Help Scout Beacon Setup: Modes, Live Chat, Scout and Messages

Help Scout's Beacon is the embeddable help widget that puts a contact form, Docs search, live chat, Scout and proactive Messages on your website or inside your app. Every plan includes it, but the plan decides what it can do. Free gives you 1 Beacon with a contact form and Docs search, Standard gives you 5, and Plus and Pro remove the cap. Live chat and Messages start on Standard. The install code is two JavaScript calls, and only one Beacon can run on a page^[1]. Pick the plan first. Then paste the code.

Match the plan to the Beacon you want

The gate most teams hit first is live chat, because a Free Beacon stops at the contact form and Docs search. Standard costs $25 per user per month billed annually or $30 per user per month billed monthly, and Plus costs $45 per user per month billed annually or $54 per user per month billed monthly^[2]. Every person with a login is a billable user, the Account Owner included; our Help Scout pricing guide runs the totals. For a Beacon alone, Plus pays off if you need more than 5 Beacons, custom fields on the form, or a widget without the small Powered by Help Scout mark that Standard shows.

Install it: two calls, one page

Each Beacon connects to one Inbox and one Docs site; you set both in the Beacon settings, then copy the embed code into your site's header. Help Scout publishes install guides for Shopify, Weebly, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, WordPress and Kajabi. On Squarespace the code goes into Code Injection, in the Header field. Wix needs a paid Wix plan for Custom Code, and Beacon does not appear in the Wix editor or preview. Weebly shows it only on the published site. Check the live page, not the builder.

Two things block Beacon quietly. A strict Content Security Policy is the first: Beacon supports CSP level 3 through a random nonce on the script tag, while levels 1 and 2 need extra allowed sources. Ad blockers are the second, since Beacon's embed URLs sit on EasyList and some visitors will never see the widget. On a single-page app, fire the page-viewed event and then call suggest whenever the URL changes. Skip that and URL-based Messages and suggestions stop matching.

Apps use the mobile SDKs: an AAR on Maven Central for Android, and Swift Package Manager, CocoaPods or an xcframework for iOS. Both need the Beacon ID. iOS apps must carry photo, camera and microphone usage strings in Info.plist even with attachments off, because Apple flags those APIs. Android push notifications have no admin screen; Help Scout support sets them up from the FCM file and App ID you email. Help Scout itself runs separate Beacons for web, Android and iOS to tailor suggested articles per platform.

Decide what visitors see first

When a Beacon has both Docs and messaging switched on, its mode sets how hard it steers people toward articles before contact options appear. There are three: Self Service, Neutral and Ask First. Turn on Scout and only Self Service and Neutral remain. Help Scout's mobile documentation suggests self service for free users and neutral for paying customers, a sensible split if you run two Beacons. A Beacon can show every collection of its Docs site or only chosen ones, including private collections that otherwise only Help Scout users read.

Suggestions do the steering. Each Beacon can map up to 200 URLs, each with up to 5 suggested articles or links, using wildcards and relative paths; in code, the suggest method takes at most ten. The contact form accepts attachments up to 10 MB per file and 3 per message. The email form must stay on whenever chat is on, because Beacon falls back to email when nobody is free. On Plus and Pro the form can also show up to 5 of the Inbox's custom fields, and workflows can tag, assign, move or reply based on the answers.

Standard teams can still route. Every conversation started in Beacon carries a note with visitor details such as IP address, operating system and the Beacon ID, and a workflow that matches that note can tag or assign it. Docs sites carry their own built-in Beacon, configured only under Docs Sites, and its contact form cannot be switched off without turning off the whole Beacon. Our Help Scout Docs guide covers the site side, from collections to Restricted Docs.

Run live chat without dropping visitors

Live chat appears only while at least one teammate is available. Otherwise visitors see email only. Availability cannot be scheduled or tied to Office Hours, and an Administrator cannot change another user's availability, so coverage depends on people switching themselves on. Each user also has a Maximum Chats setting that defaults to 3 and counts across every chat-enabled Inbox; 0 is not allowed. Set it per person before launch.

