Compare
HelpFalcon vs Help Scout
Keep the calm inbox and add the ticketing you have outgrown: SLA policies with business hours, forms, custom statuses, brands, skills-based routing and a Zendesk-compatible API, with your conversations and Docs imported.
Help Scout Plus
$45
per agent / month, billed annually, as of 2026-11-09
HelpFalcon Pro
$27
per agent / month, billed annually, AI copilot included
40% lower list price per agent
List prices, USD, per agent per month, billed annually. Help Scout checked 2026-11-09. helpscout.com/pricing
What a team of 20 pays
List prices on annual billing, in USD and excluding tax. Help Scout checked 2026-11-09.
| Vendor and plan | Per agent / month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Help Scout Plus | $45 | $10,800 |
| HelpFalcon Pro | $27 | $6,480 |
You keep $4,320 a year
Help Scout prices per user per month. $45 is the Plus price on annual billing; billed monthly it is $54.
As of 2026-11-09, check helpscout.com/pricing for current prices. USD, excluding tax. Full plan details.
At a glance
| Topic | Help Scout | HelpFalcon |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per user, per month | Per agent, per month; light agents free |
| Ticket model | Shared inbox (conversations) | Tickets with statuses, forms, fields and SLAs |
| Generative AI | AI Assist, Drafts and Summarize included; the Envoy add-on resolves at $0.75 per resolution | Copilot included in every paid plan (fair use) |
| Zendesk-compatible API | No | Yes, /zd/api/v2 |
| Trial | 15 days on Standard and Plus, no card; Pro by demo | 14 days of Pro, no card |
Help Scout information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: helpscout.com/pricing. Check there for current details.
Feature by feature
Every row is something a support team buys on. HelpFalcon answers the same way on every comparison page, so the pages cannot contradict each other; the Help Scout column describes what the vendor documents publicly.
| Feature | Help Scout | HelpFalcon |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets and workspace | ||
| Full ticket model: statuses, fields, forms | Partial Conversations with active, pending and closed states and custom fields; not ticket forms, custom statuses or SLA policies. | Yes Statuses grouped under New, Open, Pending, On-hold and Solved, custom statuses, custom fields, conditional ticket forms, and custom objects, approvals and ticket layouts from Pro. |
| Shared and personal views with live counts | Partial Folders and saved searches rather than views with live counts and bulk macros. | Yes Group by, column sorting, CSV export, and bulk edit, merge or macro on hundreds of tickets at once. |
| Macros, keyboard shortcuts and play mode | Partial Saved replies and workflows. We could not confirm a play-mode queue. | Yes Macros on every plan, the keyboard shortcuts and search syntax Zendesk agents already know, and play mode with agent capacity from Growth. |
| Side conversations with other teams | Not confirmed We could not confirm a side-conversation equivalent on the vendor’s public pages. | Yes Email, Slack or Microsoft Teams threads beside the ticket and out of the customer conversation. From Pro. |
| Several brands in one workspace | Partial Several mailboxes, each with its own address and Docs site, rather than a brand model across rules and forms. | Yes Each brand with its own addresses, help centre and forms: 1 on Starter, 5 on Growth, 25 on Pro, 300 on Enterprise. |
| Channels | ||
| Email on your own domain | Yes Several mailboxes on your own domain, in a calm email-like interface: ahead of us on feel. | Yes Any number of support addresses per brand, DKIM and SPF checks, quote stripping, loop and bounce protection, and a suspended queue for mail that should not become a ticket. |
| Web messenger and web forms | Yes The Beacon widget with chat, help articles and a contact form. | Yes Messenger with bot flows and verified visitors, plus embeddable contact forms. The snippet keeps the same zE() calls as the Zendesk widget. |
| WhatsApp, SMS and social messaging | Not confirmed We could not confirm WhatsApp or social messaging channels on the pages we read. | Yes WhatsApp Cloud API, SMS through Twilio or your own gateway, Facebook Messenger and page posts, Instagram DMs and comments, Telegram, Viber, LINE, WeChat and X. Message fees are passed through. |
| Voice: browser phone, menu, recordings | No No telephony channel in the product. | Yes Numbers answered in the browser, a phone menu with queues, voicemail, consent-based recording, transcripts and call summaries, or keep Aircall, 3CX or RingCentral. Newer than the rest of the product. |
