Navigating the range of help desk software options can be overwhelming when picking the best fit for your company.
Help Scout is a popular solution, with features like ticket management, knowledge base integration, and automation tools.
However, like any software, it has limitations that may not suit your needs.
In this blog, we explore the top alternatives to Help Scout, exploring their features, pricing, and user experiences to aid your decision-making process.
Let’s get started on the journey of discovery to find all the perfect Help Scout alternatives help desk solutions for your business.
What is Help Scout?
Help Scout is a well-known help desk software and customer service platform.
Email management, live chat support, knowledge base generation, and reporting tools are among the tools it provides to help with customer service handling.

Key features
- Shared inboxes
- Knowledge base software
- Automated workflows
Help Scout pricing plans
- Standard: $20/user/month
- Plus: $40/user/month
- Pro: $65/user/month
Free trial: 15 days
Top 11 Help Scout alternatives
The following are the best Help Scout customer service software alternatives that you need to choose:
BoldDesk
BoldDesk stands out as a comprehensive customer service solution for businesses looking to improve their overall customer experience, support workflows, and productivity.
As one of the Help Scout alternatives, it offers numerous help desk features including knowledge base software, AI assist features, and task prioritization.
Significantly, it offers affordable and transparent pricing plans, with a free plan for individuals and pricing tiers to suit businesses of different sizes.
BoldDesk’s wide range of support features helps businesses to:
- Manage support requests
- Improve collaboration within their support teams
- Communicate with clients better
- Automate repetitive tasks
It allows easy customization to match your branding and simple integration with your preferred tools and apps which makes it a better solution for alternatives to Help Scout.

Key features
- Robust ticketing software: Automatically turn support emails into tickets and have them routed round-robin to agents or according to the parameters you set.
- Customer portal: Allow customers to create and follow up on their inquiries with an easy-to-use interface.
- Automation: Customize your workflow by automating repetitive tasks like ticket routing and tagging, status updating, and sending notifications and feedback surveys.
- Excellent mobile application: Let your agents receive important notifications and send replies to customers from anywhere with BoldDesk in their pockets.
- Knowledge base software: Organize and share information in external and internal repositories, complete with a powerful search function to assist users in finding answers quickly.
- Smooth integration: Integrate BoldDesk easily with various popular tools and applications that you already utilize.
- Extensive customization options: Tailor your support desk to your company’s specific needs and look.
- Top-notch security and compliance: BoldDesk highly values the security and privacy of sensitive consumer data, complying with all common standards and regulations.
- Insightful reports and analytics: Monitor support desk metrics to help you make informed decisions.
- Multilingual support: Present articles, messages, and the customer portal in the languages customers prefer.
- AI-enhanced support: AI assist features can help summarize KB articles and lengthy ticket conversations, write responses to customers, and translate emails written in other languages.
- Efficient task management: Break complicated tasks into a series of smaller tasks and manage them easily with BoldDesk’s task management tools.
- Customer satisfaction surveys offer insight into how to enhance your services and better fulfill the expectations of your customers.
BoldDesk advantages
- Enables an instant support response, ensuring that users obtain fast help and solutions to their questions or issues.
- BoldDesk offers seamless automation that simplifies repetitive operations, saving users time and allowing agents to focus on more complicated concerns.
- It has an intuitive user interface, allowing for an easier transition for support teams.
- Provides affordable and flexible pricing plans.
- Ensures smooth integration with third parties.
BoldDesk pricing plans
BoldDesk has three pricing categories:
- Scale:Â $12 per agent/month
- Momentum:Â $25Â per agent/month
- Enterprise:Â $39 per agent/month
Include tiered pricing options for teams with 10, 25, 50 or 100 agents.
- Scale: $49/month for 10 agents
- Momentum: $129/month for 10 agents
- Enterprise: $199/month for 10 agents
- Essential:Â $799Â per month
- Pro:Â $1499Â per month ($1999 with Live chat included)
- Business:Â Contact us
Our exclusive program tailored for startups gives you 10 Momentum plan agents for free for your first year.
Free trial:Â 15 days
Helpwise
Helpwise enables simple communication via email for small businesses and has functionality like workflow automation, built-in chat, and analytics.
It serves as one of the alternatives to Help Scout that lets you manage sales and operations teams.

