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Help Scout

Help Scout

The new recipe for delightful support

#2 dans Knowledge Base
2 min read · Updated 10/3/2025
Help Scout homepage screenshot

At a glance

Quick overview for Help Scout: rating, pricing summary, key features, and highlights.

Ciroapp review

3.7
Scalable Support with Great Value

We find Help Scout delivers exceptional value with its unique contact-based, unlimited-user pricing model, making it highly scalable and affordable. Agent productivity is strongly supported by a very intuitive design and free, integrated AI tools across all plans. Overall, Help Scout is a strong choice for teams prioritizing great user experience but should be monitored closely for product stability following major updates.

Pros

  • Pro:Fair and predictable contact-based pricing with unlimited team users.
  • Pro:Highly praised, knowledgeable, and responsive customer support staff.
  • Pro:Integrated AI tools (drafts, recaps) included at no extra cost, even on the Free plan.
  • Pro:Interface is highly user-friendly, providing fast onboarding.

Cons

  • Con:Recent product updates are sometimes buggy or remove favored features (e.g., changes to Docs editor).
  • Con:Users report corporate communications sometimes push social or political messages.
  • Con:Difficulty exporting data manually; requires API knowledge or support assistance.
  • Con:Some long-standing bugs, like missing emails, have reportedly gone unresolved.
Free trial
Yes
Money-back guarantee
Yes — 30 days
Range: $0–$75/monthFree plan, Free trial, Monthly subscription, Yearly subscription, Usage-based pricing
This section is a summary. Detailed sections about features, use cases, pricing, and reviews follow below.
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Help Scout review, pricing, features, pros & cons

frustra

Are you tired of fragmented systems that create dead ends for customers? Help Scout is optimized for customer delight, not deflection. It helps teams consolidate scattered channels into a single powerful platform. You can now deliver the human touch at superhuman speed. ✨

What is Help Scout?

Help Scout is a modern customer service platform built to connect every team to the voice of the customer. It gathers all your scattered support channels into one consolidated, easy-to-use system. Teams report that it's just like using a shared email inbox, but far more robust and organized.

The platform is designed to bring structure and flexibility to the organization. This ensures a calm, measurable approach to your daily support work. 💡

Help Scout Key Features

✨ Integrated AI for Superhuman Speed

Help Scout is built to deliver the human touch at superhuman speed. Integrated AI features are included immediately, even on the Free plan, with no add-ons or usage fees. You can get a quick boost from AI right where you are working.

Use AI with a single click to instantly recap long customer threads. This ensures you understand complex context quickly without needing to read every past message. The AI can also help you draft faster answers, edit replies, or translate messages instantly. This immediate assistance reduces busy work, allowing your team to focus on responding in seconds.

✨ Consolidated & Collaborative Inbox

Help Scout helps teams consolidate scattered channels into a single, organized platform. This powerful system is just like using a shared email inbox, but far more robust and organized. You can handle messages from email, social platforms, Shopify, and more, closing those extra tabs immediately.

You can set up Multiple Inboxes easily. This feature gives every department or product its own dedicated place for managing support queries. These separate spaces help ensure relevant team members handle the right conversations when they first arrive.

✨ Smart Automation with Workflows and Views

Automate crucial, tedious tasks with workflows that keep your Inbox structured and organized. Workflows ensure that specific, critical messages never slip through the cracks. For example, you can set up a workflow to automatically flag refund requests or resurface urgent conversations.

Workflows also help assign the right person for the job without unnecessary redirects. You can ensure that messages meant for sales or other specific teams get routed correctly the very first time. Additionally, custom Views help everyone get more efficient by grouping conversations, simplifying the queue for your whole team.

✨ Embeddable Self-Service with Beacon

Meet Beacon, your embeddable support hub that provides instant answers 24/7. Customers can chat their way to fast solutions using your existing help content and guide articles. The AI can help answer complex questions, even when your human team is asleep.

Help Scout ensures that human support remains within easy reach. Whether your team offers live chat, email, or both, customers are always within two clicks of help. The platform also offers a customer portal where people can quickly access their previous conversations and respond easily, saving them valuable time.

✨ Deep Customer Context and Timing Tools

Help Scout makes it easy to prioritize conversations and make every interaction personal. Use company management features to get the context needed to support full accounts, not just individual customers. You can use Customer Properties to track data and Custom Fields for organization-specific information.

