Help Scout is a customer support platform built around a shared email inbox, with a knowledge base, a website widget, proactive messages and an AI agent layered on top. The Free plan costs $0 for up to 5 users, and the paid plans run from Standard at $25 per user per month billed annually ($30 billed monthly) to Pro at $75 per user per month billed annually ($90 billed monthly) [1]. Cost grows with headcount, because every login is a billable user; the full math is in our Help Scout pricing guide. Our verdict is simple. It is a strong pick for email-first teams that want support to feel like personal email, and a weaker one for phone-heavy desks or buyers who need EU-only data hosting.
What you actually get: conversations, not tickets
Help Scout PBC, a Delaware public benefit corporation founded in 2011, runs as a fully remote team. Help Scout says it powers over 12,000 customer-facing teams. The core design choice shows in every reply. Customers get what looks like a normal email, with no ticket numbers by default (support can switch on conversation IDs on request), and they never create an account. Conversations move through three statuses, Active, Pending and Closed.
The product splits into five parts. The Inbox handles email, live chat, Messenger, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp and SMS, with collision detection, assignment, notes, saved replies, Views, workflows and reports. Docs hosts knowledge-base sites. Beacon is the embeddable widget for websites and mobile apps, carrying Docs search, a contact form, live chat and the AI agent. Messages shows proactive banners, modals and surveys through Beacon. The Customer Portal, added in August 2026 on Plus and Pro, lets selected contacts sign in with an email code and see their conversations.
Know the gaps first. There is no native phone system; voice runs through integrations such as Aircall or Talkdesk, or through logged phone notes. There are no custom statuses or ticket types, no community forums and no bulk email, since a new outbound conversation takes 25 recipients at most. Telegram, X and TikTok are not supported as channels. If any of those sit at the center of your desk, the rest of this review matters less.
Every person with a login, the Account Owner too, is a billable user. On Plus and Pro, people who only view conversations and collaborate can be light users instead of full seats.
The AI layer: Scout, Copilot and Signal
Scout (formerly AI Answers) is the agent that answers customers in Beacon chat and, since October 2026, in email. Scout is billed through the Envoy add-on at $0.75 per resolution on Standard, Plus and Pro, on top of the per-user price and in arrears [2]. A resolution is one conversation Scout closes without human help, charged once however many questions the customer asks. New accounts get three months of free, unlimited resolutions, and the Account Owner or an Administrator can set a monthly cap counted in resolutions.
Scout has firm limits. It does not work on Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp or SMS, and it only answers: it cannot issue refunds or update records. It learns from Docs sites, web pages and files, and you can exclude topics that must always reach a person and test it before launch. By our arithmetic, about 33 resolutions a month cost the same as one more Standard user billed annually, and 100 resolutions a month equal one Pro user billed annually.
The agent-side tools sit in Copilot. AI Assist, which fixes spelling or changes a reply's length, tone or language, starts on Standard. AI Drafts writes reply drafts from past replies and Docs, and AI Summarize turns a long thread into bullets; both start on Plus with no usage fee. Signal adds AI Topics, a beta on Plus and Pro that groups conversations into themes. Automatic chat translations in Beacon are a Pro feature. Our AI playbook covers setup in detail.
Your data feeds the AI in layers. Help Scout's AI Transparency page says it uses OpenAI foundation models and does not send account data back to OpenAI to train the global model; its help articles add that OpenAI stores data for up to 30 days. The Terms of Service go further: Help Scout may aggregate de-identified customer data into Training Datasets for its AI offerings, and you opt out by emailing support [3]. Accounts with a signed BAA are opted out automatically.
Scout bills $0.75 per resolution in arrears once any new-account trial ends. A monthly cap counted in resolutions disables Scout at the limit, and Beacon falls back to its other contact options.
Plans and gates in brief
Prices shown are what Help Scout lists for visitors in the United States, in US dollars. Your price can differ by country, currency and local taxes such as VAT.
| Plan | Price per user per month | Users | What the plan adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Up to 5 | 1 Inbox, 1 Docs site (10 articles), 1 Beacon, 100 contacts a month, email only |
| Standard | $25 billed annually / $30 billed monthly | Up to 25 | Live chat, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Views, 150 workflows, 1 SLA policy, AI Assist, API |
| Plus | $45 billed annually / $54 billed monthly | Up to 50 | Custom fields, Teams, round robin, AI Drafts and AI Summarize, CRM and dev-tool apps, native SMS, Customer Portal |
| Pro | $75 billed annually / $90 billed monthly | Minimum 10 | Load-balanced routing, unlimited SLAs and workflows, SSO/SAML, IP restrictions, HIPAA included |
Three billing rules shape the real cost. Every person with a login, the Account Owner included, is a billable user, while customers never count. Annual billing runs about 17% below monthly on every plan, so monthly billing costs 20% more by our arithmetic. Pro starts at $750 a month billed annually because of its 10-user minimum. At the Standard cap of 25 users the bill is $625 a month billed annually, and a 26th user moves the whole team to Plus at $1,170 a month billed annually.
