Help Scout Reviews

Help Scout

4.6 (207)
Deliver world-class support from one easy-to-use platform.

Overall rating

4.6 /5
(207)
Value for Money
4.4/5
Features
4.3/5
Ease of Use
4.7/5
Customer Support Software
4.7/5

95%
recommended this app
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207 Reviews

Andrea
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: Self Employed
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Simply the best customer support system

Reviewed on 12/04/2020

The product is very well designed, easy and natural to use. On top of that, their support is...

The product is very well designed, easy and natural to use. On top of that, their support is excellent and they reply very quickly.

Pros

I like how transparent the experience is for the user and how easy it is to set up and use. I like the integration with the KB system to quickly insert a reference to the article.

Cons

Difficult to tell. I'm really enjoying everything on it, especially now that they added the live chat so I can stop using other software for that.
Maybe I'd love a more advanced system to manage the custom replies.
I'd appreciate if there's a better way to manage formatting inside the editor for the KB.

Laurène
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Help Scout is great for small teams looking for a simple and inexpensive shared inbox

Reviewed on 05/09/2022

Help Scout is a great option for small to medium teams who do not want and overly complicated and...

Help Scout is a great option for small to medium teams who do not want and overly complicated and pricy Help Desk software. It lacks some nice-to-have features but it will still help you provide great customer service.

Pros

Help Scout is great for our 4-person Customer Success Team. We have been using it for over a year and it helps us provide high-quality customer support. It is easy to use, our customers like it because our emails look just like normal emails. Their support team is great, we always get quick and relevant answers.

Cons

I think the reporting feature could really be improved, and we would appreciate a few more features to improve the daily management of support tickets.

Alternatives Considered

Intercom and Zendesk Suite

Reasons for Choosing Help Scout

Gmail doesn't work well as a shared inbox.

Switched From

Gmail

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

Help Scout looks more like a regular inbox and not an overly automated ticketing system. It is very easy to setup and use. It is also cheaper.
Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10

Email-Centric Ticket Management

Reviewed on 09/06/2023

Pros

HelpScout provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for both support agents and customers to navigate and use the software.

Cons

HelpScout primarily focuses on email-based support, which may not meet the needs of organizations that require support across multiple channels like live chat, phone, or social media.

Sara
Overall rating
  • Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1-5 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Help Scout helps out

Reviewed on 25/11/2020

Help Scout helps out in a pinch. I definitely recommend any company or business that has a customer...

Help Scout helps out in a pinch. I definitely recommend any company or business that has a customer support component to it to use their software and platform to start.

Pros

When I used to work at ActBlue as a support associate, I really liked Help Scout's ticketing system. It was straightforward and less confusing than Intercom. Escalating and de-escalating issues was pretty easy. Help Scout is a huge help for customer service, people oriented folks like me.

Cons

This is just a theory but I feel like Help Scout works better with certain email addresses than others. For people who have older emails such as hotmail, aol, or yahoo - their messages don't come across so clearly, which makes helping our customers and clients a real challenge.

Sam
Overall rating
  • Industry: Logistics & Supply Chain
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10

Expensive, but good. There are alternatives if you're willing to sacrifice plug and play.

Reviewed on 05/05/2022

The alternatives to Help Scout are far and wide, but my recommendation for an option would be Free...

The alternatives to Help Scout are far and wide, but my recommendation for an option would be Free Scout. It is an open-source alternative to Help Scout that acts almost the same way.

You need to know how to deploy the self-hosted service, or you can find companies willing to manage it for you. The downside is the setup takes a while, but the positive is that the cost is a small fraction of the amount we were paying to Help Scout.

Pros

HelpScout was the first shared emailing system we implemented that worked flawlessly with our setup. It rivals all other methods that focus on a ticket number approach but makes the communication process simple for users to grasp and professional yet informal.

The best part of Help Scout for us was the shared inbox aspect and the ability to collaborate with others easily.

Cons

Help Scout is expensive. In my opinion, it is overpriced. They started at a great introductory rate and grandfathered those rates for early-stage users. I heard from many users when they increased their rates, all of whom got a personalized message from the [SENSITIVE CONTENT], promising our rates would stay the same.

Months later, they recanted on their promise and hiked our rates. It was not a great feeling being lied to, and my love for the company quickly disappeared.

Other shared email services can replace Help Scout, but this is your best bet if you're looking for a simple approach and are not worried about the price tag.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Networking
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10

helps businesses streamline their procurement processes

Reviewed on 23/04/2023

Pros

Provides analytics and reporting features that can help businesses track procurement performance and identify cost savings opportunities and provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to manage procurement activities.

