In short
- Zendesk is priced per agent per month with no free plan; Kommio Cloud is free with every feature.
- Kommio keeps ticket discipline (statuses, priorities, SLA policies, business hours) inside a chat-speed conversation model.
- Zendesk is stronger on marketplace breadth, sandboxes and voice; Kommio does not do voice.
- A native Zendesk importer is planned; today contacts move by CSV and history through the API.
What Zendesk costs, and what Kommio costs
Zendesk is priced per agent per month and has no free plan, only a 14-day trial. Its pricing page refused our automated check; third-party pricing guides published in October 2026 list Suite Team at $55 per agent per month billed annually, with Copilot and automated AI resolutions billed on top. (third-party pricing guides, since Zendesk's own page could not be checked automatically, checked 20 October 2026.)
Kommio Cloud is free: no seat pricing, no plan tiers, every feature and every channel, under the fair-use limits. The limits enforced today are request rates (600 API requests a minute per key) and file rules (25 MB per attachment); the published reference levels, such as 50,000 new conversations a month or 20 GB of files per workspace, are where Kommio would talk to you, not cut you off. Sign-up is self-serve at app.kommio.io.
Where Zendesk is stronger
- A very large marketplace and integrations for almost any tool on day one.
- Enterprise controls built over fifteen years: sandboxes, data locality options on higher plans, and voice.
- Explore, a deep, customisable reporting tool, and a brand most procurement teams already approve.
Where Kommio is different
No seat arithmetic
Adding an agent, a contractor for the holidays or a second brand costs nothing on Kommio Cloud. There are no plan tiers, so SLA policies, field masking and the audit trail are on every workspace, not on an enterprise plan.
Tickets at chat speed
Kommio has one conversation model: statuses with categories, priorities, snooze and business hours, so an email and a website chat follow the same rules and the same SLA policy, instead of a ticket system with chat added later.
Field-level access
A role decides whether an email, phone, payment field or a custom attribute you tag as an ID document is shown, masked or hidden, and every reveal is audited with an optional reason. Every change records who, what, before and after.
AI without a per-resolution fee
AI assist and the optional AI agent run on Kommio Cloud's free monthly AI allowance (Claude Haiku 5.5 on Kommio's Anthropic account, under fair use), or on your workspace's own Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible key with a monthly budget you set, paid to the provider directly. There is no per-resolution charge from Kommio.
Choose Zendesk when
- You need dozens of integrations, voice or sandboxes on day one.
- Procurement requires a long-established vendor with enterprise contracts.
- You rely on Explore dashboards that your leadership already reads.
Choose Kommio when
- Per-agent pricing is what holds back adding people to support.
- You want SLA policies, business hours and audit on every workspace without an upgrade.
- Customers write on WhatsApp, Telegram or Slack as much as by email, and you want one inbox for all of it.
Kommio and Zendesk, feature by feature
Checked against Zendesk's public documentation and pricing page on 20 October 2026; Zendesk is a trademark of its owner and Kommio is not affiliated with it. Plans change, so check their site before you decide, and tell [email protected] if a mark is out of date.
