Helplyvs.Help Scout

A generalist helpdesk with AI bolted on vs. an AI-native platform built for B2B

Help Scout is a generalist helpdesk that serves education, healthcare, ecommerce, real estate, and a dozen other verticals, charging $25–$75 per seat per month plus $0.75 for every AI resolution.

Helply was built AI-first for B2B companies that sell software, so its AI runs on account context (CRM, billing, product usage) and works each ticket for the churn, upsell, and competitor signals a B2B thread carries, not just deflection. One price covers all of it: $1 per ticket, with unlimited seats and unlimited AI included.

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Helply vs. Help Scout at a glance

Capability	HelplyBest fit	Help Scout
Price	$1 per ticket, everything included	$25–$75/user/mo (annual); Free plan capped at 5 users and 100 contacts/mo
Seat caps	None. Unlimited.	Standard: 25 users. Plus: 50 users. Pro: min 10, unlimited.
Pricing model	Per ticket. Seats and AI included.	Per seat + $0.75/AI resolution + add-on fees for inboxes, Docs sites, SSO
AI resolutions	Included, unlimited	$0.75/resolution
AI drafts	Included, unlimited	Plus ($45/user/mo) and above only
Slack Connect	Yes, first-class, all plans	Not available as a support channel
Microsoft Teams	Yes, first-class, all plans	Not available as a support channel
Discord	Yes, first-class, all plans	Not available as a support channel
WhatsApp	Yes, all plans	Plus ($45/user/mo) and above only
SMS	Yes, first-class	Via third-party integration only
Account context (CRM, Stripe, Gong)	Loaded by default into every ticket	Sidebar integrations on Plus+; not fed into AI
AI training sources	Tickets, KB, CRM, billing, product usage, Gong	Knowledge base and external URLs only (not past tickets)
Churn Detection	Included	Not available
Upsell Opportunities	Included	Not available
Competitor Monitoring	Included	Not available
Feature Flags	Included	Not available
Article Creation	Included, automatic	Not available
Support Intelligence (ask anything)	Included	Not available
ROI / Profit Center dashboard	Yes	Not available
B2B channels (Slack, Teams, Discord)	All included	None available
SLAs	All plans	1 basic policy (Standard); 2 advanced (Plus); unlimited (Pro)
Knowledge base	Included, all plans	Limited sites per tier; additional sites $20/mo each
SSO/SAML	Enterprise tier	Add-on (Plus); included (Pro)
Contract	Annual, sized to ticket volume, no seat math	Annual billing for discount; upgrade forced at seat thresholds

Where Helply and Help Scout differ

Helply was built for B2B. Help Scout is Built for SMB volume

Help Scout serves education, healthcare, ecommerce, real estate, property management, logistics, manufacturing, financial services, and professional services. That breadth means every default is a compromise: the AI trains on knowledge base articles and external URLs, not on the ticket history, CRM data, or billing context that B2B teams need. There is no account command center, no native Stripe or Gong enrichment, and no revenue intelligence layer.

Helply starts from a different premise: B2B support is a different problem. Lower volume, higher stakes, known accounts. Every ticket is a window into the health of a paying customer. The AI trains on your tickets, your knowledge base, your CRM, your billing data, and your product usage signals. The first draft of every reply already knows the customer's ARR, renewal date, open invoices, and recent product activity.

The channels B2B teams actually use

Help Scout supports email, live chat, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp (Plus tier and above). It does not offer Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, or Discord as support channels. The Slack integration is limited to one-way notifications.

Helply ships every channel a B2B team needs: Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, Discord, email, live chat, in-app chat, WhatsApp, SMS, a customer portal, and API/webhooks. Every channel feeds the same context layer and gets the same AI coverage. All of them are included in the per-ticket price.

Account context that powers every response

Help Scout shows customer profiles and conversation history in a sidebar. On Plus and above, you can pull Salesforce or HubSpot data into that sidebar via integrations. But that context lives in the sidebar, not in the AI. Help Scout's AI Answers trains only on Docs sites and external URLs.

Helply loads the full account picture into every AI action by default: CRM data (Salesforce, HubSpot), billing (Stripe), product usage (Mixpanel), conversation history (Gong), and engineering tools (Linear). The AI uses all of it when drafting replies, flagging risk, and surfacing signals. Context is what makes the AI performant, and it is what turns a support conversation into account intelligence.

AI from the KB vs. AI on the account

Help Scout's AI reads your knowledge base. That works when every conversation is the same shape. For B2B, where a $40K renewal sits next to a password reset, the AI needs to see plan, ARR, and renewal date before it routes the ticket.

