Help Scout vs. Hiver

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
Hiver
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Hiver helps you manage customer support and sales right from your Gmail. With Hiver, teams can collaborate on Shared email accounts like support@ or sales@ without having to leave their Gmail accounts. Hiver works like a full-fledged help desk, built right into Gmail. It gives you everything you need to do outstanding customer support, without any of the complexities and feature overload that come with other help desk products. Hiver is used by thousands of companies…
$14
/user/month
Pricing
Help ScoutHiver
Editions & Modules
Standard
$20
per user/per month
Plus
$35
per user/per month
Company
Contact sales team
PLUS PLAN
$14.00
/user/month
PREMIUM PLAN
$22.00
/user/month
ENTERPRISE PLAN
$34.00
/user/month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Help ScoutHiver
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Help ScoutHiver
Considered Both Products
Help Scout
Chose Help Scout
Help Scout easily plugs into Gmail and allows us to create reports based on our tagging. We found its price point for us as a nonprofit was a good fit. Customer service was also supportive. It also allows us to have an external help desk for our common questions from clients.
Hiver

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Help ScoutHiver
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
Hiver
1.7
3 Ratings
129% below category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.018 Ratings1.03 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications10.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission10.017 Ratings2.03 Ratings
Ticket response10.018 Ratings2.03 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
Hiver
-
Ratings
External knowledge base9.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.014 Ratings00 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
Hiver
3.0
3 Ratings
88% below category average
Email support9.018 Ratings3.03 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration6.510 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Help ScoutHiver
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
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Help ScoutHiver
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(18 ratings)
1.0
(3 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Help ScoutHiver
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
Hiver
Any work environment where more than one team member is able to address certain customer requests. We used to use Groups, but then it was confusing as to whether or not someone responded, and we needed more transparency between team members. Another example is a person emailing with a billing question. We used to reply and add the billing department's email address or forward the email to billing, but with Hiver, simply assigning it to the billing HIVER Inbox allows anyone to reply directly to the customer without the issue of either the customer or team member remembering to reply all or accidentally replying only to the team member forwarding the email.
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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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Hiver
  • It's easy to set up, and manage ongoing.
  • The customer service and support is amazing- I get check ins, quick responses to enquiries and extras from time to time.
  • It knows what it's doing- it's here to take the issue of gmail not being the best when it comes to shared inboxes and it has provided the perfect solution!
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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Hiver
  • There is currently no way to create a support ticket unless related to an email already received. It would be extremely beneficial to be able to take a call and create a support ticket within HIVER based on the call in the same manner that we can create a ticket from an inbound email.
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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
Hiver
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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Hiver
Easy to use
Read full review
Support Rating
Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Hiver
Support is there, can be slow at times.
Read full review
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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Hiver
Hiver was the only option we looked at. There didn't appear to be many alternatives in the market
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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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Hiver
  • Hiver has increased the efficiency by which we address emailed questions and concerns.
  • Hiver increases transparency between team members.
  • Information pertinent to one or more team members is searchable by all applicable team members making it easier to research a situation that otherwise could have been stored in details across separate member email histories.
Read full review
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.

Hiver Screenshots

Screenshot of Hiver in GmailScreenshot of Access shared mailboxScreenshot of Collision alerts feature