| Functionality | 9 <p>Freshsales provides all the essential functionality most companies need, covering the majority of use cases.</p><p>The only notable gap we found was in more advanced features, like the ability to create branched automation workflows—something you’d typically see in platforms like Hubspot or Salesforce, which cater to the largest and most sophisticated organizations.</p> | 6 <p>Zendesk Sell offers a mix of advanced and basic features. On the plus side, it includes built-in prospecting and data enrichment, the ability to send texts and emails, make calls, and even create custom objects. However, its automation is extremely limited, with just one trigger available - you also can’t create custom reports, which feel like glaring omissions for a CRM.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 4 <p>Freshsales packs a ton of features and customization options, but it comes with a learning curve. For example, there are 12 different “quick” actions just for a single contact. The abundance of settings can make some workflows feel unnecessarily complex. Take email sequences—before you can even start composing, you’ll need to navigate through six different settings, including selecting between outbound, classic, or smart sequence types. This level of detail is fantastic for power users but might frustrate teams that value speed and simplicity.</p> | 5 <p>Zendesk Sell is generally easy to set up and navigate, but there are frustrations. On the top of our list is how contacts and companies are stored in the same database. This means that when associating a contact with a deal, you’ll have to scroll through a disorganized list of both individuals and companies. Pages lack color coding, making them cluttered and difficult to scan for key information.</p> |
| Look and feel | 6 <p>Freshsales looks decent, but the experience is let down by slow load times—key pages like the deal pipeline or individual contact profiles take a few seconds to load, and that gets frustrating fast.</p> | 4 <p>Zendesk Sell gets the job done but looks dull and uninspired. Some pages, like the automation and reporting modules, feel like unfinished prototypes. Page loads are another issue, with delays of up to five seconds</p> |
| Customisability | 7 <p>Freshsales is fairly customizable—you can add custom fields, create custom data objects, and even track customer user events with code.</p><p>That said, the pipeline feature feels narrowly focused on deals management, making it less versatile if you want to use your CRM for things like vendor or partner management, or tracking customer onboarding. It also falls short on more advanced capabilities, like building sophisticated automation workflows or running in-depth analytics, which platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot handle with ease.</p> | 6 <p>Customization is another mixed bag. You can create custom objects, multiple pipelines, and custom fields, which is helpful. However, automation tools are severely limited, with just one trigger available for workflows. You also can’t create custom reports, which restricts flexibility.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 4 <p>Freshsales offers a free trial without the need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking around 10 minutes to import contacts and set up pipelines. However, due to its extensive feature set and complex settings, fully customizing the platform—including chatbots, automation, and sequences—can take up to several weeks.</p> | 7 <p>Close offers a free trial without need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking around 10 minutes to import contacts and set up pipelines. Due to Zendesk's limited customisability compared to more heavweight CRMs, fully setting up the platform is straightforward, and can be largely done within 1-2 business days. </p> |
| Customer Support | 6 <p>Freshales offer support via in-app live chat. We usually get a response within an hour, but agents often change halfway during the conversation, and aren't always the most knowledgeable.</p> | 3 <p>Customer support leaves a lot to be desired. The AI chatbot is often unhelpful or misleading, and attempts to connect with a human agent resulted in error messages on two separate occasions we were testing it. When connected to a human agent, the response is generic and forces you to go to a Help Centre article. Zendesk's Help Centre, while reasonably well-written, is not always easy to navigate.</p> |
| Integratability | 6 <p>Freshsales comes with a solid lineup of around 385 pre-built integrations and offers an API for custom setups. However, it’s missing some key pre-built integrations with widely-used tools like Zendesk and Intercom, which might be a dealbreaker for some teams.</p> | 8 <p>Zendesk Sell offers a very comprehensive library of pre-built integrations with many relevant third-party apps. It also has an API for custom integrations.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 8 <p>Freshsales allows users to export key data data via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API or on request.</p> | 9 <p>Exporting data is easy. Contacts, deals and reports can all be exported via one click. Its API also allows you export any other necessary data.</p> |
