Helply vs. Help Scout: the quick verdict
Help Scout fits growing teams that start free, add paid users as they hire, and pay for Envoy per resolution. Helply fits support teams in B2B software, B2C, ecommerce, and marketplaces whose queues grow faster than their headcount. Both put an AI agent that resolves customer questions beside a shared inbox and help center.
- Help Scout Plus: $54 per user a month ($45 billed yearly), with AI Drafts and 5 light users. Pro needs at least 10 users.
- Envoy, Help Scout’s AI add-on: $0.75 per resolution on paid plans; a new account’s resolutions are free for three months.
- Helply: no per-user fee on any plan; the smallest AI credit block is 500 credits, priced $49 a month ($42 billed yearly).
- All three Helply agents come with every plan: Support investigates and can resolve, Assist drafts, and Background Agents watch for churn risk.
- At 1,000 monthly conversations with AI resolving half, five Help Scout Plus users and Envoy cost $600 a month after the free months. Helply runs the same queue for $339 (B2B) or $212 (B2C) a month. All figures are yearly list prices.
Helply vs. Help Scout compared: pricing, AI actions, routing, and SLAs
Helply and Help Scout differ on which teammates are paid users, what the AI can reach, and how each bills AI work.
| Capability | Helply | Help Scout |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | One help desk with three AI agents inside it; your team can step into any conversation | An AI support suite of Inbox, Envoy, and Signal, with Copilot coming soon; Help Scout charges per user and per Envoy resolution |
| Pricing | Unlimited users; you size a credit block to your volume, from $49 a month ($42 billed yearly) | $30 to $90 a month per user ($25 to $75 billed yearly), plus $0.75 per Envoy resolution. Pro has a 10-user minimum |
| Free plan and trial | 14 days to try it, with 1,000 credits and no card | Free plan for up to 5 users; 15-day trial of Standard or Plus, no card; Pro trials through sales |
| AI agents | Three agents on every plan: Support can resolve or escalate with its findings, Assist drafts, and Background Agents watch for signals | Envoy’s agent, Scout, resolves customer conversations from your Docs, websites, and files. It hands complex or sensitive ones to your team |
| AI that takes action | Support Agent can check billing and account data in connected tools, then take action | Help Scout lists Scout’s payment and CRM connections as coming soon; its API supports custom workflows that take action |
| Agent assist | Assist Agent writes reply drafts on every plan and can run supported actions at your team’s direction | AI Drafts and AI Summarize on Plus and Pro |
| Customer context | Customer details and conversation history, beside CRM, billing (Stripe or Chargebee), and product data from your tools | Customer profiles and history on every plan; Stripe and Shopify sidebar apps for refunds and cancellations; Salesforce and HubSpot on Plus and Pro |
| Knowledge base | A help center where Helply finds missing and outdated answers and drafts fixes for your team to approve | Docs sites (1 to 5 by plan), AI that polishes and translates article text, and a Docs report of failed searches |
| Routing and SLAs | Smart assignment and routing, with SLA targets and priorities | Rule-based workflows, round-robin routing on Plus and Pro, and SLA policies from 1 on Standard to unlimited on Pro |
| Channels | Email, chat, WhatsApp, SMS, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, and Slack with Slack Connect | Email on every plan; Beacon chat, SMS, and WhatsApp on paid plans; Instagram and Messenger as native channels |
| Phone and voice | Ties supported call information, transcripts, and follow-up to the caller’s support history | Calls through integrations such as Aircall, logged in Help Scout |
| Slack | Customer conversations in Slack Connect channels, managed in Helply | Slack app for notifications only; Slack isn’t a Help Scout support channel |
| Background work | Background Agents watch for churn risk, upgrade intent, product feedback, and gaps in your docs | SLA, Happiness, and other pre-built reports, plus custom reports from Standard; Signal’s AI Topics beta (Plus and Pro) sorts conversations by topic |
| Team access | Unlimited users on every plan | On paid plans, every replying teammate is a paid user: up to 25 on Standard, 50 on Plus, unlimited on Pro (10 minimum). Light users can view and collaborate but can’t reply: 5 on Plus, 15 on Pro |
| Security | SOC 2 Type II and GDPR; AI providers never train on your customer data | SOC 2 Type II, with HIPAA support on Pro; Help Scout never trains AI with your data |
| Best for | Growing B2B or B2C queues where engineers and success managers work in the inbox without a per-user bill | Small teams that fit the free plan, teams that need HIPAA support on Pro, and buyers who want AI billed per resolution |
What Helply adds as a Help Scout alternative
An AI agent that can check the account before it answers
Helply’s Support Agent looks into billing, account, and product data in your connected tools and can act on what it finds. It can pull a B2B account’s CRM record or a subscriber’s Stripe payments, then resolve the ticket or escalate with its findings. Scout resolves conversations from your Docs, websites, files, and text, while its payment and CRM connections sit on Help Scout’s coming-soon list.
