Help Scout Pricing in 2026: Plans and Real Costs

Help Scout costs $25, $45 or $75 per user a month billed annually for Standard, Plus and Pro, or $30, $54 and $90 billed monthly, as listed on Help Scout’s pricing page on 9 November 2026. Pro lists a 10-user minimum, and the Envoy AI agent adds $0.75 per resolution on every plan.

Key takeaways

• Three users on Standard cost $75 a month billed annually, or $90 billed monthly, before AI and extra inboxes.
• Pro’s plan table lists a minimum of 10 users, so a three-person team that picks Pro would pay for 10 seats: $750 a month annually, $900 monthly.
• Envoy costs $0.75 per resolution. At 500 resolutions a month that is $375, more than the seat bill of a five-person team on Standard.
• Every extra inbox costs $10 a month annually ($12 monthly) and every extra Docs site $20 ($24). A third product on Standard adds $30 to $36 a month.
• Help Scout is cheaper for one person, within $1 to $11 of Convot at two, and free for up to 5 users under 100 contacts a month.

The seat price is only the first line. The bill also depends on how many products you support, how many conversations AI resolves, and whether the plan has a minimum. This guide works out the monthly bill for small teams, then compares it with Convot. Convot makes a competing help desk, so every Convot figure is labelled and sourced.

Help Scout plans and prices at a glance

Help Scout sells a Free plan and three paid plans, priced per user. The pricing page opens on the annual toggle, which it labels 16% off, so the headline numbers are annual-billing equivalents rather than month-to-month prices.

Source: Help Scout pricing, checked 9 November 2026, US view, before tax. The monthly column is the rate Help Scout shows when you switch the toggle to monthly; Strategy of Finance’s Help Scout benchmark lists the same annual per-user rates.

Help Scout pricing page on annual billing, captured 3 October 2026. Re-checked against the live page on 9 November 2026.

Three details on that page change the math for a small team:

• Contacts are not the meter on paid plans. Help Scout defines a contact as someone who received a reply or had a question resolved by the AI assistant, and lists paid plans as unlimited. Only Free is capped, at 100 a month. LetsEngaige’s Help Scout pricing explanation walks through the same definition.
• Plan tiers gate features, not only price. Plus adds advanced workflows, two SLA policies, a customer portal and Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot integrations. Pro adds SSO and SAML, HIPAA compliance, unlimited SLA policies and up to 50 light users.
• Phone is an integration. Phone and voice appear as “via integration” on every paid plan, so budget for the provider behind them.

Older quotes and legacy plans can disagree

Help Scout has changed its pricing structure more than once, and a quote you saw a year ago may not match the page today. Help Scout’s own support article on legacy plan changes says that when it stops offering a plan to new customers, that plan becomes a legacy plan, and that features on current plans may not exist on legacy ones. If your account is older, check the Your Plan page for a legacy note before comparing it with the table above.

What your monthly bill looks like at 1, 3, 5 and 8 users

A Help Scout bill is seats multiplied by the per-user rate, plus extra inboxes and Docs sites, plus AI resolutions at $0.75. The tables below work it out for one product, using the 9 November 2026 prices. They exclude tax and assume every user is a full user.

Monthly bill by team size, one product, no AI

The Pro row is a three-person team forced onto the 10-user minimum, at $75 or $90 for 10 seats.

Convot figures are list prices from Convot pricing: Starter is $49 for 1 app and 3 seats, each extra seat is $10, and the 8-user figure is Growth at $79 for 7 seats plus one extra seat. Convot bills monthly with no contract.

Where Help Scout is cheaper

For one person, Help Scout Standard is $25 annually or $30 monthly, below Convot Starter at $49. For two people the bills are close, $50 to $60 against $49. At up to five users, Help Scout’s Free plan costs nothing if you stay under 100 contacts a month, while Convot’s free Community plan covers 3 seats and 1 app under $1,000 MRR and has no AI agent.

Help Scout also lists channels Convot does not offer: SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, plus HIPAA compliance on Pro. If your team needs one of those, the price comparison is secondary.

