Help Scout Review, Pricing & Features

What is Help Scout?

Help Scout is a customer support software platform with features like a shared inbox, live chat, a knowledge base, and reporting. With this kind of software, you can manage customer interactions and track problems that customers may be having.

Compared with similar companies, Help Scout is affordable and straightforward. Customers are very pleased with the tool overall. We recommend it for businesses that need to streamline their email support, provide Help Center documents for customers, and connect with customers via live chat.

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Table of Contents

• What is Help Scout?
• Help Scout Review Summary
• Help Scout Pricing & Cost
• Help Scout Key Features
  • Support Tickets & Inbox
  • Live Chat
  • Help Articles
  • Analytics
  • Integrations
• Help Scout Customer Support
• Help Scout vs. Competitors
• Is Help Scout Right For You?

Help Scout Review Summary

Help Scout was founded in 2011 by Denny Swindle, Jared McDaniel, and Nick Francis. More than 12,000 businesses across 14 countries currently use Help Scout for email and live chat customer support.

With pricing between $25 and $40 per user per month, Help Scout is fairly reasonable in terms of cost. Large competitors built for enterprises, like Zendesk, start at $49 per agent per month. However, more expensive tools also have more advanced capabilities, so keep that in mind.

Overall, Help Scout is a reliable mid-tier customer support platform that’s ideal if you are focused on email support, live chat, and Help Center documents. If you’re a small business or freelancer, Help Scout is beneficial because it’s easy to use. If you’re a larger company, however, a more sophisticated product like HappyFox or Zendesk will likely suit you better.

Help Scout Pricing & Cost

Help Scout is priced per user per month, and monthly pricing is either $25 per user per month or $40 per user per month. There’s a custom-priced plan designed for teams of more than 25 with unlimited mailboxes, unlimited document sites, and a dedicated account manager. If you sign up for a year-long plan, you’ll receive up to 20% off the monthly price.

Pricing Plans

Help Scout Key Features

Throughout this review, we’ll provide an overview of Help Scout’s features, usability, and customer service availability. Comparisons between Help Scout and similar tools will be provided throughout. We’ll also include images of Help Scout to give you a sense of what it’s like to work with the platform before you purchase it.

To learn more about how we research and rate software tools, read about SoftwarePundit’s review methodology.

Support Tickets & Inbox

The inbox is where you will manage your customer interactions. From this centralized inbox, you can see all messages, whether they’re assigned or unassigned, open or closed, and assigned to an individual agent or in the broader company inbox.

From this section, you can:

Tickets & Messages

Each new conversation can be classified as a ticket. You’ll be able to put the customer information in, assign a subject, search for Help Center documents, and write your message. You can edit the status of each ticket and assign them to individuals in your organization.

We found that this section is somewhat intuitive to use, though because it’s not quite a ticket-focused software, it’s not as easy to use as the HappyFox ticketing section.

Live Chat

Live chat, or what Help Scout calls “Beacons,” is a feature on your website that allows you to chat in real time with your customers. You can send targeted messages, attach Help Center articles so customers can help themselves, or simply send messages back and forth.

Live chat is crucial for providing instantaneous customer support.

Chat Options

With Help Scout, you can choose whether your live chat is dedicated to talking with customers, sending targeted messages, or suggesting Help Center documents. Depending on your type of business and the support teams that you have available, you can pick the option that puts the least amount of strain on your team.

Help Articles

With Help Scout, you can create support documents that serve as a self-help option for customers to learn about return policies, your customer support hours, and more. Below is what it looks like to set up the Help Articles:

One unique aspect of Help Scout that is not found in all alternatives is the “Keyword” section. You can select the main keywords in that particular Help Article, which Help Scout claims will help your articles rank higher in search results.

Analytics

Tracking your team’s effectiveness and efficiency is crucial to understanding whether or not your customer support strategy is helpful.

Along with tracking standard measures like number of conversations, number of customers, and busiest support days, you can also add tracking codes to your Docs sites via third-party tools.

Integrations

There are more than 50 integrations available to connect with Help Scout. Certain tools, like Salesforce and Jira, are only available on the Plus Plan. Other integrations include:

Help Scout Customer Support

It’s very easy to contact the Help Scout customer support team. They offer live chat on their website, which includes Help Center articles, and customers can expect responses to their inquiries within 24 hours. Customers can also contact the sales team directly.

Help Scout Alternatives & Competitors

Help Scout is similar to other help desk and ticketing software platforms, such as:

Is Help Scout Right For You?

If you’re looking for a well-priced customer support software that offers live chat and a host of integrations, Help Scout is a reliable option. The email inbox allows companies to assign messages to individuals and teams, and will help streamline the customer support process.

We found that the ticketing system was not as intuitive as it is with certain competitors like HappyFox. If streamlined ticketing is your main aim with this type of software, we recommend looking elsewhere.

If you are interested in trying Help Scout, sign up for a free trial here.