Help Scout vs. Helpshift

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Help Scout
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Help Scout is help desk software. The vendor’s value proposition is that that their solution reduces time spent on training users because Help Scout is simple to use and set up and scales like any enterprise product. This solution includes multiple mailboxes to support as many email addresses as needed in order to work collaboratively across teams, and manage several products or brands from one account. Reports on conversation trends, team performance, productivity, and customer happiness are…
$20
per user/per month
Helpshift
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Helpshift is a help desk software deployed as an in-application SDK to provide users with in-app service.
$150
per month issue
Pricing
Help ScoutHelpshift
Editions & Modules
Standard
$20
per user/per month
Plus
$35
per user/per month
Company
Contact sales team
Starter
$150.00
per month Issue
Enterprise
Please contact Helpshift
per month Issue
Growth
Please contact Helpshift
per month Issue
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Help ScoutHelpshift
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details—Flexible Consumption-Based Pricing for Your Changing Needs. Only pay for the number of issues created each month. An issue is a customer problem or inquiry that is directed to an agent or a bot. Customers with greater usage receive a reduced per issue price. All packages come with 1,000 issues per month to get you started.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Help ScoutHelpshift
Considered Both Products
Help Scout
Chose Help Scout
They all had their positives and negatives. For us, it came down to signing a BAA (Zendesk wanted $28,000 to sign one). We enjoy working with vendors who can support healthcare initiates such as we are building.
Helpshift

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Help ScoutHelpshift
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
9.8
18 Ratings
21% above category average
Helpshift
6.4
4 Ratings
21% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.018 Ratings5.54 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications10.010 Ratings6.43 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission10.017 Ratings9.13 Ratings
Ticket response10.018 Ratings9.14 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings3.64 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings4.53 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.5
16 Ratings
9% above category average
Helpshift
5.0
4 Ratings
43% below category average
External knowledge base9.015 Ratings1.04 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.014 Ratings9.13 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
7.8
18 Ratings
2% above category average
Helpshift
4.5
4 Ratings
52% below category average
Email support9.018 Ratings2.74 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration6.510 Ratings4.52 Ratings
Customer portal00 Ratings5.53 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings2.71 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Help ScoutHelpshift
Small Businesses
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Help ScoutHelpshift
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(18 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Help ScoutHelpshift
Likelihood to Recommend
Help Scout
Small businesses that want a conversational type of customer support experience. Nothing wrong with support tickets, but it does make you feel like a number. Also, we needed to get up and running quickly so the "inbox" feel of the dashboard was already familiar with the team so they could adopt the new software quickly.
Read full review
Helpshift Inc.
If you need a good way for players to send in support tickets that propagates in real-time, Helpshift would be a service I'd recommend.
Read full review
Pros
Help Scout
  • Extremely simple to use and understand as a user - treats communications like human beings and provides a much more personal feel to communication (as opposed to making people feel like numbers).
  • The email newsletter.
  • They are super responsive. They are pretty rad and transparent: if something goes wrong on their end they are not afraid of admitting fault. Which leads me to trust them because I can believe them. I know that tells you very little about the product, but as leadership, that's something that I really need
  • Help Scout does exactly what it needs to (facilitate organized, efficient conversations between customers and support people) without getting in the way.
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Helpshift Inc.
  • Their customer support is very responsive. If they have any problems, they fix them quickly.
  • They are constantly trying to improve and expand their offering, which is beneficial to our growing company.
  • It is very user-friendly and easy to manage. The analytics are pretty good as well.
Read full review
Cons
Help Scout
  • Trying to group tickets is a bit unflexible. You can create folders which can be part of a workflow (automatic trigger) but you can't create a folder based on tags. This needs to be improved because there's a need to create smarter segments and mix them.
  • Metrics are useful but there needs to be more details about them. You can drill down in some but others are still not very actionable or visible (ok, that number went down, but what was the cause? what's the criteria with what you measure that?)
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Helpshift Inc.
  • While I am not an engineer; it is known that Helpshift can be a bit of a pain to get it implemented into our applications.
  • There are some issues with the badge when it comes to the notifications of messages that let the user know they have a reply from customer service.
  • The website dashboard that is used to respond to customers has trouble sometimes and is very slow.
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Likelihood to Renew
Help Scout
We are receiving feedback from the organizational level that they may want us to transition to a different solution to provide consistency across the company.
Read full review
Helpshift Inc.
No answers on this topic
Usability
Help Scout
It is simple and intuitive. I haven't run into difficulty using any of the features that I have wanted to use. Additional help in the form of documentation or support is available as needed, and their response times are pretty good :)
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Helpshift Inc.
Helpshift is really easy to use and set up. We enjoy the automation to automatically route certain issues to different smart folders. There's just a lot of flexibility in the functionality to make things work for our team in the best way. I didn't give it a 10/10 just because we need SMS/Apple Business Chat and Helpshift doesn't yet offer that. They also don't currently support social media channels but they are working on releasing that soon.
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Support Rating
Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Helpshift Inc.
The few times we've had to contact them, they were courteous and gave us the information we needed swiftly.
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Alternatives Considered
Help Scout
Only have minimal experience with G-Suite for a much smaller company. This worked well for that organization but did not have similar specialization functions that suite our larger organization very well. Help Scout's pricing makes sense, and continues to service our needs well. Minimal usage of other programs, but have no need to explore alternatives at this time.
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Helpshift Inc.
Zendesk is used for customer communication via email and Helpshift is used for chat, they are for the same purpose but with different response times.
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Return on Investment
Help Scout
  • We are able to retain our customer base due to the outstanding customer service our Customer Experience department provides. Without an organized tool like Help Scout, this would not be possible. We pride ourselves in quick response times to customers and are able to do so by effectively routing tickets to the right agents.
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Helpshift Inc.
  • The ability to properly organize and delegate work to customer service representatives has been a very positive ROI after using Helpshift.
  • The customer service reps are much happier with this system over the previous system of a general company email address and other CS software tools.
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ScreenShots

Help Scout Screenshots

Screenshot of Build better relationships with your customers, and work together better as a teamScreenshot of Tools designed specifically for team collaboration on customer supportScreenshot of Docs Knowledge Base provides self-service that sets your customers up for successScreenshot of The conversation report can change the conversation with your customers from problems to praise by pinpointing what they write in about and when.Screenshot of Productivity Reports track your team's customer-helping velocity and identify sticking points to push through with even greater momentum.Screenshot of Happiness Reports are the closest you can get to your customer's true feelings without hiring a telepath.