Help Scoutvs
Kustomer
Kustomer: The future of customer service
Help Scout
Customer service software that people love
As of 30 August 2026, Help Scout has a free plan and paid plans start at $25/month. Help Scout is a help desk platform built for growing teams. Softwr lists it under Customer Support. Help Scout is launched in 2011, available on Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What Help Scout does
Help Scout is a help desk platform built for growing teams. It provides shared inboxes, knowledge base, live chat, and customer management tools designed for simplicity and collaboration.
What people use it for
- Shared inbox and help desk for customer support teams
- Publishing a knowledge base alongside email and chat support
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Help Scout.
- The free plan caps contacts at 100 a month, so it is a volume trial rather than a standing free tier
- Inboxes are rationed by plan, at 1 on free, 5 on Plus and 10 on Pro
- Each plan also caps users, at 25 on Standard and 50 on Plus
- The Pro plan at $75 per user per month carries a 10 user minimum, so the entry cost is $750 a month
- SSO, SAML and HIPAA compliance are Pro only
- AI Answers is billed separately at $0.75 per resolution on top of the seat price
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Help Scout
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Help ScoutvsFront
Front: Where teams collaborate on customer communication
- Help ScoutvsGroove
Groove: Simple, powerful support for growing businesses
- Help ScoutvsFreshdesk
Freshdesk: Delight your customers, effortlessly
Pricing
What Help Scout costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Up to 5 users
- 1 Inbox
- 1 Docs site
- Basic features
Standard
$25 /mo
- Multiple inboxes
- Live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger
- Multiple knowledge bases
- Basic SLA
- Basic workflows
Plus
$45 /mo
- Standard features plus advanced workflows
- Two advanced SLAs
- Secure portal
- Unlimited AI drafts
- Round robin routing
- Salesforce/Jira/HubSpot integrations
Pro
$75 /mo
- Plus features plus unlimited workflows
- Unlimited SLAs
- SSO/SAML
- HIPAA compliance
- Up to 50 light users
- Dedicated onboarding
Capabilities
Features
Shared inbox
Knowledge base
Live chat
Customer profiles
Workflows
Reporting
Slack
Integration with Slack
Salesforce
Integration with Salesforce
HubSpot
Integration with HubSpot
Jira
Integration with Jira
Shopify
Integration with Shopify
SOC2
SOC2 security feature
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How much does Help Scout cost?
Help Scout offers a free plan for up to 5 users. Paid plans start at $25/user/month (Standard), $45/user/month (Plus), and $75/user/month (Pro).
SourceWhat is included in the Pro plan?
Help Scout Pro at $75/user/month includes unlimited workflows, unlimited SLAs, SSO/SAML, HIPAA compliance, up to 50 light users, dedicated onboarding, and a strategic account manager.
SourceDoes Help Scout offer a free trial?
Yes, Help Scout offers a 15-day free trial for Standard and Plus plans with no credit card required. Pro plan requires booking a demo.
SourceWhat is the cost of Help Scout's AI Answers add-on?
Help Scout's AI Answers add-on costs $0.75 per resolution with a 3-month free trial included.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Help Scout
- Company
- Help Scout
- Based in
- Boston, MA
Keep looking
Where to go from Help Scout
- Help Scout alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Help Scout pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Help Scout badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Customer Support softwareThe full category
- Best Customer Support softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Customer Support software for
Compare Help Scout with
- Groove
- Front
- Freshdesk
- Kustomer
- Hiver
- Helpjuice
- Zendesk
- Document360
- Zoho Desk
- SupportBee
- LiveAgent
- HelpCrunch
- Customerly
- DelightChat
- Dialpad Contact Center
- Dixa
- Forethought
- Freshservice
Other Customer Support software
Knowledge base software for internal and customer-facing documentation
From $249/mo10 researched notesSelf-service knowledge base software for product documentation
Pricing on request9 researched notesAI resolution and ticket triage layered on top of an existing helpdesk
Pricing on request12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Help Scout, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Help Scout
Help Scout alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Help Scout pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Help Scout
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Help Scout badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best Customer Support software alternatives
Workforce management, quality and analytics suite for contact centres, now owned by Verint
quote
Compliant outbound dialling and contact centre infrastructure, under new ownership since October 2025
quote
Real-time AI coaching and autonomous agents that sit on top of an existing contact centre platform
quote
Indian customer experience platform for high-volume contact centres in travel, BFSI and retail
quote
Real-time guidance that prompts contact centre agents mid-call rather than scoring them afterwards
quote
Workforce management and AI agents for support teams that run on Zendesk, Salesforce or Intercom
Per user per month