Setting up a Help Scout shared inbox comes down to three jobs: forward your support address into a Help Scout Inbox, authenticate outgoing mail with two DKIM records, and build the folders, Views and workflows your team works from. The plan sets the ceiling. Standard costs $25 per user per month billed annually or $30 per user per month billed monthly, with 2 Inboxes, 150 workflows and one basic SLA policy. Plus costs $45 per user per month billed annually or $54 billed monthly and adds round-robin routing, custom fields, Teams and 500 workflows. Every person with a login is a billable user (see our pricing breakdown).
Choose the plan by Inboxes and automation, not seat price
An Inbox in Help Scout is one support address with its own folders, signature, auto reply, default status and default assignee; signatures belong to the Inbox, with variables that personalize them for whoever replies. Plan the Inbox list first. The count is capped by plan, and so is the automation that sorts each Inbox.
| Plan | Price per user per month | Inboxes included (max) | Workflows | SLA policies | Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 (1) | None | None | None |
| Standard | $25 billed annually / $30 billed monthly | 2 (20) | 150 basic | 1 basic, no conditions | Assign by workflow |
| Plus | $45 billed annually / $54 billed monthly | 5 (50) | 500 advanced | 2 with conditions | Round robin |
| Pro | $75 billed annually / $90 billed monthly, minimum 10 users | 10 (unlimited) | Unlimited advanced | Unlimited | Round robin or Balanced |
Extra Inboxes cost $10 per Inbox per month billed annually or $12 per Inbox per month billed monthly on paid plans [1]. That price changes the math. Five users on Standard with three extra Inboxes come to $155 a month billed annually, against $225 a month for five users on Plus, by our arithmetic; Standard with extras stays cheaper from two users up. So buy Plus for routing, custom fields and conditional SLAs, never for the Inbox count. The Free plan works as a test bench: up to 5 users and 1 Inbox, but only 100 contacts a month (logged phone conversations count), after which the team cannot reply until the next cycle, and no Views or workflows.
Step 1: get your support email flowing in
Your first Inbox gets an address on your company's helpscoutapp.com subdomain. Help Scout does not change who hosts your email: you keep your provider, forward the support address to that Inbox address, and confirm the connection with a verification code and a test email. Only Administrators and Account Owners can connect a domain address. Forwarding is the fragile part. These are the provider traps Help Scout's guides flag:
- Microsoft 365 blocks automatic external forwarding by default; an admin changes the outbound anti-spam policy. Use a redirect rule or forwarding, never both, or every email arrives twice.
- Google Workspace: once forwarding is on, replying to or editing messages in Gmail breaks the link to the conversation. A Google Group as forwarder adds an unsubscribe footer you cannot remove, so make the Help Scout address its only member.
- Zoho Mail works on paid plans; Forever Free cannot auto-forward.
- Amazon WorkMail needs a redirect rule, not a forwarding rule.
Several addresses can flow into one Inbox as aliases, which needs a custom address connected to that Inbox. With Reply as Alias, an address can be an alias on only one Inbox, and replies sent by workflows always use the main Inbox address. Web forms offer a shortcut: submissions can go straight to the Inbox address and skip forwarding delays. Add a CAPTCHA or the form provider's filter, because Help Scout's spam filter often misses spammy form-service mail.
Imports through partner Import2 start with a 100-conversation sample, so check how tags and statuses land before moving your full history.
Step 2: make replies authenticate as your domain
By default, Help Scout sends mail for your custom address through its own servers, shown as sent via helpscout.net. Since 2024 those messages pass SPF without a record on your side, but they are not DMARC-aligned through SPF. The fix is two CNAME records at your DNS host pointing to Help Scout's DKIM keys, after which outgoing mail is signed as your domain. On Cloudflare, set both to DNS only, not proxied. Help Scout does not require a DMARC policy, although Google and Yahoo require one from bulk senders.
The alternative is sending through your own provider with custom SMTP, Google OAuth or Microsoft 365 Outlook OAuth; the OAuth options keep a copy in your sent mail. Each has conditions. Google OAuth needs a full Google Workspace mailbox, and a password change breaks the connection until you re-authorize. Microsoft 365 OAuth needs a one-time admin consent in the Entra admin center. None works for the helpscoutapp.com address. Free addresses such as gmail.com cannot be connected when you send through Help Scout's servers [2]. Bounces land in Needs Attention with the receiving server's error.
Step 3: shape the conversation model your team works in
Help Scout handles conversations, not tickets. Every conversation is Active, Pending or Closed, plus Spam, and you cannot add custom statuses or ticket types; tags fill that role. Each Inbox ships with Unassigned, Mine, Assigned, Closed and Spam folders. Users see every conversation in the Inboxes they can access, and assignment cannot be restricted, so give a group its own Inbox when it must not see another group's mail.
