Modeled team
Annual difference at 25 agents
Updated 2026 helpdesk comparison
Help Scout alternative for B2B teams that have outgrown email-only support.
Help Scout is calm, polished, and a great fit for email-first teams. Ochre keeps that low-friction support feel while adding Slack Connect, richer account context, and AI usage billed through your own model provider.
AI billing
BYOK vs platform AI
Migration
Avg 8 hours, max 24 hours
Ochre fits best if...
- Your support volume runs through Slack Connect with B2B customers, not just shared inboxes.
- You want Stripe context (MRR, plan, LTV) in the conversation sidebar without an integration tax.
- You'd rather pay OpenAI or Anthropic directly than have your helpdesk vendor mark up the same tokens.
- You need deep custom fields, conditional routing, and rules — not just tags and saved replies.
Stick with Help Scout if...
- You're an e-commerce or content team where email + Beacon (in-app) is the primary support surface.
- You're under 10 agents and the polished UX is worth more than the feature delta.
- You're heavily invested in Help Scout Docs as your public knowledge base and the SEO history is real.
- Your AI volume is modest enough that Help Scout's AI Drafts and AI Answers pricing comfortably covers you.
Pricing snapshot
5 agents · 300 AI resolutions/mo
$195/mo ($39 × 5 + your LLM cost ~$15)
$475/mo ($50 × 5 Plus + 300 × $0.75 AI Answers)
10 agents · 800 AI resolutions/mo
$390/mo ($39 × 10 + ~$40 LLM)
$1,100/mo ($50 × 10 Plus + 800 × $0.75 AI Answers)
25 agents · 1,500 AI resolutions/mo
$975/mo ($39 × 25 + ~$75 LLM)
$2,375/mo ($50 × 25 Plus + 1,500 × $0.75 AI Answers)
Annual difference at 25 agents
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+$16,800/year vs Ochre
Feature comparison
Per-agent base
Help Scout: Standard $25, Plus $50, Pro $65 (annual list, 2026-05). Pro requires 250+ users.
$99/mo Starter (fixed 3 seats) or $39/seat Per Seat
$25–$65/user (Standard → Pro)
AI assistant for agents
Legacy AI Drafts billing is conversation-based; AI Answers resolutions are billed separately
Included, BYOK
AI Drafts on current Plus/Pro
Autonomous AI resolutions
Your LLM cost (~$0.005/resolution at retail OpenAI)
$0.75 per AI Answers resolution
Quality assurance
Help Scout has reporting; no rubric-based QA scoring
Included
Workflows + reports, no dedicated QA
Slack Connect as a channel
Help Scout integrates with Slack for notifications; not Slack Connect-native
Yes
No
Stripe context in inbox (MRR / plan / LTV)
Yes
Stripe app (basic customer + invoices)
Bring your own LLM keys (OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini)
Yes
No
In-app messenger / Beacon-equivalent
Help Scout's Beacon is mature and well-integrated with Docs
Embedded chat (basic)
Yes
Public knowledge base / Docs
Help Scout Docs is one of the best KB products on the market
Yes, with redirects from Help Scout Docs
Yes
Custom fields & conditional routing
Deep (rules engine + conditions)
Workflows (linear, simpler conditions)
HIPAA BAA
Available on request
Pro tier only
Migration from Help Scout
Concierge, 24h, IDs preserved
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Verdict
Help Scout is beloved for a reason: the UX is calm, the Docs product is strong, and email-first teams can be very happy there. Our pitch is not that Help Scout is bad; it is that B2B SaaS support increasingly happens in Slack Connect, depends on account data, and needs AI costs that scale cleanly. If your customers live in email and Beacon, stay with Help Scout. If your queue is account-based and AI-heavy, Ochre fits better.
FAQ
Help Scout's UX is great. Why move?
It is great — and we steal from it shamelessly. The honest reason to move is shape, not polish: Help Scout is built around the email inbox metaphor. If your support runs through Slack Connect channels with B2B customers, lives next to Stripe data, and depends on deep custom fields, you'll feel the seams. If you're an email-first team under 10 agents and Beacon does what you need, Help Scout is genuinely a great choice and we'll tell you so.
What happens to my Help Scout Docs SEO?
We import every article with its original slug and emit 301 redirects from your Help Scout Docs domain to the new Ochre URL. Google treats 301s as a full transfer of ranking signal — we've seen migrations land at 95%+ of pre-migration organic traffic within 30 days, with no measurable dip. The migration ticket includes a verified redirect map you can audit before we flip DNS.
How does BYOK AI compare to Help Scout's AI pricing?
Help Scout's AI Answers is available after a trial and billed per AI resolution. Help Scout's docs list pay-as-you-go AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution, while legacy AI Drafts billing has its own conversation-based tiers. With Ochre's BYOK setup, the same kind of AI answer is billed directly by your model provider, typically fractions of a cent in tokens. At low volume, Help Scout's simplicity can win; as usage grows, BYOK gives you more control.
Will my Help Scout conversation numbers break?
No. Each imported conversation keeps its original Help Scout ID as a searchable alias. Customers searching #14201 in their CRM still find it. New conversations get fresh Ochre IDs that pick up where Help Scout left off — no number reset.
Do you support Help Scout's Beacon flows out of the box?
We ship an Ochre chat widget with the equivalent core features: contact form, suggested articles, identify call for logged-in users. If you've built custom Beacon JS (event triggers, conditional show/hide rules), we'll pair on porting them in the migration call. Most teams finish the swap in under an hour.
When is Help Scout genuinely the better call?
Three honest cases. (1) You're a small e-commerce or content team where email + Beacon is the entire support surface and the simpler UX matters more than the feature delta. (2) Your team has 5+ years invested in Help Scout Docs and the migration economics don't pencil out. (3) You're on Pro for the HIPAA BAA and the procurement cycle to revalidate a new vendor would cost more than the seat savings. Otherwise, the math and the B2B feature shape favor Ochre.