Compare
ChaosDesk vs Zoho Desk
A helpdesk that stands on its own instead of inside one suite: Zendesk-shaped rules and a compatible API, EU hosting on every plan, and an importer that brings your departments, tickets and knowledge base over.
Zoho Desk Enterprise
$40
per agent / month, billed annually, as of 2026-11-09
ChaosDesk Pro
$27
per agent / month, billed annually, AI copilot included
32% lower list price per agent
List prices, USD, per agent per month, billed annually. Zoho Desk checked 2026-11-09. zoho.com/desk/pricing.html
What a team of 20 pays
List prices on annual billing, in USD and excluding tax. Zoho Desk checked 2026-11-09.
| Vendor and plan | Per agent / month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Zoho Desk Enterprise | $40 | $9,600 |
| ChaosDesk Pro | $27 | $6,480 |
You keep $3,120 a year
As of 2026-11-09, check zoho.com/desk/pricing.html for current prices. USD, excluding tax. Full plan details.
At a glance
| Topic | Zoho Desk | ChaosDesk |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per user, per month | Per agent, per month; light agents free |
| Free plan | Yes, up to 3 users | Yes, 1 agent |
| Generative AI | Zia included on Professional and Enterprise | Copilot included in every paid plan (fair use) |
| EU data hosting | Yes, through the EU data centre (desk.zoho.eu) | EU by default on every plan |
| Zendesk-compatible API | No | Yes, /zd/api/v2 |
| Trial | 15 days | 14 days of Pro, no card |
Zoho Desk information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: zoho.com/desk/pricing. Check there for current details.
Feature by feature
Every row is something a support team buys on. ChaosDesk answers the same way on every comparison page, so the pages cannot contradict each other; the Zoho Desk column describes what the vendor documents publicly.
| Feature | Zoho Desk | ChaosDesk |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets and workspace | ||
| Full ticket model: statuses, fields, forms | Yes Tickets with departments, layouts and custom fields. | Yes Statuses grouped under New, Open, Pending, On-hold and Solved, custom statuses, custom fields, conditional ticket forms, and custom objects, approvals and ticket layouts from Pro. |
| Shared and personal views with live counts | Yes Views and bulk actions. | Yes Group by, column sorting, CSV export, and bulk edit, merge or macro on hundreds of tickets at once. |
| Macros, keyboard shortcuts and play mode | Partial Ticket templates and macros. We could not confirm a play-mode queue. | Yes Macros on every plan, the keyboard shortcuts and search syntax Zendesk agents already know, and play mode with agent capacity from Growth. |
| Side conversations with other teams | Not confirmed We could not confirm an equivalent on the vendor’s public pages. | Yes Email, Slack or Microsoft Teams threads beside the ticket and out of the customer conversation. From Pro. |
| Several brands in one workspace | Yes Departments, each with its own portal and knowledge base, on the higher plans. | Yes Each brand with its own addresses, help centre and forms: 1 on Starter, 5 on Growth, 25 on Pro, 300 on Enterprise. |
| Channels | ||
| Email on your own domain | Yes Support addresses and your own domain. | Yes Any number of support addresses per brand, DKIM and SPF checks, quote stripping, loop and bounce protection, and a suspended queue for mail that should not become a ticket. |
| Web messenger and web forms | Partial Chat comes from Zoho SalesIQ, a separate product in the suite. | Yes Messenger with bot flows and verified visitors, plus embeddable contact forms. The snippet keeps the same zE() calls as the Zendesk widget. |
| WhatsApp, SMS and social messaging | Partial WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and X through the Zoho suite. | Yes WhatsApp Cloud API, SMS through Twilio or your own gateway, Facebook Messenger and page posts, Instagram DMs and comments, Telegram, Viber, LINE, WeChat and X. Message fees are passed through. |
| Voice: browser phone, menu, recordings | Add-on Telephony through Zoho Voice or a partner integration, priced separately. | Yes Numbers answered in the browser, a phone menu with queues, voicemail, consent-based recording, transcripts and call summaries, or keep Aircall, 3CX or RingCentral. Newer than the rest of the product. |
| Native mobile apps and messenger SDKs | Yes Agent apps in the stores and the ASAP SDK for your own app: ahead of us here. | Partial The workspace installs as an app on a phone and sends push today, and the messenger runs full screen in a web view. Native agent apps and iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter SDKs are built and waiting for store review. |