| Native mobile apps and messenger SDKs | Partial Agent apps for iOS and Android; the widget runs in your own app through JavaScript rather than a native SDK. | Partial The workspace installs as an app on a phone and sends push today, and the messenger runs full screen in a web view. Native agent apps and iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter SDKs are built and waiting for store review. |
| Automation and SLAs | ||
| Triggers, automations and webhooks | Yes Workflows, manual and automatic, with conditions and actions. | Yes Zendesk-shaped conditions and actions, unlimited on paid plans, with signed webhooks, retries with backoff and a delivery log. |
| SLA policies with business hours | No No SLA policy model with business hours and holidays; workflows can escalate on elapsed time. | Yes The five standard SLA metrics with business hours and holidays from Growth, and group SLAs (OLAs) from Pro. |
| Routing: round robin, capacity, skills | Partial Assignment through workflows and teams. We could not confirm skills-based routing. | Yes Round robin and capacity rules from Growth, skills-based routing and a suggested assignee from Pro. |
| Sandbox and rule testing before go-live | Not confirmed We could not confirm a sandbox or rule simulation. | Yes A sandbox workspace, rule simulation, and configuration export and import as files you can review. From Pro. |
| AI | ||
| AI copilot in the plan price | Yes AI Assist, AI Drafts and Summarize are included in the plans. | Yes Drafts with their sources, thread summaries, two-way translation and suggested macros in every paid plan, under a fair-use allowance of 50 to 700 actions per agent and month. No per-seat add-on. |
| Autonomous AI agent | Yes The Envoy add-on resolves conversations at $0.75 per resolution, charged once per conversation, with a monthly cap you set. | Yes Answers on the messenger, email, WhatsApp and the phone menu, and hands over to a person with a summary. $0.50 per automated resolution. |
| Intent, sentiment and language as rule fields | Not confirmed We could not confirm intent and sentiment as fields that rules can use. | Yes Tagged on arrival and usable in triggers, views and reports. Personal data is redacted before anything leaves the workspace, and AI can be switched off per workspace. |
| Help centre | ||
| Help centre with articles and search | Yes Docs sites with search. | Yes On every plan, the Free plan included, with AI answers in search, article analytics and searches that found nothing. |
| Help centre per brand on your own domain | Yes A Docs site per mailbox on your own domain. | Yes help.yourcompany.com with one DNS record and an automatic certificate, your colours and forms, and a theme code editor. |
| Article translations | Not confirmed We could not confirm per-article translations. | Yes Every article in as many languages as you support, with a fallback language and per-language text blocks. |
| Customer portal and community forums | Partial Customers can see their own conversations when signed in; no community forums. | Yes Request forms and My requests with magic-link, password or the brand’s own single sign-on, plus topics, posts, votes and moderation. |
| Reporting | ||
| Dashboards and live agent activity | Yes Reports on conversations, happiness and Docs. | Yes A support-operations dashboard out of the box, shared dashboards for leads and a live agent activity view. From Growth. |
| Build your own reports | Partial Fixed report views rather than a report builder with your own metrics. | Yes Pick metrics and attributes, filter, group, drill down to the tickets behind a number, save, schedule by email and alert when a metric crosses a line. From Growth. |
| CSAT, QA scorecards and AutoQA | Yes Happiness ratings. | Yes CSAT with reason codes on every paid plan; QA scorecards, AI scoring of every conversation and workforce management from Pro. |
| Export to your data warehouse | Partial Through the API or a third-party connector. | Yes Scheduled raw-data export on Enterprise, CSV export and a full workspace export on every paid plan. |
| API and integrations | ||
| Documented REST API | Yes A documented REST API with OAuth. | Yes An OpenAPI reference with an explorer, cursor pagination and rate-limit headers, at 200 to 2,500 requests a minute depending on the plan. |
| Zendesk-compatible API for your own scripts | No Scripts written for Zendesk have to be rewritten. | Yes Tickets, users, organizations, search, uploads, incremental exports and the help centre at /zd/api/v2, with Zendesk request and response shapes. Change the base URL and the token. |
