TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Help Scout

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AHelp 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…

    $30

    per month starts with 100 contacts

    Intercom

    Score10 out of 10
    N/AIntercom Helpdesk is the support workspace where human teammates handle customer conversations and tickets. Fin, the customer agent, and Copilot work in that same Inbox, so a case can move from an automated reply to a teammate with the conversation history attached.

    $39

    per month per seat

    Pricing
    Help ScoutIntercom
    Editions & Modules
    Standard
    $30
    per month starts with 100 contacts
    Plus
    $90
    per month starts with 200 contacts
    Company
    Contact sales team
    Essential
    $39
    per month per seat
    Advanced
    $99
    per month per seat
    Expert
    $139
    per month per seat
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Help ScoutIntercom
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Up to a 26% discount for annual billing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Help ScoutIntercom
    Considered Both Products
    Help Scout
    No answer on this topic
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    85 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    67 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    82 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    56 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    65 Answers
    Features
    Help ScoutIntercom
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Help Scout and Intercom
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.7
    23 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Intercom
    8.0
    15 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.123 Ratings8.613 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications8.113 Ratings8.09 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.021 Ratings8.114 Ratings
    Ticket response9.522 Ratings7.515 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings8.410 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.59 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Help Scout and Intercom
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.5
    21 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Intercom
    8.4
    15 Ratings
    5% above category average
    External knowledge base8.720 Ratings8.415 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base8.319 Ratings8.412 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Help Scout and Intercom
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.5
    23 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Intercom
    7.9
    15 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Email support9.623 Ratings8.614 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration7.415 Ratings8.711 Ratings
    Customer portal00 Ratings8.013 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings7.64 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings6.88 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Help ScoutIntercom
    Small Businesses
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Help ScoutIntercom
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (23 ratings)
    10.0
    (149 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.9
    (15 ratings)
    Usability
    9.4
    (6 ratings)
    9.2
    (57 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.7
    (7 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Help ScoutIntercom
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Intercom is well suited to finding information that your colleague gets about one lead or User. It's less appropriate when you need some report that you can not custom, and the different categories are really not clear. Nevertheless, for the communication with your clients and feature clients, it's really perfect!
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Intercom is great for tracking user engagement, support, and marketing. I love that you can see what a user is doing on your site and send messages (email or chat) based on specific criteria.
    • Intercom is simple, easy to use, and great for website chats. It is very easy for customers to interact with.
    • Makes your team very accessible, also makes the support process simple for the end users. Good integrations and useful statistics provided.
    Incentivized
    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?)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Exporting conversations - we need to do this for things like customer disputes and chargebacks, however the export is a simple unformatted text file, which is not an acceptable capture of the threads as it can be simply edited. A clean and neat PDF export would be fantastic.
    • Better/simpler spam and abusive user blocking, maybe based on IP address or sender domain
    • A lower cost - there are many free/low cost platforms now, and I feel your costs are high
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    We have been and will be continuing our journey with Intercom and nothing too concerning has happened that I have experienced or heard of that has us on the edge yet. If it ever happens it will be something along the lines of "Outgrowing" the use of need of the platform.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Help Scout
    Help Scout is a great solution for support teams. There are many articles and webinars to help you learn how to use Help Scout. There are also many features to help make your workflows easier and more efficient. I would readily recommend Help Scout to any small or medium-growing support teams.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Customizability: Intercom is highly customizable, allowing users to tailor the interface to their specific needs and preferences. This can help to improve usability by ensuring that users have quick and easy access to the features and information they need most, this can be done by using Macros, generating custom events and etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Intercom is the premier customer support/engagement model and it definitely has one of the top tier customer support teams as well. I don't think I have ever waited more than 5 minutes to get the information I need or get help with an issue. They are incredible and I aim to model our customer service department after them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The implementation was surprisingly easy but we are having to adapt from our old process to work well with Intercom.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Intercom is much easier to use. Even though HubSpot's Support hub is a fairly new feature, it lacks so much. It is quite complicated to use and lacks many features that Intercom can offer just for the focus of customer service.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Increase in demo sets and deals won by engaging with prospects that hadn't requested a demo yet.
    • Increase in efficiency for our support team to receiving tickets.
    • Boosting registration for our on going training webinars as well as those for new product announcements.
    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.