Freshdesk vs Help Scout: Which is right for your team in 2025?

Picking the right help desk software can feel like a huge decision for your support team. When you get it right, your team runs smoothly and customers are happy. But if you get it wrong, you’re looking at a clunky tool, a frustrated team, and a migration project that always seems to have surprise costs and complications.

Two of the biggest names you’ll run into are Freshdesk and Help Scout. They’re both respected in the industry, but they see customer support through very different lenses. Freshdesk is a feature-packed machine built to handle high volume and scale, while Help Scout is all about simplicity and keeping the human touch in every conversation.

This guide will give you a clear, side-by-side look at Freshdesk vs Help Scout. We’ll dig into their features, pricing, and what they offer for AI to help you figure out the best fit. We’ll also talk about a third path, a way to get the AI features you want without having to ditch the tools you’re already using.

What is Freshdesk?

Freshdesk is a customer support platform from the Freshworks software family, and it’s loaded with features. It’s built to be the central hub for everything customer service-related, capable of growing with a company from a small startup to a large enterprise.

Its main strength is its powerful ticketing system and true omnichannel support. It pulls in customer conversations from email, phone, chat, and social media, putting them all into one dashboard. This makes it a go-to for businesses managing a ton of inquiries from all over the place. If you need a structured way to track, manage, and report on every single interaction to build a data-heavy support operation, Freshdesk is probably on your radar.

What is Help Scout?

Help Scout takes a totally different approach. It’s a customer support platform built around simplicity and a more personal, human-to-human style. Its key feature is a shared inbox that deliberately avoids the impersonal ticket numbers you see in systems like Freshdesk. Instead, every customer email is treated like a real conversation.

This focus on a clean, easy-to-use interface makes it a favorite for small and medium-sized businesses. Teams that want to build strong relationships with their customers and prefer a tool that feels more like a shared email inbox than a complex piece of software often lean toward Help Scout. It’s designed so you can get started quickly, without needing weeks of training or a dedicated person to manage it.

An in-depth feature comparison

The best tool for your team usually comes down to the specific features you rely on every day. While both platforms handle the essentials, their philosophies really show in how they implement the core functions.

Ticketing system vs. shared inbox

• Freshdesk: It uses a classic, robust ticketing system. Every customer message becomes a ticket with a unique ID, status, and priority. This is great for tracking metrics, managing Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and setting up complex automated rules. The structure gives you clear accountability, but it can sometimes feel a bit cold or robotic to the customer on the other end.

• Help Scout: It completely skips the ticket numbers in favor of a shared inbox. Every query is managed as a conversation, much like in an email client. This approach feels more natural for agents and more personal for customers. It’s fantastic for building rapport, though you might miss the super-detailed tracking you get with a traditional ticketing system.

Multi-channel support capabilities

• Freshdesk: This is an area where Freshdesk goes all out. It natively supports a huge range of channels right from the start, including email, phone, live chat, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and even WhatsApp. If you truly need an omnichannel setup where every conversation lives in one place, Freshdesk is designed for it.

• Help Scout: The platform is primarily built for email and live chat. It can handle other channels like social media, phone, or SMS, but this usually requires setting up third-party integrations. This can tack on extra costs and a bit of admin work if you need to manage support from a lot of different places.

User interface and ease of use

• Freshdesk: The interface is packed with features, settings, and customization options. This makes it incredibly flexible, but it can also feel cluttered and a bit much, especially when you’re just starting out. There’s generally a steeper learning curve to get your team feeling confident with all the menus.

• Help Scout: The user interface is almost universally praised for being clean, simple, and intuitive. It’s designed to be easy to pick up, letting teams get comfortable in minutes, not weeks. For businesses that just want a tool that works well without a lot of fuss, Help Scout’s design is a huge plus.

Collaboration and automation

Both tools offer ways for your team to work together and automate the boring stuff, but they differ in how deep you can go.

Feature	Freshdesk	Help Scout
Internal Notes	Yes, with @mentions to loop in teammates.	Yes, with @mentions inside conversations.
Collision Detection	Yes, agents see if someone else is looking at or replying to a ticket.	Yes, shows when another agent is active on a conversation.
Ticket Assignment	Advanced routing (round-robin, skill-based, load-based).	Rule-based workflows and manual assignment.
SLA Management	A native, built-in feature to track and enforce response goals.	Not a built-in feature; requires workarounds or other tools.
Workflow Automation	A powerful rule engine for creating complex, multi-step automations.	Simpler, more direct "if-this-then-that" style workflows.

Pricing compared

Pricing is often the deciding factor, and hidden costs can be a real pain. One Reddit user famously documented their bad experience with Freshdesk’s surprise migration fees and pricing changes, which is a good reminder that the price on the website isn’t always what you end up paying. Here’s a straightforward look at how the two platforms structure their plans.

Freshdesk pricing plans

Freshdesk has a pretty standard per-agent, per-month model, where you unlock more features as you move up the tiers.

• Free Plan: $0 for up to two agents. Gives you basic ticketing for email and social, a knowledge base, and simple reports.

• Growth: $15 per agent/month (billed annually). Adds automation, collision detection, and SLA management.

