3 categories · RankedHelp Scout
Help Scout is a customer support platform for customer-first brands, built around a shared inbox for support teams and described by its maker as AI-driven · helpscout.com ↗
Strongest at small business. Ranked 12 of 68 for mid-market buyers.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Freshdesk is first at 25%.
Zendesk Support Suite is first at 37%. 0 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Zendesk Support Suite is first at 51%.
Why models recommend it
“Zendesk Suite, Help Scout, or Freshdesk are often recommended as safer choices”Mistral Small · Negative question · first choice
“designed for small to mid-sized businesses that want a simpler, more personal way to manage customer conversations”Claude Haiku 4.5 · Paraphrase question · alternative
“Choose Help Scout when simplicity and human, email-based support matter more than complex workflows.”Perplexity Sonar · Comparative question · alternative
“Small teams/startups: Start with Help Scout, Freshdesk, or HubSpot for affordability and simplicity.”Grok 4.20 · Comparative question · alternative
What gives them pause
“Avoid For Now: Purely free tools (e.g., basic Help Scout or open-source like Zammad) may lack depth for B2B scale”Grok 4.20 · Paraphrase question · warning
“or basic SMB ones like Help Scout if volume is high”Grok 4.20 · Scale-constrained question · warning
“May lack deep automation or analytics compared to competitors, making it less suitable for large teams.”MiniMax M2.5 · Negative question · warning
“Caveat: Chatbot capabilities require third-party integrations; less automation-native than others.”Kimi K2 · Direct question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Help Scout, over the 140 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 125 | 22 | View → | |
| 107 | 22 | View → | |
| 89 | 20 | View → | |
| 78 | 3 | View → | |
| 66 | 4 | View → | |
| 46 | 0 | View → | |
| 36 | 5 | View → | |
| 35 | 0 | View → | |
| 22 | 1 | View → | |
| 21 | 3 | View → |
What the models named instead of Help Scout →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Help Scout's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- customer-first brands
- Price stated
- at a fraction of the cost of other customer service platforms
- Starting price
- 0
- Free plan or trial
- Start for Free
- Integrations
- 100
- Certifications
- HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II
- Customers named
- eCatholic, Freightzy, King Arthur Flour, Mixmax, Brain.fm, Litmus, George Washington University, OnePageCRM
- Headquarters
- Boston, United States
- Founded
- 2011
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 120 of the 140 answers that named Help Scout and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
329 of the 355 domain citations in answers naming Help Scout came from a third party's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 5 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 287 | undated | |||
| Comparison | 27 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 11 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 10 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 5 | undated | |||
| Case study | 2 | undated | |||
| Template or tool | 2 | undated | |||
| Podcast or video | 2 | undated | |||
| News or press | 1 | undated |
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page helpscout.com exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.