| Automation and SLAs | ||
| Triggers, automations and webhooks | Yes Workflow rules, blueprints, supervise rules and webhooks. | Yes Zendesk-shaped conditions and actions, unlimited on paid plans, with signed webhooks, retries with backoff and a delivery log. |
| SLA policies with business hours | Yes SLA policies with escalations, and business hours per department. | Yes The five standard SLA metrics with business hours and holidays from Growth, and group SLAs (OLAs) from Pro. |
| Routing: round robin, capacity, skills | Yes Round robin, load balancing and skill-based assignment on the higher plans. | Yes Round robin and capacity rules from Growth, skills-based routing and a suggested assignee from Pro. |
| Sandbox and rule testing before go-live | Not confirmed We could not confirm a sandbox or rule simulation for the desk. | Yes A sandbox workspace, rule simulation, and configuration export and import as files you can review. From Pro. |
| AI | ||
| AI copilot in the plan price | Yes Zia is included on the Professional and Enterprise plans. | Yes Drafts with their sources, thread summaries, two-way translation and suggested macros in every paid plan, under a fair-use allowance of 50 to 700 actions per agent and month. No per-seat add-on. |
| Autonomous AI agent | Partial Zia includes an answer bot on the higher plans; we could not confirm a per-resolution price. | Yes Answers on the messenger, email, WhatsApp and the phone menu, and hands over to a person with a summary. $0.50 per automated resolution. |
| Intent, sentiment and language as rule fields | Yes Zia tags sentiment and intent on the higher plans. | Yes Tagged on arrival and usable in triggers, views and reports. Personal data is redacted before anything leaves the workspace, and AI can be switched off per workspace. |
| Help centre | ||
| Help centre with articles and search | Yes A knowledge base per department. | Yes On every plan, the Free plan included, with AI answers in search, article analytics and searches that found nothing. |
| Help centre per brand on your own domain | Yes A custom domain for the help centre. | Yes help.yourcompany.com with one DNS record and an automatic certificate, your colours and forms, and a theme code editor. |
| Article translations | Yes A multilingual knowledge base on the higher plans. | Yes Every article in as many languages as you support, with a fallback language and per-language text blocks. |
| Customer portal and community forums | Yes A customer portal with a community. | Yes Request forms and My requests with magic-link, password or the brand’s own single sign-on, plus topics, posts, votes and moderation. |
| Reporting | ||
| Dashboards and live agent activity | Yes Dashboards and scheduled reports. | Yes A support-operations dashboard out of the box, shared dashboards for leads and a live agent activity view. From Growth. |
| Build your own reports | Yes A report builder in the desk, and Zoho Analytics for more. | Yes Pick metrics and attributes, filter, group, drill down to the tickets behind a number, save, schedule by email and alert when a metric crosses a line. From Growth. |
| CSAT, QA scorecards and AutoQA | Yes Happiness ratings. | Yes CSAT with reason codes on every paid plan; QA scorecards, AI scoring of every conversation and workforce management from Pro. |
| Export to your data warehouse | Partial Through Zoho Analytics or the API. | Yes Scheduled raw-data export on Enterprise, CSV export and a full workspace export on every paid plan. |
| API and integrations | ||
| Documented REST API | Yes A documented REST API with OAuth, metered in daily API credits. | Yes An OpenAPI reference with an explorer, cursor pagination and rate-limit headers, at 200 to 2,500 requests a minute depending on the plan. |
| Zendesk-compatible API for your own scripts | No Scripts written for Zendesk have to be rewritten. | Yes Tickets, users, organizations, search, uploads, incremental exports and the help centre at /zd/api/v2, with Zendesk request and response shapes. Change the base URL and the token. |
| Sidebar apps and an app framework | Yes Marketplace extensions and the ASAP SDK. | Yes Apps compatible with the Zendesk App Framework run in the ticket sidebar, next to OAuth apps and a connector that shows your own customer data in the ticket. |
