Front vs Zendesk

Pick Front if several people work each customer conversation, your support is mostly email, and you want agent-side AI on any Front plan ($20 a seat on Starter and Professional), where Zendesk's $50 Copilot needs Suite Professional or above. Pick Zendesk if phone matters, you plan to grow past 50 agents, or your contracts ask for hosting in Asia Pacific. The channel mix decides most cases, because Zendesk's Suite Team puts chat, messaging and telephony in one plan at $55 an agent a month billed annually, while Front needs Professional at $65 for more than one channel type and connects calls only through partners such as Aircall and Dialpad.

Front review Zendesk review

Front and Zendesk at a glance
Fact	Front	Zendesk
Starting price	$35/agent/mo	$25/agent/mo
Plans	Starter, Professional, Enterprise	Support Team, Suite Team, Suite Professional, Suite Enterprise + Copilot
Best for	support teams, operations teams, account management teams	Large support orgs, Multi-brand deployments, Complex routing
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Headquarters	San Francisco, US	San Francisco, US
Founded	2013	2007
Facts checked	Sep 13, 2026	Sep 13, 2026

Which one fits your team?

Tick what's true for you.

Pick Front if

Two or three people often touch one customer email before it is answered. Internal comments, shared drafts, @mentions and guest accounts are on every Front plan
Your team works one channel and has 10 seats or fewer. Starter is $25 a seat a month billed annually, or $35 billed monthly, for a single channel type (email, chat or SMS)
You sell through more than one Shopify store. Front's own Shopify integration shows orders, refunds and addresses beside the conversation, connects multiple stores and works on every plan
You need EU hosting on an entry plan. Front offers US or EU data hosting and states no plan requirement; Zendesk ties region choice to its Data Center Location add-on or a plan that includes that functionality

Pick Zendesk if

Customers call you. Telephony is part of Suite Team, billed on usage beyond the plan allowance, and Suite Professional adds an IVR phone tree
You want email, chat and messaging on one plan for less than Front's omnichannel tier: $55 an agent on Suite Team against $65 a seat on Front Professional, both billed annually
Your AI agent will escalate a lot while you train it. Zendesk bills only requests the AI resolves with no human involved, and Front bills each handoff at $0.39
You expect to pass 50 agents. Front Professional is capped at 50 seats, and the next step is Enterprise at $105 a seat billed annually; Front lists no monthly rate for it
You need hosting in Asia Pacific. Zendesk has data centres in the US, Europe (EEA) and Asia Pacific, where Front hosts in the US or the EU. Zendesk also documents a HIPAA route, its Advanced Security or Advanced Compliance add-on plus a signed BAA

Tick what describes your team. We'll tell you which way it leans.

What each costs

Eight agents answering email, chat and Instagram DMs, billed annually, with an AI agent fully resolving 300 conversations a month. Front needs Professional, because Starter takes one channel type. Zendesk needs Suite Team, because Support Team is email and ticketing only.

Front Professional

Seats: 8 × $65 = $520 a month, $6,240 a year
AI: 300 resolutions × $0.89 = $267 a month, $3,204 a year
Year one: $6,240 + $3,204 = $9,444

Zendesk Suite Team

Seats: 8 × $55 = $440 a month, $5,280 a year
AI: 8 agents × 5 included = 40 resolutions; the other 260 × $1.50 committed = $390 a month, $4,680 a year
Year one: $5,280 + $4,680 = $9,960

Front comes out $516 cheaper at this volume. The crossover sits near 230 AI resolutions a month for eight agents. Below it, Zendesk's cheaper seats win; above it, Front's lower resolution price does. At Zendesk's pay-as-you-go rate of $2.00, the AI line becomes $520 a month and year one $11,520.

What the headline leaves out:

Front also bills conversations Autopilot works but doesn't resolve: $0.39 for a handoff, $0.05 for triage only. 100 handoffs a month add $39
Copilot for agents is $20 a seat a month on Front Starter and Professional ($160 a month for eight). Zendesk sells Copilot at $50 an agent a month paid yearly only on Suite Professional and above, so this team would first move from $55 to $115 a seat billed annually: $920 a month for seats plus $400 for Copilot
Phone on Front means a separate Aircall or Dialpad subscription, not priced here. Zendesk telephony is billed on usage beyond the plan allowance
Front's native WhatsApp channel costs Meta's charges plus a 20% admin fee, on Professional and Enterprise
Zendesk's help centre also describes a newer resolution allowance, a dollar budget per seat ($2 a month on Suite Team), spent across resolution tiers whose prices that article doesn't give. Ask which model your contract uses before you forecast
Suite Team can't run a full data export. Suite Growth can, and Zendesk publishes no price for it

Front plans

Front plans and prices
Plan	Billed monthly	Billed annually	What you get
Starter	$35	$25	Hard cap of 10 seats.
Professional	$85	$65	Hard cap of 50 seats.
Enterprise	–	$105	Annual billing only - Front states monthly is not offered on this plan.

Prices are an agent a month, in US dollars. Source: front.com/pricing, checked Oct 23, 2026.

