Helply vs Help Scout (2026)

TL;DR

• Pick Help Scout if you want the polished, mature shared-inbox helpdesk with the strongest customer-facing experience (no ticket numbers, conversational emails, native AI assistant).
• Pick Helply if you want AI agents to resolve part of the queue and prefer paying for AI work in credits over paying per seat. Users are unlimited on every plan, so it suits larger teams too.

Pricing

Help Scout starts at $25/user/mo (Standard), $50 (Plus), and quote-only Pro. Helply has no per-seat fee: Starter is $49/mo, Pro $199/mo, Scale $449/mo, and Enterprise is custom, all with unlimited users. AI work is billed in credits. A draft or summary costs 1 credit, a task touching one or two systems costs 4, and a multi-system investigation costs 12. Starter includes 500 to 32,000 credits. The 14-day trial includes 1,000 credits and needs no card, and annual billing is 15% cheaper. For a 5-agent team, Help Scout runs ~$125–$250/mo and Helply starts at $49/mo. Helply's bill then moves with how much AI work you run, while a 40-agent team pays the same plan price as a 4-agent team. Help Scout's cost is more predictable per seat; Helply's is more predictable per headcount.

Shared inbox experience

Both are inbox-first, but Helply was rebuilt so AI agents and humans work in the same inbox. An Assist Agent helps human agents investigate and draft replies. Help Scout's UI is more established and includes a few details that matter in daily use: collision detection (two agents replying at once), undo send, and saved replies that support variables. On channels, Helply covers email, chat, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, SMS, Telegram and Discord in one inbox.

Customer experience

Help Scout's pitch since day one has been "email that doesn't feel like a ticket": no ticket number in the subject, no robotic auto-replies, just a conversational thread. Helply's customer-facing side is partly handled by its Support Agent, which talks to customers directly, so the experience depends on how much of the queue you let it answer.

Knowledge base and help center

Help Scout's Docs product is among the best in the helpdesk category: clean editor, customizable branding, multi-collection structure, and tight integration with the inbox (suggest articles inline, search from compose). Helply includes unlimited knowledge base articles from Starter, and a background Knowledge agent watches conversations for gaps. For a content-heavy support team that wants a mature docs product, Help Scout has the edge.

AI

Help Scout's AI suite (AI summarize, AI assist, AI answers) has improved meaningfully in 2025–2026 and now includes an AI agent that can resolve common questions from the help center. Helply is built around AI. Its Support Agent answers customers, and background agents (Churn, Knowledge, Revenue, Feature Request, Insights) flag churn risk, feature requests and knowledge gaps without an agent opening the ticket. If AI resolution is the reason you're buying, Helply goes further. The cost is that you pay per credit used.

Automation and workflows

Help Scout's workflows are flexible: multi-condition triggers, scheduled actions, custom fields. On the Helply side, SLAs start at Pro ($199/mo) and skills-based routing at Scale ($449/mo), with audit logs and HIPAA compliance also on Scale. Much of the automation comes from the AI agents rather than rule building. A team that wants conditional routing on a low plan price should check which Helply tier it needs.

Reporting

Help Scout's reports include team productivity, conversation-level analytics, and customer happiness trends. Helply's Starter plan includes basic reporting. CSAT surveys and custom reports start at Pro, and the Insights agent adds analysis of conversations.

Integrations and API

Help Scout's marketplace is larger and the public API is well-documented. Helply integrates with Slack, Teams, Salesforce, HubSpot, Linear, Jira, Notion, Snowflake and BigQuery. Shopify is not on Helply's list, so check this first if you run a store.

Who should pick what

• 5–25 person SMB support team with a knowledge-base-driven motion → Help Scout.
• Team that wants AI to resolve part of the queue and doesn't want per-seat fees → Helply.
• E-commerce shop needing Shopify + Klaviyo + shared inbox → Help Scout, which has the tighter Shopify integration.
• Large support team where per-seat pricing adds up → Helply.
• B2B SaaS team that wants AI to investigate across tools like Linear, Jira and Salesforce → Helply.

Bottom line

Both are good choices for teams leaving a generic inbox or a Zendesk implementation that's too heavy. Help Scout has more depth in docs and a more mature conversational experience, with per-seat pricing. Helply is an AI-first rebuild with unlimited users and costs that follow credit use. Run Helply's 14-day trial on the team's actual conversation volume, check which credit tier you land in, and compare that bill with Help Scout's per-seat total.