Portmux is a Zendesk to Intercom migration service that moves your full ticket history, end users, organizations, macros, and Help Center articles into Intercom with conversations threaded the way your agents expect.
Zendesk and Intercom both manage support conversations but their data models diverge sharply. Zendesk has Tickets with comments, internal notes, side conversations, satisfaction ratings, and SLA breach status. Intercom has Conversations with parts (messages), assignment, and inbox routing. The mapping isn't 1:1, and the value of the migration depends on getting it right.
Every Zendesk Ticket becomes an Intercom Conversation with the original ticket ID stored as a custom attribute for cross-reference.
Public comments and internal notes migrated as Conversation Parts with the original author, timestamp, and visibility preserved.
Zendesk End Users matched to existing Intercom Contacts by email or created fresh, with custom user fields mapped to Intercom Custom Attributes.
Zendesk Organizations mapped to Intercom Companies with custom organization fields, domain matching, and User-Organization membership preserved.
Zendesk Agents matched to Intercom Teammates by email; Groups mapped to Intercom Teams with the same membership and access.
Zendesk ticket tags migrated as Intercom Conversation tags; user tags as Contact tags. Tag taxonomy preserved exactly.
Zendesk Macros converted to Intercom Saved Replies, with placeholder syntax translated to Intercom liquid variables.
Active Zendesk Triggers and Automations re-implemented as Intercom Workflows where the logic is portable; ticket fields become Conversation attributes.
Zendesk Guide articles migrated to Intercom Articles with categories, sections, content (HTML), authors, and publish status.
All ticket and article attachments downloaded from Zendesk and re-uploaded to Intercom with original filenames and conversation linkage.
Zendesk custom ticket fields migrated as Intercom Conversation Attributes with the same field types and dropdown options.
Historical satisfaction ratings imported as Conversation custom attributes; ongoing CSAT collection switches to Intercom's native survey.
We connect to Zendesk via API token with admin scope, indexing every ticket, end user, organization, agent, macro, trigger, and Help Center article. The Zendesk Incremental Export API handles large historical ticket loads without throttling. Within 72 hours you see ticket counts by status, agent activity heatmap, and a Macros + Triggers inventory for translation review.
Mapping covers four areas: ticket-to-conversation collapse logic (especially side conversations), agent and team mapping, custom field translation, and macro/trigger re-implementation. We deliver an Intercom inbox layout proposal so your support managers see exactly where conversations will land before we load anything.
Intercom workspace loaded in a parallel inbox with full ticket history. Your agents shadow Intercom for 3–5 days handling new conversations while Zendesk continues handling open tickets. On cutover day, all open Zendesk tickets are migrated as in-progress Intercom Conversations and the Zendesk widget is removed from your product.
Every migration has its own gotchas. Here's what we plan for on this specific path.
Zendesk Side Conversations (separate threaded discussions inside a ticket, often used for inter-team escalation) have no direct Intercom equivalent. We collapse them into Conversation internal notes with a clear separator and original participant list, or split them into linked Intercom Conversations if your team prefers.
Zendesk Triggers fire on ticket events; Intercom Workflows fire on conversation events. The conditions and actions don't map 1:1. We catalog every active Trigger and Automation, propose an Intercom Workflow equivalent, and rebuild them. Anything that depends on Zendesk-specific fields (organization SLA, ticket priority) needs Intercom attribute setup first.
Zendesk SLAs are tracked at the ticket level with breach alerts. Intercom uses Conversation SLA targets and business hours per inbox. We re-implement your SLA policies in Intercom terms (typically simpler) and back-fill historical breach status as a Conversation attribute for reporting.
Zendesk Help Center URLs (/hc/en-us/articles/12345) need 301 redirects to the new Intercom Articles URLs (/articles/12345). If your Help Center is on a custom domain (help.yourcompany.com), we set up the redirect map at your CDN or load balancer layer so your SEO doesn't tank.
Single-system migrations like Zendesk to Intercom run as Track A engagements: one source, one destination, up to 1M records, 4–6 weeks. Final price depends on object volume, custom field count, and integrations, scoped on a 20-minute call before any commitment. See full pricing →
Tell us what's in the source, where it's going, SaaS or custom, and when you need to be live. You'll walk away with a scoped quote, a named engineer, and a go-live date.