Cons

Can be difficult to set up and configure, particularly for businesses with complex procurement workflows or legacy systems

April
Overall rating
  • Industry: Professional Training & Coaching
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Excellent customer service software

Reviewed on 14/04/2019

I've used this for customer service for a website development company and a professional women's...

I've used this for customer service for a website development company and a professional women's organization and it's been amazing in both cases! Highly recommended.

Pros

Best features are internal notes and custom tags, traffic cop that stops the sending of your message of they've responded since you started writing, undo send, and able to see if surgery team member is working on that email already.

Also integrates mailchimp so you can see who is on your mailing list, and subscribe them if not.

Automated workflows based on custom parameters are incredibly useful, too!

Cons

Could have a more robust Zapier integration.

Erik
Overall rating
  • Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10

Works well but lack of innovations caused us to move away

Reviewed on 08/06/2022

We used Helpscout to manage customer support. The system was competent but uninspiring. Rising...

We used Helpscout to manage customer support. The system was competent but uninspiring. Rising expenses and other issues mentioned above caused us to break up with it.

Pros

Tracked tickets extremely well. Also the canned responses worked well.

Cons

The beacon on our website didn't work that well. There were often conflict issues so we just turned it off, which is a shame because it's a major feature we had relied on. After marketing en email as a spammer, we would continue to get emails in the future from that same email address.

Ashlee
Overall rating
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software

The best help desk experience I've ever had

Reviewed on 28/01/2018

Pros

The customer support is phenomenal! The Help Scout team is personal, friendly, and fun- a pleasure to interact with any time I get the chance. But because the software is so seamless on its own, a rarely have to reach out for support. I most appreciate the reporting features that show conversation rates and customer happiness.

Cons

I would like to be able to export a list of customers I have spoke with over a set time period, so I would be able to automate outreach and followup. As of now, there is no established way to export lists or data.

Kenneth
Overall rating
  • Industry: Import & Export
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

My personal view of Help Scout

Reviewed on 02/03/2023

Pros

I liked how simple it was to use Help Scout. It had a simple, clean design that was easy to navigate, and the customer service representatives were extremely helpful and knowledgeable. It was also convenient that the help desk was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so I could get assistance whenever I needed it.

Cons

The lack of customization options was the least appealing aspect of Help Scout to me. The platform is quite limited in terms of customizing the look and feel of the customer service experience. Furthermore, the customer service representatives appeared to be unfamiliar with product and its features.

Johann
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

The review

Reviewed on 22/08/2019

Really nice product for email support teams, but it doesn't do the work for others. I like the goal...

Really nice product for email support teams, but it doesn't do the work for others. I like the goal Help Scout has, but they need to fit to the market before they are dropping out.

Pros

It's your best solution on the market if you are looking to interact with your customers only via email. Really easy to implement and the CS is really helpful too.

Cons

It's really difficult to spice things up for the customer. Limitations are set rather quickly when trying to customize Reports or being proactive with customers.

Alternatives Considered

Freshdesk

Reasons for Choosing Help Scout

Zendesk was awful for email conversations

Switched From

Zendesk Suite
Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

We use Help Scout to stay on top of our customer support

Reviewed on 01/05/2018

Help Scout helped us get a handle on our support workflow and as we've added to our support team,...

Help Scout helped us get a handle on our support workflow and as we've added to our support team, it's made that process painless. We use the custom sidebar apps to great effect.

Pros

Help Scout is a focused, straightforward support mailbox product, and we've been using it to great effect since we switched over (from a shared inbox for support) a couple of years ago. We were happy with the pricing, and we use the custom sidebar add-ons to great effect. We've written our own sidebar app that gives our support team access to a ton of useful customer information and error logging without ever leaving the mailbox. When we've dealt with Help Scout support, they've also been great. Help Scout does exactly what we want.

Cons

Help Scout is a relatively slim and focused offering (although they are indeed adding new features all the time) this was actually a *selling point* for us, as we didn't want a super-complex tool for this but I am sure that for some users this could be problematic.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Internet
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Couldn't run my business without it

Reviewed on 11/12/2018

For any business, customer satisfaction is crucial. Help Scout is the tool to make it fun and easy.

For any business, customer satisfaction is crucial. Help Scout is the tool to make it fun and easy.

Pros

After having used Zendesk for a while, I was not happy with its and complexity. I wanted to have a support desk tool that made it look like it was regular mail to the customers. And HelpScout did exactly that. After having used the free version for more than 2 years, we are now on the Business plan. It was great that we could have used it without having to spend money on it, but it's soo good that it's definitely worth every penny. The Docs integration is perfect, as we use it in replies to customers, in the beacon for self-help and we now also embed the docs on our website through the API.

