A category lead does not carry across a software suite

Gist counted how often AI answers name each product in 16 business software categories. Thirteen companies have products that score 10 or more in more than one of them. A lead in one category does not carry across a company’s suite of products. HubSpot scores 99 in CRM software, where it is first. Its Service Hub scores 29 in customer support software, where it is seventh.

Five of the 13 companies lead a category, and none leads two. Zoho has a product in the published top ten of seven categories and leads none of them. Among the 12 companies in the top ten of two or more categories, each scores 68 or more in its best category and 44 or less in its weakest.

• Best placing
• Weakest placing on a page

1. HubSpotHubSpotHubSpot Service Hub99%29%
2. ShopifyShopifyShopify Payments98%34%
3. GoogleGmailGoogle Sites96%12%
4. IntuitQuickBooksQuickBooks Payroll94%44%
5. FreshworksFreshdeskFreshsales85%25%
6. SalesforceSalesforceSalesforce Commerce Cloud83%10%
7. ZohoZoho CRMZoho Sign80%18%
8. SquareSquareSquare Payroll79%18%
9. MicrosoftOutlookMicrosoft Dynamics 36574%40%
10. AdobeAdobe Acrobat SignAdobe Commerce73%34%
11. AtlassianTrelloJira Service Management68%29%
12. monday.commonday.commonday CRM68%19%

Source: The Gist 100, October 2026.

Best placing against weakest, company by company

A score is the share of a category’s AI answers that name the product, averaged across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews. A product is on the page when it sits in the category’s published top ten.

Best placing against weakest placing on a page, with category, rank and score

The table shows 10 of the 13 companies, ordered by best score, so the five that lead a category fill the top five rows. The gap runs from 34 points for Microsoft to 84 for Google. Atlassian (68 to 29) and monday.com (68 to 19) fit the same shape, and Rippling has one placing on a page. Eight placings across the 13 sit off the page, at ranks 11 to 14 with scores of 10 to 17. The table leaves them out.

One visible reason for the gaps is how the counts are built. Each answer responds to one buying question about one category, so Gist scores a product only on questions about its own category. The counts do not show more than that.

Five of the 13 companies lead a category, and none leads two.

Few second placings match the first

Two of the 13 hold two placings in the top three of their categories. Shopify is first in e-commerce platforms at 98 and third in website builders at 67. Zoho is third in CRM software at 80 and third in accounting software at 75. Zoho’s other five placings on a page score 53, 40, 22, 20 and 18.

Intuit’s weakest placing on a page, at 44, is the highest among the 12 companies, with Microsoft’s 40 next. Its three products score 94, 63 and 44. The 63 is Mailchimp in email marketing platforms, part of Intuit since November 2021.

Seventeen brands, business and consumer, appear under one name in several categories. Five appear in both customer support software and email management software. Their scores in those two, in that order, are 85 and 13 for Freshdesk, 77 and 33 for Zendesk, 10 and 70 for Front, 18 and 64 for Hiver and 68 and 67 for Help Scout. Freshdesk’s 13 and Front’s 10 sit off the page. Of the five, only Help Scout carries a score across, and each assistant’s two scores for it differ by 5 points or fewer.

What the four assistants add

The assistants agree on the leads. Each assistant scores each of the five leading products between 77 and 100, and none scores HubSpot below 98 in CRM software. The same assistants score those five companies’ weakest placings on a page anywhere from 1 to 54.

Zoho shows how far they can split. Perplexity scores Zoho CRM 99 and Zoho Sign 1. Claude scores them 84 and 61, and scores every Zoho placing on a page above ChatGPT.

Zoho is not alone. For 8 of the 12 companies in the top ten of two or more categories, Claude gives the weakest placing the highest score of the four. Not every split favors Claude, since Mailchimp scores 86 with ChatGPT and 26 with Google AI Overviews. Still, if any assistant carries a company’s name across categories, the counts point to Claude.

What to do with this

1. Score each product on its own page. HubSpot scores 99 in one category and 29 in another, so each product needs its own target.
2. Plan every extra product as its own project. None of the 13 companies leads two categories, and gaps between best and weakest placings run from 34 to 84 points.
3. Read the assistants one at a time. Zoho Sign scores 61 with Claude and 6 or lower with the other three, so a score resting on one assistant leaves three to win.

Counted from the answers behind the October 2026 Gist 100. How it is made.