How Zendesk counts agents and what that means for your bill

You pay per agent seat, not per person and not per ticket. Which roles take a seat is where bills go wrong.

You pay per agent seat, not per person and not per ticket. Which roles take a seat is where bills go wrong.

What counts

• Agents take a seat. Every one, whether they handle two tickets a week or two hundred.
• Admins take a seat. An admin is an agent with extra rights, priced identically.
• End users are free. However many customers you have, they cost nothing.
• Light agents and contributors do not take a paid agent seat for their Support role. They are not unlimited, though, and on one plan they are not included at all. See below.

Where the surprise comes from

Two situations produce a bill nobody expected.

Running out of included light agents. Each plan includes a number, and it is a number rather than a principle: Suite Growth includes 50, Professional 100, Enterprise 1000 and Enterprise Plus 5000. On Suite Team they are not included at all and are bought as an add-on. Beyond the included figure you buy more, so a company that adds its whole back office as light agents can reach a bill without anyone changing a permission.

A light agent with a role in another product. The Support role is what is free. If the same person shows up as an agent, admin or editor for Chat, Knowledge or Analytics, they take a paid seat. This happens gradually, one helpful exception at a time, and it is not visible from the Support role alone.

Seats nobody released. A colleague who left still holds a seat until somebody removes or downgrades them. Suspending is not the same as freeing the seat.

Check your usage

Admin Center shows how many seats you hold and how many are in use, with the light agent allowance counted separately from the paid ones. It is worth looking before a renewal rather than after, and Zendesk provides a way to find light agents and contributors who are quietly taking a paid seat.

Two counts on one panel, and they behave differently: the paid seats are what you bought, the light agent figure is what your plan includes. On a managed account the link to add seats is not yours to use; tell us and we arrange it.

Seats are bought, not borrowed

Adding an agent beyond your seat count adds a seat to your subscription. Reducing the count is not the same operation and generally happens at renewal rather than immediately, which is the asymmetry to plan around: buy seats when you need them, and review the total before each renewal.

See also

• Checking your agent seat usage
• Finding light agents that take up a paid seat
• Light agents and contributors: what they cost
• Adding agent seats