Help Scout has emerged as a prominent platform in customer support, offering comprehensive helpdesk solutions with collaborative features and AI-driven capabilities.
Its popularity is attributed to seamless team collaboration, improved efficiency, and budget-friendly options. However, some users face challenges with limited integrations and pricing complexities.
In this blog post, we delve into Help Scout alternatives, aiming to discover solutions that overcome these limitations and provide enhanced functionalities. By exploring various options, businesses can find the perfect fit for their needs, revolutionizing their approach to customer interactions and delivering exceptional support experiences.
Thorough research of review sites has shed light on some areas where HelpScout may not fully meet the expectations of SMB customers:
a. Lack of Advanced Automation: HelpScout’s automation capabilities are limited compared to some alternatives. SMBs seeking more advanced automation features due to limited manpower, such as automated ticket routing, escalation, or integration with other systems, may find HelpScout lacking.
b. Reporting and Analytics Limitations: While HelpScout provides basic reporting and analytics features, some users have expressed the need for more comprehensive insights and data visualization options. Advanced reporting functionalities can help SMBs monitor their support team’s performance, track key metrics, and make data-driven decisions.
c. Integrations and Customization: HelpScout offers a decent range of integrations, but some users have reported limitations regarding customization options. Businesses looking for a more tailored solution that seamlessly integrates with their existing tools and workflows may need to explore alternative options.
d. Scalability: While HelpScout is suitable for many SMBs, some users have reported challenges with scalability as their businesses grow. The need for a more scalable solution becomes apparent as the customer base expands, prompting the search for Help Scout alternatives that can accommodate increasing support demands.
HelpScout is great and comes with great capabilities, but we have found common complaints that many users have. Here is what all users say about HelpScout:
“Making docs look really polished feels like a challenge. There are always annoying and frustrating aspects around spacing, numbering, and bulleted lists in HelpScout docs. I wish it was easier to space things and still keep the numbering/bulletin system. I wish it was easier to align things right or left (especially photos).”
Another user pointed out the problems with pricing:
“I’m disappointed that Help Scout’s new integration with Messenger is only available for their Pro and Plus plans. Real-time chat should be a basic feature for any support service, and it feels unfair to limit it to the most expensive tiers. It makes me question their commitment to customer satisfaction. I hope Help Scout reconsiders their pricing model and makes this integration available to all users. I’ll be exploring other options that offer better value until then.”
Here is what another user has said:
“The reporting is limited for what our needs as a growing company are. Trying to get the reports emailed and importing information to other services can be a challenge. We have had to use several means of documenting and collecting data for our customers based on what they want to hear about and see the data for. As we have continued to grow, our company has had to consider other alternatives because of this issue. There is room for improvement, and it could really make HelpScout a great HelpDesk ticketing application.”
Helpwise is the #1 alternative to HelpScout, offering a comprehensive suite of omnichannel capabilities and much more. With Helpwise, teams can collaborate seamlessly using a shared platform inbox to assign, track, and avoid duplicate responses.
With Helpwise, you have a powerful set of features at your disposal. You can:
Helpwise goes beyond email support by enabling you to assign WhatsApp, live chat and social media conversations to the appropriate team members, expanding your reach across various communication channels. You also get native cloud phone system and an ability to build help centers with Helpwise. The AI-powered features foster quick resolutions like query prioritzation, summarization etc.
The flexible pricing plans offered by Helpwise cater to SMBs, ensuring a cost-effective solution without compromising essential functionalities. Moreover, Helpwise facilitates workflow integration by seamlessly connecting with popular third-party applications such as Slack and CRM tools.
Starting at just $15 per user per month, Helpwise offers an all-encompassing, budget-friendly customer support solution.
ProProfs Help Desk is an excellent alternative to HelpScout, offering various features at a similar price point. It automatically converts incoming support requests into tickets and assigns them to the most suitable agents.
Alongside robust ticket management, ProProfs provides various customer support tools such as Knowledge Base, Live Chat, and Survey Maker, ensuring 24/7 delightful support. Collaboration among support teams is enhanced with internal notes, custom fields, ticket labels, and internal chat.
ProProfs Help Desk offers several advantages.
However, it is important to note that ProProfs Help Desk has limitations in terms of third-party integrations, although it does offer integration with other ProProfs tools and Salesforce.
