Acquire vs Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)
Acquire is customer engagement platform with live chat and video calling. Best suited for teams needing video support and screen sharing capabilities. Known for its video calling and cobrowsing for technical support.
Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) is omnichannel messaging platform by Zendesk. Best suited for existing Zendesk customers needing omnichannel messaging. Known for its deep integration with Zendesk ecosystem.
Acquire Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)Acquire vs Smooch is a comparison of two products that have both become harder to buy than they were a year ago. Checked against both vendors' live pages on 21 August 2026: Acquire no longer publishes a price at all — acquire.io/pricing now lists its Self-Service and Integrated Solution tiers as feature checklists ending in "Contact us", with every dollar figure removed. Smooch, rebranded as Zendesk Sunshine Conversations, cannot be bought on its own at any price: it ships only inside Zendesk Suite Professional at $115/agent/month (annual) or $149/agent/month (monthly).
If you are running a standalone Smooch account today, the comparison is already decided for you by a deadline. Zendesk announced on 2 April 2026 (article last edited 2 April 2026, re-verified 21 August 2026) that every legacy Sunshine Conversations subscription will either be migrated into Zendesk Admin Center or permanently shut down on 1 February 2027 — roughly five months out. Zendesk's own wording on the shutdown path is blunt: your team loses the dashboard and "all of your existing integrations", and "services running from that account will stop working after the shutdown date." There is no grace period described and no self-serve way to opt out.
The two products were never really competitors. Acquire equips human agents with co-browsing, video and screen sharing for regulated, high-friction support. Sunshine Conversations is a developer-facing conversation API. What they now share is a procurement problem: neither one lets you find out what you will pay without talking to a salesperson.
What features does Acquire offer?
Acquire's feature set is built around its target customer base, a key differentiator against Smooch (Sunshine Conversations). It uses a varies pricing model starting at Contact sales, a different approach from Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)'s per seat structure. The features split across channel coverage, automation depth, AI tooling, and team management. Converge ($49/month flat for up to 15 agents) covers all of these in its base subscription.
What features does Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) offer?
Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)'s feature set is built around its target customer base, a key differentiator against Acquire. It uses a per seat pricing model starting at From $55/seat/mo, a different approach from Acquire's varies structure. The features split across channel coverage, automation depth, AI tooling, and team management. Converge ($49/month flat for up to 15 agents) covers all of these in its base subscription.
How do Acquire and Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) compare on features?
Acquire and Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) compete in the same category but tune their feature sets for different team profiles. The material differences cluster around channel coverage, automation depth, reporting, and team management. The side-by-side below draws on aggregated G2 and Capterra reviews. A flat-rate alternative like Converge ($49/month for up to 15 agents) may sidestep the trade-off entirely.
Acquire wins on visual engagement; Sunshine Conversations wins on channel breadth and developer control. Acquire's defining features are co-browsing (agents view and interact with a customer's browser session without downloads), 1-way and 2-way video calling, and screen sharing — all accessible inside a single chat conversation. Sunshine Conversations' defining feature is its Conversations API with switchboard orchestration, documented at docs.smooch.io.
What Acquire lists as "Coming soon"
This is the detail most Acquire comparisons miss, and it is sitting in plain sight on the vendor's own pricing page. As of 21 August 2026, acquire.io/pricing carries a third column headed "Coming soon" containing capabilities a buyer could easily assume are shipping today: Bot, More Channels, Call Deflection (additional channels), Cross-channel conversations, Video Recording, Live reporting, and Task Management. Two of those matter a great deal in practice — there is no shipped chatbot, and video calls cannot be recorded, which is disqualifying in verticals with call-retention obligations. Confirm each in a demo before assuming it exists.
Channel coverage
Acquire supports website chat, video, and SMS, with email and SMS listed only on the Integrated Solution tier. WhatsApp routes through Twilio as a third-party BSP rather than a direct Meta Cloud API integration. There is no native Telegram, Discord, Instagram, or Zalo support. Sunshine Conversations covers 14 channels through one API, enumerated in Zendesk's own channel capabilities grid: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Apple Messages for Business, LINE, WeChat, Telegram, Viber, X (Twitter) DM, SMS via Twilio and via MessageBird, Web Messenger, and native iOS and Android SDKs. That grid is worth reading before committing, because support is not uniform: several content types show only partial support per channel, and message-direction matters — a feature can be available for sending but not receiving on the same channel.
