# Help Scout Integrations: Plan Gates and Setup for Each App

> Help Scout integrations by plan: Free's single app, Salesforce and HubSpot from Plus, and setup rules for Slack, Shopify, Stripe and WhatsApp.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/help-scout-integrations — The Professional's Toolkit · updated November 2026_

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Help Scout says it connects to 100+ apps, but your plan decides which of them you can switch on. Free allows a single integration app, and the premium ones are excluded. Standard opens the directory, Slack notifications, webhooks, custom sidebar apps and the WhatsApp channel. **Plus is the first plan for the CRM and engineering apps**: Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Linear and GitHub all need Plus or Pro.[1] Phone stays outside the product. Voice reaches the Inbox only through partners, and Aircall is a paid add-on on Standard and Plus. The setup order follows from that: confirm the plan, connect channels, add the sidebar apps agents check daily, then automate the rest.


**1 app** — The Free plan's integration limit; paid plans open the directory, with CRM and engineering apps from Plus.



- **1 app** — Integration limit on the Free plan
- **Plus** — First plan for Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Linear and GitHub
- **10 retries** — Webhook retries before Help Scout discards an event


## Check what your plan unlocks before you connect anything

Most integration questions are really plan questions. The directory labels some apps as premium, and those sit behind Plus no matter how simple the connection looks. The table below lists the gates from Help Scout's plan comparison matrix, which wins over older help articles and blog posts that still describe earlier rules. Read it against your current plan before you open Settings, because an app you cannot install will simply not appear as an option for your account.

| Connection | Free | Standard | Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apps from the directory | 1 app, no premium apps | 100+ (Help Scout's figure) | 100+ | 100+ |
| Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Linear, GitHub | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Slack notifications (beta) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram channels | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SMS | No | Through an SMS integration | Native, your own Twilio account | Native, your own Twilio account |
| Aircall | No | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Preferred pricing |
| Webhooks, OAuth apps, custom apps | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API requests a minute | None | 200 | 400 | 800 |

The Free plan's one app slot is easy to waste. Choose it last, after you know which tool your agents would open most often, since a second app means a paid plan. Light users on Plus and Pro can view conversations and collaborate, but they cannot use apps, the API or the mobile app, so anyone who needs a sidebar app needs a full seat. That rule shapes headcount more than most buyers expect.

Do the sums first. Plus costs $45 per user per month billed annually or $54 per user per month billed monthly, against $25 or $30 per user per month on Standard. Every person with a login is a billable user, so the gap grows with headcount; the [pricing guide](/articles/help-scout-pricing) covers the rest. For a five-person team the step is $125 to $225 a month on annual billing, which is $1,200 more a year by our arithmetic. Plus also adds custom fields, Teams, round-robin routing, AI Drafts and AI Summarize, so the integration rarely carries the decision alone.

## Connect Salesforce, HubSpot and the engineering trackers on Plus

Salesforce has requirements on its own side. You need Sales Cloud Professional with the Web Services API add-on, or the Enterprise or Unlimited edition.[2] **The profile sync runs one way**, from Salesforce into Help Scout, matched by email address. The sidebar shows Account, Contact and Lead records with up to five data types, such as opportunities or cases. New conversations and ratings can be written to activity history, and a Visualforce component shows Help Scout conversations inside Salesforce, read-only.

HubSpot works with any HubSpot account except Marketing Hub Free. The sidebar shows contact and company properties, deals and lists, and each conversation is logged to the contact's Activity tab. You can connect only one HubSpot account. More importantly, only one CRM integration can sync and update customer profiles in Help Scout. The direction matters. If you later remove the integration from the HubSpot side, the activities it recorded there are deleted, while the contacts it created remain.


> 💡 **Let one CRM own profiles:** Only one CRM integration can sync and update customer profiles in Help Scout, so decide which system is the source of truth before you connect a second one.


The engineering apps follow the same Plus gate. Jira needs a Jira administrator to install; Jira Cloud uses a username plus API token, and Jira Server a username and password. An optional setting reopens the conversation when the linked issue reaches Done. Atlassian caps API tokens at one year, and an expired token leaves the Jira panel blank. Linear and GitHub need the Access API permission. In Linear, each agent authorizes with their own account, and issues can be filed as Customer Requests.


> 💡 **Diary the Jira token expiry:** Atlassian caps Jira Cloud API tokens at one year, and an expired token leaves the Jira panel in Help Scout blank. Set a renewal reminder when you install.


## Wire up Slack, Zapier and Make for everything else

Slack is the integration most teams add first, and it does less than people assume. The new Slack integration is in beta on Standard, Plus and Pro, connects one workspace per account, and sends notifications from Help Scout to Slack only.[3] Slack is not a support channel. You set rules that route Inboxes, event types and filters to channels, with optional threading and an @mention of the assignee. Because the mobile apps do not handle live chat, Slack is also how agents get chat alerts on a phone.

On HIPAA accounts, link unfurling in Slack is off by default and previews leave out the subject, message text and customer name. Plan your channel setup around that before a regulated team relies on Slack for triage. For teams outside healthcare, the main design choice is noise: one channel per Inbox with threading usually reads better than every event in a single feed, and assignee mentions keep ownership visible without opening Help Scout.

Zapier and Make cover apps with no native integration. Both can create contact profiles and fill contact properties. Company properties are the exception: they can only be updated through the API, not through Zapier or a Beacon identify call. MESA and viaSocket are listed as further automation options. Marketing tools need care too. Mailchimp links one account per Help Scout account and sends only the email address when you subscribe someone, so required fields in Mailchimp block the subscribe. Klaviyo tracks four Help Scout events, including closed conversations.