| Large third-party app marketplace | Yes A large Zoho marketplace, strongest inside the Zoho suite: ahead of us here. | Partial We have our own app framework and marketplace, but a young catalogue. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Linear, GitHub, GitLab, Shopify, Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce and calendars are built in. |
| Security and compliance | ||
| Single sign-on and user provisioning | Yes SAML single sign-on on the higher plans. | Yes Google and Microsoft sign-in on every plan, OpenID Connect from Pro, SAML and SCIM on Enterprise, and customer single sign-on per brand. |
| Two-step verification, passkeys, audit log | Yes Two-factor sign-in through Zoho accounts, and an audit log on the higher plans. | Yes TOTP, passkeys and security keys on every plan and enforceable per workspace; an append-only log of admin changes, sign-ins and ticket access, with export and SIEM streaming on Enterprise. |
| GDPR export, erasure, retention, own key | Yes GDPR tooling and a DPA. | Yes Per-person export and erasure with four-eyes approval, retention policies, regional redaction packs, per-workspace encryption keys and a customer-managed key on Enterprise. |
| SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report | Yes SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports are published: ahead of us here. | No Not yet, and we will not pretend otherwise: an independent penetration test and the SOC 2 programme are planned before launch. The trust centre carries the current status. |
| Data location | ||
| EU hosting on every plan | Yes An EU data centre (desk.zoho.eu), chosen at sign-up. | Yes Every workspace is hosted in the EU, on the Free plan too, with backups in the same region and a published subprocessor list and DPA. |
| Choice of another region | Yes Many data centres worldwide: more regions than we offer. | No EU only today. US and Africa regions are planned for Enterprise customers who need them. |
| Migration | ||
| Built-in importer from Zoho Desk | Not applicable Zoho Desk is the system you are moving from. | Yes Built in and read-only against your old account, with a volume estimate, a dry run, a resumable full import and a report of everything that needs a decision. |
| Getting your data out of Zoho Desk | Partial The API needs a Self Client with a refresh token and counts API credits per day, so a large desk takes longer to read out. | Yes A one-click export of the whole workspace, plus the REST API and incremental exports, so the next move is never blocked by us. |
| Delta sync and parallel run until go-live | Not applicable The parallel run happens on the ChaosDesk side. | Yes Repeat syncs every few minutes while your team keeps working, then go live one group at a time with the old system read-only as a way back. |
| Plans and support | ||
| Free plan | Yes Yes, up to 3 users. | Yes One agent, 100 tickets a month, email, web form and a help centre. No card. |
| Trial without a card | Yes 15 days. | Yes 14 days of Pro, then the workspace moves to the Free plan instead of locking you out. |
| No seat caps or ticket limits | Yes Per user with no ticket cap. Light agents are an extra $6 per light agent a month, where ours are free. | Yes Unlimited agents and unlimited tickets on every paid plan. Light agents are free: 5 on Starter, unlimited from Growth. |
| Support and a published uptime SLA | Not confirmed We could not confirm a published uptime SLA on the pages we read. | Yes Email support from Starter, email and chat on Pro, priority support and a named success manager on Enterprise. 99.5 % availability on Pro, 99.9 % on Enterprise. |
| Assisted migration | Not confirmed Migration help is not described in the plans we read. | Yes Free for teams over 20 agents: we plan the waves with you and watch the parallel run. |
Zoho Desk information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: zoho.com/desk/pricing. “Not confirmed” means we could not find a clear statement on the vendor’s public pages when we read them on 2026-11-09, not that the feature is missing. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Why teams switch from Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is an inexpensive helpdesk that fits best inside the Zoho suite. ChaosDesk targets teams leaving Zendesk who want to keep their workflows and integrations with the least change.
Not everything is in the suite
Zoho Desk is strongest when the rest of your stack is Zoho: chat comes from SalesIQ, deeper reporting from Analytics, telephony from Zoho Voice. Here email, messenger, WhatsApp, social, voice, reporting and the help centre are one product.