For conversations that do not require an immediate reply, you have flexible timing tools. If there’s no rush to reply, use Snooze to automatically resurface the conversation at a later, defined date. You can also use Send Later to schedule a reply, ensuring the customer receives the message at the perfect time for their location.

✨ Reporting and Performance Insights

Advanced reporting gives you a calm, measurable approach to support work. You can understand the 'why' behind your support volume across various channels. These insights help you make the necessary adjustments to improve efficiency.

Measure your team’s activity in the queue to learn about response times and factors contributing to customer wait times. The system provides a bird’s eye view of support performance, summarizing how the team performs as a whole and individually. You can also measure customer sentiment by gathering feedback using NPS, CSAT ratings, or picking from a library of surveys.

Use Cases

🗄️ Centralizing All Customer Communications

Teams struggle when customer messages are scattered across emails, social channels, and external apps like Shopify. Help Scout resolves this by consolidating all support queries into one powerful Inbox. You can finally close those extra tabs and manage every channel smoothly in a single place.

Help Scout also allows you to set up multiple Inboxes. This gives every department or product its own dedicated space for support queries. This structure ensures specialized teams handle relevant questions immediately, preventing internal redirects and streamlining consistency.

🤖 Accelerating Agent Productivity with Integrated AI

Lengthy support threads make it hard for agents to get up to speed quickly. Help Scout includes integrated AI at no extra cost on every plan, right out of the box. Agents can instantly recap long conversation histories with a single click, saving valuable investigation time.

The AI also speeds up drafting and editing replies. Use it to create a quick first response or to translate messages. This functionality helps your team deliver personalized service at a superhuman speed.

⚙️ Enabling Instant Self-Service and Automation

Customers prefer finding answers without waiting for a human agent. Help Scout provides Beacon, an embeddable support hub that offers instant answers 24/7. Customers can chat their way to fast solutions using AI powered by your knowledge base content.

Workflows automate tedious but critical tasks that keep your Inbox organized. These tools help reduce your team’s workload by up to 50%, making them much more productive. You can automatically assign the right person for the job, ensuring messages reach the correct department the first time.

💡 Proactive Onboarding and In-App Engagement

Instead of waiting for customers to reach out, you can use Help Scout to provide help contextually. Use in-app messages to welcome new users and guide them toward your best resources. This friendly nudge helps customers start their journey strong.

The platform also helps you gather valuable feedback and measure how customers feel in context. You can use NPS (Net Promoter Score) or pick from a library of surveys to get clear feedback on specific experiences.

✅ Overcoming Organizational Complexity

For growing teams, maintaining efficiency requires structure and flexibility. Help Scout allows you to simplify the queue for agents using custom Views that group conversations based on urgency or type. This ensures that every team member knows exactly what they need to work on next.

Problem: Missing urgent messages due to high volume. Approach: Use automated workflows to flag refund requests or resurface critical conversations. Outcome: Never let important messages slip through the cracks, ensuring a calm, measured approach to daily support work.

📈 Gaining Insights into Team Performance

Effective management requires clear data, not guesswork. Help Scout offers robust reporting that helps you understand the 'why' behind your support volume across all channels. You can adjust staffing or resources based on factual information.

Use the reports to measure your team’s vital metrics, such as how fast you are responding and the factors contributing to wait times. You get a reliable bird’s eye view of support performance, both for the team as a whole and for individual agents.

Pricing Overview for Help Scout

Pricing range
$0–$75/month
Pricing types
Free plan, Free trial, Monthly subscription, Yearly subscription, Usage-based pricing
Money-back guarantee
Yes — 30 days

Help Scout offers four pricing plans, structured around the number of unique customer "contacts helped" monthly, rather than per-user seats. Pricing starts at $0 for the Free plan and goes up to $75/month for the Plus plan base rate, with all plans offering unlimited team users.