ProProfs Help Desk plans to start at $20 per agent per month (billed annually), and you can try it free for 15 days. ProProfs Help Desk is a feature-rich option that empowers support teams to provide efficient and effective customer service.
Kayako is a user-friendly and versatile multi-channel ticketing system that is a compelling alternative to Help Scout.
Its standout feature is the ability to provide a single view of the customer journey, enabling agents to gather and utilize customer information for personalized support. Alongside its ticketing system, Kayako offers live chat and a shared inbox, resulting in faster response times and improved customer experiences.
Key advantages of Kayako include:
However, Kayako may have limitations in extensive reporting capabilities and infrequent updates for new features.
Kayako offers two pricing plans: Growth ($30 per agent per month) and Scale ($60 per agent per month), catering to different business needs.
Hiver is a versatile customer service platform designed for teams utilizing Google Workspace. It enables support teams to efficiently handle various customer touch points, including email, phone, WhatsApp, live chat, and knowledge base, all within their Gmail inbox.
Unlike Help Scout, Hiver seamlessly integrates with Gmail and works on top of it only, allowing support teams to start using it instantly without extensive training. Its interface is highly intuitive and user-friendly.
One of the notable advantages of Hiver is its easy configuration and management of SLAs (Service Level Agreements), which is not readily available in Help Scout. Additionally, Hiver offers advanced reporting functionalities, allowing users to analyze multiple types of reports or even create custom reports. This makes Hiver an excellent alternative with enhanced reporting capabilities.
The biggest drawback is that it only works on top of Gmail, so if you are using any other email clients probably options like Helpwise deem fit.
Pricing for Hiver starts at $ 7 per user/month and goes in till $57/per user/month.
Intercom is a popular competitor to Help Scout, offering a unique approach to customer relationship management. It excels in managing customer relations with its flexible business messenger, proactive sales and marketing features, and custom bots.
The platform enables customer support interactions and in-app messaging. However, Intercom’s pricing can be complex and not cost-effective for small startups. Customizable workflows and robust email support management may also be limited.
Intercom provides a range of features, including
Key advantages of Intercom include its clean interface, a feature-rich business messenger with marketing and support capabilities, and the ability to use bots for automation and targeted outbound messaging. However, some drawbacks include complicated pricing, affordability concerns, limited email support management, and weaker analytics compared to other solutions.
Intercom’s pricing starts at $74/per user/month which is not really suitable for SMBs.
Front offers a user-friendly and intuitive app, ensuring a quick setup process. Users can manage personal and shared inboxes in one place, making it convenient. The platform supports social channels and SMS, providing customers with preferred communication channels.
Collaboration is made easy with Front’s robust set of team-oriented features like tags, notes & mentions. However, workflow customization options may be limited for teams requiring specific configurations.
Front is well-suited for smaller teams but costly for larger teams, and the annual commitment requirement may limit flexibility. Front also provides custom workflow automation (available on higher-priced plans) and integrates with popular sales and CRM tools like Salesforce and HubSpot.
Pros of Front include seamless collaboration, omnichannel communication, strong integrations with external apps, and a user-friendly interface. However, some cons include limitations in the ticketing system for high support volumes, restricted workflow customization in lower-priced plans, and potential performance issues for larger teams.
Front pricing starts at $59/per user/per month.
Freshdesk also stands out as another excellent alternative to Help Scout. It offers a Team Inbox where support agents can efficiently track and manage support tickets from various channels, such as email, phone, chat, and social media, all within a unified dashboard.
Freshdesk’s auto-assignment features ensure tickets are allocated based on agent skills, workload, or equal distribution among the support team.
Freshdesk’s features include:
Pros of Freshdesk include the ‘Thank You Detector’ feature that prevents ticket reopening for customer responses with gratitude and its modern and intuitive design that simplifies team workflows. However, Freshdesk has some cons, including unclear feature distribution across subscription plans and relatively higher pricing than other help desk tools in the market.
Freshdesk offers different pricing plans, including Sprout (free for unlimited agents with email and social ticketing), Blossom ($15/user/month), Garden ($35/user/month), Estate ($49/user/month), and Forest ($99/user/month).
Zendesk is a widely-used helpdesk platform favored by enterprise companies. It consolidates various support channels into a single system, such as email, live chat, and knowledge base.
Key use cases of Zendesk include:
Pros of Zendesk include its extensive integration options with over 100 third-party business apps and robust IT ticket management features. However, it’s worth noting that the tool lacks email automation functionality for sharing automated emails.
