Help Desk Software

Zendesk, the on-demand help desk software maker, is raising their prices by over 300% for some plans. The help desk company sent the bad news to their customers via email recently which has left some with a bad taste in their mouths. Coincidentally, Zendesk reported crossing the 5k business customer mark right before their drastic price changes.

The price changes:

Before

Single package: $9/month per agent, 1 agent only
Regular package: $19/month per agent, minimum of 3 agents
Plus+ package: $39/month per agent, minimum of 5 agents

After

Starter plan: $9/month per agent, 1 to 3 agents
Regular plan: $29 per month, 3 to 20 agents
Plus+ plan: $59/month, 5 to 100 agents

The help desk vendor is offering what they call ‘Grandfathering Terms’ which will allow current customers to remain on an existing price and feature plan by converting to an annual billing cycle. However, customers are still up in arms over the forced switch to annual payment.

Zendesk has recently faced a huge backlash on their company forum in the wake of the changes. The customers demand to know how the company can justify a 300% price increase for a commonplace commodity. Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane responded by issuing this statement:

“Yes we are raising our prices on two of our plans. We now have three plans at three different price points (starting at $9). This is the first time EVER that we have increased pricing. But we have added new functionality to the service for every week for the last two and half years.

And today we’re launching a lot more functionality for knowledge base and community support Zendesk has gone from a traditional ticket management system to a complete customer engagement platform, supporting 1-to-1, 1-to-many and many-to-many customer conversations and support interactions. Zendesk is investing heavily in new features and our customers will continue to experience great things with Zendesk.

We will deliver on our promise. Are we the cheapest show in town? No. But we do think that we have an excellent offering for almost every budget starting at $9 per agent seat. And we do offer to grandfather our existing customers for one additional year at their current price point with all of their current functionality grandfathered indefinitely.

The price per agent has gone up with $10 and $20 on the Regular and Plus+ plans respectively. That’s a 50% increase. Some customers may experience disproportional price hikes due to earlier introductory discounts, and we will look into these accounts on a case-by-case basis.
Let me finally point out, that we have been completely open and transparent about the price changes. We don’t try to sneak it in.”

Only time will tell if the response will appease the masses or if there will be a mass exodus of Zendesk customers to other help desk platforms.

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