What both platforms lack: native Discord and Zalo support. Discord powers gaming, crypto, and developer communities; Zalo dominates Vietnam with over 70 million monthly active users. Neither offers a ready-made integration for either.
The five integrations that disappear on migration
If your legacy Smooch account is migrating rather than shutting down, Zendesk's migration documentation (last edited 29 April 2026) names five business systems that are no longer supported afterwards: Email for Business, Help Scout, Stripe Connect, Office Hours, and Slack (the Sunshine-native one; a separate Zendesk Slack integration exists). Two more structural changes land at the same time: sub-accounts stop existing — a Zendesk subdomain maps 1:1 to an app, so teams that used sub-accounts to separate brands or dev environments must move to Zendesk sandboxes — and account-level API keys must be reset to app-level keys. Any account settings previously inherited by sub-accounts (credit-card masking, conversation retention, localization) have to be re-applied via the API afterwards. None of this is optional and none of it is visible from Zendesk's marketing pages.
Implementation differs fundamentally. Acquire is a ready-to-use agent workspace. Sunshine Conversations is middleware that requires a Zendesk Suite subscription as a prerequisite plus developer time to build channel integrations, bot logic, and switchboard handoffs. Per Zendesk's platform access documentation (last edited 1 May 2026), what is included with Suite Professional and above is explicitly "a low-volume, self-service version" with "limited support via chat" — not the full legacy product.
How much do Acquire and Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) cost?
Acquire starts at Contact sales (varies); Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) starts at From $55/seat/mo (per seat). Converge is $49/month flat for up to 15 agents with all channels and AI included.
As of 21 August 2026, Acquire publishes no pricing whatsoever, and Sunshine Conversations has no standalone price to publish. This is the single most important practical fact on this page, so it is worth stating precisely rather than filling the gap with a number that is no longer sourceable.
Acquire: pricing withdrawn
The live acquire.io/pricing page is headed "Straightforward pricing, custom integrations" but contains no prices. Both named tiers — Self-Service and Integrated Solution — render as feature checklists whose call-to-action is "Contact us" and "Book a demo". Acquire was previously documented at $500/month base plus $25/agent for Self-Service and $2,000/month plus $45/agent for Integrated Solution, and those figures still circulate widely in third-party roundups and in our own comparison table for this matchup. None of them can be verified against Acquire today, so treat every Acquire price you encounter — including ours — as historical. Budget on the basis of a written quote only.
Sunshine Conversations: the price is a Zendesk seat price
These figures were read off zendesk.com/pricing and its plan-comparison table on 21 August 2026:
- Suite Professional: $115/agent/month paid yearly, or $149/agent/month month-to-month. This is the entry point — Sunshine Conversations is not available on Support Team ($19), Suite Team ($55), or any lower plan.
- Suite Enterprise + Copilot: no published price. Zendesk replaced the former Enterprise figure with a "Talk to Sales" button, and its own FAQ states enterprise plans "generally require sales engagement". Any $169/agent/month Enterprise number you find elsewhere is no longer confirmable on the vendor's site.
- Included volume: 1,000 Monthly Active Users and 1,000 outbound notifications per month.
- Overages: $50 per additional 2,500 MAUs and $50 per additional 25,000 notifications. Zendesk notes these are subject to a "True Forward" model, meaning usage increases are trued up going forward rather than refunded down.
- Copilot add-on: $50/agent/month, and it can only be attached to Professional and above.
Worked totals on annual billing:
- 5 agents, Suite Professional: 5 x $115 = $575/month ($6,900/year), within the 1,000-MAU baseline.
- 10 agents, Suite Professional: $1,150/month ($13,800/year).
- 10 agents at 10,000 MAUs: 9,000 MAUs above baseline needs 4 overage packs, so $1,150 + $200 = $1,350/month before any add-on.
- 10 agents, 10,000 MAUs, with Copilot: + (10 x $50) = $1,850/month ($22,200/year).