Where the bill climbs

From three seats up, Convot’s bundled seats pull ahead on one product, and the gap widens with every hire on Help Scout’s per-user ladder. Plus is the bigger trap: three users on Plus cost $135 to $162 a month, about three times Convot Starter, for features such as advanced workflows and a customer portal that a small team may never switch on.

What a second and third product add to the bill

Each extra inbox on Help Scout costs $10 a month billed annually or $12 monthly, and each extra Docs site $20 annually or $24 monthly. A team that gives every app its own inbox and its own public help center therefore pays $30 a month annually, or $36 monthly, for each app beyond the two included on Standard.

Three users, several products, no AI, Standard plan

This assumes one inbox and one Docs site per product. Convot charges $20 a month for each app beyond the first, and each app gets its own live chat, help center, changelog, roadmap and status page. If you run two products on Help Scout and do not need separate inboxes, the two included inboxes and two Docs sites cover it at no extra charge, which is why Help Scout’s bill stays flat at two products, though Convot is still $6 to $21 lower. Convot vs Help Scout shows the full feature comparison.

What Help Scout AI costs per resolution

Help Scout’s AI agent is called Envoy on the pricing page and AI Answers in the pricing FAQ. It costs $0.75 per resolution on every plan, with a 3-month free trial that starts when you create the account. Help Scout counts a resolution only when the customer gets an AI reply and does not escalate, search the knowledge base, ask more questions or say they need more help.

That definition is generous to the buyer, and it is worth knowing. A conversation that the AI answers but the customer escalates is not charged. Help Scout also lets you set a monthly spending cap, and when you reach it, AI is switched off for the rest of the billing cycle.

Added AI cost per month by resolution volume

The two units differ. Help Scout charges for resolved conversations only. Cove AI costs $0.20 per resolved conversation in which it replied, so a conversation where Cove replied and the customer then needed a human can still be billed. The Convot column is therefore a floor for a given number of resolutions. If Cove replied to 50% more conversations than it resolved, 500 resolutions would cost $150 at Convot against $375 at Help Scout.

Three users, Standard or Starter, with 500 AI resolutions a month

After the free trial, the AI line is the largest part of this bill for a three-person team. The jump from 100 to 500 resolutions adds $300 on Help Scout, more than moving from Standard to Plus for three users. Forecast resolutions before you turn it on, and use the spend cap.

What drives the Help Scout bill and which costs stay hidden

Four units set a Help Scout invoice: seats, inboxes, Docs sites and AI resolutions. A quote that lists only seats is missing the other three.

A large roster can have a quiet inbox

Take eight people who sometimes answer customers, such as founders, engineers and support staff, with about 40 customers writing in each month. On Standard that is $200 a month annually before AI, because every full user is a seat. Help Scout lists light users, which let teammates view and collaborate without taking a full seat, with up to 50 on Pro; ask Help Scout in writing whether your plan includes any and what they may do.

A small roster can have a busy inbox

Two agents helping 900 customers a month do not pay more for the volume, because contacts are unlimited on paid plans. They pay more if AI resolves those conversations, since each resolution is metered. The busy inbox is where the AI line, not the seat line, decides the bill.

Five purchase conditions to check

1. The Pro minimum. Pro lists a minimum of 10 users. Price the floor, $750 a month annually, not your roster.
2. The Free ceiling. Free is capped at 100 contacts a month and 5 users. Plan the step up to Standard before you reach it, and confirm what happens at the limit.
3. Billing cadence. The headline price is the annual equivalent. Monthly billing costs about 20% more per user: $30 against $25 on Standard.
4. Extra inboxes and Docs sites. Standard includes 2 of each. Every product after that adds $30 to $36 a month.
5. Tax and AI caps. Tax is extra, and AI stays on until you set a monthly cap.

Ask for a written quote that lists all five before approving it.

Per-user and flat team pricing compared

Per-user pricing charges for access and grows with the roster. Flat team pricing bundles a set number of seats and products into a plan, so the bill moves when you cross a plan boundary rather than with each hire.

Flat pricing does not mean unlimited. Convot’s Starter plan includes 3 seats, and the fourth seat is $10 a month. A comparison of help desks with flat pricing lists where each tool’s boundaries sit.

