Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

support.zendesk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 109 posts

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#91

Post by jackowayed »

ErrantX wrote: post #86
megamark16 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We ended up using eSupport ( which is a complete piece of shit )" Whenever I read something like this I can't help but think "Here's a potential customer to whomever can get this right and at the right price". It seems like there's still a huge opening in this market for someone to come in and take all of ZenDesk and eSupport's customers.

Do you really think so? It always struck me that there was 1001 support desk providers out there... is there really that much space? (cos if so it's going on my list of maybe projects :))

There's always space for someone who does it better and/or cheaper than the competition.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#93

Post by bdickason »

Splines wrote: post #85
mikeryan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its funny as we move to SAAS models this seems to be a bigger issue. With Desktop apps you could just stick people on a version and let them keep their existing pricing plan with some sort of dedicated EOL. Anyone wanting a newer/better/prettier version would need to pay for the upgrade. This breaks down severely on these web models, where you're more inclined to start out with a lower price and feature set while you…

You could try introducing a tiered pricing model. Allowing users on a lower tier to trial features on a higher tier (or introducing the higher-tier features at a limited mode) might help convert users up.

This is what we're looking at with our new startup. We have a core featureset that will probably carry a subscription but other than scaling with more 'users' (in our case, employees), I'm not sure of other ways to increase the price without screwing people.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#94

Post by th5 »

ryan-allen wrote: post #58

ZenDesk pricing has always confused me. They always pitched themselves as 'for the small smart guys' with all the 37s type philosophies that were popular at the time. And I looked at the product and thought "Wow, this product is actually quite nice!". But we had 5 staff and only one full time support person, but everyone needed an account. The starting price was a bit rich for how small we were and I met the head eva…

Weve been with esupport for about 1.5 years now. I find it somewhat cumbersome to do certain things, and there are 2 minor things that really piss me off, but overall, it being a piece of shit, sounds a little of an over statement. I wouldnt exactly rant and rave about it, but it seems to do its job and its not that expensive. Maybe im missing something...

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#95

Post by Skyline »

ryan-allen wrote: post #58

ZenDesk pricing has always confused me. They always pitched themselves as 'for the small smart guys' with all the 37s type philosophies that were popular at the time. And I looked at the product and thought "Wow, this product is actually quite nice!". But we had 5 staff and only one full time support person, but everyone needed an account. The starting price was a bit rich for how small we were and I met the head eva…

Our company was actually just looking into licensing eSupport and we thought it looked pretty good.

Why is it a "complete piece of shit"?

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#96

Post by hapless »

troels wrote: post #51
jhancock wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to setup a helpdesk system next week. Any recommendations? Our key requirement is to be able to reassign incoming tickets and have simple notification to the person it was reassigned.

I don't recall if RT from Best Practical has the particular feature, but otherwise it's a well-rounded and battle proven solution. It's ugly as hell though.

RT has the most seamless workflow imaginable. It puts every other ticket system's e-mail integration to shame.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#97

Post by acangiano »

chrisrhee wrote: post #75
pclark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tender App is especially great

Thanks! We're getting a bunch of signups right now. If anyone has questions about Tender, feel free to comment here, tweet @tenderapp, or email support@tenderapp.com — Will's girlfriend is in town visiting, so let's keep him as busy as possible!

The pricing is just right too.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#98

Post by rmoriz »

imagetic wrote: post #89
rmoriz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was evaluating both zendesk and tenderapp last week. Tenderapp had serious confirmed email problems so I had to wait one day to see mails appearing on tenderapp. This is not the thing we would like as an early startup. We've to evaluate other services now because neither zendesk nor tenderapp are usable (imho)

Hey rmoriz. I just wanted to follow up on your email issues with Tender. Did you have an open support discussion I could pull up? We certainly strive to provide the best service possible as we built Tender for supporting our own services and clients and are highly dependent on it.

My co-founder wanted to give up tender because no mail were processed so I checked google apps mail forwarding and found no errors.

As I was unsuccessful I've tweeted to @tenderapp and got a reply some hours later stating that there was indeed a mail receiving problem.

As tender/entp also uses google apps, it's kind of scary to see that there was a problem. I mean that's probably the easiest combination to deal with imho.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#99

Post by ryan-allen »

megamark16 wrote: post #67
ryan-allen wrote: post #58

ZenDesk pricing has always confused me. They always pitched themselves as 'for the small smart guys' with all the 37s type philosophies that were popular at the time. And I looked at the product and thought "Wow, this product is actually quite nice!". But we had 5 staff and only one full time support person, but everyone needed an account. The starting price was a bit rich for how small we were and I met the head eva…

"We ended up using eSupport ( which is a complete piece of shit )" Whenever I read something like this I can't help but think "Here's a potential customer to whomever can get this right and at the right price". It seems like there's still a huge opening in this market for someone to come in and take all of ZenDesk and eSupport's customers.

Yep I agree completely. We painstakingly trawled through a very large number of support products and in the end it wasn't a case of picking the one that was the best but picking the best of a worst bunch.

I do believe there is a gap in the market for a good but well priced product, but it wont be a simple little ticketing app, the creators would have to understand how support grows out of a one man job into a 50 man job.

eSupport offers a lot of tricks (well hidden in their horrific UI and UX) that save you time, you also have to handle that not just make a 'Oh a Customer has many Tickets!' ROR app with a nice logo.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#100

Post by callmeed »

jhancock wrote: post #43
ahoyhere wrote: post #17

I think anyone who uses ZenDesk will know that they don't love their users, or treat their tool like a serious business. (More like a cashcow.) Their software is horrible. There are 6 different ways to view the single table of incoming messages, and it's nondeterministic which one you will come to at any given time. And the first time you accidentally send an internal message to a customer, instead of your team - sin…

I need to setup a helpdesk system next week. Any recommendations? Our key requirement is to be able to reassign incoming tickets and have simple notification to the person it was reassigned.

I have an open source rails one at github.com/bigfolio
Post reply on HN