The most intuitive customer support platform
Grade: A — Score: 100/100
Help Scout leverages advanced technology to enhance customer support interactions. With AI-driven features, it allows teams to respond faster and manage customer inquiries effectively, ensuring that agents have the context they need at their fingertips.
The platform streamlines workflows by automating repetitive tasks, enabling support teams to focus on more complex issues. Features like saved replies, workflows, and multiple inboxes help maintain organization and efficiency, allowing teams to handle increased volumes of inquiries seamlessly.
While Help Scout minimizes risks associated with customer support through its robust AI capabilities, it also ensures transparency and compliance with industry standards. The platform is designed to scale with businesses, providing reliable support without compromising on quality or security.
Free: $0/month
Standard: $25/user/month billed annually; $30 monthly
Plus: $45/user/month billed annually; $54 monthly
Pro: $75/user/month billed annually; $90 monthly; 10-user minimum
AI Answers add-on: $0.75/resolution, billed monthly
Consider switching to Zendesk: Zendesk offers more extensive features for larger enterprises.
As listed in August 2026, Help Scout Standard costs $25 per user per month billed annually and includes two Inboxes, two Docs sites, 150 basic workflows, and one basic SLA policy. Zendesk Suite Team costs $55 per agent per month paid yearly and adds native telephony and omnichannel routing, while Help Scout handles phone through integrations such as Aircall. Help Scout is the leaner option for email, chat, social, and self-service workflows; Zendesk is stronger when native voice and more complex routing justify the higher seat price.
As listed in August 2026, Freshdesk Growth starts at $19 per agent per month billed annually, includes an email-focused ticketing inbox and the first 500 Freddy AI Agent sessions, and charges $49 per additional 100 sessions. Help Scout Standard costs $25 per user per month billed annually and includes live chat, SMS, social messaging, AI Inbox Assistant, two Inboxes, and two Docs sites; its customer-facing AI Answers is billed separately at $0.75 per resolution. Freshdesk has the lower entry price, while Help Scout packages more channels into its base paid plan.
Both Help Scout and Gorgias let agents view Shopify context and take order actions inside the support workspace; Help Scout documents refunds, cancellations, edits, and duplicate orders from its conversation sidebar. Gorgias is commerce-first and advertises more than 300 integrations, while Help Scout advertises more than 100 apps and serves a broader mix of SaaS and ecommerce teams. Choose Gorgias when ecommerce specialization is the priority; choose Help Scout when the wider shared Inbox, Docs, and Beacon workflow matters more.
Paid Help Scout plans can route email, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger conversations into shared Inboxes. Voice is not native, so phone workflows require integrations such as Aircall, Talkdesk, or JustCall. Help Scout's built-in SMS channel accepts inbound texts and replies but does not support MMS or new outbound SMS conversations.
Help Scout AI Answers runs in Beacon and grounds replies in selected Docs, web sources, and custom instructions. If it cannot resolve a request, human help remains available; Help Scout reports a 73.19% average resolution rate. As listed in August 2026, paid accounts are charged $0.75 for each conversation the AI resolves without team help, and administrators can set monthly spending caps.
Multiple addresses such as support@ and sales@ can forward into one Help Scout Inbox as aliases, or a team can create separate Inboxes and Docs sites for different brands or departments. Standard includes two Inboxes and two Docs sites, Plus includes five and three, and Pro includes ten and five. As listed in August 2026, additional Inboxes cost $10 per month with annual billing or $12 monthly, while additional Docs sites cost $20 or $24 on the same billing choices.
Help Scout provides prebuilt reports for volume, response time, resolution, and customer satisfaction, with filters based on tags, custom fields, companies, or views. Standard includes 150 basic workflows and two years of report history, Plus includes 500 advanced workflows and all-time reports, and Pro removes workflow limits. Custom fields are limited to Plus and Pro, with up to 10 fields per Inbox.
Help Scout's Import2 tool can bring in emails or tickets, customer profiles, and tags or labels from systems including Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Gorgias, HubSpot Service Hub, and Zoho Desk. It does not import users, Inbox settings, or knowledge-base articles, so administrators must recreate account structure and handle content separately. Help Scout documents a separate article-migration tool for Zendesk help centers.
As listed in August 2026, Help Scout provides SSO/SAML and HIPAA support on Pro, which costs $75 per user per month annually or $90 monthly and has a 10-user minimum. Help Scout will sign a BAA on request, but says Docs is not HIPAA compliant and should not hold sensitive data. AI features on a HIPAA account require an additional AI Feature Healthcare Addendum.
Help Scout says data sent to OpenAI through its AI features is not used to train OpenAI's models. Help Scout's Terms separately allow it to aggregate de-identified Customer Data into Training Datasets for its own AI offerings, but customers can opt out by emailing help@helpscout.com. Customers with a signed BAA are opted out automatically.
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