## Set up the commerce and billing apps

Shopify is the deepest of the store apps. Help Scout says it is a Shopify Plus Certified App Partner. The sidebar shows lifetime, annual and average order value with full order details, and agents can refund, cancel, edit, duplicate or restock a customer's recent orders without leaving the conversation. After app updates, users may need to re-authorize Shopify. Our [e-commerce guide](/articles/help-scout-for-ecommerce) covers how stores combine this with live chat and social channels in one Inbox.

WooCommerce needs a purchased third-party plugin built by OPMC before the sidebar app can connect. WordPress permalinks set to Plain do not work, and the legacy REST API must be enabled in WooCommerce. The app then shows order value figures and up to 10 recent orders, and several stores can be added as labeled accounts. Magento 2 and Magento 1.x are both supported, with the same 10-order view, though Magento 1 has been out of vendor support since June 2020.

Stripe is listed for every Help Scout plan. Installation needs a Stripe admin-level user and a Help Scout user with the Access API permission. Agents then see subscriptions, invoices and payments, and can create or cancel subscriptions and issue full or partial refunds from the sidebar. Marketplace messages from Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Etsy arrive through ChannelReply, a third-party app supported by ChannelReply; syncing its order details into custom fields needs Plus or Pro.


> ⚠ **Stripe refunds ignore Stripe roles:** Once the Stripe app is connected, every Help Scout user can issue refunds from the sidebar regardless of their own Stripe permissions.


## Route WhatsApp, SMS and phone calls into the Inbox

WhatsApp is a channel rather than an app, connected per Inbox by the Account Owner or an Administrator. You need a Meta Business Portfolio with admin access and a WhatsApp Business Platform account; the ordinary WhatsApp Business app does not work.[4] Meta's 24-hour window applies, after which only approved text-only Utility templates can be sent. Each Inbox takes one number. A number you connect stops working in the WhatsApp mobile apps.

Native SMS on Plus and Pro uses your own Twilio account: you enter the Account SID, the Auth Token and a provisioned number. Connecting the number overwrites its existing SMS webhook, and the number must not sit inside a Twilio Messaging Service. Unlike WhatsApp, one Inbox can hold several SMS numbers. On Standard, text messages come in through an integration instead; Heymarket, for example, creates a conversation for every incoming text and needs Standard or higher.

There is no native phone system. Aircall lets agents start calls from the Inbox and logs them as threads. JustCall, CloudTalk and Cordless log calls, missed calls and voicemails, and the Talkdesk integration is built and supported by Talkdesk with nothing to install in Help Scout. The Voicemail app needs no setup either: any provider that emails an MP3 or WAV file works, but the phone note lands in Unassigned without a linked customer. Telegram, LINE, X and TikTok are not supported.

## Build your own when nothing in the directory fits

Custom sidebar apps run on all paid plans. An Administrator or the Account Owner creates one under Settings, then Workspace, then Apps, with an app name, a callback URL, a secret key and the Inboxes where it should appear. Help Scout publishes a JavaScript SDK and a React UI Kit for the iframe the app runs in. Property-management teams use this route too, since there is no direct AppFolio or Yardi integration; Zapier or the API fills the gap.

Webhooks sit in the same Apps area on Standard, Plus and Pro. Your endpoint must answer with a 2xx status. A 410 response removes the webhook, and any other failure is retried up to 10 times before the event is discarded. Watch that counter. Once ten events have been discarded, the webhook is deactivated. Payloads are signed with an HMAC-SHA1 signature in a header, so verify it on receipt. The [API guide](/articles/help-scout-api) covers authentication, rate limits and the event list.


## FAQ

**Can light users work with Help Scout integrations?**

No. Light users, available on Plus and Pro, can view conversations and collaborate, but they cannot use apps, the API, the MCP connector or the mobile app.

**Can AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT read Help Scout data?**

Yes, through the Help Scout MCP server on Standard, Plus and Pro, with report tools from Plus. It is read-only, and each user connects with their own OAuth sign-in and sees only what they are allowed to see.

**How do I get Help Scout data into a data warehouse?**

The Fivetran integration, available on Standard, Plus and Pro, moves Help Scout data into warehouses such as BigQuery, Redshift or Snowflake. Census works the other way and can keep custom customer properties in sync from a warehouse.

**Can my team sign in to Help Scout with Google?**

Yes, if the account uses the Google Workspace integration, which starts on Standard and needs API access. Administrators can also require Google sign-in only.


## The bottom line

Start with the plan, not the app. Free gives one app, Standard covers Slack, webhooks, custom apps, WhatsApp and most of the directory, and Plus is the line for Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Linear, GitHub and native SMS, while Standard handles texts through an SMS integration. Phone always arrives through a partner. Plan for that. Pick one CRM to own customer profiles, check token expiry dates on Jira, limit who can refund through Stripe by limiting seats, and test webhook endpoints before you depend on them.



## Sources

[1] Help Scout Pricing: Affordable Customer Support Software — https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/ (2026-11)
[2] Connect Salesforce With Help Scout — https://docs.helpscout.com/article/700-salesforce (2026-11)
[3] Connect Slack With Help Scout to Get Notifications in Slack — https://docs.helpscout.com/article/271-connect-slack-with-help-scout-get-notifications-in-slack (2026-11)
[4] Connect WhatsApp to Help Scout to Send and Receive Messages — https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1758-connect-whatsapp-to-help-scout-to-send-and-receive-messages (2026-11)
[5] Help Scout help center — https://docs.helpscout.com/
[6] Help Scout Terms of Service — https://www.helpscout.com/company/legal/terms-of-service/
[7] Help Scout developer documentation — https://developer.helpscout.com/