Compare · Help Scout
A Help Scout alternative that answers in the page
Help Scout is a shared inbox with Beacon, a widget that opens from a button on your site with your Docs articles, chat, an email form and Scout, its AI agent. Actually Asked answers visitors in the page itself. It reads your Docs site, your own site and your files, shows the questions asked most as a FAQ in your fonts and colours, and answers new ones under it.
Free plan: 50 AI answers a month on one site.
Side by side
Help Scout and Actually Asked.
| Topic | Help Scout | Actually Asked |
|---|---|---|
| Where AI answers appear | In Beacon, which opens from a button on your site, and in email replies. | In a FAQ section of the page, in your layout, fonts and colours. Visitors can also highlight any sentence and ask about it. |
| What visitors see before they ask | The Beacon button. Opened, it suggests articles, and it can show messages, banners and surveys. | The questions asked most, already answered, where they're reading. |
| Where answers come from | Your Docs site, public websites, PDF, Word and spreadsheet files, and instructions you write. Sources other than Docs are synced again by hand. | Your site, your help center, a public Docs site included, and the PDF or Word files you upload. |
| Your Docs site | A site of its own, on a helpscoutdocs.com address or a subdomain of yours. Links on your pages can open an article in Beacon, as a popover, sidebar or modal. | Read by its address and again every week, so its answers show in your own pages. |
| When there's no answer | Visitors can take the conversation to your team, in chat or by email. | No live chat or inbox. The visitor can leave an email and you reply from your own, and every Monday you get an email of what your pages couldn't answer. |
| Install | A script on the pages where Beacon should appear, with guides for Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and Webflow. | Anywhere you can paste two lines of HTML, and in Shopify as a theme block. |
| Free plan | Yes. Its AI agent is an add-on. | Yes, with AI answers and no credit card. |
Checked against helpscout.com. If something there has changed, tell us at hello@actuallyasked.com.
When Help Scout is the better fit.
Choose Help Scout if your team answers customers from a shared inbox, by email and chat, and wants an AI agent in the same place. If what you want is the questions visitors keep asking answered where they read, Actually Asked does that from the Docs you already write. Take Beacon off once the FAQ answers what visitors ask, and keep Help Scout for your inbox.
What your site gets.
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Two lines to install
Paste a div and a script, or add the block in your Shopify theme editor.
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Real HTML
Plain questions and answers in your page's HTML, with FAQ structured data, so search engines read every entry. On Shopify they're in the page before any script runs.
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Your colours, your radius
Pick a look, then change the colours, corners and spacing in the widget editor. The preview updates as you type.
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Groups and page rules
Group entries under Shipping, Returns and Sizing. Show different entries on different pages with URL rules.
Other comparisons.
Questions about Help Scout.
It's running on this page, from this site's own pages. Ask your own question at the end, or highlight any sentence above and ask about it.
See what your visitors actually ask.
Free plan: 50 AI answers a month on one site.