Tally,
OpenPanel,
Drizzle,
SuperWhisper,
Scite,
Throne,
Nuelink,
Ghostbase,Free
Free, forever.
$0/ month
Get FreeWhat's included
- Unlimited posts
- Unlimited users
- 3 admin roles
- 2 feedback boards
- Guest posting
- Public roadmap
- Public changelog
- REST API and MCP server
The Help Scout alternative with a flat price and no user seats.
UserJot is a Help Scout alternative with support email and live chat in one inbox, and an AI agent that answers from your docs on chat and email, next to a public feedback board, roadmap, and changelog. Flat pricing, no user seats, and a free plan with no contact cap.
Every day, the teams behind Tally, OpenPanel, Drizzle, SuperWhisper, Scite, Throne, Nuelink, Ghostbase, and hundreds of others talk with their customers in UserJot.
At a glance.
| Feature | Help Scout | UserJot |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $25, $45, or $75 per user a month billed yearly, or $30, $54, and $90 monthly; Pro needs 10 users | Free, $29, or $59 a month, flat |
| Free plan | 5 users, 1 inbox, 10 Docs articles, and 100 helped contacts a month; replies stop at the 100th contact until the next month | Live chat, inbox, Juno, board, roadmap, and changelog, with 3 team members, no cap |
| AI agent | Envoy, $0.75 per resolution after a three-month trial for new accounts; existing accounts get no trial | Juno, included while Conversations is in beta, with no charge per answer |
| A teammate who follows support | A full user on Standard, $30 a month; Light users, who read and leave notes, from Plus at $54 a user | 3 team members on Free; no seat charge on paid plans |
| Feature requests | A tag, or Canny and Savio by integration; no board, roadmap, or changelog listed | Public board, roadmap, and changelog on every plan; Juno files them from chat |
| Time to launch | Forward your address and add Beacon; a 15-day trial without a card; history through Import2 on paid plans | Minutes: forward your support address and add the widget |
Top Help Scout alternatives
Help Scout bills by the user, and the engineer who wants to read a bug report is a user. If you would rather pay a flat price, these are the alternatives to Help Scout worth a look. If SMS through Twilio, phone through Aircall, SLA policies, and Jira, Linear, HubSpot, and Salesforce integrations are what you use Help Scout for, UserJot has none of them; Zendesk and Front have most.
UserJot
Get started freeSupport email and live chat in one inbox, and Juno, an AI operator who answers from your docs on chat and email and files feature requests on your public board. Roadmap and changelog included, and an MCP server on every plan, including Free. Flat pricing, no user seats, free to start.
Best for: SaaS teams whose support happens in a shared inbox and a chat widget, and who want the feature requests in those conversations to land somewhere.
A shared inbox at $25 a seat a month billed yearly for one channel type, and $65 for email and chat together, with free guest accounts for people outside support. Its AI, Autopilot, bills $0.05 to $0.89 a conversation. No free plan.
Best for: Operations teams that run many shared addresses and want to co-draft replies with internal comments.
A Messenger-first help desk with chat, email, and a help center on one seat, at $39 a seat a month or $29 billed yearly, plus $0.99 per Fin outcome. No free plan; a 14-day trial. Its pricing page showed $19 a seat billed yearly for new customers the day we checked.
Best for: Teams that want chat, email, and the help center on one plan from day one, and will pay per seat and per AI outcome.
Tickets from $19 an agent a month billed yearly; chat, voice, and a help center from Suite Team at $55, up to $115 on Suite Professional. 5 or 10 AI resolutions per agent included, then $2 each, or $1.50 on a commitment.
Best for: Teams that want SLAs, skills routing, and a phone channel, and will pay per agent for them.
Email ticketing from $19 an agent billed yearly; live chat needs Freshdesk Omni, from $29. Freddy AI is $49 per 100 sessions after a one-time 500. No free plan on the pricing page today, and a 14-day trial.
Best for: Teams that want a ticket model with SLAs and automations from $19 an agent, and don't need chat on day one.
A chat-first inbox priced per workspace, with 2 seats free, 4 seats for $45 a month, and 10 for $95. Its AI runs on dollar credits included with each paid plan, $5 on Mini and $25 on Essentials.
