This is what I did for multiple customers now. Not Zendesk, but other expensive SaaS. I only built the 20% they actually needed, with faster UI and better UX. If you freelance, this is where you can make money with AI.
Thanks for this idea
We replaced Zendesk
41–50 of 102 posts
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#42> We pulled an ultrahackathon. The team who built this did not sleep much for two days. They worked through Wednesday night, through Thursday, through Thursday night, through Friday. They ate at their desks. They wrote the spec late Wednesday evening and they wrote the cutover commit on Friday afternoon, and in between they did the work that the time between those two moments required. Cool story but I would not want…
Yeah. I understand that this was an exceptional situation outside their control, but having to work multiple days straight is nothing to be proud of. It's something to apologize for and give a corresponding monetary reward for, and then see what kinds of mitigations you can take to avoid this in the future.
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#43This is precisely the future of consumer software engineering (no I’m not saying anything here about building robots rockets medicine etc. at least for the next decade probably) This idea that software developer productivity being the goal for AI companies is just not it - every piece of code you put into an LLM is a you giving these giant companies your expertise People need to remember where the bulk of engineering…
> if I can spend a week replicating your software that has all these bullshit dark pattern features and I can replicate that for my own why why wouldn’t I?
Have fun Chesterton's fencing yourself into much of what other companies spent years learning and solving.
Prototypes and proofs of concept were easy even before AI.
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#44This happened to me recently with a few providers. Their billing teams got aggressive and I said fuck it and AI coded a replacement in a few nights/weekends. For me it was: Temporal, Zapier and DocuSign I strongly believe the build/buy equation is much different in 2026 than it was in 2024
docusign? Maybe I'm just dumb, but I would definitely want a CYA third party keeping track of all legally binding agreements.
Yeah, this is the absolute last thing I'd vibecode. This is one step above sending your LLM to represent you in front of a court when you're accused of murder.
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#45[deleted]
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#46Hahaha totally relatable. Love Zendesk but they kept charging and adding more features I don't need. I built https://pointanswer.com/ for myself to host 3 of my own SaaS instead of paying more than $100/mo for simple helpcenter. I'm the only one using it with no customers but it's still way better than paying for Zendesk. But did spent too much time on it as I built in pre-Claude era. My personal experience: For many…
Isn't this a perfect case for why SAAS stocks have been puking all year?
I certainly don't think Zendesk's core business is threatened here, and I have no desire to replace Zendesk with a custom solution. But Zendesk's ability to upcharge, sell adjacent products, and pass on cost increases is hugely threatened. If PE was planning on a decade of consistent cost increases and more land, that dream seems materially threatened!
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#47Since their private equity buyout in 2022, Zendesk will absolutely attempt to get you to sign agregious terms. They will attempt to hoodwink you. They will pretend they never received your cancellations and charge you for another year of contract. Legal counsel should be leveraged when dealing with them to ensure you don't get screwed.
> Since their private equity buyout in 2022, Does anyone know of examples of where a private equity buyout has made things better for the consumer?
Yeah but they're boring. Hilton, Skype, and Dell are PE success stories. PE, when they're not being egregious, makes the website go down a bit less? Support improves? Security and compliance gets a bit more spent on them and they land more enterprise deals? Hardly the stuff to counteract taking down everyone's beloved Toys'Я'us with leveraged debt.
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#48From my understanding, they vibe coded a solution and for now it is working for them. I've worked with zendesk and several other platforms. I worked in customer service automation, so we had to deal with so many incompatibility with different platforms. This looks like a win for now, but the part we won't see is what happens at 72 hours.
I'm all for sticking it to zendesk, but as I tell every single person who were thinking to roll their own solution, have you thought about Integration? That's zendesk's moat. They have an integration with almost every single platform you can think of. It works with all e-commerce, but also ebay and amazon. It can communicate via WhatsApp, imessage, signal, and everything in between. Then connects to salesforce and netsuite.
I know this is a AI generated post, talking about an AI generated app. So next I'm expecting the AI agent deleted our prod database posts.
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#49At some point, some people will just publish open source single-shot LLM prompts that define a clean-room spec for every over-priced product. Why not make an open source alternative to the product? Because everyone's needs are just a little different, and collaborating takes maintenance. Forks are free, merges are expensive.
that's actually NOT what you want to do. You want to build out a clone for these SAAS product that don't have the features you don't need, eliminating footguns and accelerating the fast path to user success.
Large companies may have difficulty embracing this strategy because software is a cost center, and not a revenue center, for them. The returns to efficiency gains are really hard to measure.
Re: We replaced Zendesk
#50It certainly is true that many SaaS subscriptions can be replaced with custom written(supercharged by AI) tools. The key question however remains “Who are you going to call when something goes wrong?” Or “who is going to maintain this software?” Because essentially that’s what SaaS subscriptions genuinely offloaded and let you focus on your core business things.
As is most things in engineering, this is a trade-off and the line where buy vs build exists somewhere to be found and justified. Sure AI moves the line closer to build these days.