Compare · Intercom
An Intercom alternative that answers in the page
Intercom's AI agent, Fin, answers visitors in the Messenger, a chat window that opens from a bubble in the corner of your site, beside live chat, a shared inbox and tickets. Actually Asked answers in the page itself, as a FAQ in your fonts and colours that visitors read, ask under, and that grows from what they ask.
Free plan: 50 AI answers a month on one site.
Side by side
Intercom and Actually Asked.
| Topic | Intercom | Actually Asked |
|---|---|---|
| Where answers appear | In the Messenger, a chat window that opens from a bubble in the corner, and on WhatsApp, SMS, email, Facebook and Instagram. | 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 bubble, and the messages, banners and tours you send them. | The questions asked most, already answered. |
| Where answers come from | Your Intercom help center, snippets, synced websites and PDFs, and content from Zendesk, Notion, Confluence and others. Fin goes live once your help center has at least 10 public articles. | Only your own sources. Your site, your help center or knowledge base, and the PDF or Word files you upload, private ones included. |
| Your help center | A site of its own. Intercom says its articles can't be embedded on your website. | Not needed. The FAQ starts from what your site already says, and a help center you keep anywhere is read by its address. |
| Talking to your team | Live chat, a shared inbox and tickets. Fin hands a conversation over with its history. | No live chat. A visitor without an answer can leave an email, and you reply from your own. |
| What you learn | A report of what customers searched your help center for and didn't find. | Every Monday, an email of what visitors asked and what your pages couldn't answer, and the questions asked most join your FAQ on their own. |
| Install | A snippet, React, Vue and other frameworks, WordPress, Google Tag Manager, or its Shopify app. | Anywhere you can paste two lines of HTML, and in Shopify as a theme block. |
| Free plan | No. A free trial. | Yes, with AI answers and no credit card. |
Checked against intercom.com. If something there has changed, tell us at hello@actuallyasked.com.
When Intercom is the better fit.
Choose Intercom if your team runs support from one inbox across chat, email and phone, and wants an AI agent that hands conversations over with their history. Most questions on a website are the same few, though, and Actually Asked answers those in the page, where every visitor sees them before they think to open a chat. Try it beside the Messenger, and take the bubble off once the FAQ answers what visitors ask.
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.
Questions about Intercom.
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.