Light users soften the headcount math on Plus and Pro only. They can view conversations and collaborate, see reports and Docs, and build Beacons and Messages, but they cannot reply to customers, take assignments or use the mobile app. Plus includes 5 light users (up to 25) and Pro includes 15 (up to 50); extras cost $10 per light user per month billed annually or $12 billed monthly.
You can trial Standard or Plus for 15 days with every feature of that plan and no credit card; Pro trials go through sales. Refunds come only through the 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment, plans renew unless written notice is given at least 30 days before the term ends, and the plan cannot be reduced mid-term. Put the renewal date in a calendar the day you sign.
On the Free plan, once 100 contacts have had a reply in a month, the team cannot reply until the next cycle or an upgrade. Incoming email still arrives, and phone conversations logged in Help Scout count as contacts too.
Security, sign-in and the mobile apps
Help Scout holds a SOC 2 Type 2 report for Security and Availability, available on request [4]. Data is hosted on AWS in the United States, and there is no EU-only data residency option. Help Scout's help center says the service was online 99.99% of the last 12 months. That is a reported figure. It is not an SLA. The status page at status.helpscout.com sits outside Help Scout's infrastructure and lets you subscribe to incident alerts.
Healthcare needs a specific path. HIPAA is included on Pro and a paid add-on with no published price on Plus; it is not available on Free or Standard. Either way you sign Help Scout's BAA online, and AI features stay off until you also sign the AI Feature Healthcare Addendum. Docs sits outside HIPAA coverage, so knowledge-base content must stay non-sensitive, and any integration that stores patient data needs its own BAA.
Signing in works three ways. With the Google Workspace integration, available from Standard, users sign in with Google. SAML SSO with Okta, OneLogin, Azure AD or any SAML provider is included on Pro and an add-on on Standard and Plus, as are IP restrictions. Two-factor authentication works on every plan. One login quirk matters during rollout: under forced Google or SAML sign-in the Account Owner keeps a password, and new SSO users see no Inboxes until someone grants access.
The free iOS and Android apps run on every plan, Free included, on iOS 16 or later and Android 11 or later. They handle replies, notes with mentions, saved and scheduled replies, snooze, assignment and bulk updates. They do not handle live chat, reporting, Docs or settings, and light users cannot use them. Chat alerts reach a phone through Slack instead.
How we score Help Scout
Our score weighs integrations, capability, value for money, ease of use, AI, support and reliability, documentation and user sentiment, each on its own evidence. The composite lands at 3.6/5. The strengths are the email-like conversation model, plan gates that are easy to map and an AI meter you can forecast and cap. The deductions come from the missing native phone system, US-only hosting and per-user bills that jump at the 25- and 50-user caps.
Email lands in the shared Inbox on every plan, and from Standard live chat through Beacon, Messenger, Instagram DMs and WhatsApp join the same queue; Plus and Pro add a native SMS channel on the customer's own Twilio account. Around the queue sit 100+ apps on paid plans (Help Scout's figure): a Shopify app whose agents refund, cancel, edit, duplicate and restock recent orders from the sidebar, a Stripe app with refunds and cancellations, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Linear and GitHub, WooCommerce and Magento, ChannelReply for marketplace messages, Zapier and Make, and from Standard custom sidebar apps, webhooks with signed payloads and retries, the Inbox API 2.0 on OAuth 2.0 and a read-only MCP server. Held back by no native phone system (voice only through partners such as Aircall, a paid add-on on Standard and Plus, or logged phone notes), no Telegram, LINE, X or TikTok channel and no public social comments, SMS only through an integration on Standard, the CRM and issue-tracker apps gated to Plus and Pro, Free limited to 1 app with no API or webhooks, API limits of 200, 400 and 800 requests a minute on Standard, Plus and Pro (writes count as 2), and the MCP server read-only.
