10 agents
What a team of 10 keeps by running Epkora instead. Seat cost only.
What you keep
The same team, on both price lists
Zendesk bills per agent. Epkora bills once for the workspace. That is the entire difference, so here it is at five team sizes.
| Team size | Zendesk · Suite Team | Epkora Pro | You keep, monthly | You keep, a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 agents | $165 /mo | $20 /mo | $145 | $1,740 |
| 5 agents | $275 /mo | $20 /mo | $255 | $3,060 |
| 10 agents | $550 /mo | $20 /mo | $530 | $6,360 |
| 25 agents | $1,375 /mo | $20 /mo | $1,355 | $16,260 |
| 50 agents | $2,750 /mo | $20 /mo | $2,730 | $32,760 |
Why Suite Team
Suite Team is the cheapest Zendesk plan that includes messaging and live chat and a knowledge base — the things Epkora gives away on its free plan. Benchmarking against Support Team at $19 would compare a full desk to an email queue.
What this leaves out
Seat cost only, at their annual rate, which is the cheaper one. It excludes their AI usage charges and every add-on. Those exclusions all understate the gap.
Their price list
What Zendesk publishes
Copied from their pricing page, not summarised from it. Check it against the source at the bottom of this page.
| Plan | Price | What that tier adds |
|---|---|---|
| Support Team | $19 /agent/mobilled annually |
|
| Suite TeamCompared above | $55 /agent/mobilled annually |
|
| Suite Professional | $115 /agent/mobilled annually |
|
| Suite Enterprise + Copilot | Contact sales |
|
How their AI is billed
Zendesk AI agents are included in every Support and Suite plan, priced on the successful outcomes they deliver. The Copilot add-on for agents is $50 per agent per month on Professional and above. Zendesk does not publish a per-outcome rate on its pricing page, so this page does not quote one.
AMI is part of Epkora Pro. There is no per-resolution charge, no session pack and no credit allowance — the $20 covers it.
Feature for feature
Not whether — at what price
Most of these exist on both sides. The question a ladder makes you ask is which rung you have to buy to reach them.
| Capability | Epkora | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Ticketing | Free plan | Support Team, $19/agent |
| Live chat and messaging | Free plan | Suite Team, $55/agent |
| Knowledge base | Free plan | Suite Team, $55/agent |
| Workflow automation | Free plan — 19 triggers, 25 actions | Automations and triggers, $19/agent |
| Skills-based routing | Routing by rule, not skill | Suite Professional, $115/agent |
| AI assistant for agents | AMI — Pro, $20/workspace | Copilot add-on, +$50/agent |
| AI answering customers | AMI — Pro, no metering | Priced per successful outcome |
| Reporting | Free plan — 9 reports | Prebuilt $19; Quick Reports $115 |
| Seats | Unlimited on Pro | Every agent is billed |
| Telephony | Phone logged as a ticket channel | Suite Team and above |
| File attachments | Not shipped yet | Included |
- Included
- — in the plan, at no extra charge
- Gated
- — from a named plan or paid add-on up
- Metered
- — billed by usage on top of seats
- Not offered
- — the product does not do it
The other side
Where Zendesk is the better buy
Written by us, about them. If one of these is a requirement for your team, this is the wrong page to be reading and we would rather you found that out here.
- 01
Real telephony. Zendesk places and receives calls, with an IVR phone tree on Professional and a Contact Center add-on at $83 per agent per month. Epkora records a phone contact as a ticket and does not touch the call itself.
- 02
Workforce engagement and quality assurance as first-party add-ons, at $50 per agent per month. Epkora reports on coverage and capacity but does not score conversations.
- 03
A sandbox environment, approval workflows and custom agent roles at Enterprise — the controls a large, audited support organisation is required to have.
- 04
An app marketplace and integration catalogue that a five-year-old product cannot match. If your desk depends on a specific third-party app, check that first.
- 05
File attachments on tickets, which Epkora has not shipped — it is waiting on private, malware-scanned storage.
Sources
Every figure, and where it came from
All list prices on this page were read from the pages below on 13 August 2026. Vendors change prices; if one of these no longer matches, the source is right there and it wins.
Zendesk is a trademark of Zendesk, which has no affiliation with Epkora and has not reviewed this page. Comparisons use publicly listed prices and published feature lists; negotiated pricing, regional pricing and promotional rates will differ.
Questions
How this page was put together
- Where do these prices come from?
Every figure is the list price published on the vendor’s own pricing page, linked at the bottom of each comparison and last checked on 13 August 2026. Nothing is estimated. Where a vendor does not publish a rate — Zendesk’s per-outcome AI charge is the example — these pages say it is unpublished rather than quote someone else’s guess.
- Is the saving calculation fair?
It is their per-seat list price times the seat count, less Epkora’s $20 workspace fee. It uses their annual-billing rate, which is the cheaper one, and it excludes their usage-based AI charges and add-ons entirely. Both of those choices make the gap look smaller than a real invoice would.
- Why compare against that particular plan?
Each page names the rival plan it benchmarks and why. The rule is the cheapest plan of theirs that actually covers what Epkora Pro does — so Zendesk is compared at Suite Team rather than Suite Professional, and Freshdesk at Omni Growth rather than Support Desk Pro.
- Does Epkora really not charge per agent?
No. Pro is $20 a month for the workspace with unlimited seats. Adding an agent, a supervisor or a whole second shift does not change the amount. The free Plus plan has no seat limit either.
- Is the AI metered?
No. AMI is part of Pro. There is no per-resolution charge, no session pack and no credit allowance — which is the single biggest structural difference between this price list and the others on these pages.
- What is Epkora missing?
Every comparison ends with a section on what the other product does better, and they are not token entries. There is no telephony, no file attachments yet, no sandbox and no published compliance programme. If one of those is a requirement, buy the product that has it.
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