What Are Sunshine Conversations? (Zendesk's Messaging Platform Explained)

In one sentence: Sunshine Conversations is Zendesk's underlying omnichannel messaging platform — the developer-grade API engine that powers conversations across WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, web, mobile, Apple Messages for Business, RCS, SMS and more, and lets businesses build custom, programmatic messaging experiences. Most teams use it without ever realizing it, because Zendesk's everyday Messaging product is built directly on top of it. This guide explains what it actually is, who it's for, how it relates to ordinary Zendesk Messaging, the key concepts (the Conversations API, channels, the switchboard, webhooks), when you genuinely need it, what it costs, and the Sunshine-vs-Sunshine-Conversations confusion. Everything here is verified against Zendesk's own documentation.

What Sunshine Conversations actually is

Sunshine Conversations is a unified messaging platform and API. Instead of integrating WhatsApp one way, Facebook Messenger another, and your mobile app a third, you connect to a single REST API and Sunshine Conversations handles the translation to and from each channel's native format. Zendesk describes it as the platform that lets you "manage and automate your conversations across multiple channels," exposing one consistent set of objects — users, conversations, and messages — across 14+ messaging channels.

It started life as Smooch, an independent messaging platform Zendesk acquired in 2019 and rebranded. That heritage matters, because it explains the product's character: it's API-first and developer-oriented, designed for teams that want to build messaging into their own products and workflows rather than just turn it on in a settings page.

What you can do with it programmatically includes:

• Create and manage users and conversations — full create/read/update/delete via the API, not just through an agent's screen.
• Send and receive rich messages — text plus interactive elements like carousels, quick replies, forms, list pickers, and even payment requests, where the channel supports them.
• Send proactive, outbound messages — for example, a shipping update pushed to a customer on WhatsApp or SMS.
• Wire in third-party bots and systems — route a conversation through a custom bot, an external AI service, or your own backend before (or instead of) a human.
• React to events in real time via webhooks — every inbound message or status change can trigger your code.

The important mental model: Sunshine Conversations is infrastructure, not an app. It's the messaging plumbing; what you build on top of it is up to you.

Who it's for

Because it's a platform rather than a point-and-click feature, Sunshine Conversations is aimed at a specific audience:

• Developers and enterprises building custom messaging — companies that want messaging experiences their competitors can't get from an off-the-shelf widget: in-app chat, branded mobile messaging, automated commerce flows, or conversations that blend bots, agents, and backend systems.
• ISVs and platforms embedding conversations — software vendors who want to put live, omnichannel messaging inside their own product and surface it to their customers.
• Teams unifying fragmented channels — businesses where a customer might start on Messenger, follow up over SMS, and finish in a mobile app, and who want all of that stitched into one continuous conversation rather than three disconnected threads.

If that doesn't sound like you, that's fine — and it's the most common case. The vast majority of Zendesk customers get everything they need from standard Messaging and never call the Conversations API directly.

How it relates to plain Zendesk Messaging

This is the single biggest source of confusion, so it's worth being precise.

Zendesk Messaging — the native, persistent chat you configure in the Admin Center and deploy through the Web Widget, mobile SDKs, or social channels — is itself built on Sunshine Conversations. When you switch on Messaging and drop the widget on your site, you're already using the Sunshine Conversations engine under the hood. You just never see it, because Zendesk wraps it in a friendly admin UI and the Agent Workspace.

So the relationship is best thought of as layers:

• Zendesk Messaging is the productized, no-code layer — turn it on, style the widget, build a bot in the visual flow builder, done. This is what we cover in Zendesk Messaging vs. live chat, and the on-site surface for it is the Zendesk Web Widget.
• Sunshine Conversations is the raw platform layer beneath it — the API you drop down to when the no-code layer can't do what you need.

You reach for Sunshine Conversations directly when you want something native Messaging doesn't offer out of the box: a channel that isn't natively supported, a fully custom conversation flow, programmatic control over routing, or messaging embedded somewhere Zendesk's standard widget can't go. Crucially, even then, agents still answer from the same place — Zendesk notes that channels connected through Sunshine Conversations land in the Agent Workspace alongside everything else, so your team replies from one interface regardless of how the conversation arrived.

