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Help Scout recently overhauled their pricing model. They’ve moved from per-user pricing to flat monthly rates with unlimited users and unlimited contacts on all paid plans.
This is a significant simplification—$50-75/month gets you a complete support platform. Here’s what each plan includes and whether Help Scout is right for you.
Help Scout’s New Pricing Model
Help Scout now charges flat monthly rates rather than per-user pricing. All paid plans include unlimited users, unlimited contacts, and AI features.
| Plan | Price (Annual) | Contacts/Month | Users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 50 | Unlimited |
| Standard | $50/month | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Plus | $75/month | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Pro | Custom | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Monthly billing available at slightly higher rates ($55/month for Standard).
Free Plan
Help Scout offers a genuinely useful free tier for very small operations.
What’s included:
- Up to 50 contacts helped per month
- Unlimited users
- 1 shared inbox
- 1 Docs knowledge base site
- AI-powered help widget (Beacon)
- Basic reporting
What’s missing:
- Limited to 50 contacts/month (that’s ~2 customers per day)
- Single inbox only
- Single Docs site only
- No advanced automations
- No custom integrations
Reality check: 50 contacts per month is extremely limited. If you’re getting even a handful of support requests daily, you’ll exceed this within weeks. It’s useful for testing, but not for running an actual support operation.
Standard Plan ($50/month)
The Standard plan is Help Scout’s entry point for real support teams.
What’s included:
- Unlimited contacts
- Unlimited users
- 2 shared inboxes
- 1 Docs knowledge base site
- AI features included
- Basic reporting and CSAT
- 100+ integrations
- API access
What’s missing:
- No advanced workflows
- No custom reporting
- Limited Docs sites
- No enterprise security features
- No Salesforce/Jira/HubSpot integrations
Plus Plan ($75/month)
The Plus plan adds features for more sophisticated support operations.
What’s included:
- Everything in Standard
- 5 shared inboxes
- 2 Docs knowledge base sites
- Advanced workflows and automations
- Custom reporting
- Salesforce, Jira, and HubSpot integrations
- Teams and advanced permissions
- Custom fields
- Restricted Docs sites
What’s missing:
- No enterprise security (SSO, HIPAA)
- No dedicated account manager
- No concierge onboarding
Pro Plan (Custom Pricing)
The Pro plan is for larger organizations needing enterprise features.
What’s included:
- Everything in Plus
- 25 shared inboxes
- 10 Docs knowledge base sites
- Enterprise security features (HIPAA compliance, SSO)
- Concierge onboarding
- Dedicated account manager
- Custom SLAs
- Higher plan limits
Pricing: Contact Help Scout sales for a custom quote.
Additional Costs
Help Scout has several add-ons that can increase your bill:
Extra inboxes:
- $10/month each (annual billing)
- $12/month each (monthly billing)
Extra Docs sites:
- $20/month each (annual billing)
- $24/month each (monthly billing)
AI Answers (resolutions):
- 3 months free unlimited usage
- After trial: billed per resolution
The Pricing Model Shift: Winners and Losers
Help Scout’s flat-rate pricing with unlimited contacts creates clear winners and losers:
You save money if:
- You have high support volume—unlimited contacts means no overage fees
- You want to add agents without increasing costs
- You previously paid per-seat and had a large team
You pay more if:
- You’re a solo founder or tiny team—the old per-seat pricing may have been cheaper
- You only handle a handful of support requests monthly
What Help Scout Does Well
Complete support platform: Help Scout combines shared inbox, knowledge base (Docs), and live chat (Beacon) in one platform.
Clean, intuitive interface: The product is well-designed and easy for support teams to learn.
Unlimited users: The contact-based model means you can add team members without per-seat costs (except Pro).
AI features included: AI answers and assistance come built-in rather than as expensive add-ons.
What Help Scout Doesn’t Do
No automatic documentation updates: Help Scout’s Docs product is a manual knowledge base. It won’t detect product changes or suggest content updates.
No support-to-docs automation: Despite having both support inbox and Docs, Help Scout doesn’t automatically turn common questions into knowledge base articles.
No content auditing: There’s no system to identify stale or outdated documentation that needs refreshing.
Knowledge base is secondary: Docs exists, but it’s clearly secondary to the support inbox features.
When Help Scout Makes Sense
Help Scout is a solid choice if:
- You need a complete support platform (inbox + docs + chat)
- You have a large team relative to support volume
- You want unlimited users without per-seat costs
- You prefer a polished, established product
- Your primary focus is the support inbox, not the knowledge base
When to Consider Alternatives
You might want to look elsewhere if:
- You need a knowledge base that maintains itself
- You want AI that proactively creates and updates documentation
- Your documentation needs outweigh your inbox needs
- You’re specifically looking for a modern, AI-native help center
- You need deeper analytics on what customers are searching for
For a detailed feature comparison, see our Help Scout alternatives guide. You might also want to compare Intercom Help Center pricing or Zendesk Help Center pricing if you’re evaluating multiple support platforms.
How Ferndesk Compares
| Feature | Help Scout | Ferndesk |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $50/month | $39/month |
| Contacts | Unlimited (paid plans) | Unlimited |
| AI documentation | Manual Docs editor | Automatic AI agent |
| Support ticket analysis | No | Up to 5,000 tickets/month |
| Content gap detection | No | Yes, weekly audits |
| Customer self-service | Basic Beacon widget | AI-powered search, widgets, analytics |
| Migration from Help Scout | N/A | One-click |
Help Scout and Ferndesk solve different problems. Help Scout is a support inbox platform with a basic knowledge base. Ferndesk is an AI-native help center focused on customer self-service.
Different focus: Help Scout excels at managing support conversations. Ferndesk excels at reducing them. With AI-powered search, embedded help widgets, and customer behavior analytics, Ferndesk helps customers find answers themselves before they ever open a ticket.
Support ticket intelligence: Ferndesk analyzes up to 5,000 support tickets per month to identify patterns and generate FAQs automatically. It can connect to Help Scout to analyze your existing conversations and draft documentation based on what customers actually ask.
AI-native documentation: Help Scout’s Docs is a manual editor—you write and maintain everything yourself. Ferndesk’s AI agent drafts articles from your codebase, support tickets, and changelogs, then audits content weekly to keep it fresh.
They work well together: Many teams use Help Scout for their support inbox and Ferndesk for their customer-facing help center. Ferndesk reduces ticket volume by helping customers self-serve, while Help Scout handles the conversations that need human attention.
Bottom Line
Help Scout’s new pricing with unlimited contacts is straightforward—$50-75/month gets you a solid support platform with unlimited users and contacts. The inbox is excellent.
But the Docs knowledge base is manual and basic. If you want documentation that maintains itself, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
If you need an AI-native help center that reduces support volume, Ferndesk offers automatic documentation starting at $39/month. It can even analyze your Help Scout conversations to draft articles.
Already on Help Scout? Ferndesk offers one-click migration for your Docs content. Try it free and see how much time you save when AI handles the documentation.
