Help Scout fits an online store that answers by email, live chat and social DMs, and wants order actions inside the conversation. Its Shopify app lets agents refund, cancel, edit, duplicate and restock recent orders. Live chat, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp start on Standard at $25 per user per month billed annually, or $30 per user per month billed monthly. The bill follows headcount, not tickets. Skip it if phone leads. Every login is a billable user, the Account Owner included, and annual billing is about 17% cheaper by our arithmetic; see our Help Scout pricing guide.
One inbox for email, chat and DMs
Help Scout forwards the addresses you already use, such as support@ or returns@, into a shared Inbox. Replies leave from that same address with no ticket numbers by default; support can switch on conversation IDs on request. Customers never need an account. Help Scout's ecommerce page says Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp messages land beside email and live chat, and each reply reaches the customer on the platform they used. The Free plan is email only. Its outgoing emails carry a Help Scout footer that cannot be removed.
Meta's rules come along. Instagram and Messenger cover DMs only, never public comments on your posts. A conversation expires after 7 days without a customer reply, and replies sent from the native Meta apps do not sync back. WhatsApp needs a WhatsApp Business Platform account and a Meta Business Portfolio. After a 24-hour window you can send only approved Utility templates. The connected number also stops working in the WhatsApp mobile apps. TikTok and X are not supported.
| Store job | Lowest Help Scout plan |
|---|---|
| Email from your existing address | Free (100 contacts a month) |
| Live chat, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp | Standard |
| Workflows that tag, move and assign | Standard (150 workflows) |
| Order-number custom fields | Plus |
| Teams and round-robin routing | Plus |
| Native SMS through your own Twilio account | Plus |
| Load-balanced routing, automatic chat translation | Pro |
Live chat runs through Beacon, the site widget, and appears only while a teammate is available. Otherwise Beacon offers email. An unaccepted chat closes after 5 minutes and drops into Unassigned as an email transcript. The mobile app handles no live chat at all. A team answering chat from the stockroom needs a laptop nearby. Texting on the lowest paid tier runs through an SMS integration rather than the native channel.
Orders without leaving the conversation
The Shopify app is why most stores look. The sidebar shows lifetime value, annual value, average order value and full order details, and agents can refund, cancel, edit or duplicate a customer's most recent orders [1]. Restocking sits in the same panel. Help Scout says it is a member of the Shopify Plus Certified App Partners program, and its ecommerce page says 1,300+ ecommerce teams trust it. Help Scout's customer pages name Tuft & Needle, Mukama and Threadless among its ecommerce users.
Other platforms get lighter treatment. WooCommerce needs a purchased third-party plugin built by OPMC (Help Scout's pages list it at $8.25, a charge outside Help Scout) and the legacy REST API switched on; the sidebar then shows up to 10 recent orders. Magento 2 and 1.x also show the 10 most recent orders, though 1.x has been out of vendor support since June 2020. BigCommerce, Stripe and Klaviyo are named too. Klaviyo receives Help Scout events such as a closed conversation or a received reply.
Marketplace sellers need ChannelReply, a third-party integration that ChannelReply supports. It brings Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Back Market and Newegg messages into Help Scout with order data beside each conversation [2]. Replies to Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Newegg shoppers travel back through marketplace messaging. Etsy differs. It accepts no external replies, so most answers go to the buyer's email address. Syncing ChannelReply order details into custom fields requires Plus or Pro.
Returns, refunds and the order-status pile
Help Scout's blog describes ecommerce support as predictable questions at high volume and low complexity. Workflows carry that load: 150 on Standard, 500 on Plus, unlimited on Pro. They run automatically or as one-click manual actions, and they can tag returns, move a conversation to another Inbox or assign it by a subject keyword such as refund. Assigning to a Team needs Plus. Statuses stay fixed at Active, Pending and Closed. An awaiting-return stage lives in a tag.
Help Scout's ecommerce guide draws a useful line. Custom fields track something on every conversation, such as order number or return reason; tags group conversations for reporting on refunds, shipping and fulfillment. Custom fields start on Plus, up to 10 per Inbox, and one can be required before closing. Separate Inboxes suit split work, such as wholesale against consumer orders. Standard includes 2 Inboxes and Plus includes 5; an extra Inbox costs $10 per Inbox per month billed annually, or $12 billed monthly.
Help Scout's ecommerce guide puts order number and return reason in custom fields (Plus and Pro, up to 10 per Inbox) and keeps tags for refund and shipping reporting.
Warehouse staff rarely need full seats. Light users exist only on Plus and Pro: Plus includes 5 (up to 25) and Pro includes 15 (up to 50). They view conversations and collaborate, but cannot reply to customers or be assigned. Extra light users cost $10 per light user per month billed annually, or $12 billed monthly. Help Scout's customer story on The New Wheel says the store has used Help Scout since 2016 with 24 teammates, four Inboxes, two Beacons and a Docs site.
Answering before they ask: Beacon, Docs, Scout and Messages
Beacon can sit on storefront pages, the shipping policy or checkout, surfacing help articles or letting customers ask the AI. Help Scout publishes Beacon install guides for Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and WordPress. Docs holds the answers: product specs, sizing guides, manuals. Free allows 10 articles; paid plans are unlimited. Removing Help Scout branding from Beacon needs Plus. Help Scout's customer story on Mabel's Labels says knowledge base visits rose 122% in two years while email volume fell 58%.
