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    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

    Kayako

    Score6.8 out of 10
    N/AKayako is a help desk and customer support platform that helps businesses automate workflows, improve agent productivity, and deliver personalized customer experiences across email, chat, and social media.

    $79

    per month

    Pricing
    Help ScoutKayako
    Editions & Modules
    Standard
    $30
    per month starts with 100 contacts
    Plus
    $90
    per month starts with 200 contacts
    Company
    Contact sales team
    Kayako One
    $79
    per month
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Help ScoutKayako
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Help ScoutKayako
    Considered Both Products
    Help Scout
    Chose Help Scout
    We primarily chose HelpScout because they were an affordable, moderately robust, HIPAA compliant solution. All the other options (e.g. Zendesk, Freshdesk, Kayako, etc.) were out of our price range or did not provide the necessary features that our team has come to rely on.
    Incentivized
    Kayako
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Help ScoutKayako
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Help Scout and Kayako
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.7
    23 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Kayako
    2.0
    11 Ratings
    121% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.123 Ratings1.011 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications8.113 Ratings1.08 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.021 Ratings7.011 Ratings
    Ticket response9.522 Ratings1.011 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings1.05 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings1.07 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Help Scout and Kayako
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.5
    21 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Kayako
    1.0
    9 Ratings
    155% below category average
    External knowledge base8.720 Ratings1.09 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base8.319 Ratings1.08 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Help Scout and Kayako
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.5
    23 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Kayako
    1.0
    10 Ratings
    155% below category average
    Email support9.623 Ratings1.010 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration7.415 Ratings1.06 Ratings
    Customer portal00 Ratings1.07 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings1.02 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings1.04 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Help ScoutKayako
    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 ScoutKayako
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (23 ratings)
    1.0
    (22 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.8
    (11 ratings)
    Usability
    9.4
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    2.1
    (4 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Help ScoutKayako
    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
    Kayako
    When it works, It's without a doubt a great help desk solution. It is perfect for our usage, and have rolled it out company-wide. It's great if you have multiple departments. We have it set up so most items come through a single desk that then hands out tickets to their proper department. There may be cheaper options for smaller organizations but for one that is as service-driven as ours, we really think Kayako is a great fit.
    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
    Kayako
    • Gives a very good report on an individual level of what is being done for a customer or corporate issue.
    • Easy to understand who has what, what the tickets are about, how long they have been opened and how many times the customer/employee have gone back and forth with each other.
    • Nice dashboard view.
    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
    Kayako
    • Departments need a bit of work. Even though you can have multiple departments, the only changes that can be made are globally. If you want independent queues within the departments, you have to do a lot of work that can be very confusing.
    • Survey system is not up to speed. Kayako really needs to add Net Promoter Score into their system. Also, if a staff user removes their name from an incident ticket, it removes them from the survey so you really can't even get a good estimate of how well your staff is in the eyes of the customer.
    • Very difficult to implement when you already have a customer base. Setting them up in organizations is difficult. Also, the sign-up for new customers is quirky. If you send an email to Kayako, it will say you are not an authorized user, however, it will store your email address. If you try to send an email a second time, it will go through. This is one of many reasons why we decided to move from Kayako to Oracle Service Cloud.
    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
    Kayako
    • We are grandfathered in on their old Software-assurance pricing and our continued use costs us only a few hundred dollars a year (excluding hosting expenses)
    • Our team's processes are now heavily ingrained in the system
    • We have not been shown a more compelling option that is more cost-effective while still offering all the features we've come to expect
    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
    Kayako
    I did not come from an IT background and I picked this program up quickly
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Kayako
    They are really good, but it takes a while to get back, because of the large time difference to the Eastern US. However, they are very helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Kayako
    • We didn't have to use support too much, but when we did, they were able to assist us and help us make everything work.
    • Mostly we used their Online KB and step by step instructions to get all of our issues resolved.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Kayako
    Three years in we are about as happy with Kayako as we could be. We've had several employee's leave and on-boarding new hires was easier than it has ever been as things are uniform and consistent across the entire application.
    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
    Kayako
    We were using Spiceworks for a few years before switching to Kayako but found that it wasn't as customizable or as user friendly for our customers. The SNMP scanning and inventory features with Spiceworks was nice but we needed more of a Help Desk that would allow us to scale our services to more companies.
    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
    Kayako
    • Tickets were definitely responded to faster once we implemented the audible alarm that would go off when new tickets came into the queue. This was possible because of the API.
    • Since the system was email based we could set our monitoring software up to generate tickets automatically via email for customers when it found something out of the ordinary.
    Incentivized
    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.