Best for — Customer Support
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Low
Who is Help Scout best for?
Quick fit guide: Who is Help Scout best for, who should avoid it, and what typically forces a switch.
Sources linked — see verification below.
Freshness & verification
Best use cases for Help Scout
- Small teams (5–25 users) where email is primary support channel
- Startups wanting free tier (5 users, 1 Inbox) with no expiration
- Teams prioritizing simplicity and clean UX over feature depth
- B2B support with shared inbox and company/contact grouping (Plus+)
- Teams needing workflows and routing without Zendesk-level complexity
- Product companies with Docs + Beacon for self-service and light chat
Who should avoid Help Scout?
- Heavy ticketing, SLA policies, queue-centric workflows—Zendesk/Freshdesk better
- E-commerce with order lookup—Gorgias native; Help Scout requires integrations
- Chat-first, AI deflection–led support—Intercom's Fin and chat UX stronger
- Team over 50 users; tier limits and scaling cost add up
- Need 1,000+ integrations; Help Scout's marketplace smaller
- Collaborative inbox for multi-touch B2B—Front built for that
Upgrade triggers for Help Scout
- Outgrow 2 mailboxes—additional Inboxes $10/mo each
- Need 2+ Docs sites—$20/mo per additional site
- Workflows exceed 150 (Standard) or 500 (Plus)—Pro required for unlimited
- Team grows beyond 25 (Standard) or 50 (Plus) users
- SSO/SAML required—add-on on Plus or native on Pro
- HIPAA compliance—Pro tier with dedicated onboarding
Sources & verification
Pricing and behavioral information comes from public documentation and structured research. When information is incomplete or volatile, we prefer to say so rather than guess.