Scout (formerly AI Answers) answers from your Docs, public web pages and files, in Beacon chat and, since October 2026, in email. It skips Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and SMS. It cannot refund orders. Scout is billed through the Envoy add-on at $0.75 per resolution on top of the per-user price, monthly in arrears, on Standard, Plus and Pro [3]. New accounts get 3 months of free resolutions, counted from the day the account is created. By our arithmetic, 500 resolutions a month come to $375, and fewer than about 33 cost less than one Standard seat at $25 per user per month billed annually. Help Scout's ecommerce page claims a 73% average AI resolution rate.
Scout's monthly spending cap is counted in resolutions; at the cap Scout switches off until the next cycle and Beacon falls back to its other contact options.
Messages are the proactive side: banners, modals and surveys shown through Beacon on Standard and up. Help Scout suggests them for shipping delays, newly stocked items and holiday hours. Each month includes 2,000 unique viewers, and 2,001 to 4,000 viewers adds $20 a month, billed in arrears. A viewer is one Beacon device a month. Sale weekends cross that line fast. Budget for it.
Per user or per ticket: weighing Help Scout against Gorgias
Gorgias is the catalog rival built for stores. It charges per account by billable tickets a month, not per user: Basic costs $50 a month billed annually or $60 billed monthly for 300 tickets, and its Pro tier $300 billed annually or $360 monthly for 2,000, with overage at $0.40 or $0.36 per ticket. Its AI Agent is a per-account add-on whose resolutions also count as tickets. AI Agent and order management need a Shopify store.
By our arithmetic, Help Scout Standard and Gorgias Basic cost the same at two users on either billing term ($50 billed annually, $60 monthly). From a third user, Help Scout costs more while the store's volume stays under 300 tickets a month. Against the Gorgias 2,000-ticket tier, Help Scout Standard stays cheaper through 11 users and ties at 12, again on both terms.
At the small end, Gorgias Starter costs $10 a month for the whole account, billed monthly only, with 50 tickets and up to 3 user seats. By our arithmetic that undercuts even one Help Scout Standard seat ($25 billed annually) while the store's volume stays under 50 tickets a month. Features differ, though. Gorgias offers a 7-day trial and no free plan; Help Scout has a Free plan and a 15-day trial of Standard or Plus, both without a card. See our Gorgias alternatives guide.
A new outbound conversation takes at most 25 recipients, and Help Scout's rules bar bulk email, so delay notices to many buyers need another channel.
Where a store should look elsewhere
Phone is the real gap. Help Scout has no native phone system; voice comes through integrations such as Aircall, a paid add-on on Standard and Plus with no published price. Bulk sends are out too. A new outbound conversation takes at most 25 recipients, and Help Scout cannot be used for bulk email, so a shipping-delay notice belongs in Messages. Customer data sits on AWS in the United States, with no EU-only residency. Merki Market's story says it cut response times by 87%.
With the Stripe app connected, every Help Scout user can issue refunds from the sidebar regardless of their permissions in Stripe.
Frequently asked questions
Can a store move its old support history into Help Scout?+
Yes, through the partner Import2, from Zendesk, Freshdesk, Gorgias, Gmail, Outlook and others, with a 100-conversation sample first. Zendesk stopped issuing new API tokens on 27 Oct 2026 and all its Support API tokens stop on 30 Apr 2027, so a store leaving Zendesk should confirm the import method with Help Scout first. Imports up to 500,000 records started from Help Scout are free; Help Scout says most migrations take a few hours to a couple of days.
What happens when a Free-plan store reaches 100 contacts in a month?+
The team cannot reply by email or other channels until the next monthly cycle or an upgrade, though incoming email still arrives. Phone conversations logged in Help Scout also count toward the 100 contacts.
Can warehouse staff on light-user seats use the mobile app?+
No. Light users, available on Plus and Pro, cannot use the mobile app, reply to customers or use the API; they work in the web app to view conversations and collaborate.
Is customer data stored in the EU for European shoppers?+
No. Help Scout hosts on AWS in the United States and offers no EU-only data residency; EU transfers rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework with Standard Contractual Clauses as a fallback.
The bottom line
Help Scout suits a small, steady store team whose support is email, chat and DMs, with Shopify order actions beside every conversation. Standard covers chat, social and basic workflows. Plus adds order-number fields, Teams and seats for warehouse viewers. Headcount sets the price, so peak seasons cost more through seats for seasonal staff, billed pro rata, plus Scout resolutions and Messages viewers. On an annual plan, the plan cannot be reduced mid-term. Refunds come only under the 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment. Phone-led stores and teams wanting an AI agent that acts on orders should compare first.
- [1] Connect Shopify With Help Scout to View and Work With Orders in the Sidebar (2026-11) https://docs.helpscout.com/article/294-shopify
- [2] Connect ChannelReply With Help Scout for eBay, Amazon, Shopify, and Walmart Support (2026-11) https://docs.helpscout.com/article/663-connect-channelreply-with-help-scout-ebay-amazon-shopify-and-walmart-support
- [3] Help Scout Pricing: Affordable Customer Support Software (2026-11) https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/