Best for: Teams that want a chat widget at a flat price, and a ticket queue second.
FreeScout
An open source help desk under the AGPL that you host yourself, built as a Help Scout clone, with a shared inbox and one-time modules, live chat among them at $13. You run the server, the backups, and the import.
Best for: Teams that want to own the data and have someone to run a server.
Where Help Scout falls short.
Help Scout, from Help Scout PBC, founded in 2011, sells a shared inbox with Beacon live chat, Docs help centers, workflows, SLA policies, a Customer Portal, agent apps for iOS and Android, an integration directory, and Envoy, its AI agent. It also has a price that changed shape twice in two years, a full seat for the engineer who only wants to read, an export that goes through the API, and an account that closes the day you cancel, and no home for the feature request inside the conversation.
Seats, then contacts, then seats again
Per user until late 2024, per helped contact for most of 2025, per user again by December 2025 at $25, $45, and $75 billed yearly, up from $22, $44, and $65
In July 2024 Help Scout's yearly rates were $22, $44, and $65 a user. By January 2025 the pricing page billed by helped contacts instead, with unlimited users, from $50 a month for 100 contacts, and by December 2025 it billed per user again at $25, $45, and $75. Plus includes 5 Light users today where it included 25 in 2024. A two-person support team wrote on Trustpilot in April 2025, under the title "Increasing their prices over 400%": "They just announced they are 'upgrading' our plan from 1500 a year to over 7500 a year. So that we can use AI drafts and have 'unlimited seats'.. we have two dedicated support team members, and no reason to use AI drafts because customers hate not talking to an actual person." Piwigo's Claire Michard wrote that month that under the new model "We would have landed in the $150 to $250/month range. That's a ridiculous price for… a shared inbox." In October 2026, WordPress.org's Meta team announced its own move off Help Scout, "around 20 mailboxes that need to be moved and about 86 accounts," citing the shift "from a contact-based pricing model to a user-based one". A Trustpilot reviewer who updated a 2021 review in August 2026 titled it "Started great, now they are squeezing for profit".
Every reader on Standard is a user
$30 a month for a full user on Standard; Light users, who can read and leave notes but not reply, exist only on Plus (5 included) and Pro (15), at $10 to $12 each beyond that
Anyone who replies to a customer is a full user, and on Standard there is no other kind. The product manager who wants to read bug reports costs the same $30 a month as a support agent, and Help Scout's help docs say "Light users are available on Plus and Pro plans only." Plus, at $54 a user monthly, includes five Light users, and Pro fifteen, with extra ones at $10 a month billed yearly or $12 monthly. A founder wrote on Hacker News in February 2024: "The other big jump was in HelpScout ($2.4k) because we used to have a discounted rate as a startup, but that ended after two years, so we pay a whopping $50/seat." Joost de Valk wrote in March 2024 that his team "were paying $80 per month for 4 standard user accounts" and "needed more than two inboxes, but we decided against using more" because "the cost would otherwise have gone up to $160 a month."
Getting the data out
Report exports leave out conversation bodies; conversations come out through the Inbox API; access ends on cancellation and data is deleted after 60 days
Help Scout's report exports are CSV and XLSX without the conversation text. The conversations themselves come out through the Inbox API. A Trustpilot reviewer wrote in May 2023: "I didn't realize this until already 'locked in' but if you want to export anything, good luck." and "Want a customer export (simple CSV)? You have to reach out to support." Piwigo found "No proper export options from HelpScout" and that "The only option: pay a third party $1,100 to run an 'automated' script"; WP Fusion paid a migration service about $1,204 in August 2023 to move "about 24,000 conversations from 8,000 customers." Only the account owner can cancel, access ends the moment they do, and the data is deleted after 60 days. A Product Hunt reviewer wrote around 2023: "we lost access to all of our email threads and contacts once our subscription expired."
The request ends as a tag
No feedback board, public roadmap, or changelog listed; Canny and Savio by integration; the Customer Portal on Plus and Pro shows a customer their own conversations
When a customer asks for something in a Help Scout conversation, the conversation is where it stays unless you add a feedback tool. Help Scout lists no feature request board, public roadmap, or changelog of its own; Savio is in its integration directory and Canny documents pulling feedback out of closed Help Scout conversations, both as separate products. The Customer Portal that arrived in August 2026, on Plus and Pro, lets a customer see their own conversations and their company's. Before it, a six-year customer listed on Hacker News in April 2022 why they were leaving, and one reason was that "they have no web ui for customers to track all their requests (helpscout is mail-only)".