Key concepts to know

A handful of concepts cover most of what you'll meet:

• The Conversations API. The REST API at the center of everything (developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/conversations). It models three core objects — users (the customer), conversations (the thread), and messages — and lets your code create, read, and act on all of them. This is the part that makes Sunshine Conversations "programmable."
• Channels and integrations. Each messaging surface — WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Apple Messages for Business, Telegram, Viber, Google Business Messages, SMS via providers like Twilio or MessageBird, Web Messenger, and mobile SDKs — is connected as an integration. The platform normalizes them so your code talks to one API while customers use whichever app they prefer.
• The switchboard. The routing brain (documented in the Conversations API reference). The switchboard decides which "integration" currently owns a conversation and hands control between them — for example, passing a chat from a custom bot to a human agent, or back again. It works through actions like pass control (route to the next handler) and release control (return to the default). This is how you orchestrate a flow where a bot triages first and a person steps in only when needed.
• Webhooks. Your real-time event feed. Subscribe to events — a new inbound message, a delivery status, a user joining — and Sunshine Conversations calls your endpoint the moment they happen, so your systems and bots can react instantly.

Together these are what let you build a conversation that flows across channels, gets routed intelligently, and triggers your own logic at every step.

When you actually need Sunshine Conversations (and when you don't)

A simple test:

**You probably don't need it directly if** you want standard live chat or messaging on your website and apps, a visual bot for FAQs and handoffs, and the common social channels. Native Zendesk Messaging covers all of that, and going to the API would only add engineering work for no benefit.

**You do need it when** you're building something genuinely custom: deeply branded in-app messaging, programmatic outbound campaigns, interactive commerce flows (carousels, forms, payments) tailored to your business, orchestration across multiple bots and backend systems, a channel Zendesk doesn't natively support, or embedding conversations inside a product you ship to your own customers. In short: when the no-code layer hits a wall and you have developers to build past it.

Pricing: how Sunshine Conversations is billed

Pricing has two realities, and it's worth getting both right.

The version most people have. Zendesk Suite Professional, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus plans include a low-volume, self-service version of Sunshine Conversations at no extra license cost. It comes with a baseline of 1,000 monthly active users (MAU) and 1,000 outbound notifications per month, plus platform and API access with self-service docs and limited chat support. For many custom builds, that baseline is enough to start.

Usage beyond the baseline. Sunshine Conversations is usage-based, billed on MAU. Per Zendesk's MAU documentation, a MAU is counted when a message or event occurs between a unique end user and an agent or bot in a calendar month — multiple interactions by the same person in the month generally still count as one MAU (though interactions across different channels or devices can count separately). Extra capacity is sold in increments of 2,500 MAU and 25,000 notifications.

A pricing caveat to flag honestly: Zendesk does not publish the per-pack price — its docs direct you to "reach out to your sales representative." Third-party guides (such as eesel) cite roughly $50 per 2,500-MAU pack, but treat that as unofficial and approximate; confirm the current number with Zendesk for your account, since usage add-ons and enterprise rates change.

A rough, illustrative monthly estimate. None of the numbers below are official — Zendesk publishes neither the add-on price nor a public Sunshine Conversations rate card, so treat this purely as a way to reason about the structure, not a quote. Say you run a custom messaging build on Suite Professional with three agent seats and you expect about 8,000 monthly active users:

• Suite Professional seats: 3 × roughly $115/agent/month (Zendesk's published list price) ≈ $345/month. This is what unlocks the included low-volume Sunshine Conversations access.
• Included baseline: the first 1,000 MAU come free with that plan, leaving ~7,000 MAU to cover.
• Extra MAU packs: 7,000 ÷ 2,500 = 3 add-on packs (you buy whole packs, so round up). At the unofficial ~$50/pack figure from eesel, that's ~$150/month — but this is the number Zendesk won't confirm publicly, so call sales.
• Rough total: ≈ $345 + $150 = ~$495/month for this hypothetical 8,000-MAU build.

Again: the seat price is published, but the per-pack MAU cost is an unofficial third-party estimate. Use the shape of this math — seats + included baseline + N extra packs — and get the actual pack price from Zendesk before you budget.

(There was also a standalone, full-platform license with tiered Starter/Premium/Enterprise support, but that pre-dates April 2023 and is now legacy — new customers get Sunshine Conversations through the Suite plans above.)

Sunshine Conversations is not Zendesk Sunshine

Here's the distinction that trips up almost everyone. "Sunshine Conversations" and "Sunshine" are two different products that happen to share a brand name.

• Sunshine Conversations (this article) is the messaging platform/API — channels, conversations, the switchboard. It's about talking to customers.
• Sunshine (no "Conversations") was Zendesk's open CRM / customer-data platform, built on AWS — custom objects, custom events, and unified profiles for storing and connecting customer data. It's about modeling and storing data, not messaging.