The clock is strict. An unaccepted chat closes after 5 minutes, its transcript lands in Unassigned as an email, and every available user in that Inbox is switched to Assign Only. A customer who goes quiet gets a warning after 25 minutes, and the chat ends at 30^[3]. Only one user can be assigned to a chat; colleagues can add private notes but cannot reply, and an assigned chat never returns to Unassigned. The mobile agent apps do not handle chat, so phone alerts go through Slack.

Ending a chat creates an Inbox conversation with the full transcript, and the customer gets an emailed copy without private notes when the Email transcript option is on. Switching off Require Email makes chat anonymous, but then no transcript goes out. Visitors can rate a chat Great, Okay or Not Good, which feeds the Happiness report, and you can place a privacy disclosure of up to 160 characters in the greeting label. Pro adds Automatic Translations, translating customer messages into the agent's browser language and replies back. Pro costs $75 per user per month billed annually or $90 per user per month billed monthly, with a 10-user minimum. That minimum means at least $750 a month billed annually, by our arithmetic; see our Help Scout pricing guide.

Add Scout and proactive Messages

Scout (formerly AI Answers) is switched on per Beacon and answers from your Docs sites, public web pages, files and text snippets. On Standard, Plus and Pro it is billed through the Envoy add-on at $0.75 per resolution, on top of the per-user price and in arrears; new accounts get 3 months of free resolutions from account creation. A resolution is one conversation Scout closes without the visitor escalating, searching, asking more or asking for a person. Exclusions hand chosen topics to your team, showing Email or Chat buttons inside Beacon.

Set a monthly cap, counted in resolutions. At the cap Scout is disabled in Beacon until the next cycle, and Beacon falls back to the other options its mode allows. About 33 resolutions a month cost the same as one more Standard user billed annually, since $25 divided by $0.75 is 33.3, by our arithmetic. Under that line Scout costs less than a seat. The Help Scout AI playbook covers sources, roles, test mode and Scout reports.

Messages come in five types (Standard, Modal, Banner, Microsurvey and NPS) on Standard, Plus and Pro. Triggers include time on a page at a given URL, and a Start a Chat message repeats at most once every 24 hours. The embed code must be on the page, but the Beacon button can be hidden. NPS needs the identify method, and targeting selected people needs identify plus Customer Properties. Each month includes 2,000 unique viewers; 2,001 to 4,000 viewers cost $20 a month^[4]. A viewer is a Beacon device ID in local storage, so clearing storage counts it again.

Verify who is asking: identify and Secure Mode

Out of the box, support history is Basic. It rides on a device ID and local storage, so a customer on a new laptop sees no past conversations. The identify method adds context: name, email, company, job title, avatar and customer properties (Standard and up), and it pre-fills and hides name and email on the form. Names are limited to 80 characters, company and job title to 60. Company properties cannot be set through Beacon identify. The session-data method adds per-conversation details to the visitor activity note.

Secure Mode is the Advanced setting. Your server computes a SHA-256 HMAC of the visitor's email with the Beacon's secret key and passes it as the signature in identify. Each Beacon has its own key, found on the Contact tab behind the cross-device history toggle. Never ship it inside an app. The Enhance Security option then lets only key-verified visitors send messages or chats, the right setting when past conversations hold anything sensitive. It takes custom code from your developers.

The bottom line

Beacon is worth setting up on any Help Scout plan, but the useful version starts on Standard, where live chat, Messages and up to 5 Beacons arrive. Plan the people side before the code: availability is manual, unaccepted chats close in 5 minutes, and Maximum Chats needs a deliberate value. Add Scout with a monthly cap and treat roughly 33 resolutions a month as the cost of one Standard seat billed annually. Move to Plus for more than 5 Beacons, custom fields or an unbranded widget, and to Pro only for automatic chat translations at its 10-user minimum.