What UserJot does instead.
UserJot has what a small SaaS team uses Help Scout for: support email in a shared inbox, live chat in your app, and an AI agent, Juno, who answers from your docs and hands the thread to a person when one is needed. It adds the public feedback board, roadmap, and changelog that the requests in those conversations end up on.
Everyone on your team works the inbox, three team members on Free and no seat charge on the paid plans, and Conversations is free on every plan while it is in beta. Paid plans start at $29 a month with a 14-day trial, and you're live in minutes.
Starter
Staff pick. For small teams.
$29/ month
Get StarterEverything in Free, plus
- Custom domain
- Moderation
- Automatic login
- 5 feedback boards
- Private boards
- One integration
Professional
For growing teams.
$59/ month
Get ProEverything in Starter, plus
- Unlimited boards
- Advanced search
- Single sign-on
- Unlimited integrations
- Unlimited admin roles
- Public identity masking
Email and chat in the same inbox.
Forward your support address and the email lands in the inbox, with no DNS changes. Your reply goes out from the forwarding address. With Conversations on, the widget that shows your board, roadmap, and changelog gets a Messages page, and customers write to you from inside your product. A customer who leaves the chat gets your answer by email when you have their address, and their reply comes back into the thread.
A conversation can be assigned to one teammate and has a state: needs team, AI handling, or waiting on customer. Internal notes, snooze, reminders, search, typing indicators, blocked senders, and an away reply for when the whole team is off are in the inbox. Incoming messages are translated into your language, and you can translate a reply before it goes out.
Juno answers first, on chat and on email.
Juno is the AI operator built into UserJot. On each customer message, chat or email, she decides to answer, hand off, or stay silent. She answers from your docs and the sites you point her at, in the customer's language, at any hour. When the customer asks for a person, when she isn't confident, or when the question is outside what she knows, she hands the thread to your team and can leave a private note on why. Once a teammate replies, she stays out of that thread until someone hands it back.
Juno is on every plan, including Free. Turn her off for the workspace and new conversations go straight to the team.
Sara Meyer
Team support
We were charged twice this month, can you help?
4:07 PM
Sorry about that! Refunds need a teammate, so I'm bringing one in now.
4:07 PM
Juno handed this conversation to the team
Hi, Sara here. Just refunded the duplicate charge, you'll see it back in a few business days.
4:09 PM
The feature request leaves the conversation.
When a customer describes a feature in chat, Juno searches your public board, shows them the matching request, and once they confirm, adds their vote or files a new one in their name. The request is on the board with the customer's name on it, where other customers can find it and vote, and the board is where your team plans from.
When you mark the request Planned or In Progress, it moves to that column on the public roadmap. Every status change emails everyone who posted, voted, or commented. When you mark it Completed, the changelog post you write links back to it, and Juno drafts the post from the requests you completed since the last one when you ask.
Planned
12Committed and queued
- Features
Mobile app
The whole web app on iPhone and Android, with push notifications when something needs you.
Alex Martin - Features
Export reports to CSV
Finance needs the monthly numbers in a spreadsheet. A one-click export from any report would save us an afternoon every month.
SRSofia Reyes - Integrations
Zapier integration
We’d love to send new tasks to the rest of our tools without writing a script. A trigger for new tasks would cover most of it.
TBTom Becker - Features
Custom fields on tasks
We track budget and client on every task. A couple of custom fields would replace the spreadsheet we keep next to Acme.
MLMia Laurent - Features
Two-factor sign-in
Our security review asks for it every year. An authenticator app option would be enough for us.
OHOmar Haddad
In Progress
4Actively being built
- Features
Dark mode
Late nights in Acme are hard on the eyes. A dark theme that follows the system setting would be perfect.
Marcus Chen - Features
Bulk edit tasks
Changing the assignee on twenty tasks one at a time takes forever. Let me edit a whole selection at once.