| Sidebar apps and an app framework | Partial Integrations and a sidebar app API rather than a full app framework. | Yes Apps compatible with the Zendesk App Framework run in the ticket sidebar, next to OAuth apps and a connector that shows your own customer data in the ticket. |
| Large third-party app marketplace | Partial An app directory, smaller than the suite vendors in this comparison. | Partial We have our own app framework and marketplace, but a young catalogue. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Linear, GitHub, GitLab, Shopify, Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce and calendars are built in. |
| Security and compliance | ||
| Single sign-on and user provisioning | Partial SAML single sign-on on the higher plans. | Yes Google and Microsoft sign-in on every plan, OpenID Connect from Pro, SAML and SCIM on Enterprise, and customer single sign-on per brand. |
| Two-step verification, passkeys, audit log | Partial Two-factor sign-in. We could not confirm an exportable audit log. | Yes TOTP, passkeys and security keys on every plan and enforceable per workspace; an append-only log of admin changes, sign-ins and ticket access, with export and SIEM streaming on Enterprise. |
| GDPR export, erasure, retention, own key | Yes GDPR tooling and a DPA. | Yes Per-person export and erasure with four-eyes approval, retention policies, regional redaction packs, per-workspace encryption keys and a customer-managed key on Enterprise. |
| SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report | Yes A SOC 2 report is published: ahead of us here. | No Not yet, and we will not pretend otherwise: an independent penetration test and the SOC 2 programme are planned before launch. The trust centre carries the current status. |
| Data location | ||
| EU hosting on every plan | Not confirmed We could not find an official statement on EU data hosting. | Yes Every workspace is hosted in the EU, on the Free plan too, with backups in the same region and a published subprocessor list and DPA. |
| Choice of another region | Not confirmed Not stated on the pages we read. | No EU only today. US and Africa regions are planned for Enterprise customers who need them. |
| Migration | ||
| Built-in importer from Help Scout | Not applicable Help Scout is the system you are moving from. | Yes Built in and read-only against your old account, with a volume estimate, a dry run, a resumable full import and a report of everything that needs a decision. |
| Getting your data out of Help Scout | Yes An app you create yourself reads every mailbox that user can see, and a Docs API key adds the articles. | Yes A one-click export of the whole workspace, plus the REST API and incremental exports, so the next move is never blocked by us. |
| Delta sync and parallel run until go-live | Not applicable The parallel run happens on the HelpFalcon side. | Yes Repeat syncs every few minutes while your team keeps working, then go live one group at a time with the old system read-only as a way back. |
| Plans and support | ||
| Free plan | Yes Yes, up to 5 users: more generous than our single agent. | Yes One agent, 100 tickets a month, email, web form and a help centre. No card. |
| Trial without a card | Yes 15 days on Standard and Plus without a card; Pro by demo. | Yes 14 days of Pro, then the workspace moves to the Free plan instead of locking you out. |
| No seat caps or ticket limits | Yes Per user with no ticket cap. | Yes Unlimited agents and unlimited tickets on every paid plan. Light agents are free: 5 on Starter, unlimited from Growth. |
| Support and a published uptime SLA | Not confirmed We could not confirm a published uptime SLA on the pages we read. | Yes Email support from Starter, email and chat on Pro, priority support and a named success manager on Enterprise. 99.5 % availability on Pro, 99.9 % on Enterprise. |
| Assisted migration | Not confirmed Migration help is not described in the plans we read. | Yes Free for teams over 20 agents: we plan the waves with you and watch the parallel run. |
Help Scout information from the vendor's public website, checked on 2026-11-09: helpscout.com/pricing. “Not confirmed” means we could not find a clear statement on the vendor’s public pages when we read them on 2026-11-09, not that the feature is missing. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Why teams switch from Help Scout
Help Scout is a shared-inbox style helpdesk that is simple to start with. HelpFalcon is built for teams that need a full ticketing model: SLAs, complex triggers, multiple brands, forms and a Zendesk-compatible API.
