Zendesk Support vs Sell: What to know after the 2027 retirement

If you've been working in customer experience for any length of time, you’ve probably heard the "Zendesk Support vs Sell" debate. For years, teams have been weighing which platform was the right fit. But that whole conversation is about to change, big time.

Zendesk recently announced that they're retiring Zendesk Sell, with the platform being completely phased out by August 31, 2027. This isn't just a small product update; it’s a major shift that tells us a lot about where Zendesk is heading.

Let's break down what each platform was built for, what this change actually means for you, and how you can build a smarter workflow for your sales and support teams from here on out.

What is Zendesk Support?

Zendesk Support is the product that probably pops into your head when you think of Zendesk. It’s their main customer service platform, and its whole job is to help your business manage and sort out customer questions as painlessly as possible.

At its heart, Zendesk Support is all about a few key things:

• Putting all conversations in one place: It gathers every customer interaction, whether it's from email, chat, phone, or social media, and puts it into a single, unified ticket view. This gives agents the full story so they aren't scrambling between different apps to figure out what's going on.

• Building a self-service help center: You get the tools to create your own knowledge base. This is huge because it lets customers find answers to their own questions, freeing up your team to focus on the trickier, more complex problems.

• Making things automatic: You can set up triggers and automations to take care of repetitive work. This could be anything from automatically sending a ticket to the right department to managing service-level agreements (SLAs) so you always respond on time.

• Tracking your performance: Dashboards let you keep an eye on important numbers like ticket volume, how your agents are doing, and of course, customer satisfaction (CSAT).

Basically, it's the command center for customer support teams and anyone dedicated to keeping customers happy.

What was Zendesk Sell?

It feels a little weird to talk about it in the past tense, but here we are. Zendesk Sell was Zendesk’s CRM platform, designed specifically to help sales teams manage their pipeline, keep track of leads, and, you guessed it, close more deals.

It was built around features like:

• Lead and deal management: It gave sales reps a visual pipeline to track prospects and manage every opportunity, from the very first email to the final contract.

• Activity tracking: Reps could log all their calls, emails, and meetings. This created a complete history for every prospect, which was super helpful for keeping the whole team on the same page.

• Sales reporting: Managers could get a clear view of team performance, which helped with forecasting revenue and tracking how close they were to hitting their quotas.

• A direct line to Support: One of its best features was the built-in integration with Zendesk Support. This meant a sales rep could see if a prospect was having trouble with the product, giving them incredibly useful context before hopping on a call.

Zendesk Sell was for the sales folks, from sales reps and account executives to the managers who needed a system to keep the sales process organized and moving forward.

Why Zendesk is retiring Sell

This wasn't just a random decision. It’s a pretty clear signal about Zendesk's strategy and the challenges of building software that does everything for everyone.

Focusing on what they're great at

The official word from Zendesk is that they're pouring their energy back into their bread and butter: customer service. The world of AI-powered support is getting more competitive, and by letting go of their sales CRM, they can invest more in making their main product even better. It’s a classic case of choosing to be the best at one thing instead of being just okay at a few different things.

The 'do-it-all' platform problem

Let's be honest, building a single platform that's amazing at sales, marketing, and service is incredibly hard. Most of the time, these "all-in-one" tools end up feeling a bit clunky in one area or another. What a sales team needs every day is just different from what a support team needs.

This change really paves the way for a more modern, "best-of-breed" strategy, where companies pick the absolute best tool for each job and then connect them. That way, you don't have to settle for "good enough."

What this change means for you

The impact of this change really depends on which side of the fence you're on:

• If you're a Zendesk Sell customer: You've got a deadline. You need to find a new CRM, figure out how to move years of important data, and retrain your entire sales team before the 2027 cutoff. It's a big project, and it's not optional.

• If you're a Zendesk Support customer: If you were thinking about adding Sell, that's no longer an option. Now, to get that full 360-degree view of your customers, you’ll have to find a third-party CRM and hope the integration works smoothly. That can sometimes lead to disconnected data and a clunky experience for your teams.

Zendesk Support vs Sell: The key differences

To make it super clear, here’s a quick comparison of what the two platforms were designed to do. Thinking about these differences will help you figure out what you need from a Sell replacement.