Full Front pricing

Zendesk plans

Zendesk plans and prices
Plan	Billed monthly	Billed annually	What you get
Support Team	$25	$19	Ticketing without the wider Suite.
Suite Team	$69	$55	The entry point to the Suite, which is where the AI and the extra channels start.
Suite Professional	$149	$115	Marked Most Popular by Zendesk.
Suite Enterprise + Copilot	Contact sales	–	Quoted, not published.

Prices are an agent a month, in US dollars. Source: zendesk.com/pricing, checked Oct 30, 2026.

Full Zendesk pricing

Where the features differ

24 of the 28 features we checked on both differ in availability or the plan you need. The other 4 are the same on both. Each answer links to the page on the vendor’s own site that says so.

Features where Front and Zendesk differ
Feature	Front	Zendesk
Channels
Contact form and widget	Some planssource	Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource
Email	Every plansource	Every plansource
Live chat	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource
Phone	Some plansfrom Professionalsource	Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource
SMS	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource
Social DMs	Some plansfrom Professionalsource	Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource
WhatsApp	Paid add-onfrom Professionalsource	Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource
AI and automation
Agent copilot	Paid add-onsource	Paid add-onfrom Suite Professionalsource
AI agent (customer-facing)	Paid add-onfrom Startersource	Every plansource
Automation rules	Every plansource	Every plansource
Intent detection and routing	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Professionalsource
Macros and saved replies	Some plansfrom Professionalsource	Every plansource
Self-service
Customer portal	Some planssource	Some plansfrom Suite Growthsource
Customer-facing help centre	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Teamsource
Multilingual support	Some plansfrom Enterprisesource	Some plansfrom Suite Growthsource
Workflow and admin
Native mobile app for agents	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Growthsource
Public API	Every plansource	Every plansource
Roles and permissions	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Enterprisesource
Side conversations	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Professionalsource
Single sign-on	Some plansfrom Professionalsource	Every plansource
Reporting and quality
Custom reports and export	Some plansfrom Enterprisesource	Some plansfrom Suite Professionalsource
QA and agent scoring	Some plansfrom Enterprisesource	Paid add-onsource
Reporting dashboards	Every plansource	Every plansource
Security and reliability
EU data residency	Every plansource	Some plansfrom Suite Professionalsource

AI agents and what you pay for

Zendesk includes AI agents in every Suite and Support plan and bills per automated resolution, a request settled without escalation to a person. Suite Team includes 5 per agent a month and Suite Professional 10; extra ones cost $1.50 committed or $2.00 pay-as-you-go
Front's Autopilot is an add-on on every plan. Each conversation is billed once, at the highest level it reached: $0.05 triage, $0.39 handoff, $0.89 resolution
Front counts a resolution when no teammate follows up within 24 hours on chat, SMS and WhatsApp, or 72 hours on email and the portal
Front's pricing page shows only "starting at $0.05 per conversation", the triage rate. The handoff and resolution prices are in its help centre
Zendesk's Copilot add-on takes actions in systems such as Shopify, and Zendesk says it can process returns with agent oversight. Front's Shopify integration page describes showing order data and doesn't mention acting on orders
Our view: Front is cheaper per resolved conversation and dearer per attempt. In the first months, while the knowledge base is still thin, an AI agent hands off more than it resolves, and on Front every handoff is billed. Zendesk is the safer budget until your resolution rate settles

Channels and phone

Zendesk Suite Team includes messaging and live chat, omnichannel routing and telephony. Support Team at $19 an agent a month billed annually is email and ticketing only
Front Starter takes one channel type. Professional opens email, SMS, chat and social channels such as Facebook, Instagram and X in one workspace
Front has no telephony of its own. Calls and voicemails come in through integrations like Aircall and Dialpad
Front limits channels per seat: 10 on Starter, 30 on Professional, 50 on Enterprise
Our view: Zendesk handles phone better, because calls arrive in the same product and plan as every other channel. If calls are rare for you, Front's integrations are enough

Working a conversation together

Front puts internal comments, shared drafts and @mentions on every plan, and guest accounts let a colleague outside support comment without a paid seat
Zendesk has internal notes, CCs and followers across its Suite plans. Side conversations, separate threads with people outside the ticket, start at Suite Professional
Our view: Front handles this better. It assumes several people work one conversation, where Zendesk assumes one assignee per ticket and adds collaboration on higher plans. If a warehouse lead or someone in finance weighs in on refunds, you will notice the difference daily

Getting your data out

Front has no self-serve export. A company admin asks Front support, which acknowledges within 72 hours. The export covers shared-inbox conversations, comments and attachments, and leaves out individual inboxes, contact data, message templates and tags
Zendesk's full export needs Suite Growth or above, so the Suite Team account priced above can export only through the REST API. Exports are off until the account owner asks Zendesk support, CSV files leave out ticket comments and descriptions, and AI agent tickets can't be exported
Our view: neither makes leaving easy. Zendesk is the better of the two on Suite Growth or above, because once exports are switched on an admin runs them without waiting on anyone

How we checked this

Plan prices are the tiers on file, which our pricing monitor last matched to each vendor's pricing page on 2026-10-23
The arithmetic is ours, from the published per-seat and per-resolution prices
Checked 2026-10-29

Sources

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