Collaboration needs no setup. Collision Detection runs on every plan, shows who is viewing or replying, and pauses your reply if someone wrote since you loaded the page; the paused reply waits in Needs Attention. Notes never reach the customer, and an @mention pings a user or Team without assigning. Snooze and send later work on every plan, and saved replies and tags are unlimited on paid plans.
Views are the custom folders: unlimited from Standard, created by Owners and Administrators, up to 30 in each sidebar. Custom fields are Plus and Pro only, up to 10 per Inbox, and can be required before closing. Their data does not follow a conversation moved to another Inbox, so settle the Inbox map before you lean on fields. On Standard, tags carry the categorization instead.
When you migrate from another help desk, an admin can advance the Next Conversation number in company settings so new numbers continue from the old system.
Step 4: automate with workflows, routing and SLAs
Workflows are Help Scout's if/then rules: 150 basic on Standard, 500 advanced on Plus and unlimited on Pro. An automatic workflow takes up to 30 AND/OR conditions and acts only the first time a conversation matches. Order matters. Workflows run top to bottom, new ones land at the bottom, and you drag to reorder them [3]. Apply to Previous runs a rule on existing conversations, but one that would send more than 200 emails is held for support review.
Actions cover replies, notifications, notes, status, assignment, tags, moves and deletion; Assign to Team needs Teams, and Set Custom Field needs custom fields. On Standard, workflows are how work gets assigned, for example by sender domain. Routing starts on Plus with round robin in alphabetical order, and Pro adds Balanced, which picks whoever has the fewest active assignments. Routing serves the longest-waiting conversations first, only to Active teammates below their limit of up to 100.
SLAs set response and resolution targets. Standard gets one basic policy covering all conversations; Plus gets two with conditions such as company, email domain, custom field or customer property; Pro gets unlimited policies [4]. A policy applies only to conversations created after it, and the first match wins. Since June 2026, workflows can fire when a conversation nears or misses a target. Company office hours, from Standard, feed response-time reports; custom hours per Inbox need Plus.
Limits and reports to check before you scale
A shared inbox is not a mailing tool. New outbound conversations take at most 25 recipients, and Help Scout cannot be used for bulk email. Views break above 10,000 active or pending conversations in one Inbox, and a conversation locks at 100 threads. Recovery windows are short. Deleted conversations can be restored for 15 days, but conversations deleted by a workflow cannot be recovered, so test delete rules narrowly before Apply to Previous.
Help Scout notification emails are unique to one user and one conversation, so a colleague who receives a forwarded copy cannot act on it.
Reporting depth follows the plan. History runs 30 days on Free, 2 years on Standard and all-time on Plus and Pro. Report Views and CSV or XLSX exports start on Standard, but exports leave out thread contents, and custom-field reporting needs Plus. The reporting API endpoints are Plus and Pro only. Ratings feed the flow too: a workflow can reopen a conversation with a poor rating and notify the team.
Frequently asked questions
Can teammates work a Help Scout conversation from their own email?+
Yes. Replying to a notification email can add a reply or note, change assignment or status and add tags with commands such as @assign, @status and @tag; @assign to a Team needs Teams, which is on Plus and Pro.
Do rules and macros from my old help desk come across in an import?+
No. The import does not bring users, Inbox settings, saved replies or macros, workflows, custom fields, ticket types or custom statuses, so you recreate them. Imported tags become tags, Open maps to Active and Resolved maps to Closed.
Does Help Scout show ticket numbers to customers?+
Not by default: replies look like normal email and customers need no account. Help Scout support can switch on conversation IDs in the subject line on request.
Can I bring old email history into Help Scout?+
Yes. Past conversations from another help desk come in through partner Import2, and email history can be imported from a Google Workspace inbox; imports of up to 500,000 records started from Help Scout are free.
The bottom line
For an email-first team, the Help Scout shared inbox is a forwarding rule, two DNS records and a few decisions about Inboxes, folders and rules. Standard covers small teams that assign with workflows, track one basic SLA and categorize with tags. Plus earns its higher per-user price once you need round robin, custom fields, Teams or conditional SLAs, and Pro only when load-balanced routing or unlimited policies justify its 10-user minimum. Get forwarding and DKIM right first, because every later step depends on mail arriving and leaving cleanly.
- [1] Help Scout Pricing: Affordable Customer Support Software (2026-11) https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/
- [2] Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo Email Authentication Requirements (2026-11) https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1542-google-and-yahoo-email-authentication-requirements
- [3] Automatic Workflows (2026-11) https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1399-automatic-workflows
- [4] Create and Manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs) (2026-11) https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1751-create-and-manage-service-level-agreements-slas