They are unrelated in function. And the data side of "Sunshine" has largely faded as a brand: Zendesk is retiring its legacy Sunshine custom objects in phases (per Zendesk's removal announcement). The first phase has already passed — since January 15, 2026 you can no longer create new legacy custom objects — and full removal of the legacy APIs, admin interface, and records is scheduled for July 27, 2026. The older data can be moved to the newer Custom Objects framework, but that migration is optional, not automatic — Zendesk's docs say "optionally, you can migrate your legacy custom objects and records to the new custom object experience," so accounts that depend on legacy objects need to act before the removal date. So if someone says "we use Sunshine," ask which one they mean — the messaging engine, or the older custom-data layer. If your question is about WhatsApp, bots, or omnichannel chat, you want Sunshine Conversations.

Where AI fits — a quick note

Because Sunshine Conversations is built for custom, programmatic messaging, it's a natural place to plug in AI: the switchboard can route a conversation to an automated handler before a human ever sees it, and webhooks let an AI service react to messages in real time. Zendesk has native AI for messaging (see Zendesk AI explained), and there's also the option of an independent AI agent layer like Macha that sits on top of your Zendesk — it's not a help desk and not a Zendesk replacement, just the automation brain connected to your conversations and knowledge. Connected this way, it can triage, draft replies, look up data, and resolve routine conversations, handing anything harder back to a human with full context.

One thing to understand on cost, since it's a common mix-up: Macha bills per AI action — any automated step, whether that's summarizing, tagging, routing, looking something up, drafting, or resolving (roughly 0.5–9 credits depending on the model you choose), not per resolved conversation. That's the automation model, not a per-deflection one, because most useful AI work isn't a "resolution" — it's the steps along the way. If a custom messaging build is where your volume lives, you can try it free — 7-day free trial, no credit card required.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sunshine Conversations the same as Zendesk Messaging? No, but they're closely linked. Zendesk Messaging is the productized, no-code chat experience you configure in the Admin Center — and it's built on top of Sunshine Conversations. Sunshine Conversations is the underlying API platform you use directly only when you need custom, programmatic messaging that the standard Messaging product can't deliver. Most teams use Messaging and never touch the Conversations API.

Do I need Sunshine Conversations to use WhatsApp or Messenger on Zendesk? Not necessarily. The common social and messaging channels can be added through native Zendesk Messaging. You'd go to Sunshine Conversations directly for custom flows, channels that aren't natively supported, programmatic outbound messaging, or embedding conversations into your own app.

How much does Sunshine Conversations cost? Suite Professional, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus plans include a low-volume version free, with a baseline of 1,000 monthly active users (MAU) and 1,000 notifications per month. Beyond that it's usage-based, sold in increments of 2,500 MAU / 25,000 notifications. Zendesk doesn't publish the per-pack price (it directs you to sales); a third-party estimate puts a 2,500-MAU pack at roughly $50, but confirm the current figure with Zendesk.

What's the difference between Sunshine and Sunshine Conversations? They share a name but do different things. Sunshine Conversations is the omnichannel messaging platform/API. "Sunshine" (no "Conversations") was Zendesk's open CRM/customer-data platform — custom objects, events, and unified profiles. Zendesk is retiring the legacy Sunshine custom objects in phases: new legacy objects could no longer be created after January 15, 2026, and the legacy framework is scheduled for full removal on July 27, 2026. The older data can optionally be migrated to the newer Custom Objects framework — that migration isn't automatic, so affected accounts need to do it before the removal date.

What is the switchboard in Sunshine Conversations? It's the routing mechanism that decides which integration — a custom bot, a human agent in the Agent Workspace, or an external system — currently controls a conversation, and hands control between them using actions like "pass control" and "release control." It's how you build flows where a bot handles a chat first and a person takes over only when needed.

Who should use Sunshine Conversations? Developers and enterprises building custom messaging experiences, software vendors embedding conversations into their own products, and teams unifying many channels into one continuous thread. If you just want standard chat and a bot on your website, native Zendesk Messaging is the simpler fit.

The bottom line

Sunshine Conversations is the omnichannel messaging engine underneath Zendesk — a developer-grade, API-first platform for building custom, programmatic conversations across every major messaging channel. Standard Zendesk Messaging is already built on it, which is why most teams never interact with it directly; you reach for the Conversations API only when you need custom flows, unsupported channels, proactive outbound, or messaging embedded in your own product. Pricing comes free at low volume on Suite Professional and above (1,000 MAU baseline), then scales on usage with pack pricing you'll need to confirm with sales. And whatever you do, don't confuse it with plain "Sunshine," Zendesk's separate (and now largely retired) customer-data platform. If you want the no-code version of this story, start with Zendesk Messaging vs. live chat and the Zendesk Web Widget.

Verified against Zendesk's official documentation, June 2026. Zendesk changes its products and pricing periodically — confirm specifics, especially MAU add-on costs, in your own account before relying on them.