Picking the right customer support tool can feel like a huge task. You need something powerful and easy to use, but the one thing that trips everyone up is pricing. Finding a platform with a clear, predictable price tag often feels impossible.
That brings us to Helpshift, a well-known customer service platform, especially in the mobile app world. It has a lot of features, but its pricing can be a real head-scratcher. It’s built on an "issue-based" model that sounds simple at first but can lead to some surprisingly high bills.
So, in this guide, we’re going to pull back the curtain on Helpshift pricing. We’ll break down the plans, dig into the potential hidden fees, and help you decide if it’s the right move for your team. We’ll also look at how some modern AI tools are offering a much clearer and more flexible way forward.
What is the Helpshift pricing model?
Helpshift does things a little differently than most software tools. Instead of the usual per-agent, per-month fee, they use what they call an "issue-based" pricing model.
So, what exactly is an "issue"? It’s just Helpshift’s term for a support ticket or a customer conversation.
Here’s the gist of how it works:
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You pay a flat monthly fee for a specific plan.
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That plan comes with a set number of "free" issues each month (the entry-level plan includes 250).
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If you go over your limit, you pay for each extra issue, which is about $0.45 a pop.
On the surface, this might sound good. If your support volume is low and never changes, your costs stay the same. But let’s be honest, when does that ever happen in a growing business? The main problem is that your costs can get unpredictable, fast. A new product launch, a small bug, or just a busy season can send your ticket volume soaring, and your bill will shoot up right along with it. This makes budgeting a real challenge.
It’s a big change from newer platforms that focus on predictability. Take eesel AI, for example. It offers plans with a fixed number of AI interactions. You get a huge allowance, and there are no fees per resolution, which means your costs stay predictable even when things get busy.
A detailed breakdown of Helpshift pricing plans
Helpshift has three main plans: Starter, Growth, and Enterprise. The features you get and what you pay for them change a lot as you move up the ladder. Let’s get into what each one offers.
Helpshift pricing: The starter plan essentials
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Price: Kicks off at $150 per month.
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Includes: 250 issues per month, with that $0.45 charge for every issue over the limit.
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Core Features: This plan covers the basics. You get web and mobile in-app messaging, email support, a self-service help center, and some simple analytics. It also comes with their AI Agent and Copilot, but you can only create two custom bots.
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Best For: This is really for small teams, startups, or businesses with a very low and stable number of support requests. If you’re just starting to explore AI support and don’t need a ton of automation, it could be a decent place to start.
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Limitation Spotlight: That two-bot limit is the biggest catch. As you start finding more ways to automate things, you’ll hit that wall pretty quickly. The plan also misses key features for growing teams, like routing tickets based on agent skills or a real-time dashboard, which basically pushes you to upgrade.
Helpshift pricing: The growth plan for scaling businesses
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Price: Custom (you have to get on a call with their sales team).
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Includes: A custom number of issues per month, which you negotiate.
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Core Features: The Growth plan has everything from the Starter plan but gets rid of a lot of the frustrating limits. You get unlimited custom bots, queue management, skill-based routing (to get tickets to the right person), a real-time operations dashboard, and SLA management to keep an eye on response times.
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Best For: This plan is built for medium-to-large businesses that are handling more complex support requests. The automation and team management tools are pretty much essential for any team that’s starting to scale.
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Limitation Spotlight: Even on this tier, some of the more advanced AI features, like routing based on the customer’s actual intent, are still missing. The biggest headache, though, is the custom pricing. With no public price, you can’t budget or compare your options without first talking to a salesperson.
Helpshift pricing: The enterprise plan for large-scale operations
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Price: Custom (negotiated with sales).
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Includes: A custom volume of issues and project-based pricing.
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Core Features: This is Helpshift’s top-of-the-line plan, and it unlocks their most powerful AI features. The main attraction is "Smart Intents," which automatically figures out what a customer wants and routes the ticket accordingly. You also get Feedback Bots and a much higher API call limit (1500 per minute versus just 60 on the Starter plan).