Feature Area	Zendesk Support	Zendesk Sell (Legacy)	What to Look For in a Replacement
Main Goal	Solve customer problems	Manage the sales pipeline	A dedicated sales CRM that plays nice with your helpdesk
Core Item	Ticket	Lead / Deal	Opportunity and Contact records
Key Metrics	CSAT, First Response Time	Win Rate, Deal Velocity	Sales forecasts and pipeline reports
Automation	Ticket routing, auto-replies	Task reminders, lead assignment	Automated email sequences and follow-ups
Integration	Connects to your other tools	Connected directly to Zendesk Support	A strong, reliable integration with Zendesk

What to do now that Zendesk Sell is retiring

Okay, so with Zendesk Sell heading for the exit, what's the best move? You've pretty much got three choices.

Integrate a new CRM with Zendesk Support

This is the most common path. You keep your support team on Zendesk and connect it to a new sales CRM like Pipedrive (which Zendesk is recommending) or a bigger platform like Salesforce.

• The upside: Your support team doesn't have to change a thing. Their workflows stay exactly the same.

• The downside: Integrations can be tricky. They can break, they require maintenance, and they often lead to data living in separate silos. Your sales and support teams might end up looking at two different versions of the same customer story, which kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Move to a new all-in-one platform

This is the "rip and replace" method. You decide to move both sales and support over to a unified platform like HubSpot or Freshworks.

• The upside: You get that single source of truth for all customer data. It's the dream, right?

• The downside: This is a huge, disruptive, and often expensive project. You’re talking about a massive data migration, retraining for both teams, and the risk of moving to a platform that might be a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none.

Upgrade Zendesk Support with an AI layer

There's a third, often overlooked path: instead of replacing your tools, make them smarter. This is where an AI platform like eesel AI comes into the picture. It’s a way to seriously boost your support capabilities without tearing everything down and starting over.

Here’s why this approach makes a lot of sense:

• You don't have to start from scratch: eesel AI plugs right into your existing Zendesk account. Your team keeps the helpdesk they already know, so there’s zero disruption to their day.

• It connects all your knowledge: eesel AI learns from more than just your help center. It pulls knowledge from past Zendesk tickets, macros, and even external sources your team uses, like Google Docs and Confluence. This bridges the information gap between teams and makes sure your AI gives answers that are actually helpful.

An infographic illustrating how eesel AI centralizes knowledge from sources like Zendesk, Google Docs, and Confluence to provide comprehensive answers.

• Test drive your AI before it meets a customer: Worried about an AI going rogue and saying the wrong thing? eesel's simulation mode lets you test your AI agent on thousands of your past tickets. You can see exactly how it will perform and what it will automate before it ever interacts with a real customer, which is a level of safety most other tools just don't offer.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation dashboard, showing how the AI performs on past tickets before activation.

• Get up and running in minutes: A full CRM migration can take months. With eesel AI, the setup is designed to be self-serve. You can have an AI copilot helping draft replies for your agents in less than an hour, all without needing to book a single sales call.

A quick look at Zendesk pricing

With Zendesk Sell on its way out, let's focus on the pricing for Zendesk's service plans. They package their features into "Suite" tiers.

Plan Tier	Price (per agent/month, billed annually)	Key Features
Suite Team	$55	Ticketing, messaging, 1 help center, essential AI features, generative replies.
Suite Professional	$115	Everything in Team + up to 5 help centers, customizable reports, CSAT surveys, HIPAA compliance.
Suite Enterprise	$169	Everything in Professional + up to 300 help centers, custom roles, sandbox environment, advanced workflows.

Source: Zendesk Pricing Page

It's also worth keeping in mind that Zendesk has add-ons like Advanced AI and Workforce Management, which cost extra. These can add up, so be sure to factor them into your budget.

The future is specialized and smart

The Zendesk Support vs Sell debate is over. Zendesk has planted its flag as a top-tier service platform. The real question for businesses now is how to build a tech stack where both sales and support have the best tools for their jobs, without creating more work for everyone.

Instead of searching for one magic tool that does it all, the modern approach is to pick best-in-class tools for each department. Keep the helpdesk you love (Zendesk) and make it even more powerful with a best-in-class AI layer.

This is where eesel AI really fits in. It gives you all the benefits of advanced, automated support without asking you to ditch the tools and workflows your team has already perfected. It’s the fastest and smartest way to level up your customer experience.

Ready to see how it works with your own setup? Try eesel AI for free and you can see how it performs on your own tickets in just a few minutes.