Your inbox is overflowing. Customers are emailing, chatting, and searching for answers. And you’re trying to maintain overview with a regular Gmail inbox or a messy Excel file. Helpscout wants to change that by bringing customer service back to what it once was: a human conversation, without ticket numbers or complex portals.
Who is behind Helpscout?
Help Scout was founded in 2011 by Nick Francis, Jared McDaniel, and Denny Swindle. The trio saw how businesses were getting more and more customers, but losing the human touch in a forest of ticket numbers and complicated helpdesk systems. Their idea was simple: make customer service personal again by making it feel like a normal email conversation. No #2847391, just a name and a question.
The company grew from Boston and raised a total of 28 million dollars through Series B funding from investors like Foundry Group and Lead Edge Capital. Help Scout became a certified B-Corp, which means they officially commit to social and environmental goals alongside profit. Since 2020, the entire team works fully remote.
Today, more than 12,000 companies use Help Scout, including well-known names like Buffer and Basecamp. The platform primarily targets small and medium-sized businesses that take customer service seriously, but don’t need the complexity of enterprise monsters.
Who is Helpscout for?
Helpscout is built for SMBs, customer service teams, and SaaS companies that want to professionalize their support without needing an IT department for installation. If you have a growing team that’s currently struggling with a shared Gmail inbox, this is a logical next step.
Helpscout is not ideal for large enterprises with heavy ITIL requirements or complex telephony integrations. Solo freelancers also have little use for a tool that revolves around teamwork and shared inboxes. Then you’re just paying more than necessary.
What can Helpscout do?
The free version offers access to the basics of Helpscout: a shared inbox, a knowledge base, and support for up to five users. For advanced workflows, unlimited contacts, live chat, and more extensive reporting, you need a paid plan. Here’s what you get:
- Shared Inbox: All customer questions come into one shared inbox that looks like a normal mailbox. You can see who’s working on a conversation thanks to collision detection, so you don’t respond twice. You can assign, tag, and forward conversations to colleagues.
- Knowledge Base (Docs): Build a help center where customers can find answers themselves. You create articles with an editor, organize them in categories, and publish them on your own subdomain or custom domain. The design automatically adapts to your brand identity.
- Live Chat & Messaging (Beacon): Place a chat widget on your website where customers can ask questions directly. The Beacon searches your knowledge base first before opening a live conversation, which handles many standard questions.
- Workflows (Automation): Set up rules that automatically tag, assign, or move conversations based on subject, sender, or keywords. This saves a lot of manual sorting work.
- Reporting & Analytics: See how many conversations are coming in, how quickly your team responds, and which employees are the busiest. The reports are clear, but not as in-depth as enterprise tools.
- Customer Management (CRM-light): Helpscout maintains a profile of each customer with previous conversations, notes, and metadata. It’s not a full-fledged CRM, but enough to have context for each conversation.
- AI Assist: The AI can summarize conversations, rewrite responses in a different tone, or make suggestions for next steps. This is a paid add-on on top of your subscription.
Helpscout works in the browser and has mobile apps for iOS and Android. There are no desktop apps for Windows, macOS, or Linux, but the web app works fine on any screen.
What does Helpscout cost?
Helpscout offers a free plan called Free, but it’s limited to five users, one shared inbox, one docs site, and a maximum of 100 unique contacts per month. For growing teams, that quickly becomes too tight.
The Standard plan costs $ 1 per user per month with annual billing, or $ 1 per month if you pay monthly. This gives you unlimited contacts, workflows, and more mailboxes. The Plus plan costs $ 1 per user per month (annually) or $ 1 monthly, and adds live chat, advanced reporting, and multiple teams. The Pro plan costs $ 1 per user per month with annual billing and includes custom roles, SAML SSO, and priority support.
There is no lifetime deal available. However, you can try Helpscout free for 15 days without a credit card.
What should you watch out for?
Helpscout’s mobile apps regularly receive criticism. Users report crashes, slow load times, and missing features that are available in the web app. If your team works on the go a lot, that’s a serious drawback.
The reporting options are basic level. You can see the most important numbers, but if you want to dig deep into trends or build custom dashboards, you’ll quickly hit limits. Companies that work data-driven miss functionality here.
The new block editor in Docs is a step backward according to many users. The old editor was simpler and faster, while the new version feels clunky and requires more clicks for the same actions. The formatting in signatures is also limited, which is annoying if you want to maintain a clean brand identity.
The AI features sound useful, but cost extra on top of your subscription. The pricing model for that isn’t immediately clear, which causes confusion in budget planning. And while Helpscout is simpler than Zendesk, that also means you can customize less. If you need specific workflows or integrations, you’ll hit limitations faster.
Helpscout alternatives
Helpscout is not the only player in this field. Here are three alternatives you can consider:
- Zendesk: Much more complex and extensive than Helpscout, with heavy enterprise features and omnichannel telephony. Choose Zendesk if you’re a large company with strict compliance requirements and need advanced customizations.
- Front: Focuses more on collaboration in general email than purely on helpdesk. Useful if you share inboxes for sales or account management instead of just support, and you want more flexibility in how you organize conversations.
- Intercom: Stronger focus on live chat and proactive marketing, such as onboarding tours and targeted messages. Often more expensive than Helpscout, but better if chat and customer engagement are your priority over email support.
Frequently asked questions
Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions about Helpscout:
Is there a mobile app?
Yes, Helpscout has apps for both iOS and Android that let you manage conversations on the go. Keep in mind that the apps regularly show bugs and don’t contain all the features of the web app.
Can I manage multiple brands in one account?
Yes, with the Standard and Plus plans you can set up multiple mailboxes and knowledge bases for different brands. This way you keep everything separate while your team has access to everything from one environment.
Does Helpscout comply with GDPR?
Helpscout offers tools for GDPR compliance, such as deleting customer data upon request. However, the data is primarily stored in the United States via AWS, which is a consideration for some European companies.
Conclusion
Helpscout does what it promises: make customer service human without needing an IT degree. The interface is clear, setup is quick, and your team can be productive within a day. For SMB and SaaS companies looking to professionalize their support, this is a solid choice. Just watch out for the limitations in reporting and the bugs in the mobile apps. And if you’re a large company with complex requirements, take a good look first at whether Helpscout offers enough depth before you switch.