- Same 10 agents on month-to-month billing: the base alone moves from $1,150 to $1,490/month — a $4,080/year premium for not signing an annual contract.
The legacy-plan trap
Anyone comparing their current Smooch bill to Suite Professional should check their MAU ceiling first. Zendesk's plan documentation shows the legacy Starter, Premium, and Enterprise plans (sold before 6 April 2023) capped at 500 MAUs and 500 notifications per month — half of what the current bundled tier includes. A team that outgrew 500 MAUs on a legacy plan has been buying add-ons for years, and those add-on economics do not carry over unchanged through a migration. The number to ask your Zendesk representative for is the all-in monthly figure after migration, including seats, since the seat count is the variable that did not exist in your old bill.
Acquire Pricing
Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) Pricing
What are Acquire's strengths and limitations?
Acquire's biggest strengths cluster around what reviewers consistently single out as its standout capability, which is what makes it a strong fit for teams needing video support and screen sharing capabilities. Its limitations cluster around pricing-model fit at smaller team sizes and around channel coverage gaps relative to a messaging-first inbox. The detailed lists below come from aggregated G2 and Capterra reviews plus our own internal customer-pipeline reports — teams that are using Acquire today as their primary inbox, plus teams that evaluated and ultimately rejected it during their selection process. Read them carefully side-by-side with Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)'s breakdown lower on this page to decide which of the two platforms fits where your team is heading next quarter — or whether a flat-rate alternative like Converge ($49/month, up to 15 agents, all channels and AI included) is a better path entirely, sidestepping both vendors.
Strengths
- Video calling capabilities
- Screen sharing and cobrowsing
- Good mobile SDK
- Visual engagement tools
Limitations
- No published pricing — both tiers are quote-only as of 29 August 2026
- Base fee plus per-agent model gets expensive at scale
- Limited social media integration
- Complex interface
What are Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)'s strengths and limitations?
Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)'s biggest strengths cluster around what reviewers consistently single out as its standout capability, which is what makes it a strong fit for existing zendesk customers needing omnichannel messaging. Its limitations cluster around pricing-model fit at smaller team sizes and around channel coverage gaps relative to a messaging-first inbox. The detailed lists below come from aggregated G2 and Capterra reviews plus our own internal customer-pipeline reports — teams that are using Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) today as their primary inbox, plus teams that evaluated and ultimately rejected it during their selection process. Read them carefully alongside Acquire's breakdown earlier on this page to decide which of the two platforms fits where your team is heading next quarter — or whether a flat-rate alternative like Converge ($49/month, up to 15 agents, all channels and AI included) is a better path entirely, sidestepping both vendors.
Strengths
- Strong Zendesk integration
- Good channel coverage
- Mature platform
- Enterprise-grade security
Limitations
- Per-agent pricing gets expensive
- Complex setup process
- Limited customization options
- Requires Zendesk for full features
Acquire or Smooch (Sunshine Conversations): which should you pick?
Pick Acquire if your primary need maps to its standout capability and its pricing model works at your team size. Pick Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) if your team profile maps to its strengths instead. If neither fits — for example, a 3-15 agent team handling messaging channels (WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Instagram, Discord, Zalo) wanting flat-rate pricing — Converge is $49/month flat for up to 15 agents, with all channels and AI tooling included.
Choose Acquire only if co-browsing, 1-way or 2-way video calling, or screen sharing is the reason you are buying — and only after you have a written quote. The visual-engagement stack is genuinely strong for regulated verticals (financial services, healthcare, insurance) where walking a customer through a form over text is slower than showing them. Verify the compliance posture you need (HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI-DSS) in the contract rather than from the marketing site.
Choose Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) if you are already committed to Zendesk Suite Professional or above and you have engineers who will actually use the Conversations API. The switchboard orchestration — routing one thread between multiple bots and human agents — is a real capability with few equivalents, and the channel list reaches markets most competitors skip (LINE, WeChat, Viber).