Add your whole team to the inbox, and the bill stays the same
On paid Help Scout plans, each teammate who replies counts as a paid user. Light users on Plus and Pro can view and collaborate, but they can’t reply to customers. With unlimited users on every Helply plan, adding engineers, success managers, or ops staff to the inbox costs nothing extra.
Catch churn risk and upgrade intent without a prompt
Helply’s Background Agents start when the right signals appear and can alert teammates, create work, or trigger a workflow. The Churn Agent reads conversations for frustration and shifts in sentiment, and the Revenue Agent flags upgrade intent and buying signals. Help Scout’s Signal groups conversations into AI topics (beta, Plus and Pro); Help Scout lists sentiment and alerts as coming soon.
Help Scout pricing vs. Helply pricing
Help Scout’s paid plans run $30 to $90 a month per user ($25 to $75 billed yearly), plus $0.75 per Envoy resolution. Helply has no per-user price, and every plan includes all three AI agents. You pick a credit block, starting at $49 a month ($42 billed yearly), and add as many users as you like.
Help Scout plans and add-ons, October 2026:
- Free: $0 for up to 5 users and 100 contacts a month, with 1 inbox and 1 Docs site
- Standard: $30 a month per user ($25 billed yearly), up to 25 users
- Plus: $54 a month per user ($45 billed yearly), up to 50 users; adds AI Drafts, AI Summarize, and 5 light users
- Pro: $90 a month per user ($75 billed yearly), with a 10-user minimum, 15 light users, and HIPAA support
- Free trial: 15 days on Standard or Plus, no credit card; Pro trials go through sales
- Envoy, with its agent Scout: $0.75 per resolution on Standard, Plus, and Pro, monthly or yearly; Help Scout charges once per chat session
- Envoy resolutions are free and unlimited for a new account’s first three months
- You can set a monthly cap on resolutions; at the cap, Envoy turns off until the next cycle unless you raise it
- Discounts: lower rates for prepaid Envoy resolutions, and 10% off for nonprofits on top of the yearly discount
- Extra light users and extra inboxes: $12 a month each ($10 billed yearly); extra Docs sites: $24 a month ($20 billed yearly)
- Phone: through integrations, with Aircall as an add-on on Standard and Plus
| Cost line | Helply | Help Scout |
|---|---|---|
| Plan compared | B2B queue: 7,000 credits; B2C queue: 4,000 credits | Plus, the entry plan for AI Drafts |
| Price per user a month | Nothing: every plan has unlimited users | $45 billed yearly |
| Five users | Included | $225 a month |
| Drafting help | Assist Agent on every plan | AI Drafts and AI Summarize on Plus |
| AI agent billing | Drafting or summarizing uses 1 credit, searching one or two systems 4, and running a full investigation 12 | $0.75 per Envoy resolution, billed after each month ends |
| Not charged | Spam, no-touch tickets, retries, failed actions, rejected drafts, and knowledge base indexing | Chats where Scout only greets or asks a follow-up, and chats where the customer asks for more help |
| Spend control | A monthly ceiling that defaults to your block price, plus team or mailbox allowances. The AI pauses at that ceiling when auto top-up is off | An optional monthly cap on resolutions; Envoy turns off at the cap until the next cycle or until you raise it |
| Teammates beyond the five | Unlimited, at no extra cost | $45 each billed yearly; Plus includes 5 light users, who can view and collaborate but can’t reply |
| Monthly total at list price, AI resolving 500 conversations | $339 for B2B, or $212 for B2C | $600 after the three free months: $225 for users plus $375 for Envoy |
| If the five use Standard instead | Same block: $339 for B2B, or $212 for B2C | $500 after the free months: $125 for users plus $375 for Envoy; AI Drafts start on Plus |
At 1,000 B2B conversations a month, expect about 7,000 Helply credits, the block that costs $399 a month ($339 billed yearly). A B2C team at that volume uses about 4,000 credits, which run $249 a month ($212 billed yearly). At list price after the free months, five Help Scout Plus users and 500 Envoy resolutions cost $645 a month ($600 billed yearly).
