Help Scout vs SolarWinds Service Desk
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
Help Scout is the stronger AI pick in Help Desk: it has a visibility score of 29.8 versus 0.9 for SolarWinds Service Desk, and ranks ahead in 100% of the answers that name both.
Choose Help Scout if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (29.8 vs 0.9)
- You need SOC 2 Type II coverage
- Shared inbox with email-like, human feel
- Simple, straightforward support for small teams
Choose SolarWinds Service Desk if…
- You need ISO 27001 or PCI DSS Level 1 or FISMA Moderate or FedRAMP or SOC 1 or SOC 2 coverage
- You prefer a larger, established vendor (1,001–5,000 employees)
- robust incident and asset tracking
- ITIL-certified service desk
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | Help Scout | SolarWinds Service Desk |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 29.8% | 0.9% |
| Change vs last week | up+1.5% | New |
| Rank in Help Desk | #4 | #29 |
| Share of voice | 8.2% | 0.6% |
| Mentions this run | 42 | 3 |
| Positive in AI answers | 38% | — |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Help Scout +1.6000000000000014pp · SolarWinds Service Desk +0.9pp over 1 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
Help Scout leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
2 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | Help Scout | SolarWinds Service Desk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official website of the top help desk platform vendors | ChatGPT | #4 | #16 |
| Official website of the top help desk platform vendors | Perplexity | #9 | #11 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Help Scout | SolarWinds Service Desk |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per seat | — |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $25 per seat / mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | Cloud (hosted on AWS) | Cloud-based, with servers hosted on AWS in the USA, the EU and Australia. |
| Integrations | 100+ | — |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA | ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1, FISMA Moderate, FedRAMP, HIPAA, SOC 1, SOC 2 |
| Support | Email, Dedicated onboarding specialist, Strategic account manager | — |
| Founded | 2011 | — |
| Headquarters | Boston, MA, United States | Austin, Texas (parent SolarWinds) |
| Employees | 201–500 | 1,001–5,000 |
| Funding | Series B1 | $30M Series D led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital |
| Best for | Small businesses, growing companies and non-profits that want simple, multichannel customer support | Small teams seeking lightweight, good-value ITSM |
Plans side by side
SolarWinds Service Desk
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
Help Scout
- Shared inbox with email-like, human feel
- Simple, straightforward support for small teams
- Clean, intuitive interface
- Free plan for small teams
- Free trial with full feature access
- Costs more for extra inboxes and Docs sites
- Free plan limited to 100 contacts per month
SolarWinds Service Desk
- robust incident and asset tracking
- ITIL-certified service desk
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 98.8%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Help Scout vs SolarWinds Service Desk”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/help-scout-vs-solarwinds-service-desk, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.