Zendesk offers different pricing plans, including Suite Team ($49/agent/month), Suite Growth ($79/agent/month), and Suite Professional ($99/agent/month).
Zoho Desk is a noteworthy free alternative to Help Scout that should be considered. It empowers support agents to leverage customer context to understand problems better, increase productivity, promote self-service, and improve customer satisfaction.
Zoho Desk integrates AI to expedite issue resolution. You can proactively reduce support tickets, analyze customer sentiments, and identify bottlenecks through Zia, the AI-powered assistant.
Key use cases of Zoho Desk include:
Pros of Zoho Desk include:
Zoho Desk offers different pricing plans, including Free (limited to 3 agents), Standard ($12/agent/month), Professional ($20/agent/month), and Enterprise ($35/agent/month).
Keeping is a help desk software designed specifically for teams that use Gmail as their primary support channel. Keeping acts as the single stop to get all the uses of customer service tools.
By installing Keeping’s Chrome extension, you can centralize your communication with the customers. Using features like agent collision detection, ticket assignment, workflow automation, and Shopify integrations can enhance productivity and efficiency among the customer support staff.
With the Shopify integration, you can access entire customer information, enabling your customer support staff to deliver personalized customer experiences. Keeping also provides useful analytics and insights that help keep the team on track for delivering exceptional customer experiences.
The pricing of Keeping starts at $8 per user per month.
| Platform | Key Features | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Helpwise | Shared platform inbox, AI-driven email templates, WhatsApp integration, Collaboration with internal notes and team chat. | Starting at just $15 per user per month |
| ProProfs | Automatic ticket conversion, Knowledge Base, Live Chat, Survey Maker, Ticket prioritization, Smart reports and analytics. | Start at $20 per agent per month |
| Kayako | Single view of customer journey, Multichannel ticketing system (including live chat), Seamless ticket routing, Easy collaboration between teams. | Growth ($30 per agent per month) |
| Hiver | Integration with Google Workspace, Advanced reporting and SLA management, Customer service platform with multiple communication channels. | Starts at $7/per user/per month |
| Intercom | Flexible business messenger, Proactive sales and marketing features, Customizable bots, Email support management, Segment-based email marketing. | Starts at $74/per user/per month |
| Front | Unified inbox for personal and shared emails, Social channels and SMS support, Collaboration tools, User-friendly and quick setup. | Starts at $59/per user/per month |
| Freshdesk | Team Inbox, Auto-assignment of tickets, SLA management, AI-powered Chatbot, ‘Thank You Detector’, Modern and intuitive design. | Starts at $15/per user/per month |
| Zendesk | Consolidation of support channels, Extensive integration options, Robust IT ticket management, Integrated help center and community forum. | Starts at $49/per user/per month |
| Zoho Desk | AI-powered assistant (Zia), Multi-channel support, Integration with Zoho CRM, Forever free plan, Customer sentiment analysis. | Standard starts $12/agent/month |
| Keeping | Gmail integration, Centralized communication, Agent collision detection, Shopify integration, Workflow automations, Useful analytics. | Starts at $8 per user per month |
In exploring Help Scout alternatives, we’ve discovered feature-rich solutions for enhanced customer support. Among them, Helpwise shines as the top pick for SMBs seeking efficient and scalable customer service operations. With its comprehensive email support capabilities, collaborative tools, and AI-driven features, Helpwise promotes seamless teamwork and personalized interactions. Sign up for a free trial with Helpwise today.
Some alternative customer support software options to Help Scout include Helpwise, ProProfs Help Desk, Kayako, Hiver, Intercom, Front, Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, and Keeping.
Help Scout’s features, such as shared platform inbox and AI-driven templates, vary in scope and implementation compared to its alternatives, each offering unique capabilities to suit different business needs.
Yes, Helpwise, ProProfs Help Desk, and Keeping are Help Scout alternatives that offer lower price points with various plans catering to SMBs.
Several Help Scout alternatives, such as Helpwise, Kayako, Hiver, Intercom, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, and Freshdesk, integrate with other popular business tools like CRM platforms and communication apps.
Users praise Help Scout for its simplicity, while Help Scout alternatives like Helpwise and Zendesk are commended for their extensive feature sets and integrations. Others appreciate Hiver’s seamless Gmail integration and Kayako’s user-friendly interface.
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