Re-checked 2026-10-01 against zendesk.com/pricing and Zendesk support docs
The community forum is a Help Center (Guide) feature available on Suite Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus plans. Zendesk’s own docs now just call it “community” in the Help Center; “Gather” was the earlier product name (kept as an alias). Plans below are annual billing; the pricing page says monthly billing costs 28-36% more than annual.
What changed in 2026
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Plans: Support Team, Suite Team, Suite Professional and Suite Enterprise (custom, with Copilot), all per agent. Suite Growth is no longer on the public pricing page (fetched 2026-10-02). Because community needs Professional or above, the entry plan for community is Suite Professional.
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AI pricing: AI Agents are billed per automated resolution (5 automated resolutions included per agent per month on Team plans, 10 on Professional; overage charged per resolution, committed or pay-as-you-go); Copilot is a per-agent add-on; 14-day trial with all Suite Professional features including Copilot.
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Removals announced (Zendesk “What is being removed”, updated August 2026): Zendesk Chat from 2028-01-31, Sell from 2027-08-31, live reporting in Explore from 2027-01-25. None concern community forums (only the 2017 removal of Community v1 is listed).
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The 2025-era claim “69% of customers prefer self-service” was dropped (no source found).
Overview
Zendesk’s community (formerly marketed as Gather) is a Help Center feature that lets customers post questions, answers and ideas for each other next to the knowledge base.
Core Features (per Zendesk’s Help Center documentation, fetched 2026-10-02)
- Community is organised into topics; members create and comment on posts to ask questions, answer or share ideas.
- Moderation: community moderators, with moderator groups, manage engagement.
- It complements the knowledge base and requires an established Help Center first.
- Availability: Professional, Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plans.
Earlier versions of this note listed deduplication, audio/video/polls, custom HTML/JS, analytics dashboards, ticket escalation, white-label and CRM integration; none could be verified and they were removed.
Pricing & Availability
Product: Zendesk community (Help Center feature, formerly marketed as Gather)
Availability: Suite Professional (per agent, annual), Enterprise and Enterprise Plus (custom); not on Support Team or Suite Team
Limitations
- Needs an existing Help Center and a Professional-or-above plan
- Cost: Requires Suite Professional (per agent, annual) or higher; AI and Copilot priced extra
Getting Started
- Ensure Zendesk Suite subscription (Professional+)
- Set up the Help Center, then activate the community (active by default in new Help Centers in setup mode; manual on live ones)
- Create topics
- Set up moderation guidelines
- Appoint moderators
Limits
Feature detail beyond topics, posts and moderation is not documented in sources reachable on 2026-10-02. Whether “Gather” is still sold separately is unconfirmed (current docs only say “community”). Suite Growth’s removal is per pricing-page reading.
Sources
- https://www.zendesk.com/pricing/ (accessed 2026-10-01)
- https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882689306-Planning-and-activating-community-in-your-help-center (accessed 2026-10-01)
- https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843026714-What-is-being-removed-updated-August-2026 (accessed 2026-10-01)
- https://www.eesel.ai/blog/zendesk-plans-and-pricing and other 2026 pricing breakdowns via web search (secondary: pricing breakdowns; accessed 2026-10-01)
- https://www.zendesk.com/pricing/ and the community-activation support article (re-read 2026-10-02)