A complete guide to Helpscout integrations in 2025

Help Scout is a great tool for managing customer conversations. It’s clean, easy to use, and has a customer-first vibe that a lot of teams really appreciate. But like any software, it doesn't work in a bubble. The real power comes out when you connect it to the other apps that run your business.

That's where Help Scout integrations come into play. They act as bridges, connecting your support conversations to your CRM, e-commerce store, and internal tools, creating a smooth flow of information. This guide will walk you through the different ways to integrate with Help Scout, from simple pre-built apps to AI automation that can really make a difference for your support team. Getting your integrations right can do more than just save a few clicks, it can cut down on manual work and lead to happier customers.

What are Help Scout integrations?

At their heart, Help Scout integrations are connections that let Help Scout "talk" to your other business software. Think of them as the plumbing that allows customer data, order info, and support tasks to move freely between your help desk and tools like your CRM or e-commerce platform. The main goal is to give your team a full picture of the customer they're talking to and streamline their daily work.

Instead of your agents having to flip between ten different tabs to find a customer’s order history or sales records, they can see everything they need right inside the Help Scout conversation. This not only saves time but also helps them provide more personal and effective support.

There are three main ways to connect your tools to Help Scout, and we'll break down each one:

1. Native integrations: These are the ready-made, one-click connections you’ll find right in the Help Scout App Directory.

2. Middleware integrations: This involves using a third-party platform like Zapier or Make to build bridges to thousands of other apps.

3. Custom integrations: For total control, you can use the Help Scout API and webhooks to build your own solutions from scratch.

Exploring the core types of Help Scout integrations

Let's dig into the three main ways you can connect your other tools to Help Scout. We'll look at the good and the bad of each approach so you can figure out what’s best for your team.

1. Native integrations in the app directory

Native integrations are the simplest and most direct way to get started. These are the pre-built connections available in the Help Scout App Directory, designed to work with just a few clicks. No developers needed. Help Scout has over 100 of these, covering many of the popular tools businesses use every day.

Some of the key categories include:

• CRM: Connect with tools like HubSpot or Salesforce to pull in useful customer data, like their lifecycle stage or recent sales activity, directly into the Help Scout sidebar.

• E-commerce: The Shopify integration lets agents see a customer's order history, issue refunds, and manage order details without leaving the conversation.

• Communication: With the Slack integration, you can send notifications about new or urgent conversations to a specific channel, keeping everyone on the same page.

• Project Management: You can link support conversations to engineering tasks with the Jira integration, creating a smoother handoff between support and development teams.

The catch: While these integrations are handy, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, some of the most useful ones, like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Jira, are only available on the "Plus" plan or higher, so you’ll need to factor that into your budget. More importantly, these integrations are mostly designed to show your agents helpful information, but the agent is still the one doing all the work to resolve the ticket.

For example, the native Shopify integration lets an agent see order details, but a dedicated AI platform can take it a step further. An AI Agent from a tool like eesel AI can be set up to look up that same information on its own and fully resolve a "Where is my order?" ticket without any human help at all. It's the difference between giving your team a map and just letting the car drive itself.

2. Expanding possibilities with Zapier and Make

What happens if you use a tool that isn't in Help Scout's App Directory? That’s where platforms like Zapier and Make are useful. These "middleware" services act as universal translators, connecting Help Scout to thousands of other apps.

The logic is straightforward: "When this happens in Help Scout, do that in another app." You could set up a rule so that "When a conversation in Help Scout is tagged 'Feature Request,' automatically create a new card in Trello." It opens up a lot of possibilities for automating simple, repetitive tasks.

The catch: This approach sounds good in theory, but it can create some headaches for busy support teams.

• More Complexity & Cost: You're now managing (and paying for) another subscription. Building workflows with multiple steps can quickly become a tangled web that’s a pain to fix when something breaks.

• More Points of Failure: Every connection you build is another link in the chain that can snap. If your Zapier connection has an issue, your workflow stops, and you might not even notice until things start backing up.

• They aren't actually "smart": At the end of the day, these are just rule-based automations. They react to simple triggers, like a tag being added. They can't read a customer's message, understand the real question, or have a helpful conversation.

Instead of juggling different platforms, a tool like eesel AI offers a self-serve workflow engine that’s built right in. You can build AI-driven automations that actually understand what a customer wants and take action, all from one place, without the hidden costs or fragility of middleware.

3. Building custom integrations with the Help Scout API

For teams that need complete control and have developers available, Help Scout offers a powerful API and webhooks. This route lets you build completely custom integrations for your exact needs. You could connect to a proprietary internal tool, pull conversation data into a custom analytics dashboard, or create a unique sidebar app that displays specialized info.

