Help Scout alternative
A Help Scout alternative that charges per inbox, not per user.
Help Scout Standard is $25 per user per month, billed annually, so a team of 5 pays $125 a month. SharedReply is $29 per inbox with unlimited users, so the same team pays $29. Below is what that buys, and what it does not.
The numbers
SharedReply next to Help Scout Standard.
| What | SharedReply | Help Scout |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 per inbox | $25 per user |
| A team of 5 | $29 / month | $125 / month |
| Users included | Unlimited | Up to 25 on this plan |
| Minimum | 1 user | 1 user |
| Billing | Monthly, no commitment | Annual for this price |
| Ticket numbers | None | No |
| Data location | EU | See their terms |
Help Scout Standard is $25 per user per month, billed annually, or $30 billed monthly, read from their own pricing page on 9 November 2026. Prices change; check the source before you decide anything on ours.
What a team of 5 pays per month
- Help Scout Standard, $25 per user
- $125
- SharedReply, one inbox
- $29
The difference is $96 a month at 5 people, and it grows with every person you add.
Where each one wins
Help Scout is the better product for some teams.
A support team that wants a knowledge base, live chat and workflow automation in the same product, and has budget that grows with headcount.
What Help Scout has that we do not
- A knowledge base (Docs) and a customer portal
- Live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger
- Workflows, SLA policies and saved replies
- An AI assistant, and an AI agent sold per resolution
- Sending from your own domain
What SharedReply does differently
- A flat price per inbox, so adding a colleague costs nothing
- Unlimited users on every plan, with no seat tier to outgrow
- Setup in about a minute: one forwarding rule, nothing to migrate
- Database, file storage and email infrastructure in the EU
SharedReply is in beta. The shared live inbox, ownership, the three statuses, attachments and replying in the customer's own thread all work today. Internal notes, a collision warning and sending from your own domain are being built. If you need any of those now, Help Scout has them.
The break-even
From 2 people, Help Scout costs more every month.
At $25 per user, Help Scout passes SharedReply's flat $29 once you have 2 people in the inbox. After that the gap grows by $25 with every colleague you add — which is the quiet cost of per-user pricing: it makes you think twice about letting the rest of the team see support at all.
- A team of 3
- $75 vs $29
- A team of 5
- $125 vs $29
- A team of 10
- $250 vs $29
Questions
What teams ask before they switch.
- Is SharedReply cheaper than Help Scout?
- For a team of 5, yes: $29 per month against $125. Help Scout Standard is $25 per user per month, billed annually, so the comparison flips below 2 users, where paying per person is the cheaper arrangement.
- Can I move from Help Scout without migrating anything?
- There is nothing to migrate, because there is nothing to import. You forward your support address to the address we give you, and new email arrives in SharedReply while your history stays where it is. Many teams run both for a week and then stop forwarding to one of them.
- What does Help Scout do that SharedReply does not?
- A knowledge base (Docs) and a customer portal, Live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, Workflows, SLA policies and saved replies. SharedReply is a shared inbox, not a help desk: if you need those, Help Scout is the better choice today.
- Does the customer notice the difference?
- They should not. The reply lands in the email thread they already have, with no ticket number and no portal to log into. During the beta it is sent from a SharedReply address; sending from your own domain is being built.
- How many people can use SharedReply?
- As many as you like, on every plan. The price is per inbox, not per person, so adding a colleague costs nothing.
- Where is the data stored?
- In the EU. The database, the file storage and the email infrastructure all run in European regions.
Compare something else
All six, on one page
The full price table, including the one that is cheaper than us.
A Front alternative
A collaborative inbox turned omnichannel customer-service platform, with heavy investment in AI routing and analytics.
A Hiver alternative
A shared inbox that lives inside Gmail itself, so the team keeps working in the mail client it already has.
Cheaper than Help Scout from 2 people up.
Sign in, copy your forwarding address, paste it into Outlook or Gmail. Nothing to migrate, nothing to cancel.
Free while in beta. Unlimited users on every plan.