Plans & Pricing

Free

Monthly$0
100 contacts per month
  • Inbox with all channels
  • Docs knowledge base
  • Help widget with AI answers
  • Unlimited AI drafts
  • In-app messaging
  • Basic Reporting (30 days of data)
Sign up

Standard

Monthly$50
Starts with 100 contacts per month, up to 5,000 max contacts
  • Multiple Inboxes (2 included) and Docs sites
  • API and 100+ integrations
  • Advanced Reports (2 years of data)
  • Surveys & NPS, CSAT ratings
  • Customer Properties
Try for free

Plus

Monthly$75
Starts with 100 contacts per month, up to 25,000 max contacts
  • Salesforce, Jira, HubSpot apps
  • Custom Fields
  • Advanced Permissions
  • Teams
  • Advanced Views & Workflows
  • Restricted Docs sites
Try for free

Pro

Contact for pricing
Starts with 1,000 contacts
  • Additional security (SAML authentication, IP restrictions, HIPAA)
  • Higher plan limits
  • Dedicated onboarding
Talk to Sales

Help Scout costs between $0 and $75 per month for the base tiers, with four options available: Free at $0, Standard at $50/month, Plus at $75/month, and the custom-quoted Pro plan.

Below, you'll find the details for each plan, which all include unlimited users and are priced based on the number of unique customer contacts helped monthly.

Free

Price: $0 Websites Supported: 1 site Best For: Not explicitly stated Refund Policy: Not explicitly stated Other Features:

  • Inbox with all channels
  • Docs knowledge base and Help widget with AI answers
  • Unlimited AI drafts
  • Basic Reporting (30 days of data)

The Free plan is perfect if you are just launching or have very low support volume, covering up to 100 unique contacts each month. It includes core customer service features like the knowledge base and integrated AI tools right out of the box, allowing any small team to get started immediately.

Standard

Price: $50 /month Websites Supported: 1 site (add for $20/mo.) Best For: Not explicitly stated Refund Policy: 30-day money-back guarantee Other Features:

  • Multiple Inboxes (2 included) and Docs sites
  • API and 100+ integrations
  • Advanced Reports (2 years of data history)
  • Surveys & NPS, CSAT ratings
  • Customer Properties

Choose Standard if your volume is growing, as this plan supports up to 5,000 contacts monthly. You gain crucial reporting capabilities, extensive integration access, and surveying tools like NPS and CSAT ratings to measure customer sentiment.

Plus

Price: $75 /month Websites Supported: 3 sites (add for $20/mo.) Best For: Not explicitly stated Refund Policy: 30-day money-back guarantee Other Features:

  • Salesforce, Jira, HubSpot apps
  • Custom Fields and Advanced Permissions
  • Teams and Advanced Views & Workflows
  • Restricted Docs sites

The Plus plan handles significant volume up to 25,000 contacts and provides complex organizational features necessary for scaling teams. This top-tier option unlocks critical enterprise integrations and advanced controls for managing user permissions and refining workflows. ✨

Pro

Price: Talk to Sales (Starts with 1,000 contacts) Websites Supported: Higher plan limits Best For: Not explicitly stated Refund Policy: Not explicitly stated Other Features:

  • Additional security features (HIPAA, SAML, IP restrictions)
  • Dedicated onboarding
  • Enhanced API call limits

Pro is designed for established companies requiring dedicated security, tailored support, and very high capacity limits. You'll need to reach out directly to the sales team to discuss customized pricing and activate the full enterprise solution.

Help Scout happily offers a completely Free plan starter option for smaller needs. For the paid plans (Standard and Plus), you can begin with a free trial to test the features. Additionally, Help Scout provides a 30-day money-back guarantee, ensuring peace of mind if you are ever surprised by a bill after initial use.

User Reviews

Help Scout receives mixed but passionate external feedback, resulting in a 3.0 Trustpilot score. Users consistently praise the platform's robust usability and professional, knowledgeable support team, often highlighting specific account managers by name.

Long-term customers commend the fair, contact-based pricing structure, calling it one of the cheapest options with comprehensive features, especially appreciating free AI drafting tools on all plans. However, user frustration centers heavily on recent product development changes.

Several reviewers noted that Help Scout is enshitifying the product by replacing functional tools, specifically citing the buggy transition to a new Docs block editor 😥. This change sometimes made existing knowledge base articles uneditable or deleted content silently.

Recurring technical complaints include buggy signup forms for the free trial and unresolved historical bugs like missing emails. Finally, sentiment is overwhelmingly negative toward the company’s perceived decision to push social or political agendas, which many users find intrusive and "tiresome," leading some to seek alternatives.

One user also flagged a massive 400%+ price increase during a plan "upgrade."

What users say elsewhere

Alex D.
· Trustpilot
5.0 / 5

Cheapest by far in pricing with all the bells and whistles. We’ve used HS for three years, and their new free AI update only adds value. Fees per contact are the most fair pricing model available out there.