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Best For: Big companies with a massive volume of complex support issues. These are the teams that need the most sophisticated AI, security, and customization the platform can offer.
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Limitation Spotlight: Helpshift keeps its best AI features locked away behind its most expensive and least transparent plan. This puts up a big wall for companies that want to use advanced AI but aren’t ready to sign a massive enterprise contract.
Helpshift pricing: Plans at a glance
| Feature | Starter Plan | Growth Plan | Enterprise Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Starts at $150/mo | Custom | Custom |
| Included Issues | 250/month | Custom | Custom |
| Custom Bots | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Real-Time Dashboard | No | Yes | Yes |
| Skill-Based Routing | No | Yes | Yes |
| Intent-Based Routing | No | No | Yes (Smart Intents) |
| API Calls | 60/minute | 300/minute | 1500/minute |
The hidden costs and limitations of Helpshift pricing
The price on the website is almost never the full story. With Helpshift, there are a few things that can drive up your total cost and introduce some annoying limitations.
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Unpredictable overage fees: This is the most obvious one. That $0.45 charge for every ticket over your limit might not sound like much, but it can add up alarmingly fast. If your team handles just 1,000 extra tickets in a busy month, that’s another $450 tacked onto your bill. This kind of volatility makes financial planning a constant guessing game.
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Pricey add-ons: Not everything comes included. The "AI Agent Copilot," which gives your agents AI-powered reply suggestions, is an add-on that costs an extra $50 per agent, per month. For a team of 10 agents, that’s an extra $500 every single month, on top of your plan and any overage fees.
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Forced upgrades for key features: Helpshift’s pricing tiers are clearly designed to move you up. Features that are pretty essential for growth, like unlimited bots and skill-based routing, are locked behind the custom-priced plans. So, as your business grows, you have no choice but to upgrade and start a new sales negotiation.
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Implementation and onboarding: While Helpshift does offer guided onboarding for its higher plans, user reviews often point out a steep learning curve. Getting set up isn’t as simple as flipping a switch; it can take a good amount of your team’s time and energy, which means you’re waiting longer to see any value.
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Siloed knowledge: Helpshift’s AI works best when it’s learning from information inside its own system, like its native help center and FAQs. But what if your company’s knowledge is scattered across tools like Confluence, Google Docs, or old tickets in another helpdesk? The AI’s ability to help is seriously limited.
This is where a more modern tool can make a huge difference. Platforms like eesel AI were built to fix these exact problems. eesel AI offers transparent pricing with no per-resolution fees, a ridiculously easy setup that gets you live in minutes, and it can pull in knowledge from all your existing sources without you having to move a single file.
A smarter alternative to Helpshift pricing: eesel AI’s transparent and powerful approach
For teams fed up with confusing pricing, complicated setups, and scattered knowledge, there’s a much better way. Instead of making you rip out and replace all your current tools, eesel AI works like an intelligent brain that connects directly to your existing helpdesk and knowledge sources. You get powerful AI without all the usual headaches.
Here’s how eesel AI tackles the main frustrations of the Helpshift model:
1. Predictable and transparent pricing
With eesel AI, what you see is what you get. There are no fees for each ticket resolved, so you’ll never be surprised by your bill after a busy month. The plans are based on features and a very generous number of monthly AI interactions, which keeps your costs totally predictable. You can even go with a flexible month-to-month plan and cancel anytime you want.
2. Go live in minutes, not months
Forget about long sales calls and mandatory demos. eesel AI has one-click integrations with major helpdesks like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Intercom. It’s a completely self-serve platform. You can sign up, connect your tools, set up your AI agent, and get it running without ever talking to a salesperson.
3. Unify your knowledge, instantly
Your company’s important information doesn’t live in one place, so why should your AI be limited to one? eesel AI immediately starts learning from your past support tickets to pick up on your brand’s voice and common solutions. Even better, it connects to all the places your team keeps information, Google Docs, Notion, Confluence, Slack, you name it. This creates one unified brain for your entire support operation, which leads to much more accurate and helpful answers for your customers.
