Help Scout Pricing, Features, Reviews & Comparison of Alternatives

Pros
I no longer get an email about an email that is about a forward of an email which was originally about an email that was about an email that was forwarded regarding an email that was sent. Exactly..we have all had the pleasure of deciphering the shortened email snippet, forwards and the references to email threads that are broken but with Help Scout I now see it all..and see when..and where ..and who..Yep.. order to the choas of my many "conversations". And ohhhhh sooo much data hygine..i agree a terrible phrase but such a critical thing for any serious business. This includes a robust beyond belief search and filter feature. For those who appreciate effecient shortcuts and cross refereneced data points...yep tags..and filtering by tags as well. The bane of my existence is also the best feature which is the timeline transparancy that Help Scout brings. We all know who touched what when so we can not step on toes and if we try they put in the "traffic cop" feature to prevent unprofessional duplicate customer touches. Additionally, you can use Help Scout to assign voicemails to staff individual to deal with if your voicemail service offers emailed transcription forwards. Our staff also create conversation for intra office communications all the time to document timelines and details for reference later if needed. HS has helped us track everything from maintenance service logs to customer complaints and staff schedules.

Cons
This is only a tough question and one I would suggest come first when reviewing since after listing all the things i love and enjoy it helps me block out the uglier bits and pieces.. Besides some of the android app glitches that are more annoying than crisis creating I am still hard pressed to find many cons about using HS this past 2 years. has had a "negative" impact on my work communications besides the timeline busting myself for something

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
- extremely simple to use and understand as a user - treats communications like human beings and provides a much more personal feel to communication (as opposed to making people feel like numbers) - fantastic support team that's very responsive and solution focused - solid API that allows you to bring in data from other apps so that you have a consolidated view of a client, beyond just their email history

Cons
- wish that the interface could be a little more customized for our specific needs - really don't have any downsides to it - it's a great product

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
First, Help Scout gets major brownie points for "eating their own dog food" -- they are all about the Customer Experience, and they live up to this philosophy by delivering not only a very easy to use and modern product, but answering support inquiries right away (and thoroughly), and publishing an extremely helpful and insightful industry blog. So when you buy into Help Scout, you're not just getting a great software product, but also getting a great organization running behind it. Aside from that I love how Help Scout does itself in fact deliver a great customer experience to our customers. It gets out of the way. Customers are not aware that we use it, in fact they believe they are emailing directly with me. Transactions are fast and lightweight, there are not many bells and whistles to complicate the process and slow down the support workflow. Help Scout made the hard decision to not allow custom fields on tickets, and while this at first seemed limiting, it has in fact allowed us to handle the ticket queue much more quickly, due to much lower overhead. For delivering quick and helpful email support, I can't imagine a much better way to bullseye the task than using Help Scout. We've been very satisfied with it.

Cons
The Docs section of the product is a little bit underdeveloped, but adequate. It would be nice in that area to have more cohesion the way you'd typically find in a generic content management system (e.g. Wordpress). For instance, currently it isn't possible to move an article from one collection to another -- you have to copy its contents, re-build it on the other side, and delete the original. That is my main complaint. In spite of that we have a full internal and external knowledge base hosted with the Docs feature, and it is adequate for our needs, if not exceptional.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Super easy UI. I don't have to train newbies on using Help Scout for more than 10-15 minutes. It's that simple to use. VERY customer focused. It's not about a bunch of bells and whistles that are flashy fish hooks only intended to get bought by fishermen but not actually catch fish. Their product signs for the customer and the Support rep in it 8+ hours a day.

Cons
The lack of integrations. They just rolled out with a Salesforce integration, but lack integrations in other areas. Also, they're primarily focused on email so tracking chats and calls aren't that helpful...you would need to drop that data into Redshift, Gooddata, Domo, etc. to get much functionality in it. So unless you do that, you're stuck compiling a bunch in Google Sheets. Caveat: if all you do is email and maybe chat, then this product is everything you need and more.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
They are super responsive. They are pretty rad and transparent: if something goes wrong on their end they are not afraid of admitting fault. Which leads me to trusting them because I can believe them. I know that tells you very little of the product, but as leadership that's something that I really need. Other environments—blameshifting—I cannot stand and can't trust, believe, or hope that they'll hold true to their promise. We're leaving another vendor for that reason. Their system is very responsive, quick, simple, and easy to learn. There aren't too many bells and whistles which simplifies my life when onboarding new teammates. Their docs are well written and engaging.

Cons
The vendor is great! I'd say a better or more thorough live chat & phone integration would be great. We communicate with customers via email, phone, live chat, and Twitter. It's hard when all these are fairly decentralized. Help Scout *does* have a live chat integration (which we use) and we can forward VMs to Help Scout (which is great). But if you're looking for tracking call length, live chat length, or some of the other nifty metrics in one central place, you'll need to use Excel or a Google Sheet. Or use everyone's API to feed into your own system.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10