Sarah J.
· Trustpilot
5.0 / 5

The Help Scout platform is the most user-friendly interface I've encountered in my career. The features are attractive, but the care provided by the customer support team is phenomenal. They truly raise the bar.

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Why use Help Scout?

Thousands of companies choose Help Scout because it delivers powerful results without the usual complexity. You shouldn't have to deal with distracting interfaces or complicated features that slow you down. The platform takes out the busy work so your team can focus on what truly matters: creating a better customer experience. ✅

  • AI is Always Included: Start using integrated AI immediately, even on the Free plan, with no add-ons or usage fees. This allows you to quickly recap long threads, edit replies, and draft faster answers with a single click.
  • Outstanding Ease of Use: Learn the core platform in under an hour and become a power user in less than a day. Users consistently praise its pleasant UX, finding functionalities right when they are needed.
  • Built for Customer Delight: Independent research shows that Help Scout's NPS is 7x higher than competitors’ scores. This focus on zero dead ends makes handling customer service easier for everyone.
  • Confidence in Scaling: Help Scout supports unlimited seats and is built to grow with you. Over 80% of customers remain with the platform after four years, proving its long-term viability.
  • Simplify Workloads: Automate crucial, tedious tasks with workflows that keep the Inbox organized. This efficiency shift has helped teams reduce their workload by up to 50%, making them twice as productive.

Ready to transform your workflow with Help Scout?

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does Help Scout charge per user or based on usage volume?

Help Scout uses a contact-based pricing model, not per-seat billing. All plans, including paid tiers, include unlimited team users. You are charged based on the number of unique customer contacts you help monthly.

How does Help Scout define a 'contact' for billing purposes?

A contact is any unique client who receives a reply from your team or has their question solved by the AI assistant in a given month. If you exchange multiple conversations with the same person during that month, they still count only as one contact.

How does the Fair Billing Policy make the monthly bill more predictable?

The Fair Billing Policy determines your tier using your trailing three-month average contact count. This method reduces billing variability compared to traditional per-seat models, helping maintain a stable monthly cost even during seasonal volume spikes.

What customer support responsiveness (SLA) can I expect?

Help Scout offers world-class support available 24 hours a day, six days a week. The team commits to answering 99% of customer support emails within 24 hours.

What is included in the 100+ integrations access for the paid plans?

The Standard plan grants access to the API and 100+ general integrations. The Plus plan specifically unlocks critical apps for scaling, including Salesforce, Jira, and HubSpot integrations.

Is there a free trial for the paid Standard or Plus plans?

Yes, both the Standard and Plus paid plans offer a free trial so you can test the features before committing. The precise duration of the free trial period is not explicitly stated on the official site.

What kind of data security and compliance standards does Help Scout meet?

Help Scout is committed to data security and is compliant with both GDPR and SOC 2 standards. Additional advanced security features are available in the Pro plan.

Can I get advanced security features like HIPAA compliance or SSO?

These dedicated security features are reserved for the custom-quoted Pro plan. Features available there include SAML authentication for SSO, IP restrictions, and HIPAA compliance.

Is there a money-back guarantee if I am surprised by my bill?

Yes, the Standard and Plus paid plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee. They offer this to ensure your peace of mind after initial use.

How many Docs sites or Inboxes can I use on the lower-tier plans?

The Free plan includes one Docs site and one Inbox. The Standard plan upgrades you to 2 included Inboxes and 1 Docs site. The Plus plan includes 5 Inboxes and 3 Docs sites.

Can I import existing conversation history into Help Scout?

Yes, you can import your historical data, like 90 days of activity, during a free trial. This process also helps you accurately calculate your required contact count before purchasing a paid plan.

Are there special pricing options for nonprofit organizations or startups?

Yes, Help Scout offers specific programs. They have 'Help Scout for Good' for non-profits and B-corps, and a startup plan designed to help early-stage companies grow.

Which plan is best if I need dedicated onboarding support?

Dedicated onboarding is explicitly listed as a feature of the Pro plan. This plan caters to established companies requiring tailored support and security solutions.

How do I cancel my subscription if I need to downgrade or stop using the service?

Specific procedures regarding how to cancel a subscription or downgrade are not explicitly stated on the official site. You should check the product's settings or contact their support team directly.

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