Help Scout's API access scales with its plans, offering different rate limits depending on your subscription (Standard: 200 calls/min, Plus: 400 calls/min, and Pro: 800 calls/min). This gives you plenty of room to build some seriously cool stuff.

The catch: The biggest hurdle here is obvious: you need engineers. Building and maintaining custom integrations is expensive and time-consuming. It pulls your development team away from working on your core product. For most small to medium-sized support teams, having a developer dedicated to internal tools is a luxury they just don't have.

This is where a tool designed for support teams can make a huge difference. eesel AI gives you the power of a custom solution without needing to write a single line of code. Our platform is designed so the support team can set up and manage it themselves. You can easily create custom actions that call external APIs, like looking up shipping info from your warehouse database, giving you the flexibility of a custom-built solution with the simplicity of a no-code tool.

Beyond data syncing: Using AI for true automation

The integrations we’ve discussed so far are mostly about moving data around to make an agent's job easier. But what if an integration could do the job itself? That’s the jump you make when you go from simple data syncing to AI-powered automation.

Unlocking ticket deflection with an AI agent

An AI Agent is the most advanced kind of integration you can add to your help desk. It’s a tool that works on its own inside Help Scout to understand customer issues and resolve them from start to finish.

This is exactly what the AI Agent from eesel AI does. It connects to your Help Scout account and all your knowledge sources, not just a help center, but also past tickets, internal wikis on Confluence, shared Google Docs, and more. By learning from everything, it can provide accurate and context-aware solutions.

This approach has some real advantages over Help Scout's built-in "AI Answers" feature:

• Unified Knowledge: eesel AI learns from all your scattered knowledge, including the resolutions from thousands of past tickets. This gives it a deep understanding of your specific issues and brand voice that a simple knowledge base connection just can't match.

• Predictable Pricing: Help Scout's AI Answers is an add-on that costs $0.75 for every resolution. This can lead to surprise bills, especially during busy times. eesel AI offers transparent pricing plans based on interactions, with no per-resolution fees, so you can scale without worrying about the cost.

• Powerful Actions: eesel isn't just a chatbot that answers questions. It’s an agent that takes action. You can set it up to tag tickets, update custom fields, or escalate complex issues to the right team, completely automating the triage and resolution process for your most common requests.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how they compare:

Feature	Help Scout AI Answers	eesel AI Agent
Pricing Model	$0.75 per resolution (add-on)	Included in plan, no per-resolution fees
Knowledge Sources	Help Scout Docs, external websites	All sources: past tickets, Confluence, GDocs, Notion, etc.
Key Function	Answers questions in a chat widget	Fully resolves tickets inside the help desk
Setup	Simple configuration	Self-serve, go live in minutes

Help Scout pricing plans and their impact on integrations

It's important to know that the availability of certain Help Scout integrations and API access depends on which pricing plan you're on. Here’s a quick overview to give you the full picture.

Plan	Price (per user/mo, annual)	Key Integration/API Features
Standard	$25	2 Inboxes, 2 Docs sites, API access (200 calls/min)
Plus	$45	Everything in Standard + Salesforce, Jira, and HubSpot integrations, API access (400 calls/min)
Pro	$75	Everything in Plus + SSO/SAML, HIPAA compliance, API access (800 calls/min)
AI Answers Add-on	$0.75 per resolution	Available on all paid plans

Source: Help Scout Pricing Page

Choosing the right Help Scout integrations strategy

We've gone over the three main ways to handle Help Scout integrations: native apps for simplicity, middleware for connecting to a wider range of tools, and the API for completely custom builds. Each has its place, but they all mostly focus on helping your agents by giving them more context.

While that's useful, these solutions often come with extra costs, require developer time, or still leave the heavy lifting to your human team. For teams that want to scale their support, reduce ticket volume, and just work more efficiently, integrating a dedicated AI agent is the logical next step. It adds a layer of intelligence that works 24/7 to actually solve problems, freeing up your team to focus on the conversations that truly need a human touch.

Learn more about the many apps and tools you can connect to your Help Scout account.

Ready to automate your workflow with Help Scout integrations?

If you're ready to move beyond basic integrations and start automating ticket resolutions for good, we can help.

eesel AI plugs into Help Scout in minutes, learns from all your existing knowledge, and starts deflecting common tickets right away.

Try eesel AI for free or book a demo to see how our AI Agent can transform your support operations.