Helply's AI runs on account context loaded by default (CRM, Stripe, Gong, product usage), so it actually performs on hard B2B threads.

The throughline: Help Scout is a friendly shared inbox for SMB and lifestyle businesses; Helply is AI-native and built for B2B software, so a ticket is not just closed.

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Helply vs. Help Scout pricing: the per-seat inbox vs. one price per ticket

Scenario: a B2B SaaS company with 12 support agents, 30 people who need platform access (agents plus AEs, CSMs, PMs, engineers), and 1,500 tickets/month.

Line item	Help Scout (Plus)	Helply
Tickets (1,500/mo)	No per-ticket price; you pay per seat and per resolution	1,500 × $1 = $1,500
Platform / seats (30 people)	30 users × $45/mo = $1,350/mo	$0 (unlimited seats)
AI resolutions (~500/mo)	500 × $0.75 = $375/mo	Included
AI drafts, revenue signals, feature flags, auto articles	Drafts included on Plus; the rest not available	Included
Additional inbox (1 extra)	$10/mo	$0 (included)
Monthly total	$1,735	$1,500
Annual total	$20,820	$18,000
Annual savings	—	$2,820 back to the business

The math gets worse for Help Scout as you scale. Every teammate who needs to see the inbox, engineers, AEs, CSMs, PMs, is another $45/month seat, and when your 26th user joins Standard, Help Scout forces an upgrade from $25/user to $45/user overnight. On Helply, seat 30 costs the same as seat 1: $0.

At this workload Help Scout works out to $1.16 per ticket for an inbox plus KB-trained answers. Helply is $1 per ticket, and the price includes capabilities Help Scout does not sell at any price: churn detection, upsell signals, competitor monitoring, automated article creation, and a Support Intelligence layer that lets anyone query across every ticket, account, and data source.

Estimate your cost on Helply's calculator →

No seat fees vs. the per-seat inbox

$0 per seat

Help Scout Plus costs a 12-person team roughly $996 per month in seat fees, and every additional teammate you invite adds up to $83 more. Helply charges $0 per seat, forever: the whole company works in the platform and the bill never moves with headcount, only with ticket volume.

The per-seat tax compounds

Help Scout's pricing is friendlier than Zendesk's, but it still scales with headcount. Standard is $50/agent/mo, Plus is $83/agent/mo, Pro is $113/agent/mo. The friendliest inbox in software still bills you for every engineer, product manager, and CSM you give access to. Helply gives unlimited seats to the whole company at $0.

AI that reads the KB vs. AI that reads the customer

AI Answers is a clean KB summariser priced at $0.25 per answer. Helply's $1 ticket price includes end-to-end resolution with full account context (ARR, plan, renewal, billing, product usage, Gong calls), plus the revenue and product signals Help Scout doesn't offer at all. A $0.25 answer and a worked ticket are not the same unit of work.

The AI work included in every ticket, and what Help Scout does not sell

Help Scout offers AI Answers from your knowledge base. Helply's $1 ticket price includes full end-to-end resolution with action against billing, CRM, and product systems, plus four categories Help Scout doesn't ship at all.

Ticket resolution

Resolutions & Drafts

Included

Every ticket the AI closes (with action against Stripe, plan, KB) or drafts a reply for.

Help Scout: AI Answers at $0.25 each, KB-based only. Drafts bundled into Plus, no action against billing or CRM.

Revenue intelligence

Upsell, Churn, Competitor

Included

Every ticket scanned for buying signals, churn-risk language, and competitor mentions. Signals route automatically to CSM and AE the same day.

Help Scout: not available. The inbox surfaces no churn risk, no upsell intent, no competitor monitoring.

Product intelligence

Feature Flags & KB gaps

Included

Feature requests detected, structured, and weighted by ARR. Knowledge base gaps identified automatically.

Help Scout: does not offer either capability natively.

Knowledge base

Article Creation

Included

Articles drafted from recurring ticket patterns and from the AI Recorder. The help center writes itself over time.

Help Scout: manual article creation only. Charges $20/mo for each additional Docs site.

Built for B2B companies that sell software

Helply is purpose-built for technical B2B companies that sell software: B2B SaaS (horizontal and vertical), AI-native and AI-infrastructure platforms, dev tools and developer infrastructure, data platforms, API-first and embedded platforms, HR tech and workforce platforms, DevOps and security tooling. The sweet spot is $1M to $50M ARR, up to 100 agents, up to 15,000 tickets per month. No services, agencies, or marketplaces.

