Compare · Zendesk
A Zendesk alternative that answers in the page
Zendesk is a help desk, with tickets, live chat, and AI agents that answer in a messaging widget in the corner of your site. Actually Asked does one part of that, answering visitors, and does it in the page. It reads your Zendesk help center, your 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
Zendesk and Actually Asked.
| Topic | Zendesk | Actually Asked |
|---|---|---|
| Where AI answers appear | In the messaging widget that opens from a button in the corner, and over email, social, voice and mobile apps. | 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 launcher button, and messages above it set off by the page or the visit. | The questions asked most, already answered, where they're reading. |
| Where answers come from | Your Zendesk help center, and other sources brought in by a web crawler or a connector, such as Google Drive or PDFs. | Your site, your help center, a public Zendesk one included, and the PDF or Word files you upload. |
| Your help center | A site of its own, on a zendesk.com address or a subdomain of yours, with articles suggested in the widget. | Read by its address and again every week, so its answers show in your own pages. |
| When there's no answer | The AI agent hands the visitor to your team, collecting a name, email and reason, and a ticket is created. | No tickets or live chat. 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 your pages, a WordPress plugin, or the Shopify integration. | Anywhere you can paste two lines of HTML, and in Shopify as a theme block. |
| Free plan | No. A free trial. | Yes, with no credit card. |
Checked against zendesk.com. If something there has changed, tell us at hello@actuallyasked.com.
When Zendesk is the better fit.
Choose Zendesk if your team works tickets from email, chat, social and phone in one place, and needs an AI agent that hands conversations to them. Most visitors only want an answer, though, and the same few questions come up again and again. Actually Asked answers those in your pages from the help center you already keep in Zendesk. Take the widget off once the FAQ answers what visitors ask, and keep Zendesk for your tickets.
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 Zendesk.
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.