4. Test with confidence
Rolling out a new AI tool shouldn’t feel like a gamble. eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode that lets you test your setup on thousands of your actual past tickets. You can see exactly how the AI would have answered, get solid predictions on your resolution rates, and figure out your potential ROI before it ever interacts with a real customer. This takes all the risk out of the process and gives you the confidence to automate.
Helpshift pricing vs. eesel AI: A pricing and value comparison
| Aspect | Helpshift | eesel AI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing Model | Issue-based with overage fees | Fixed monthly fee, no per-resolution charges |
| Price Transparency | Custom pricing for advanced features | Fully transparent on website |
| Setup Time | Can require guided onboarding | Self-serve, go live in minutes |
| Knowledge Sources | Primarily help center & FAQs | Unifies all sources (past tickets, docs, etc.) |
| Pre-launch Testing | Limited | Powerful simulation on historical tickets |
| Flexibility | Requires migrating to their platform | Plugs into your existing helpdesk |
How to choose the right plan based on Helpshift pricing
Choosing a support platform is a big deal. Here are a few things to think about to make sure you’re making the right call for your business.
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Get real about your ticket volume: First, take a serious look at your support data. If your ticket volume is consistently low and doesn’t change much, Helpshift’s Starter plan could work. But if your volume goes up and down, or if you’re growing, the per-issue model is a financial gamble. An unexpected bill can really hurt a growing team’s budget.
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Figure out what you need from AI: What level of automation are you actually aiming for? If you just need to deflect basic questions with an FAQ bot, a lower-tier plan might be enough. But if you want smarter AI features like intent-based routing to really scale up your support, get ready for Helpshift’s vague, enterprise-level price tag. If you want powerful AI without the enterprise cost, a more accessible tool like eesel AI is a much better option.
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Think about your current tools: How attached are you to your current software? Going with Helpshift means you’ll be managing your support, knowledge base, and analytics all inside their world. If you’d rather have an AI tool that just makes the helpdesk and knowledge bases you already use even better, eesel AI’s plug-and-play approach gives you way more freedom.
Move beyond unpredictable Helpshift pricing
Helpshift is a solid platform, especially for companies focused on mobile. But its issue-based pricing, hidden add-on costs, and locked-away features create a world of unpredictable expenses and potential vendor lock-in. For any business trying to grow, that lack of predictability is a major roadblock.
The future of AI in customer support isn’t about complicated, rigid platforms with confusing price tags. It’s about being transparent, flexible, and working smoothly with the tools you already have. The best solutions give you the power to automate smartly without making you change your entire workflow.
eesel AI is built for teams who want powerful, customizable AI without the financial guesswork. With predictable pricing, a quick self-serve setup, and the unique ability to connect all your scattered company knowledge, it’s simply a smarter, more modern way to handle customer support automation.
Ready for AI support with clear pricing and total control? Start your free eesel AI trial today or book a demo to see it for yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Your costs can become unpredictable very quickly. The base plan includes a set number of "issues" (tickets), and you’ll pay an overage fee of around $0.45 for every single one that goes over your limit. A busy month could easily lead to a surprisingly high bill.
Yes, besides the overage fees for extra issues, some key features are paid add-ons. For example, the AI Agent Copilot costs an additional $50 per agent, per month, which can significantly increase your total cost on top of your plan.
Helpshift uses custom pricing for its higher-tier plans, which means you must contact their sales team to get a quote. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to budget or compare options without engaging in a sales conversation first.
It can be quite limiting. The Starter plan only includes 250 issues and two custom bots, and it lacks essential scaling features like skill-based routing. Most growing teams will quickly outgrow these limits and be forced to upgrade to a more expensive, custom-priced plan.
Instead of charging per user, Helpshift charges based on your support volume (the number of "issues"). While this might seem appealing for teams with very low, stable ticket counts, it makes costs unpredictable for any business that experiences fluctuations or growth.
Because these plans require a conversation with the sales team, the final price is typically negotiated. The cost will likely depend on the custom number of issues you need, the specific features you select, and your final contract terms.