HSHana Sato - Features
Task templates
We set up the same onboarding checklist for every new client. Saving it once as a template would save us an hour each time.
NPNina Petrova - Features
Timeline view
Seeing tasks on a timeline would make it much easier to plan around deadlines and spot overlaps.
LPLeo Park
Done
9Recently shipped
- Integrations
Google Calendar sync
Due dates should show up on my calendar without copying them over one by one.
PNPriya Nair - Integrations
Slack alerts for due tasks
A message in our team channel the morning a task is due would stop things from slipping.
CDChloe Dubois - Bugs
Search freezes in big workspaces
With a few thousand tasks, typing in search locks the page for a second or two.
BABen Adler - Features
Keyboard shortcuts
Creating and moving tasks without the mouse would make Acme so much faster to use all day.
RMRavi Menon
The price is the plan.
$0, $29, or $59 a month, by the features you turn on. No user seats, no charge per answer while Conversations is in beta, and unlimited customers on every plan, including Free. Pay monthly or yearly, cancel from your settings, and export your posts as CSV any time.
Help Scout vs UserJot, side by side.
| Feature | Help Scout | UserJot |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Pricing model | Per user, plus $0.75 per AI resolution and a metered audience for proactive messages | Flat, by feature set |
| Free plan | 5 users, 100 helped contacts a month, 1 inbox, 10 articles; no live chat | Chat, inbox, Juno, board, roadmap, changelog; 3 team members |
| 2 users, 500 conversations, people answering | $60 a month on Standard, or $0 if those conversations come from 100 contacts or fewer | $0, $29, or $59 a month |
| The same team with Envoy on 30% | About $173 a month after the trial | $0, $29, or $59 a month |
| 10 users, 5,000 conversations, Envoy at 30% | About $1,425 a month on Standard | $29 or $59 a month |
| Startup offer | Six months free on Plus for incorporated startups under two years old and under $1M ARR | None; the Free plan does not end |
| Trial | 15 days of Standard or Plus, no card; Pro through sales | 14 days of Starter or Professional, from the dashboard |
| Inbox and chat | ||
| Channels | Email on every plan; Beacon live chat, SMS through Twilio, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram from Standard | Chat in the widget and forwarded email |
| User seats | Every user who replies is a seat; Light users on Plus and Pro only; Standard stops at 25 users, Plus at 50 | None; 3 team members on Free, no seat charge on paid plans |
| Saved replies | 10 on Free, unlimited on paid plans | None |
| SLAs and workflows | 1 basic SLA and 150 workflows on Standard; 2 conditional SLAs and 500 on Plus; unlimited on Pro | None |
| Translation | Beacon and Docs labels translated by hand; AI-assisted Docs translation on Plus and Pro | Incoming messages translated to your language; translate a reply |
| Internal notes and assignment | Both, with collision detection; round robin from Plus | Both, with snooze and reminders |
| Phone | Aircall and other telephony integrations, billed by the provider | No |
| AI | ||
| Price | $0.75 per resolution after a three-month trial for new accounts; prepaid discounts up to 33% | Included on every plan while Conversations is in beta |
| Where it answers | Beacon on the web, in-app, and mobile; email listed as coming soon | Chat and email |
| What it answers from | Public and private Docs, website URLs, public Google Docs, and PDF, Word, and Excel files by URL | Your docs site, crawled, and uploads, five sources; she searches the board for requests |
| Human handoff | Yes, on request or for excluded topics; a handoff is not billed | Yes, with a note on why if you want one; she stays out once a person replies |
| Spend controls | A monthly resolution spending limit; raising it can take an hour | No usage charge |
| Agent assist | AI Assist on paid plans; AI Drafts and Summarize on Plus and Pro | No |
| Feature requests from chat | A tag on the conversation, or Canny by integration | Juno files the request or adds the vote after the customer confirms |
| Feedback board, roadmap, and changelog | ||
| Feature request board | None listed; Savio by integration, Canny from closed conversations | Public board on every plan, with votes and comments |
| Public roadmap | None listed | Every plan; Planned, In Progress, Done |
| Changelog | None listed; proactive Messages can announce a release to visitors, metered by view | Every plan, on the board and in the widget |
| Duplicate detection | Not documented | As people type, on the board and in the widget |