Cons

It would be great if we could set a custom threshold for the spam filter, as we have a bit too many false positives.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Monthly for 6-12 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

One of the best easy to setup customer support service

Reviewed on 18/12/2022

The overall experience was excellent, would definitely recommend their software as it does not...

The overall experience was excellent, would definitely recommend their software as it does not require much support during initial installation. Moreover, their features like email delivery, self-service, and live chat support have made my life easier.

Pros

I like the best that their initial installation requires little to no help. I was able to quickly set up the entire platform in no time, which is very unlike other help desk services that are difficult to set up and require a lot of permissions and time. They have managed to solve a problem with attention to detail and made their UI very intuitive in that respect. Their performance and response time for most of the tasks is excellent. It made my life easier, and I was able to track, organize and categorize all customer issues very easily. Moreover, the learning curve was very low for a CRM, and I was able to pick up most of their features within days, instead of weeks as compared to other market platforms.

Cons

There are a few minor issues that made my daily work a hassle, like providing a bigger picture of all the chat supports of the last 3 months or providing a birds-eye view like reports, and dashboards. They do generate reports, but those have not been so effective for me.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Help scout review

Reviewed on 28/02/2023

Overall experience was not that good but it can be more useful if improvement will be done.

Overall experience was not that good but it can be more useful if improvement will be done.

Pros

It has user friendly interface, multi-channel support and can integrate with other tools like slack .

Cons

It has very limited features.pricing is a bit Higher and has limited language support.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Like all the other Help Desks, but faster, more focused, and cleaner

Reviewed on 26/04/2018

Easy Help Desk software, fully functional with even more bells and whistles, amazing design, and...

Easy Help Desk software, fully functional with even more bells and whistles, amazing design, and affordable to boot!

Pros

Having used Zendesk for years, I was looking for a alternative option without breaking the bank. Help Scout has all the features i needed for my team, and more.

Help Scout looks/feels great. Everything is right where it needs to be. I can quickly show a new employee how to use it in minutes. Zendesk looks like a dinosaur in comparison, and had to train them for a few days before my employees got comfortable.

Cons

Not much to dislike. They have a lot of integrations built right in, and zapier fills in the blanks. The only thing I wish I had was the custom fields, which is in the PLUS feature, and I'd have to pay a bit more money for it. But can't complain about that.

Carrie
Overall rating
  • Industry: Management Consulting
  • Company size: Self Employed
  • Used Daily for 1-5 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

I currently use Help Scout with a client and it is a great tool for staying connected and...

Reviewed on 05/06/2018

Pros

1. The number 1 thing I love is that emails are "closed" once they are responded to. When I'm in my own email, I have a tendency to never delete messages. Then I think I need to sort into folders and so on, but that's a waste of time and messy. Help Scout automatically closes them when you've responded to it. But you can still search for it and find it. It's perfect! I get Zero in-box with Help Scout!
2. I also like that you can tag people (reassign) so my client can assign emails to me that she wants me to handle.
3. You can tag the emails, so once a week, she can go in and find a certain type of message to work on those all together.
4. You can write a common response and then save it to be reused.
5. You can write notes within message and tag the team member who you want to see the note, but the original sender of the message doesn't see the note.

Cons

I found it confusing at first because I didn't know where the closed messages were going, and I was nervous about closing messages, that they would disappear. But it just took some learning. My client who added me to her account was able to show me how it works. I'm not sure what the Help Scout training is like.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Design
  • Company size: Self Employed
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Easy to use and helpful features

Reviewed on 14/10/2021

Very helpful and friendly e-mail platform for customer service and customer service related...

Very helpful and friendly e-mail platform for customer service and customer service related analytics.

Pros

I like that it is very easy at the eye, we use it mainly for customer service and e-mail threads are really easy to catch up on even if conversations are several or long. Also Love the preset answers feature, very helpful for general questions.

Cons

The thing I like the least is that filters are not the friendliest sometimes besides the filter you need to look further yourself for specific info.

Melissa
Overall rating
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software

Love Help Scout

Reviewed on 13/01/2018

Pros

I love all of the features that Help Scout offers. We're a growing CS department and it's scaled with us quite nicely. Our Developers are able to customize is for us and it's quite easy to use.

Cons

There are only a few things I don't like about HS. The main thing is that it would be nice to make article formatting easier to use with out HTML. And, it would awesome if they implemented a live chat feature, so we didn't have to use Intercom in addition to HS.