| Feature | Kommio | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| Core | ||
| Conversation model | One conversation model with data-driven statuses (chat speed plus ticket states) | Tickets |
| Channels | ||
| Shared email inboxKommio: IMAP and SMTP, or Microsoft 365 and Google sign-in | ✓ | ✓ |
| Website live chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| WhatsAppKommio: your number on the WhatsApp Business Cloud API, through your own Meta app | ✓ | ✓ |
| Messenger, Instagram, TelegramKommio: Messenger and Instagram through your own Meta app, Telegram through a bot; Slack channels shared with business customers too | ✓ | ✓ |
| Two-way SMSKommio: through your own Twilio account, with MMS and STOP opt-outs | ✓ | ◐ |
| Deployment | ||
| Self-hosted option | ✓ | — |
| Choice of data regionKommio: cloud region or your own infrastructure | ✓ | ◐ |
| Access control | ||
| Custom roles and permissions | ✓ | ◐ |
| Conversation visibility by team, inbox or assignment | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-role field masking (show, mask or hide an email, phone or payment field)Kommio: also on custom attributes you tag as ID, payment or other personal data | ✓ | ◐ |
| Audit trail with before and after values | ✓ | ◐ |
| Productivity | ||
| Automation rules and macros | ✓ | ✓ |
| SLA policies and business hoursKommio: first-response and resolution targets by inbox and priority, wall clock or business hours with holidays, attainment in reports and a breach trigger | ✓ | ✓ |
| Visual chatbot flow builder with hand-off to a personKommio: several bots and flows per inbox, in order, with conditions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full-text search across every message | ✓ | ✓ |
| Knowledge | ||
| AI reply suggestions and summaries for agentsKommio: on your own Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible key | ✓ | ◐ |
| Help center and knowledge baseKommio: versioned articles in your languages, public or internal, and a Help tab in the chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| Developers | ||
| No-code data pulls from your own systems into the conversationKommio: data connectors with recipes for Stripe, Shopify and HubSpot | ✓ | ◐ |
| Public REST API and webhooks | ✓ | ✓ |
| Versioned OpenAPI contract with a generated client | ✓ | ◐ |
| Plugins or apps inside the agent screen | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reporting | ||
| Reporting with medians and p90Kommio: backlog, SLA attainment, staffing and channel mix too, with saved views, CSV and Excel exports and a Reports API for BI tools | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys with reportsKommio: by agent, team, inbox, tag and channel, with the responses and comments behind every number | ✓ | ✓ |
| Branding | ||
| Brand theming by tokens across the chat widget and the agent app | ✓ | ◐ |
✓ Included◐ Partial, add-on or higher plans— Not offered◷ On the Kommio roadmap
What Kommio does not do yet
- No Zendesk importer yet: it is planned on the Chatwoot importer's framework, the first of the planned importers.
- No voice calls, no sandboxes, and a Marketplace far smaller than Zendesk's; Stripe, Shopify and HubSpot listings and Zapier, Make and n8n recipes are planned.
- SLA next-response targets and pausing the clock while pending are planned; first-response and resolution targets are shipped.
- Help centers on a custom domain are not offered on Kommio Cloud yet.
Moving from Zendesk to Kommio today
A native Zendesk importer is planned and not built yet. Until it ships, a move takes three steps, and [email protected] helps plan it.
- Contacts by CSV. Export your users from Zendesk and upload the file in Contacts › Import: map the columns to name, email, phone, company, tags and custom attributes, preview the first 1,000 rows as a dry run, then import up to 1,000,000 rows in the background.
- History through the API. Create conversations and messages with the REST API (an API key, idempotent writes and a generated TypeScript client), so past tickets arrive with their contact and timestamps.
- Rebuild the rules. Recreate triggers and automations as Kommio rules on events and time, starting from the six ready-made templates, and your SLA policies by inbox and priority.
Contacts: CSV import and exports in the developer center
Frequently asked questions
Is Kommio really free compared with Zendesk?
Yes. Kommio Cloud has no seat pricing and no plan tiers. The limits enforced today are request rates and file rules (25 MB per attachment); the published reference levels per workspace are where Kommio would talk to you, not cut you off.
Can I import my Zendesk tickets into Kommio?
Not with a one-click importer yet: a Zendesk importer is planned. Today contacts come in by CSV import and ticket history through the REST API, and the Kommio team helps plan a move at [email protected].
Does Kommio have SLA policies like Zendesk?
Yes: first-response and resolution targets by inbox and priority, on the wall clock or in business hours with holidays, a clock on every conversation, SLA attainment in reports and a breach event for rules and webhooks.
Does Kommio have Zendesk-style voice support?
No. Kommio has no voice calls; it covers email, website chat, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, SMS, Slack and API inboxes.
Is Kommio open source?
No. Kommio is not open source. Kommio Cloud is free, and a self-hosted edition of the same product is available on request.
Facts on this page describe Kommio as it is on the date above; anything marked planned is on the roadmap, not shipped. Corrections to [email protected].