The inbox stopped being enough
The usual trigger is an SLA a customer asked for, a second brand, or a form with conditional fields. HelpFalcon has SLA policies with business hours and holidays, custom statuses, conditional forms and up to 300 brands.
Rules that can carry a process
Triggers on every update, automations on time, group SLAs, skills-based routing, approvals and side conversations with other teams, with a sandbox to try a rule before it goes live.
Reporting you can build yourself
Pick metrics and attributes, filter, group and drill down to the tickets behind a number, then schedule it by email. QA scorecards, AI scoring of every conversation and workforce management come with Pro.
A price that does not climb with the features
Everything above is on our Pro plan at $27 per agent a month on annual billing. Help Scout lists Plus at $45 and Pro at $75 per user a month on annual billing: $10,800 a year for 20 agents on Plus against $6,480 here.
Your conversations and Docs come with you
Mailboxes become groups and brands, teams become groups, users become agents, saved replies become macros, conversations become tickets with their threads, and Docs becomes your help centre.
What you keep when you move
The Help Scout importer is built in. It only reads your old account; it never changes anything there.
Comes over automatically
- Mailboxes as groups, and as brands when you have more than one
- Teams as groups and users as agents
- Customers and custom fields
- Saved replies as macros
- Conversations with their threads, as tickets
- Docs collections, categories and articles as your help centre
Rebuild by hand
- Help Scout workflows: the report lists each one to rebuild as a trigger, automation or macro
You create the app yourself under My Apps, so no new billing relationship is needed; a Docs API key adds the articles. Help Scout allows 200 requests a minute per account (400 on Plus), and the importer lets you lower the rate so your team can keep working.
Where Help Scout is strong
Help Scout may be the better fit if these matter most to you. A fair comparison says this too:
- A calm, email-like interface that small teams pick up quickly.
- Free plan for 5 users, 1 inbox and 1 Docs site: more generous than our single agent.
Help Scout list prices
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Free5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site | $0 | $0 |
| Standardper user | $25 | $30 |
| Plusper user | $45 | $54 |
| Proper user | $75 | $90 |
As of 2026-11-09, check helpscout.com/pricing for current prices. USD, excluding tax.
- Help Scout’s pricing page shows one price per plan behind a monthly/annual toggle labelled “-16%”; the annual figures above are the ones it shows by default and the monthly ones are the same prices with that discount removed. The page says nothing about tax, and we still could not find an official statement on EU data hosting.
HelpFalcon list prices
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 |
| Starter | $11 | $14 |
| Growth | $18 | $22 |
| Pro | $27 | $33 |
| Enterprise | $39 | annual only |
Per agent per month, USD, excluding tax. Full plan details.
Questions about moving from Help Scout
Is HelpFalcon not much heavier than Help Scout?
It has more in it, but the workspace is built to stay quiet: views, tabs, macros and keyboard shortcuts, with the advanced parts (forms, SLAs, routing) switched on only when an admin sets them up.
What comes over from Help Scout?
Mailboxes as groups and brands, teams as groups, users as agents, customers, custom fields, saved replies as macros, conversations with their threads as tickets, and Docs as your help centre.
What has to be rebuilt by hand?
Help Scout workflows. The dry-run report lists each one so you can rebuild it as a trigger, automation or macro.
Do we lose the simple, email-like feel?
Agents still read a thread and reply. What changes is what the system can do around it: statuses, SLAs, forms and reports. Light agents who only need to read or comment are free.
What is Help Scout still better at?
A calm, email-like interface that small teams pick up in an afternoon, a free plan for up to five users against our one agent, and a simpler setup when you do not need SLAs, forms or brands. We also could not find an official statement on EU data hosting for Help Scout, which may matter to you in either direction.
Bring your whole Zendesk history. Keep your way of working.
Import tickets, users, rules and the help centre, run both side by side, and switch when your team is ready.
Zendesk is a trademark of Zendesk, Inc. Help Scout is a trademark of its owner. HelpFalcon is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Zendesk, Inc. or any other vendor named here. Product names are used only to describe compatibility and to compare publicly available information.