A complete guide to Help Scout pricing in 2025

Help Scout is a popular tool in the customer support world, and for a lot of good reasons. It gives teams a clean, shared inbox that feels more like a collaborative email app than a clunky old ticketing system. But when you try to nail down exactly what it’s going to cost you each month, things start to get fuzzy.

The main plans are simple enough, you pay per user. The curveball comes with their more powerful automation features, especially the AI tools, which run on a totally different, usage-based model. This mix can be a real headache for anyone trying to forecast a budget. Ironically, the better you get at using AI to automate support and deflect tickets, the higher your bill can unexpectedly climb.

This post will give you a clear, no-nonsense breakdown of the current Help Scout pricing. We’ll go through the per-user plans, unpack the variable add-on costs, and talk about a more predictable way to bring powerful AI into your current support workflow.

What is Help Scout?

At its heart, Help Scout is a customer communication platform for teams that want to offer personal, human-style support. It’s designed to feel less like a rigid ticketing system and more like a shared email inbox that everyone on your team can jump into.

Its main components include:

• Shared Inbox: This is the core of Help Scout. It pulls customer emails, live chats, and social media messages into one central spot. This makes it easy for your team to assign conversations, leave private notes for each other, and avoid sending the same reply twice.

• Docs: This is their knowledge base feature. You can build out a library of help articles that customers can search to find their own answers, which can help lighten your team's workload.

• Beacon: This is a little widget you can embed on your website. It combines live chat, email, and access to your Docs articles, giving customers one place to go when they need help.

Help Scout is a really solid option for small to mid-sized businesses, especially if your support is mostly email-based and you want a clean, simple interface.

Breaking down the Help Scout pricing plans

Help Scout’s pricing comes in two flavors. The main plans are billed on a straightforward per-user, per-month basis, which is easy to get your head around. The confusion and unpredictable bills pop up with the add-ons, particularly the AI features that are billed per resolution. The infographic below breaks down this dual structure. Let's look at both parts in detail, using the information from their official pricing page.

Help Scout pricing for per-user plans

First up, the core subscription plans. These set the foundation for the features you get and how many people can use the account.

Plan Name	Price (Annual Billing)	Key Features	Limitations & User Caps	Ideal For
Free	$0/month	1 Inbox, 1 Docs site, 1 Beacon, Basic reports (30-day history).	Up to 5 users, 100 contacts/mo, 10 articles, 10 saved replies.	New teams or startups just trying out a shared inbox.
Standard	$25/user/month	2 Inboxes, 2 Docs sites, 5 Beacons, Live Chat, AI Assist, 150 Workflows, 100+ integrations.	Up to 25 users. Reporting history is limited to 2 years.	Growing teams that need some basic automation and live chat.
Plus	$45/user/month	5 Inboxes, 3 Docs sites, Unlimited Beacons, AI Drafts & Summarize, Salesforce & Jira integrations.	Up to 50 users. HIPAA compliance is an add-on.	Teams with higher volume that need key CRM and developer tool integrations.
Pro	$75/user/month	10 Inboxes, 5 Docs sites, Unlimited Workflows, SSO/SAML, HIPAA compliance included, 50 light users.	A minimum of 10 users is required.	Larger teams that need enterprise-level security and dedicated support.

Figuring out the variable and add-on costs

This is where planning your budget for Help Scout pricing can get tricky. On top of your monthly per-user subscription, there are several usage-based and flat-rate add-ons that can seriously inflate your bill.

• AI Answers: This is the main source of the surprise costs. After a three-month free trial, this feature costs $0.75 per resolution.
  • What exactly is an "AI Resolution"? Help Scout's FAQ explains that a resolution is only counted if the AI gives an answer and the customer is satisfied. If they escalate to a human or ask another question, it doesn't count. While that’s a fair way to measure it, your costs are still tied directly to your support volume, which can swing wildly from one month to the next.

• Additional Inboxes: If you outgrow the number of inboxes in your plan, it costs $10 for each extra inbox per month.

