Help Scout is cool. If you want an affordable customer service platform offering shared inbox, live chat, and Docs, it might be the one for you.
But even great solutions like Zendesk and Freshdesk don’t fit every business. Some teams need smaller software with a few essential features. Some require a dedicated ticketing system that can help their online business grow. Some expect to find a not-too-expensive all-in-one platform.
Help Scout alternatives also exist across the whole Internet. The right solution for your business is still out there; you just need to go find it.
In this post, I’ll give 10 Help Scout alternatives to make your searching process easier. I highly recommend you carefully go through the list, do some research, and try each of them. This way, you’ll be sure to choose the tool that best suits your needs.
Ready? Let’s jump in.
1. Gorgias
Pricing: Start from $50 per 350 tickets per month, billed annually.
Free trial: 7 days. No credit card required.
Best suit for: Ecommerce businesses.
What makes Gorgias better than Help Scout:
- Ease of use: Gorgias aims to simplify your customer support workflow. You’ll never lose an email or misplace contact information. Easy for both end-users and help desk agents.
- Feature-rich ticket management: Search, assign, reply, and resolve tickets. Add tags to manage your tickets with ease.
- Multi-channel support: Phone, SMS, live chat, email, social media (Facebook Messenger, Instagram, etc.).
- Powerful automation: Play with macros, automation rules, customer sentiments, tags. You don’t need to waste a lot of time doing repetitive tasks anymore.
- Affordable pricing plans: Our plans are consistent with the size of your store.
- Mobile app: Besides a web app, Gorgias is available on Google Play and Apple App Store. Your team can answer tickets on the go.
- Ecommerce-focused integrations: Shopify, Magento, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, Yotpo, Smile.io, to name a few. No nonsense integrations.
2. Zendesk
Pricing: Start from $5 per agent per month.
Free trial: 14 days. No credit card required.
Best suit for: Large teams and enterprise.
What makes Zendesk better than Help Scout:
- Powerful reports with custom metrics and flexible data visualizations.
- Access to over 1,000 integrations and apps.
- Engage with customers from messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, Facebook Messenger, and more.
- Support customers through voice and SMS with Zendesk Talk.
- An all-in-one platform for customer relationship management (CRM) and lead generation
3. Freshdesk
Pricing: Start from $15 per agent per month. A free plan available.
Free trial: A 21-day free trial for paid plans. No credit card required.
Best suit for: Small and medium businesses, SaaS startups.
What makes Freshdesk better than Help Scout:
- Support customers via multiple channels like email, phone, chat, and social media—all in a single unified database.
- Automate routine tasks like routing tickets to the right agents and set up preset responses to handle tickets fasters.
- Create in-depth help content to give customers a better self-service experience.
- Track and measure team performance to make data-driven decisions.
- Connect with other Freshworks’ products like Freshservice, Freshsales, Freshcaller, or Freshchat to streamline workflows.
4. Intercom
Pricing: Start from $39 per month.
Free trial: 14 days. Credit card required.
Best suit for: Large teams, enterprises.
What makes Intercom better than Help Scout:
- Answer customer questions through a collaborative and customizable inbox.
- Onboard and support customers on the website and mobile apps with outbound messages.
- Onboard customers and introduce new features with product tours.
- Create a custom bot to qualify leads, support inquiries, and more.
- Create a resolution bot to automatically resolve simple issues.
5. Kayako
Pricing: Start from $15 per agent per month.
Free trial: 14 days. No credit card required.
Best suit for: Small and medium businesses, SaaS startups.
What makes Kayako better than Help Scout:
- Include more than 500 integrations.
- Support customers through Facebook and Twitter.
- Measure customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
- Use dashboards to track your team’s KPIs and optimize operations.
- Connect with team members across departments to quickly and efficiently resolve customer issues.
- Determine goals for each metric to ensure Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met.
6. HappyFox
Pricing: Not available.
Best suit for: Small and medium businesses, SaaS startups.
What makes HappyFox better than Help Scout:
- Convert Facebook messages into tickets within the app.
- Provide voice support with calls, transcripts, and recordings.
- Create personalized support centers for multiple brands.
- Create a multi-lingual knowledge base to support customers globally.
- Clone, relate, merge, or split tickets to manage complex issues.
7. LiveAgent
Pricing: Start from $15 per agent per month. A free plan available.
Free trial: 14 days. No credit card required.
Best suit for: Small and medium businesses, SaaS startups.
What makes LiveAgent better than Help Scout:
- Offer more than 175 help desk features at a more affordable price.
- Support customers across email, live chat, phone, social media, and customer portal.
- Provide unlimited mailboxes, automation, rules, and chat buttons.
- Offer 43 different language translations to make customer support easier.
8. Zoho Desk
Pricing: Start from $15 per agent per month. A free plan available (3 agents).
Free trial: 15 days. No credit card required.
Best suit for: Small and medium businesses, SaaS startups.
What makes Zoho Desk better than Help Scout:
- Provide multi-channel support, i.e., email, chat, phone, social media, and more.
- Automate repetitive activities with ticket assignment, notification rules, SLAs and escalations, workflows, and blueprint.
- Support GDPR compliance.
- Create and use templates for ticket forms, emails, and notifications.
- Offer custom roles, multi-branding, ticket peek, priority-based ticket views, and more.
9. Crisp
Pricing: Start from $25 per website (4 seats) per month. A free plan available (2 seats).
Free trial: 14 days. No credit card required.
Best suit for: Small and medium businesses, SaaS startups.
What makes Crisp better than Help Scout:
Support a free plan for 2 seats.
Run automated, multi-channel marketing campaigns to convert or upsell customers.
Centralize emails, SMS, live chat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, or WhatsApp inside one inbox.
Provide desktop app, message sneak-peek, video and audio calls.
10. Missive
Pricing: Start from $10 per member per month. A free plan available.
Best suit for: Small and medium businesses, SaaS startups.
What makes Missive better than Help Scout:
- Assign conversations to a specific team or multiple members.
- Several support channels, including email, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook Messenger).
- Automate workflows with rules.
- Unassign a chat.
- Compose emails and get feedback in real-time.
- Chat inside emails.
- Create to-dos and assign them to other team members.
- Add tasks, links, and media files to chat.
- Support native apps for Mac and Windows as well as mobile apps for Android and iOS.
It’s time for you to make a decision!
At the end of the day, you’re the person who knows which app is the right choice for your business.
Whatever you decide, we wish you and your business the best!
Note: Join our buyout program to get full access to Gorgias at no cost and prepare for your most profitable BFCM ever.
