| Functionality | 8 <p>Atlas offers most of the support functionality that SMBs will need. It includes support for most channels, help centre creation, basic AI, automation and reporting functionality. It also uniquely offers "session recording" functionality, which allows you to view a video/ live session of a user using your web product. </p><p>However, it lacks more advanced features such as a chatbot builder, native phone and SMS support, advanced automation, and custom reporting. The product is still evolving, with features in beta. </p> | 6 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">HelpCrunch is more of a customer engagement platform than a focused support tool. It places emphasis on features like proactive messaging via its chat widget and sending email outbound blasts to engage customers. When it comes to its core support functionality like live chat and building help centres, HelpCrunch is nothing special. We were sad to see a lack of any kind of AI chatbot and a limited array of integrations though.</span></p> |
| Ease of Use | 8 <p>Atlas has a gentle learning curve, and really shines with its efficient keyboard shortcuts that power users love. One of its best features is the customer timeline, which gives you a clear, chronological view of every client interaction at a glance. While everything flows nicely for shortcut users, those who prefer mouse navigation might find it frustrating that they can't see all tickets in a sidebar.</p> | 5 <p>Whilst we found HelpCrunch's interface to feel somewhat dated, overall, the product is fairly simple to use. Its inbox experience is familiar and intuitive, similar to the feel of an email inbox. On average, it would take an SMB employee a few hours to master its use.</p> |
| Look and feel | 6 <p>Atlas has a modern, clean interface that is pleasing to use. However, the UI lacks the polish of more established competitors, and loading times can be comparatively slow, taking 2-3 seconds for some pages.</p> | 4 <p>HelpCrunch's design aesthetic feels dated. It lacks the simpler, more modern look that many of its competitors have today - both on the internal facing web app and external facing widgets/knowledge bases. When tested, we also noticed a slight lag to certain pages in terms of load times, often taking a few seconds.</p> |
| Customisability | 6 <p>Atlas offers a standard level of customisability.</p><p>Users can create custom fields for customers, set up custom views, and track custom events. The live chat widget and chatbot builder have standard customization options.</p><p>However, it lacks more advanced customization features like custom objects, custom actions, and custom reports. Help Centre customization (style, layout) is particularly limited.</p> | 7 <p>HelpCrunch offers a number of channels to customize your experience with the product. On the internal facing pieces of the product we especially appreciated the ability to customise how customer cards look in the inbox, as well as the ease to which you can create custom inbox views. However, the options for customizing the look and feel of widgets/knowledge bases were somewhat more limited.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 4 <p>Frustratingly, Atlas does not offer a self-serve free trial for its platform. Instead, you'll need to trudge through a sales demo before you can get access. However, the process is relatively short and smooth and once access was granted, we found the tool to be simple to set up and configure.</p> | 4 <p>HelpCrunch offers a simple self-serve free trial for their platform. We found the initial setup to be slightly longer than necessary, taking around 10 minutes. Setting up your first channels may take some time though - with no easy one-click email connect option, you’ll have to setup email forwarding manually. When it comes to richer customisation options - the platform is fairly standard when compared to competitors with simple scripts to add live widgets to your website and relatively basic appearance customisation options. </p> |
| Customer Support | 9 <p>Atlas's customer support is excellent. They offer 24/7 in-app live chat with Atlas's team (including the founder!), who are always happy to provide friendly and personal help.</p> | 8 <p>HelpCentre offers support primarily via a live chat widget inside its web app. When tested, we find it easy to get hold of a live agent - in generally less than 5 minutes. Once contacted, we found them to be knowledgeable and helpful, often able to answer complex queries in a single response.</p> |
| Integratability | 4 <p>Atlas only has 15 pre-built integrations. While these integrations cover key areas like CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Close, Pipedrive) and calling (Aircall, Dialpad), it lacks integrations with popular tools in other categories such as project management, data enrichment, and surveys. It does offer an API for custom integrations.</p> | 2 <p>We were disappointed by HelpCrunch's limited array of integrations. Core integrations such as with CRMs (Salesforce, Hubspot), e-commerce platforms (Shopify) or ticketing platforms (Jira) are all marked as 'coming soon' but remain omitted entirely for the time being.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 3 <p>Atlas's data export capabilities are somewhat limited. While reporting data for selected reports can be exported directly from within Atlas, most data seem only available for export via API. For example, tickets can only be exported as PDFs.</p> | 6 <p>HelpCrunch offers self-serve export functionality for contact lists and transcripts within its web app. We were also pleased to note that they an offer an API which users can interact with too.</p> |