Key features
- Collaboration tools
- Automation
- Analytics
- File management
Helpwise pricing plan
- Standard: $12/agent/month
- Premium: $23/agent/month
- Advanced: $39/month/ user
Free trial: 7 days
Front
Front is one of the alternatives to Help Scout allowing support teams to respond to emails, social media communications, and SMS through a centralized hub and deliver support at scale.

Key features
- Workflow automation
- Knowledge base software
- Live chat
- Omnichannel communication
Front pricing plan
- Starter: $19/user/month
- Growth: $59/user/month
- Scale: $99/user/month
- Premier: $229/user/month
Free trial: 14 days
ProProfs
ProProfs is a Help Scout competitor help desk that supports ticketing and allows support teams to manage all their emails in one place using a shared inbox.

Key features
- Multichannel support
- Help desk automation
- Ticket management
- Reports
- Survey maker
Pricing plan
- Single User: free
- Team: $19.99/operator/month
- Support Suite: starts at $99/month
Free trial: 15 days
Kayako
Kayako is a customer service program that provides help desk and live chat software to businesses.
This Help Scout competitor provides tools for handling customer issues from various channels.

Key features
- Collaboration tools
- Live chat
- Self-service
- Integrations
Kayako pricing details
Starting at $125/agent/month
Free trial: 14 days
Hiver
Hiver transforms Gmail into a collaborative customer support hub. This Help Scout competitor lets businesses handle shared inboxes, allocate tasks, and monitor performance metrics.

Key features
- Email management
- Automation
- Collaboration
- Analytics
- Integrations
Hiver pricing plan
- Lite: $15/agent/month
- Pro: $49/agent/month
- Elite: $79/agent/month
Free trial: 7 days
Intercom
Intercom is a Helps Scout competitor platform that offers real-time interactions, online customer support, and customer engagement techniques.

Key features
- Email marketing
- Integrations
- Live chat
- Automated messages
Intercom pricing details
- Essential: $39/month
- Advanced: $99/month
- Expert: $139/month
Free trial: 14 days
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is all-in-one customer service software that lets businesses deliver customer support across multiple channels.
Zoho Desk is one of the alternatives to Help Scout, which provides businesses with automation and advanced reporting capabilities.

Key features
- Customization
- Ticket management
- Omnichannel
- Automation
- Analytics
Zoho Desk pricing plan
- Standard: $14/user/month
- Professional: $23/user/month
- Enterprise: $35/user/month
Free trial: 15 days
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a cloud-based service platform that allows organizations to handle client queries and support requests via several channels, providing other customer support software solutions.
Being one of the alternatives to Help Scout, it offers automation tools for managing tickets, integration with third-party apps, and multi-language support.

Key features
- Ticket management
- Zia AI assist
- Self-service
- Agent productivity
- Customization
Freshdesk pricing details
- Growth: $15/agent/month
- Pro: $49/agent/month
- Enterprise: $79/agent/month
Free trial: 14 days
HubSpot
The HubSpot Service Hub is a Help Scout competitor that incorporates knowledge base software, review polls, and a reporting platform.

Key features
- Ticketing
- Knowledge base software
- Live chat
- Omnichannel messaging
- Team email
HubSpot pricing plan
- Starter: $15/seat/month
- Professional: $450/3 seats/month
- Enterprise: $1,200/5 seats/month
Free trial: 14 days
Zendesk
Zendesk is help desk software with advanced analytics features that lets teams manage support tickets in a central hub. This is one of the alternatives to Help Scout.