Lindsey
Overall rating
  • Industry: Marketing & Advertising
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Powerful and Easy to Use!

Reviewed on 18/10/2017

Ease of use, overview of mailboxes and emails, time-saving shortcuts

Ease of use, overview of mailboxes and emails, time-saving shortcuts

Pros

Love seeing all message threads with the contact to the right when an email is open
Like being able to star certain boxes so they show up first
Love being able to have stored replies
Like being able to keep notes that you can see at a glance upon opening an email

Cons

Don't like that it sometimes takes a bit for the numbers to refresh in mailboxes, from time to time.
Don't like that you can't order or resize the starred mailboxes
Don't like that multiple addresses for the same person aren't flagged somehow

Stefanos
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: Self Employed
  • Used Daily for Free Trial
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Help Scout review

Reviewed on 21/12/2020

Help Scout is a very user intuitive and helpful tool to keep all your customer support interactions...

Help Scout is a very user intuitive and helpful tool to keep all your customer support interactions gathered and managed in a single place. Very responsive and easy to use Web app console which I am making use of on a daily basis.

Pros

I was impressed by the overall features and functionality of this product. In the basic pricing plan it allows you to create up to three support mailboxes and thus supporting three organizations with a single account. Each mailbox can be configured with an associated beacon, i.e. chat and customer support monitoring with customizable behavior depending on what end user experience you wish to offer to your customer support. Last but not least Help Scout features documentation pages which act as a knowledge base for supporting your users and thus eliminating support calls.

Cons

I would like to see more granular configurations made available in the aesthetic side of a knowledge base. I would also like to see the basic plan to support up to three knowledge bases out of the box without an extra charge beyond the first one.

Matthew
Overall rating
  • Industry: Internet
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software

Makes life SO much easier

Reviewed on 07/09/2015

HelpScout has become an essential, can't-do-without part of my workday with how savvy and helpful...

HelpScout has become an essential, can't-do-without part of my workday with how savvy and helpful it is in organizing contact with our customers and giving us a handy module for FAQs to boot.

Pros

- Keeping un-answered emails bolded even after you've read it once,
- "Traffic Cop" for keeping egg off your face in case you send an email before reading a follow-up email from the customer
- Intuitive inbox and Doc-editing interfaces
- Ability to tag email addresses and assign conversations to a particular team member
- "Show original" option to see the email in its original formatting, in case HelpScout's interface isn't able to accommodate
- Quick customer service response times, to fix problems in a pinch
- about 20 other things :-)

Cons

Pretty minor, really:
- Sometimes the inbox counts don't always update automatically (between 30 seconds and a few mins, depending on the day)
- I honestly can't think of any others (seriously, it's that good)

Vivian
Overall rating
  • Industry: Consumer Goods
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Great product

Reviewed on 23/10/2019

I’m so glad I started using helpscout, it’s easy to integrate with other apps we’re already using...

I’m so glad I started using helpscout, it’s easy to integrate with other apps we’re already using and our whole team loves it.

Pros

I use helpscout as a simple task management platform for a small team. I know there are other task managers out there but helpscout is so easy to use and simple in tracking tickets, assigning and closing, it’s all I needed to stay organized with projects and small tasks for my team.

Cons

I wish I could get more details in the reporting. Maybe I have fully used it to the full potential but I would love to have full reports on each team member and how long each task took them, and be able to see this at a glance.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Apparel & Fashion
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software

Great way to organize customer interactions

Reviewed on 11/06/2018

Pros

This was the first customer service software we used as a team and it is really solid for being able to connect with customers through multiple points of contacts.

Cons

I really wish we could connect the entire customer journey within helpscout, it would allow our team to be more informed when dealing with customers.

Rob
Overall rating
  • Industry: Media Production
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software

Simple & cost effective for small team support

Reviewed on 31/08/2015

We were struggling to ensure all our customer support emails were replied to in a timely manner and...

We were struggling to ensure all our customer support emails were replied to in a timely manner and often we were missing replies or getting confused when multiple employees needed to handle the support.
I tried a few different systems and they were either bolted on to Gmail, which got confusing or overly complicated for a small team. Finding Helpscout was a breath of fresh air. The web app was simple to setup and immediately it made sense with features that gave us the power to ensure we were giving our customers the best service possible.

Pros

* Simple to use with powerful features available if you need them
* Great documentation so little or no training needed for new staff
* Customer service from helpscout is brilliant with quick and helpful responses
* Two favourite features - 1) the ease with which you can move assign conversations back and forward between staff members 2) Save replies - saves so much time!

Cons

* A mobile app or mobile optimised web app is really needed