Conversations rather than tickets: replies read like normal email with no ticket numbers by default and customers need no account, with collision detection, notes and @mentions, saved replies, tags, snooze and send later on every plan; Standard adds Views, customer properties, 150 basic workflows, office hours, 1 basic SLA policy, custom reports and exports; Plus adds custom fields (10 per Inbox), company management, Teams, round robin routing, 500 advanced workflows, 2 SLA policies with conditions, Restricted Docs and a Customer Portal; Pro adds load-balanced routing and unlimited SLAs and workflows. Docs sites, Beacon and five types of proactive Messages (with CSAT and NPS surveys) complete the self-service side. Held back by a deliberately simple model: no custom statuses or ticket types, no community forums, no custom report builder with custom calculations, custom fields and routing only from Plus, report history of 30 days on Free and 2 years on Standard, Views that break above 10,000 active or pending conversations in an Inbox, and a ban on bulk email (25 recipients per new conversation).
A real free plan, Free $0 for up to 5 users and 100 contacts a month, and paid plans that include channels rivals sell separately: Standard $25 per user per month billed annually or $30 billed monthly (capped at 25 users, live chat, social and AI Assist included), Plus $45 billed annually or $54 billed monthly (capped at 50 users, AI Drafts and AI Summarize with no usage fee), Pro $75 billed annually or $90 billed monthly (unlimited users, minimum 10); a 15-day trial of Standard or Plus needs no card, Scout through Envoy costs $0.75 per resolution with 3 months of free resolutions for new accounts and a monthly spending cap, and the Terms give a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment. Held back by cost that grows with headcount (every login billable, the Account Owner too), monthly billing 20% dearer than annual (our arithmetic), the Free plan stopping replies at 100 contacts a month, Salesforce, HubSpot and Jira only from Plus, Pro starting at $750 a month billed annually for its 10-user minimum (our arithmetic), a 26th user moving the whole team from Standard to Plus, HIPAA (an add-on on Plus) and SSO/SAML and IP restrictions (add-ons on Standard and Plus) sold with no published price, and no refunds for partial months or unused annual payments.
The shared Inbox keeps the email model customers and agents already know (Active, Pending, Closed; no ticket numbers by default), the Free plan needs no payment method, the 15-day trial of Standard or Plus needs no card, imports of up to 500,000 records through Import2 are free with a 100-conversation sample first (Help Scout says most migrations take a few hours to a couple of days), Beacon installs with two calls per page, and free iOS and Android apps run on every plan with replies, notes, saved replies, snooze and assignment. Held back by gates spread across four plans (custom fields, routing, company properties and CRM apps on Plus, load-balanced routing and automatic translations on Pro), mobile apps without live chat, reporting or Docs management that light users cannot use, an import that leaves workflows, saved replies, custom fields and knowledge-base articles to be recreated, Restricted Docs configured only through the Docs API, and no published rule for what happens when a trial ends without a card.
Scout (formerly AI Answers) answers customers in Beacon chat and, since Oct 2026, in email, from Docs sites, public web pages, files, Google Docs and text snippets, with roles, exclusions, test mode and Resolved / Unresolved / Human escalation reports, billed through Envoy at $0.75 per resolution on Standard, Plus and Pro with a monthly cap; AI Assist (six rewriting actions) comes from Standard, AI Drafts and AI Summarize from Plus with no usage fee, AI Topics (beta) on Plus and Pro, automatic translations in Beacon chat on Pro, and the Envoy add-on can also bill the customer's own agent connected through the MCP or API. Help Scout's AI Transparency page says it uses OpenAI foundation models and does not send account data back to train the global model. Held back by Scout taking no actions (no refunds, order edits or record updates) and not working on Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp or SMS, AI Summarize output in English only and on the web app only, Copilot questions and Signal sentiment still marked Coming Soon, the Terms allowing de-identified customer data in Training Datasets unless the customer opts out by email, OpenAI storing data up to 30 days, and AI switched off in HIPAA accounts until the AI Feature Healthcare Addendum is signed.
A SOC 2 Type 2 report (Security and Availability) on request, an annual independent penetration test, HIPAA with a BAA signed online (included on Pro, a paid add-on on Plus), 2FA on every plan, SAML SSO with Okta, OneLogin and Azure AD, a DPA built into the Terms with EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework certification, a public status page hosted outside Help Scout's infrastructure (Help Scout's help center says it was online 99.99% of the last 12 months), email support 24/6 for every plan with priority on Plus and Pro, and weekly live classes. Held back by no uptime commitment in the Terms, hosting on AWS in the United States with no EU-only data residency, no custom DPAs or BAA changes, Docs not HIPAA compliant, SSO/SAML and IP restrictions as add-ons on Standard and Plus, automatic renewal unless written notice is given at least 30 days before expiry, no mid-term plan reduction, and a cancelled account restorable only on written request within 14 days.