• Pro: $49 per agent/month (billed annually). Unlocks custom roles, CSAT surveys, and support for multiple products.

• Enterprise: $79 per agent/month (billed annually). Adds skill-based routing, a sandbox for testing, and an audit log.

Here’s the catch: many of Freshdesk’s advanced AI features are sold as pricey add-ons. The Freddy AI Copilot costs an extra $29/agent/month, and the Freddy AI Agent is priced by usage at $100 per 1,000 sessions. These fees can pile up fast and make your final bill much higher than expected.

Help Scout pricing plans

Help Scout uses a unique pricing model based on the number of contacts you help each month, not on how many agents you have.

• Free: $0 for up to 100 contacts/month. This plan includes unlimited users, one inbox, a knowledge base (Docs), and their AI features.

• Standard: $50/month (starts at 100 contacts). Adds multiple inboxes and knowledge bases, better reporting, and over 100 integrations.

• Plus: $75/month (starts at 100 contacts). Adds custom fields, advanced permissions, and integrations with tools like Salesforce and Jira.

The big difference here is that Help Scout’s pricing includes unlimited users and all AI features at no extra cost. This makes budgeting much more predictable, especially for growing teams or businesses with part-time staff who just need to pop in and out of the platform.

The AI showdown: Freddy AI vs. Help Scout’s AI

AI isn’t just a buzzword anymore; it’s a real part of modern support software. Both Freshdesk and Help Scout have built AI into their platforms, but their approaches, costs, and capabilities couldn’t be more different.

Approach to AI

• Freshdesk (Freddy AI): Freshdesk markets its "Freddy AI" as a full suite of AI tools made for serious automation. It has an AI Copilot to help agents write replies and summarize tickets, plus a customer-facing AI Agent that can resolve issues entirely on its own. It’s powerful, for sure, but these features come with that steep extra cost and can be a headache to set up and manage.

• Help Scout AI: Help Scout’s AI is baked right into its platform at no extra cost, even on the free plan. It’s designed to make human agents faster and more efficient, not to replace them. The features are practical and easy to use, like AI-powered reply suggestions, conversation summaries, and instant translations. It’s less about full automation and more about giving your agents some useful superpowers.

The limitations of built-in AI

Here’s the main issue with both of these built-in solutions: they lock you into their world. If you’re using Help Scout but need more automation than it can offer, you’re out of luck. If you’re on Freshdesk but find its AI is too expensive, complicated, or hard to control, you’re stuck with it.

This forces you into a tough choice. But what if you could add a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-manage AI layer to the help desk you already use, without the nightmare of a full migration?

Beyond Freshdesk vs Help Scout: The smarter alternative of an AI layer

Instead of getting locked into one platform’s ecosystem, a more modern approach is to just make the tools you already have better. eesel AI is a flexible AI platform that connects directly to your existing help desk, giving you top-tier AI capabilities without the "rip and replace" drama.

• Go live in minutes, not months: Switching help desks can take months of planning and work. In contrast, eesel AI connects to platforms like Freshdesk and Help Scout with a one-click integration. The setup is completely self-serve, so you can be up and running in the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.

• Unify all your knowledge: Built-in AIs are often stuck with only the information inside the help desk. eesel AI goes way beyond that, connecting to all your knowledge sources, past tickets, help centers, Confluence, Google Docs, you name it. This helps it provide much more accurate and relevant answers than a siloed AI ever could.

This image shows eesel AI's ability to connect to various knowledge sources, offering a more flexible approach in the Freshdesk vs Help Scout discussion.

• Test with confidence: Nervous about letting an AI loose on your customers? eesel AI’s simulation mode is a huge stress reliever. You can test your AI setup on thousands of your past tickets in a safe environment. This shows you exactly how it will perform, including its automation rate and ROI, before it ever talks to a live customer.

This image displays eesel AI's simulation mode, a key differentiator when considering alternatives in the Freshdesk vs Help Scout evaluation.

• Total control and predictable pricing: With eesel AI, you decide exactly which types of tickets to automate, giving you complete control over the workflow. The pricing is transparent and based on usage, with no weird per-resolution fees that punish you for being successful.

Freshdesk vs Help Scout: Making the right choice for your team

So, when it comes down to Freshdesk vs Help Scout, how do you decide?

• Choose Freshdesk if: You need a powerful, all-in-one, omnichannel platform for a high-volume team that’s growing fast. Just be prepared for the potential complexity and the extra costs for its advanced features and AI.

• Choose Help Scout if: Your top priorities are simplicity, a human touch, and a straightforward, conversation-first workflow. It’s perfect for small-to-medium-sized teams who want a tool that both agents and customers actually enjoy using.

But it’s clear there’s another option on the table. Instead of getting locked into one of two platforms and their limitations, think about upgrading the one you already have. eesel AI lets you add best-in-class AI without the pain of switching tools, giving you the power of Freshdesk’s automation with an setup process that’s even easier than Help Scout’s.

Supercharge your support without switching tools

This video breaks down the key differences between Help Scout and Freshdesk, focusing on simplicity and support quality.

Ready to see how AI can transform your current help desk? Try eesel AI for free and run a simulation on your past tickets in just a few minutes.