Every default assumes you sell software to other businesses. Account context loads CRM data, Stripe billing, Gong call history, and product usage from the first word of every ticket. Revenue signals scan for churn risk cross-referenced with renewal dates. Feature requests are weighted by account ARR. The entire system thinks in accounts, not individual contacts.

Help Scout is built for SMB, e-commerce, and lifestyle businesses where conversations are customer-to-individual and roughly equal in value. The inbox treats every email the same. For B2B, where a $40K renewal sits next to a password reset, you need a system that knows the difference.

B2B SaaS
AI-native platforms
Dev tools
Data platforms
API-first
HR tech
DevOps / security

Helply sweet spot

$1M–$50M

ARR

Up to 100

Agents

Up to 15K

Tickets/month

Accounts

Not contacts

What you get with Helply that Help Scout doesn't sell

The full helpdesk, included.Unlimited seats, shared inbox, ticketing, email, live chat, knowledge base, macros, saved replies, standard reporting. All in the ticket price.
Unlimited AI, no meter.End-to-end resolutions with action, plus drafts on every ticket. No $50–$83/agent inbox fee, no per-resolution charge.
Revenue signals beyond deflection.Churn Detection, Upsell Opportunities, Competitor Monitoring, all included on every ticket. Help Scout does not sell these.
B2B account context by default.CRM, Stripe, Gong, and product usage data loaded automatically. Not a Beacon profile field, not an app.
Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, and Discord as customer channels.First-class, native support channels for B2B teams. Help Scout doesn't offer these natively.
Self-improving knowledge base.Articles created automatically from ticket patterns and AI Recorder walkthroughs. Included.
Support Intelligence.Natural-language queries across tickets, CRM, billing, and product data. Included.
Profit Center ROI dashboard.Every outcome tied to a dollar amount. Support stops being a cost center.

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Help Scout Plus, per agent

$83/mo

Plus tier. AI Answers, Docs, and chat included. No revenue intelligence.

Helply, per agent

No seat fees, ever. One price per ticket covers everyone.

“If you’re running support on Zendesk, Intercom, or Front, and you’re a B2B company in the $1M to $50M ARR range, go run the ROI calculator. The math gets you to a decision in about four minutes.”

Jason Lemkin

Founder, SaaStr

Switching from Help Scout to Helply

Live on Helply in under a week

Migration from Help Scout is straightforward. Helply has a dedicated Help Scout importer that brings in your ticket history, customer records, knowledge base articles, and saved replies in a single pass. Account relationships and conversation threads carry over intact.

Most teams are live on Helply in under a week. Run Help Scout in parallel through the end of your current billing period: Helply bills per ticket, so the overlap costs only the tickets you route to it. Your team keeps working while data syncs, and you cut over when ready.

See the full migration playbook →

1
Import in one pass
Conversations, customers, tags, Docs, custom fields, saved replies.
2
Run both in parallel
Pay only for the tickets you route to Helply as you ramp.
3
Compare at Help Scout renewal
Real cost data from Helply, side by side with the Help Scout bill.

Ready to upgrade from a shared inbox?

Or try the numbers yourself on the cost calculator.

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FAQs

How much does Helply cost?

$1 per ticket, with a 250-ticket monthly minimum and a $3,000 minimum annual contract. Seats are free and unlimited, and every AI capability is included.

How does Helply's AI resolution pricing compare to Help Scout's?

Help Scout charges $0.75 per AI resolution on top of seat fees. Helply includes unlimited resolutions in its $1 per-ticket price.

Does Helply support Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, and Discord?

Yes, all three ship first-class and are included in the per-ticket price, while Help Scout offers none of these.

What does a B2B team pay on Helply vs. Help Scout?

At 1,500 tickets a month, Helply is $1,500 with unlimited seats and AI included. Help Scout Plus for 30 platform users with AI Answers runs roughly $1,735 for an inbox with no revenue intelligence.

Does Helply offer churn detection and upsell signals?

Yes. Churn Detection, Upsell Opportunities, and Competitor Monitoring run on every ticket at no extra charge.

Does Helply's AI learn from past tickets?

Yes, Helply trains on tickets, KB, CRM, billing, and product data, while Help Scout's AI trains only on Docs sites and external URLs.

Can I migrate my Help Scout data to Helply?

Yes. A dedicated importer brings tickets, contacts, articles, and saved replies over in one pass.

Does Helply charge extra for additional inboxes or knowledge base sites?

No, inboxes and the knowledge base are included in the per-ticket price, while Help Scout charges $10/mo per extra inbox and $20/mo per extra Docs site.

Does Helply limit SLAs by plan?

No, SLAs, business hours, and reporting are all included, while Help Scout limits SLAs by tier and plan.