Key features
- Security and compliance
- Messaging
- Ticketing
- Automation
- Integration
Zendesk pricing details
- Support Team: $19/agent/month
- Suite Team: $49/user/agent
- Support Professional: $55/agent/month
- Growth: $79/agent/month
- Professional: $99/agent/month
- Support Enterprise: $119/agent/month
Free trial: 14 days
Help Scout alternatives comparison table
Help Scout alternatives | Major features | Price |
BoldDesk |
|
Plans start at $12 per agent/month
Free trial: 15 days |
Helpwise |
|
Plans start at $12/agent/month
Free trial: 7 days |
 Front |
|
Plans start at $19/user/month
Free trial: 14 days |
ProProfs |
|
Plans start at $19.99/user/month
Free trial: 15 days |
 Kayako |
|
 Plans start at $125/month
Free trial: 14 days |
Hiver |
|
Plans start at $15/user/month
Free trial: 7 days |
Intercom |
|
Plans start at $39/month
Free trial: 14 days |
 Zoho Desk |
|
Plans start at $14/agent/month
Free trial: 15 days |
Freshdesk |
|
Plans start at $15/user/month
Free trial: 14 days |
HubSpot |
|
Plans start at $15/seat/month
Free trial: 14 days |
Zendesk |
|
Plans start at $19/user/agent
Free trial:Â 14 days |
Considerations for selecting the right Help Scout alternative
If you’re looking for the best option for your organization, you should thoroughly examine the advantages and disadvantages of each of the Help Scout alternatives.
- Affordable pricing plan: Every cent counts for all business sizes. Look for help desks that give you the most value for your investment with flexible pricing to ensure you’re paying for the features you want.
- Robust ticketing system: Choose a help desk ticketing system that centralizes customer interactions and speeds up your team’s work with automation.
- Multichannel service: Customer support software should allow your customers to contact you through the channel they prefer, including email, social media, and chat, but combine these channels on the agent side so that all customer communications are accessible in one place.
- Customization: Assess the level of customization available with each alternatives to Help Scout. Determine if you can modify the software to match your unique workflows, branding guidelines, and customer communication preferences.
- Good customer review: Look for help desk providers with great reviews on third-party sites. They often discuss benefits and disadvantages you may not have considered.
- Suitable integrations: A platform’s value is frequently found in its compatibility with other customer success products that your customer support agents utilize. Choose a solution that can easily integrate with your existing software.
Conclusion
When looking for alternatives to Help Scout, try to find help desk features that deliver exceptional customer service while also increasing your team’s productivity.
The software should include an intuitive interface and a central service dashboard, allowing your employees to interact and share relevant information. It must be simple to use and affordable.
In our opinion, and the reviews of customers on trusted sites, BoldDesk offers all these functionalities, helping businesses of all sizes to provide effective customer support at scale. Try it for yourself or sign up for a free demo to see how it could improve your support system.
If you found this article interesting, please share your opinion and recommendations in the comments section below.
Related articles
- 10 Best Freshdesk Alternatives for Businesses in 2024
- 16 Best Zendesk Alternatives for Businesses in 2024
- Top 10 Free Help Desk Software and Ticketing Systems in 2024
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
When switching from Help Scout to alternative solutions, prioritize features like omnichannel support, advanced ticketing system, comprehensive knowledge base, available integrations with your existing tools, customization flexibility, AI and automation options.
Also consider the ease of migration, pricing tiers that align with your budget and customer service quality from the new provider.
Migration complexity varies by platform. It’s advisable to choose solutions like BoldDesk that offer free and seamless migration services, with a dedicated support team and detailed documentation at no additional cost.
The migration process typically involves transferring your tickets, customer data, knowledge base articles, and customization settings.
BoldDesk offers more flexible and cost-effective pricing options for growing teams than Help Scout.
Help Scout’s Pro Plan starts at $75/month but can exceed $200/month as your team grows while BoldDesk’s Pro Plan is $199/month for up to 2,500 tickets/month with unlimited agents. That’s a savings of $100+ per month, or $1,200+ annually with BoldDesk.
Additionally, it has a special startup program that offers 10 free agents for the first year, for the Momentum plan.
BoldDesk offers smooth third-party integration with many popular business applications and tools such as Shopify, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce and more.
The platform is designed to work seamlessly with your current tech stack, minimizing disruption to your workflows during implementation.
Each platform has different security measures and compliance certifications. For instance, BoldDesk prioritizes data security and privacy, complying with all the common standards and regulations (GDPR and SOC 2).
When selecting an alternative, verify that the provider meets your specific industry compliance requirements and implements robust security measures to protect sensitive customer data.
For small businesses with limited technical resources, BoldDesk and Helpwise offer intuitive interfaces and straightforward setup processes.
BoldDesk’s comprehensive features combined with its user-friendly design make it particularly suitable for teams without extensive technical expertise.