Zendesk

Zendesk is where support teams land once they need SLAs, custom roles and audit logs. It is also where they get surprised by the bill, because the per-seat price is the smaller half of what you end up paying.

The $19 entry plan is email ticketing only. Messaging, voice and the help centre start at $55 per agent per month billed annually, or $69 billed monthly. AI is metered separately at $1.50 per automated resolution on committed volume, or $2.00 pay-as-you-go, against an allowance of five to ten resolutions per agent per month. A Zendesk-run LLM decides which conversations qualify, not the customer.

What it does not do is let you leave easily. Data exports are switched off by default on every plan and the account owner has to open a support ticket to enable them. The export UI is then gated to Growth and above, so neither publicly priced entry plan can reach it at all. Audit logs and custom agent roles appear on none of the three public plans. Macros, triggers and tuned AI configuration have no documented export path, AI agent tickets cannot be exported, and seat count cannot be reduced mid-term.

Against Intercom, Zendesk charges 52% more per resolution ($1.50 against $0.99) and closes its messaging billing window after two hours of inactivity where Intercom waits twenty-four. Freshdesk meters a 72-hour session at $0.49 instead, cheaper per unit but billed even when a human takes over. All three are customer service platforms.