Zendesk concepts and a compatible API
Workflow rules and blueprints are their own model. ChaosDesk keeps the Zendesk ticket model, trigger and automation shapes and search syntax, and answers Zendesk-shaped calls at /zd/api/v2.
An import that does not fight API credits
Zoho counts API credits per day, so a large desk takes time to read. The importer estimates the volume first, runs read-only, and resumes where it stopped instead of starting over.
Cheaper is not the same as complete
Zoho Desk is the lowest list price in this comparison: Express at $7 and Enterprise at $40 per user a month on annual billing. The gap is what comes with it. Chat, deeper analytics and telephony are other Zoho products with their own prices, where email, messenger, WhatsApp, social, voice, reporting and the help centre are all in ChaosDesk Pro at $27.
AI without a plan jump
Zia is part of the higher Zoho Desk plans. Our copilot is in every paid plan from $11 per agent, with a fair-use allowance of 50 to 700 actions per agent a month, and the autonomous agent is $0.50 per automated resolution.
What you keep when you move
The Zoho Desk importer is built in. It only reads your old account; it never changes anything there.
Comes over automatically
- Departments as groups, and as brands when you have more than one
- Agents, accounts as organizations, and contacts
- Tickets with their threads and comments
- Ticket templates as macros
- The knowledge base
Rebuild by hand
- Workflow rules, blueprints, macros and SLAs
You need your data centre (for example com, eu or in), the Organization ID, and a Self Client from the Zoho API console with a refresh token. Zoho Desk counts API credits per day, so a large desk may take several days to read.
Where Zoho Desk is strong
Zoho Desk may be the better fit if these matter most to you. A fair comparison says this too:
- Tight integration with Zoho CRM and the rest of Zoho One.
- The lowest list price in this comparison, from $7 per user a month.
Zoho Desk list prices
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Express | $7 | $9 |
| Standard | $14 | $20 |
| Professional | $23 | $35 |
| Enterprise | $40 | $50 |
As of 2026-11-09, check zoho.com/desk/pricing.html for current prices. USD, excluding tax.
- Zoho renders the price list in the visitor’s local currency. The USD figures above are the ones Zoho’s own pricing page loads for the US price list; open the page from the US, or switch the currency on it, to see the same numbers. Zoho is also the one vendor here whose page says applicable local taxes are charged on top.
ChaosDesk list prices
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 |
| Starter | $11 | $14 |
| Growth | $18 | $22 |
| Pro | $27 | $33 |
| Enterprise | $39 | annual only |
Per agent per month, USD, excluding tax. Full plan details.
Questions about moving from Zoho Desk
Why would a Zoho Desk team move to ChaosDesk?
Most often because support has outgrown the suite: they want one product with every channel, a Zendesk-compatible API for older internal scripts, or AI in the plan price rather than on the higher tiers.
Is Zoho Desk not cheaper than ChaosDesk?
At list price, yes: Zoho Desk Enterprise is $40 per user a month on annual billing and Professional $23, against $27 for ChaosDesk Pro (checked 2026-11-09). Express starts at $7. What the comparison turns on is scope, not the seat price: chat, deeper analytics and telephony are separate Zoho products with their own prices, light agents cost $6 each where ours are free, and Zoho Desk has no Zendesk-compatible API for scripts you already wrote.
What comes over from Zoho Desk?
Departments as groups (and as brands when you have more than one), agents, accounts as organizations, contacts, tickets with their threads and comments, ticket templates as macros, and the knowledge base.
How long does the import take?
Longer than the other sources, because Zoho Desk counts API credits per day. The importer estimates the volume first and the full import is resumable, so a large desk can run over several days without starting again.
What is Zoho Desk still better at?
Tight integration with Zoho CRM and the rest of Zoho One, a very low entry price, many data centres worldwide against our EU-only hosting, mature mobile apps and SDKs, and published SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports.
Bring your whole Zendesk history. Keep your way of working.
Import tickets, users, rules and the help centre, run both side by side, and switch when your team is ready.
Zendesk is a trademark of Zendesk, Inc. Zoho Desk is a trademark of its owner. ChaosDesk is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Zendesk, Inc. or any other vendor named here. Product names are used only to describe compatibility and to compare publicly available information.