Help Scout

Customer support platform for growing businesses that blends AI and people-powered tools to scale support without losing the human touch.

Customer Support Platforms
★★★★★ 4.5
2011 Founded
201-500 Employees
12,000+ Customers
Boston, MA, United States Headquarters
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Quick Facts

✓ Free Trial
Website
helpscout.com →
Starting Price
25
Pricing Model
tiered
Free Trial
15 days
Company Type
private
Social
LinkedIn Twitter/X

About Help Scout

Help Scout is a SaaS customer support platform designed to help growing businesses manage all of their customer conversations in one place without sacrificing a personal, email-like experience. Its core products — Inbox, Docs, Beacon, Messages, and AI Answers — give support teams a unified workspace for email, live chat, self-service, and in‑app messaging, all wrapped in an interface that feels familiar and easy to adopt.

Founded in 2011 as a spin-out from the Brightwurks web consultancy, Help Scout is incorporated as a public benefit corporation (Help Scout PBC) and operates as a fully remote company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The company is intentionally focused on people-first customer experiences: customers interact with normal-looking emails instead of ticket portals and numbers, and teams get collaboration tools like assignments, notes, collision detection, and workflows to stay organized at scale.

Over time, Help Scout has expanded beyond its original shared inbox to include Docs for building searchable, branded knowledge bases, the Beacon widget for embedded support and live chat inside web or mobile products, and Messages for targeted in‑app announcements and surveys. Recent releases add AI-powered capabilities such as AI Assist, Drafts, Summarize, and AI Answers, which use a customer’s own content to automate routine responses while keeping humans in control. The platform offers 100+ integrations and open APIs so support data can flow into CRMs, e‑commerce platforms, telephony systems, and analytics stacks.

Help Scout serves more than 12,000 customer-facing teams in over 140 countries, particularly digital businesses in SaaS, technology, and e‑commerce. It is often chosen over more complex enterprise suites for its ease of use, thoughtful design, responsive support, and predictable pricing. While it does not aim to match heavyweight ITSM tools feature-for-feature, it has carved out a strong position as a modern, pragmatic customer support platform for companies that value simplicity, strong documentation, and a human approach to customer service.

Key Features

Shared inbox for email support with collision detection, assignments, and @mentions across multiple mailboxes.

Docs knowledge base for creating branded, searchable self-service help centers with article analytics.

Beacon embeddable widget that surfaces docs, AI Answers, contact forms, and live chat inside your website or app.

Messages for targeted in-app and on-site messages, announcements, and lifecycle surveys like NPS and CSAT.

AI Assist, Drafts, and Summarize tools to expand, rewrite, translate, and summarize replies based on your historical conversations and help content.

AI Answers add-on chatbot that automatically resolves common questions using your Docs content and additional web sources.

Rule-based workflows to automate routing, tagging, auto-replies, and queue management based on conditions and time triggers.

Queue management tools including Views, snooze, send-later, and custom folders to prioritize and organize conversations.

Customer and company profiles with custom properties and fields for richer context and account-level support.

Multi-channel support for email, live chat, self-service docs, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, and in-app messaging via Beacon.

Built-in satisfaction ratings and survey tools to collect CSAT, NPS, and other feedback across touchpoints.

Reporting and analytics covering volume, response and resolution times, agent productivity, and customer happiness, plus custom reports and exports.

Security and governance features such as advanced permissions, SSO/SAML, HIPAA-ready environments, and IP restrictions on higher tiers.

Mobile apps for iOS and Android so agents can view, reply to, and manage conversations on the go.

Open Inbox and Docs APIs, webhooks, and a sidebar apps framework for custom integrations and extensions.

Pros & Cons

👍 Pros

  • Very easy-to-use, email-like interface that requires little training for new agents and feels natural to customers.
  • Clean, uncluttered design focused on core support workflows rather than overwhelming agents with rarely used features.
  • Excellent vendor support with fast, friendly responses and a strong customer-centric culture.
  • Integrated Docs knowledge base and Beacon widget make it simple to link articles, deflect tickets, and offer self-service.
  • Good value for money compared with larger enterprise suites, especially for small and mid-sized teams.

👎 Cons

  • Reporting and analytics are relatively basic, with limited drill-down and customization compared to advanced CX analytics platforms.
  • Some advanced or niche features (complex workflows, SLA/time-based rules, deep omnichannel routing) are limited or require third-party add-ons.
  • Mobile apps lag behind the web experience, with occasional reliability issues and fewer features, which some reviewers note as frustrating.

User Reviews

G2
4.4
★★★★☆
Capterra
4.6
★★★★★
TrustRadius
9.0
★★★★★

Integrations

Slack HubSpot Salesforce Shopify Stripe Jira Aircall Trello Google Workspace Mailchimp Zapier Make Cordless AppFollow OnePageCRM ChannelReply Super SLA Linear Gladly Supademo

Best For

Company Size

smb mid-market enterprise

Industries

SaaS Technology E-commerce Professional Services Nonprofits

Use Cases

Shared inbox and email support management Multi-channel customer support across email, chat, and social Self-service knowledge base and FAQ management Proactive in-app messaging and customer onboarding E-commerce order, billing, and subscription support B2B SaaS customer success and account-level support operations

FAQ

What is Help Scout?

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Help Scout is a cloud-based customer support platform that gives teams a shared inbox, knowledge base (Docs), in-app Beacon widget, messaging tools, and AI features to manage all customer conversations in one place. It's designed to feel like email for customers while giving support teams collaboration, automation, and reporting capabilities to scale high-quality support.

How much does Help Scout cost?

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Help Scout offers a Free plan for up to 5 users with 1 Inbox and 1 Docs site. Paid plans start with the Standard plan at about $25 per user per month, Plus at about $45 per user per month, and Pro at about $75 per user per month with a 10-seat minimum. All paid plans support monthly or discounted annual billing, and there is a 15-day free trial for Standard and Plus, plus a 3-month free trial of the AI Answers add-on.

What are the main features of Help Scout?

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Key Help Scout features include a shared inbox with collision detection and assignments, Docs knowledge base, the Beacon widget for embedded self-service and live chat, in-app and onsite Messages, rules-based workflows, Views, snooze and send-later, customer and company profiles with custom fields, CSAT and survey tools, AI Assist/Drafts/Summarize, the AI Answers chatbot, extensive reporting, and 100+ integrations and APIs.

Who are Help Scout's main competitors?

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Help Scout's main competitors in the customer support and help desk space include Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Front, and Zoho Desk, as well as other modern shared-inbox and CX platforms. Buyers typically compare them on ease of use, depth of features, omnichannel capabilities, reporting, and total cost of ownership.

Is Help Scout good for small businesses?

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Yes. Help Scout is particularly well-suited to small and growing businesses because it is easy to set up, requires minimal training, and includes a generous Free plan. Small teams get an intuitive shared inbox, docs, and chat without the complexity of enterprise-oriented tools, and can grow into Plus and Pro plans as their support volume and sophistication increase.

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