| Status emails | Not documented | Every status change emails everyone on the request |
| NPS and surveys | Messages, with 2,000 unique viewers a month included on paid plans, then from $20 | None |
| Access and branding | ||
| Custom domain | Docs on your own domain; the Customer Portal on a helpscoutportal.com address | Board on your own domain from $29 |
| Customer identity | Beacon identify with an HMAC secure mode; Portal sign-in by emailed code; SAML for agents as an add-on, included on Pro | Identify on every plan; automatic login from $29; SSO (JWT) at $59 |
| Languages | One Docs site per language; Beacon labels translated by hand | Board in 12 languages, including Arabic |
| Remove vendor branding | Beacon logo from Plus; Free email replies carry a Help Scout footer | $59 |
| Data location | AWS in the United States | Hosted in the US |
| Integrations and API | ||
| Slack, Discord | Slack; Discord not listed | Both; one integration on Starter, all on Professional |
| Jira, Linear, GitHub | All three, on Plus and Pro | No |
| HubSpot, Salesforce | Both, on Plus and Pro | No |
| Zapier | Yes, and Make | No |
| API and webhooks | Inbox and Docs APIs with webhooks; 200 requests a minute on Standard, 400 on Plus, 800 on Pro | API on every plan, including Free; no webhooks |
| MCP | Yes, from Standard; searches conversations, reads reports on Plus and Pro, with limited beta writes | A server, on every plan, including Free; Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT desktop, Windsurf, and other clients that speak remote MCP with an API token |
| Leaving | ||
| Cancellation | Account owner only, from Your Plan; access ends immediately; yearly terms need 30 days' written notice | Any time, from settings |
| Export | Conversations through the Inbox API, articles through the Docs API, a contact list by asking support | Posts as CSV, any plan; comments, voters, changelog posts, and conversations are not exported |
| Data after cancelling | Deleted after 60 days; a written restoration request within 14 days | Kept; downgrade and nothing is removed |
| Import from the other | Import2 on paid plans from about 30 sources, Gmail and Outlook included; free to 500,000 records, then $500 per 500,000 counted from the first | No Help Scout importer; forward email, and CSV for requests |
Help Scout's prices and the shortlist's starting prices were checked against their pricing pages on ; Help Scout's features, help docs, and terms, and the rest of the shortlist's plans, on October 14, 2026. The worked bills are monthly billing on Standard at $30 a user, with Envoy at $0.75 per resolution after the three-month trial and 30% of conversations counted as resolved. If something has changed, tell us and we will correct it.
Switching from Help Scout to UserJot.
There is no conversation importer, and you don't need one to start: forward the support address and the next email lands in UserJot. Help Scout's export is for your records, and your Docs site becomes what Juno answers from.
If something doesn't come across, email support@userjot.com and we'll finish the migration with you.
Forward your support address.
Turn on Conversations, copy the forwarding address, and add a forwarding rule in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, or change the forward you set up for Help Scout. No DNS changes; replies go out from the forwarding address.Add the widget and teach Juno.
Install the v3 widget with a script tag; with Conversations on, it gets a Messages page. Point Juno at your Docs site while it is still up, so she answers from day one.Export your Help Scout data.
Conversations come out through the Inbox API and articles through the Docs API; a contact CSV comes from Help Scout support, and the report exports do not include conversation text, so plan a script or a migration service for the archive. Feature requests you tagged can go onto the board with the CSV import once they are in a spreadsheet.Then cancel Help Scout, with the export in hand.
Only the account owner can cancel, under Your Plan. A yearly term needs written notice of nonrenewal at least 30 days before it ends.
Help Scout alternative FAQ
$25 per user a month on Standard, $45 on Plus, and $75 on Pro billed yearly, or $30, $54, and $90 monthly, with a 10-user minimum on Pro. Envoy, the AI agent, is $0.75 per resolution after a three-month trial for new accounts. Extra inboxes are $10 a month billed yearly, extra Docs sites $20, extra Light users $10 on Plus and Pro, and proactive Messages are free to 2,000 unique viewers a month, then from $20. The worked bills for 2, 5, and 10 users are in our Help Scout pricing guide.
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