• Additional Docs Sites: Need another knowledge base for a different product? That'll be $20 per site per month.

Help Scout does let you put a monthly spending cap on AI Answers, but the pay-per-resolution model itself creates a big budgeting challenge. Your costs are directly linked to your ticket volume, which isn't always something you can predict.

The good and the bad of Help Scout pricing

So, does this pricing model make sense for your business? It really depends on how you plan to use the platform and its AI tools.

Where Help Scout pricing works well

• Straightforward per-seat cost: If you don't plan on using the AI chatbot or needing a bunch of extra inboxes, the base per-user price is clear and easy to calculate.

• A generous free plan: For brand-new businesses or small teams, the free tier is surprisingly capable for up to five users. It's a great way to get started without any financial commitment.

• AI is optional: You aren't locked into the pay-per-resolution model. Teams can decide whether to turn on AI Answers, which gives them control over when they want to deal with variable costs.

Where Help Scout pricing gets tricky

• Unpredictable AI costs: This is the biggest drawback. A new product launch, a viral marketing campaign, or an unexpected service outage can send your support requests soaring, leading to a massive, unplanned bill for AI resolutions. This is a common point of frustration for many users.

• It punishes successful automation: The model puts you in a strange spot. The better your AI gets at handling common questions (which is the whole point), the more you pay. This setup can actually discourage you from using AI to its full potential because every success adds to your bill.

• Makes budgeting difficult: It's almost impossible for finance and support managers to accurately forecast monthly spending. This can cause internal friction and means you have to constantly keep an eye on your AI usage to avoid a shock when the invoice arrives.

• Add-on costs can pile up: As your company grows, you'll likely need more specialized inboxes for different teams or knowledge bases for new products. These extra costs can add up fast, turning what seemed like an affordable plan into a much pricier one.

A different path: Predictable AI that plugs into your tools

Help Scout is a good help desk, but its AI pricing model presents some real challenges for any team wanting to scale up automation without the budget surprises. This is where a different philosophy can make all the difference.

Enter eesel AI, an AI platform built to solve this exact problem. Instead of making you switch help desks, eesel AI works as an intelligent layer that plugs right into the tools you're already using, like Zendesk and Freshdesk. That means no migration headaches for your team, your knowledge base, or your workflows.

Here’s how eesel AI addresses the issues with Help Scout's model:

• Predictable, flat-fee pricing: eesel AI uses a clear, tiered model based on a set number of interactions. For example, the Business plan is a flat $639/month (billed annually) and covers up to 3,000 AI interactions. This lets you budget with confidence, with no surprises. If you happen to hit your limit, the AI just pauses until you decide to upgrade. There are no automatic overage charges.

• No migration needed: You get to keep the help desk your team already knows. eesel AI just makes it smarter, acting as an AI Agent that can resolve tickets on its own or as an AI Copilot that drafts replies for your human agents. You skip the massive disruption and cost of switching platforms entirely.

• Risk-free simulation: Before you even let the AI talk to live customers, the Business plan allows you to run a bulk simulation on your past tickets. This unique feature shows you exactly how the AI would have handled real customer questions, giving you a clear forecast of your potential deflection rate and return on investment.

• Unlimited bots: With the Business plan, you can create as many bots as you need. This means you can build specialized AI agents for different teams, like sales, billing, and technical support, all without paying extra for each one.

Picking a pricing model that grows with you

Help Scout provides a solid help desk with clear per-user pricing, but its approach to AI introduces a level of unpredictability that can be a big problem for growing businesses. When you're investing in automation, the pricing model is just as important as the features. A model that charges you more every time your AI does its job successfully just doesn't align with the goal of scaling efficiently.

As you look at your options, search for solutions that offer transparent, predictable costs. The right platform should help you maximize automation and improve your support without you having to worry about a surprise bill at the end of the month.

Ready to add powerful, predictable AI to your customer support without the sticker shock? Try eesel AI free for 7 days and see what your potential ROI looks like with a risk-free simulation.