A pricing page with a plan matrix whose row labels carry user caps, the Pro minimum and add-on prices, a help center with dated articles covering billing, legacy plans, AI resolutions and HIPAA, developer documentation for the Inbox API 2.0, webhooks, the Chat API, the Docs API, Beacon and the mobile SDKs with rate-limit headers and a changelog, an updates feed, an llms.txt summary, an AI Transparency page, Terms, DPA, BAA and security pages, and weekly live classes. Held back by pages not updated that buyers will meet: help articles tying AI Assist, HIPAA, SSO and IP restrictions to Pro or to Plus and Pro, an SMS article and channels blog giving SMS to all paid plans, a Free-plan article listing Messenger and Instagram, compare pages with older AI and SLA gates, blogs promising unlimited users or a Scout trial for all customers, an llms.txt rate limit from the legacy Mailbox API 1.0, and help written for legacy contact-based plans that buyers of today's per-user plans can mistake for current.
G2 4.4 from 431 reviews and Capterra 4.6 from 226 (both as indexed by Google); App Store US 4.25 from 332 and Google Play 3.5 from 388 rate the Help Scout mobile app, not the web help desk; Trustpilot 3.0 from 40 is a small sample and reads as a map of complaint themes. Gartner Peer Insights (1 review) is below our 30-review floor and left out. Axis score 4.1: the mean of each platform's displayed rating with at least 30 reviews, app stores included, weighted by review count (1,417 reviews; computed 4.111, rounded down to one decimal).
Weighted across the axes above (weights reflect what actually drives the decision in this category). How we score →
Read each source differently. G2 and Capterra collect reviews from business users of the web help desk, and their scores sit close together. The App Store and Google Play scores rate the mobile agent app, not the help desk itself, and the Google Play listing trails the App Store one. Trustpilot has a small sample, which we read as a map of complaint themes rather than a trend. Gartner Peer Insights holds a single review, below our floor, so we leave it out.
Who should pick Help Scout, and who should not
Help Scout's own pages name its fits: growing SaaS and ecommerce companies, property management and professional services firms, and businesses of 100 to 500 employees focused on long-term customer relationships. Its blog positions it for gradual AI adoption rather than replacing a support team, and says it is not a fit for industry-specific needs such as scheduling or invoicing. Our read agrees on email-first teams. If most of your support is email plus chat and you want replies that feel personal, Standard and Plus cover a lot of ground.
Look elsewhere in four cases. Phone-heavy desks will route every call through a third-party integration. Teams that need EU-only hosting have no option here. Desks built on custom statuses, ticket types or forums will hit missing features. And a team just over 25 or 50 users pays the step-up for everyone. Our Help Scout alternatives guide compares Freshdesk, Zendesk, Gorgias and Zoho Desk on these points, including Gorgias's per-account pricing by ticket volume.
Frequently asked questions
Do customers count as users in Help Scout?+
No. Only people with a login are billable users; customers never log in, and paid plans have no limit on contacts or stored customers. The Free plan caps contacts at 100 a month.
Can I get my data out if I leave Help Scout?+
In-app exports cover only some reports, as CSV or XLSX without thread contents; conversations, customers and Docs articles come out through the Inbox API and Docs API. Cancellation is immediate, and Help Scout can restore a cancelled account only on written request within 14 days, so export first.
Does Help Scout offer discounts for non-profits or startups?+
Help Scout for Good gives non-profits and B Corporations a 10% lifetime discount with proof of status, and some cause-based organizations can apply for up to 100% off. A startup program gives incorporated tech startups under two years old and under $1 million ARR six months free.
Does Help Scout have an API?+
Yes. The Inbox API 2.0 is available from Standard with 200, 400 or 800 requests a minute on Standard, Plus and Pro, and reporting endpoints start on Plus. There is also a Docs API and a read-only MCP server for AI tools.
The bottom line
Help Scout does one thing very well: it keeps customer support feeling like personal email while adding chat, a knowledge base and a metered AI agent around it. The per-user plans are clear, the gates are easy to map, and the Free plan lets a small team start without a card. The trade-offs are just as clear. There is no native phone, hosting stays in the US, and bills jump at the 25- and 50-user caps. Pick it if email is the heart of your support and you want AI you can switch on gradually; our score reflects exactly that fit.
- [1] Help Scout Pricing: Affordable Customer Support Software (2026-11) https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/
- [2] Help Scout help: AI Resolutions Pricing (2026-11) https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1746-ai-resolutions-pricing
- [3] Terms of Service (2026-11) https://www.helpscout.com/company/legal/terms-of-service/
- [4] Security (2026-11) https://www.helpscout.com/company/legal/security/