Support agents often record walkthroughs for customers, a cost that sits outside the help desk bill. If yours do, Loom alternative picks from Trupeer, published by Trupeer Inc., offers a separate resource for evaluating that part of the support stack.

When per-user pricing is the right buy

A one or two person team with light automation, an email-first workflow and no need for several products may pay less on Help Scout than on any bundled plan, and may pay nothing on Free. An existing Help Scout workflow also has value. If agents find history, answer correctly and manage escalations without friction, switching to save a few dollars may not repay the disruption.

Moving from Help Scout and where Convot fits

Move only if the bill or the workflow gives you a measured reason. Convot is built by a solo founder for small software teams, with Shopify app developers the sharpest fit. Its plans bundle seats and let a team support several apps from one inbox.

Convot’s list prices are Starter at $49 for 1 app and 3 seats, Growth at $79 for 2 apps and 7 seats, Pro at $149 for 5 apps and 12 seats, and Scale at $299 for unlimited apps and 20 seats. Extra seats are $10 a month and extra apps are $20, except on Scale. Cove AI costs $0.20 per resolved conversation in which it replied, answers from your documentation and hands off to a human when it is not sure. Growth, Pro and Scale include a 14-day trial.

Disclosure: Convot makes a competing help desk, so check these figures against your own quote.

There is no self-serve Help Scout importer. Talk to us before switching and we will plan the move with you. A help desk migration checklist helps assign owners and acceptance criteria, and the best Help Scout alternatives guide compares eight options by cost for three people.

Test the replacement before moving the queue

1. Count the real units. Pull seats, products, monthly conversations and AI resolutions for the last three months.
2. Test real tickets. Use setup questions, billing issues and escalations. Check whether an agent can find context and take ownership without rebuilding the conversation.
3. Map the history transfer. Decide what must move: customer records, conversation content, attachments and assignments. Do not assume a migration preserves every object.
4. Run a controlled overlap. Keep both subscriptions for a billing cycle, but give each incoming conversation one system of record.
5. Cancel after verification. Confirm routing, reporting and access to history before ending the old subscription, and keep an export.

Use the help desk price calculator to organize the comparison, then reconcile it with the vendor’s written quote. A calculator cannot resolve an undocumented billing condition.

Decision test: Could you explain the expected invoice to another founder without opening the pricing page again?

Frequently asked questions

How much does Help Scout cost per user?

Help Scout Standard is $25 per user a month billed annually or $30 billed monthly, Plus is $45 or $54, and Pro is $75 or $90, checked on 9 November 2026. The Free plan covers up to 5 users and 100 contacts a month.

What is the Help Scout Pro minimum?

Help Scout’s plan table lists Pro as unlimited users with a minimum of 10. At $75 per user annually that is $750 a month, so a team of three would pay for ten seats. Confirm the floor with Help Scout before you plan around Pro.

How much does Help Scout AI cost?

Help Scout’s AI agent, Envoy, costs $0.75 per resolution on every plan, with a 3-month free trial. A resolution is a conversation the AI answers without the customer escalating or asking for more help. At 500 resolutions a month it costs $375.

Does Help Scout have a free plan?

Help Scout has a free plan for up to 5 users with 1 inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month. Convot’s Community plan is free for teams under $1,000 MRR, with 1 app and 3 seats, and has no AI agent.

What does an extra inbox cost on Help Scout?

Each additional inbox costs $10 a month billed annually or $12 monthly, and each additional Docs site costs $20 or $24. Standard includes 2 inboxes and 2 Docs sites, so a third product adds $30 a month annually.

Is Help Scout cheaper than Convot?

Help Scout is cheaper for one person, within $1 to $11 of Convot at two, and free for small teams that stay under 100 contacts a month. For three users on one product Convot Starter is $49 against $75 to $90 on Help Scout Standard, and the gap narrows at two products and widens again from three and with AI volume.

Convot combines a shared inbox, live chat, help center, changelog and Cove AI in app-based plans with seats included. Compare Convot with Help Scout or see the plans, then talk to us about a Help Scout migration before changing your live setup.

Tarang Agarwal, founder of Convot. Help Scout prices checked on helpscout.com (US view) on 9 November 2026.