Who should not buy either. If you are a small or mid-size team that wants working channels next week, both are the wrong shape. Sunshine Conversations is not a product you turn on — it is an API you build against, on top of a $115/agent/month subscription you must buy first, so a 5-agent team is spending $6,900/year before writing a line of integration code. Acquire, as of this check, will not tell you the price at all until you book a demo. And if you are shopping specifically because your legacy Smooch account is being shut down, note that "migrate to Admin Center" is not a like-for-like move: Zendesk says it "may upgrade your account to Zendesk Suite Professional" to make the new delivery model work, which can convert a standalone messaging bill into a per-agent seat bill.
When should you choose Acquire or Smooch (Sunshine Conversations)?
Acquire and Sunshine Conversations target opposite ends of the support spectrum, and as of August 2026 they share one trait that should shape your shortlist: neither will quote you without a conversation. Acquire has withdrawn published pricing entirely. Sunshine Conversations has a price, but it is a Zendesk Suite Professional seat price of $115/agent/month that you pay before you start building. Layered on top, anyone still on a legacy Smooch account is working against a hard 1 February 2027 shutdown-or-migrate date with real integration casualties attached. Neither is a fit for small or mid-size teams who want a working unified inbox across their channels without sales calls, annual contracts, or developer projects.
For teams that need messaging-first support across WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, and Zalo, Converge offers all channels at $49/month flat for up to 15 agents — a published price, on one page, with no per-seat multiplication as the team grows.
Looking for more options? Browse all platform comparisons, or see all Acquire comparisons and all Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) comparisons.
Frequently Asked Questions
Zendesk announced on 2 April 2026 that every legacy Sunshine Conversations subscription will either be migrated into Zendesk Admin Center or permanently shut down on 1 February 2027. On the shutdown path, the Sunshine Conversations dashboard and all existing integrations stop working, and any service running from that account stops with them. You are only affected if you received a direct email from Zendesk; if you did, you need to remove or replace every Sunshine Conversations dependency — web and mobile messaging, social channels, bots, and any backend integration using Sunshine APIs and keys — before that date.
Acquire does not publish a price. Checked on 21 August 2026, acquire.io/pricing shows its Self-Service and Integrated Solution tiers as feature lists ending in a 'Contact us' call to action, with no dollar figures anywhere on the page. Figures of $500/month plus $25/agent and $2,000/month plus $45/agent circulate in third-party comparisons but can no longer be verified against the vendor, so they should be treated as historical rather than current. Get a written quote.
No. Per Zendesk's platform access documentation, Sunshine Conversations is included only with Zendesk Suite Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus, and what is bundled is described as a low-volume, self-service version with limited support via chat. The practical entry price is therefore Suite Professional at $115/agent/month on annual billing, or $149/agent/month month-to-month, which includes 1,000 monthly active users and 1,000 outbound notifications. Additional usage costs $50 per 2,500 MAUs and $50 per 25,000 notifications.
Zendesk's migration documentation names five business systems that are no longer supported after the move: Email for Business, Help Scout, Stripe Connect, Office Hours, and the Sunshine-native Slack integration. Two structural changes land at the same time. Sub-accounts no longer exist, because a Zendesk subdomain maps one-to-one to an app, so teams that used sub-accounts for separate brands or development environments must switch to Zendesk sandboxes. Account-level API keys must also be reset to app-level keys, and any settings that previously cascaded to sub-accounts have to be re-applied through the API.
Acquire is best for Teams needing video support and screen sharing capabilities. Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) is best for Existing Zendesk customers needing omnichannel messaging. Acquire's standout feature is Video calling and cobrowsing for technical support, while Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) offers Deep integration with Zendesk ecosystem.
Acquire starts at Contact sales. Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) starts at From $55/seat/mo. For flat-rate pricing, consider Converge at $49/month for up to 15 agents.
Acquire does not offer a free plan. Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) does not offer a free plan. Both are established platforms in the customer support space.
Acquire pros: Video calling capabilities; Screen sharing and cobrowsing. Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) pros: Strong Zendesk integration; Good channel coverage. Each platform has distinct strengths depending on your use case.
Choose Acquire for Teams needing video support and screen sharing capabilities. Choose Smooch (Sunshine Conversations) for Existing Zendesk customers needing omnichannel messaging. If you need messaging-first support with flat pricing, consider Converge as an alternative at $49/month for up to 15 agents.
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