Users
Unlimited
Included in every credit block
Entry block
$49 a month
$42 a month billed yearly, for 500 credits
Trial
14 days
1,000 credits, no card
Teams that switched
“Helply was simple to set up and it’s become a phenomenal tool. It took everything we’d learned over the years and turned it into support that runs itself, takes action, and warns us early. Our authors move faster and my team isn’t buried.”
Rob Price, CEO & Founder · Gatekeeper Press
Results
- Manual, human-only support replaced with one complete platform
- 92% resolution across 1,500+ monthly conversations; only ~120 escalations
- Years of communications converted into shared company memory
Switching from Help Scout
Start with one mailbox, such as billing@, while support@ and the rest stay on Help Scout. Move them across once you’ve reviewed billing@ in Helply. Enterprise plans include dedicated migration.
- Connect your Help Scout workspace during a 14-day free trial; you don’t need a card.
- Choose the supported mailboxes, customers, conversations, and Docs content to migrate.
- Add your support addresses to Helply, swap Beacon for Helply’s chat widget, then review your workspace and complete the cutover.
What comes with you:
- Conversation history from your mailboxes
- Customer records
- Docs knowledge base content
See what migrates from Help Scout
Helply or Help Scout: which should you choose?
Choose Help Scout if:
- Your team has five people or fewer and fits the free plan’s 1 inbox and 100 contacts a month.
- You need HIPAA support, which Help Scout includes on its Pro plan.
- You want to pay for AI only when it resolves a chat; new accounts get three months of free resolutions.
- You’re an incorporated tech startup new to Help Scout, under two years old and under $1M ARR. You can apply for 6 months of Plus and Envoy free through Help Scout’s startup program.
- Your customers message you on Instagram or Messenger, which Help Scout runs as native channels.
Choose Helply if:
- Your B2B or B2C team will pass 50 users, where Help Scout requires Pro at $90 per user a month ($75 billed yearly).
- Your engineers and ops staff reply to customers about bugs and refunds, and Help Scout would bill each as a paid user.
- You want an AI agent that can check billing and account data in your connected tools before it answers.
- Your customers write in through Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, Discord, or Telegram.
Frequently asked questions
Helply has unlimited users and AI agents that can check account data and take action. Help Scout charges per user and bills Envoy per resolution.
Yes. Helply includes a shared inbox, a help center, live chat, routing, SLAs, and analytics, plus Support, Assist, and Background Agents.
Help Scout’s paid plans cost $30 to $90 a month per user ($25 to $75 billed yearly). Its AI add-on, Envoy, adds $0.75 per resolution.
Help Scout Standard is $30 per user a month ($25 billed yearly), and Plus is $54 ($45). Pro is $90 ($75), with a 10-user minimum.
Yes, for up to 5 users and 100 contacts a month in 1 inbox. Standard runs $30 per user a month ($25 billed yearly).
Help Scout charges $0.75 on paid plans for each chat Scout resolves without human help. Resolutions are free for a new account’s first three months.
Yes. Help Scout’s shared Inbox works as a ticketing system, with assignment, tags, workflows, and SLA policies.
Helply includes unlimited users and sells AI work in credit blocks from $49 a month. Retries, failed actions, and rejected drafts cost no credits.
Yes, Helply has no per-user fees on any plan. You buy AI credits in monthly blocks; the smallest costs $49 ($42 billed yearly).
Yes, after Envoy’s free months, at yearly list prices for 1,000 conversations, half AI-resolved. Monthly cost: Helply $339 (B2B) or $212 (B2C); Help Scout $600.
Yes. Connect Help Scout during the 14-day trial and choose the supported mailboxes, customers, conversations, and Docs content; move one mailbox first.
Yes, for notifications only: Help Scout’s Slack app can’t create or manage conversations. Your team can manage Slack Connect customer conversations in Helply.
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