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Zendesk vs Help Scout 2025 (Which is Better Customer Service Software?)

While Zendesk and Help Scout are both great customer service tools, they do have some key differences. In this comparison article, we’re going to dive into the features, pricing, and customer satisfaction of each software to help you to make the decision.

Zendesk is best for large enterprises looking for all-in-one support software. $49/month per user zendesk.com
Help Scout is the best all-in-one customer support software for ticketing. $19/month per user helpscout.com

Which One is Better, Zendesk or Help Scout?

The help desk software market is growing more competitive by the day. Two popular options are Help Scout and Zendesk. Both have their pros and cons, but which one is better for your business? Here are our three use cases to see which one is better.

Better Features

Based on the number of features, Zendesk is the better option.

Better Price

Help Scout is a more affordable option than Zendesk.

People’s Choice

Based on trusted customer reviews, Help Scout is the winner.

Overall Winner:

Help Scout 2-1

Zendesk vs Help Scout Pros and Cons

Both Help Scout and Zendesk have their pros and cons, but one may be a better fit for your company depending on your needs. In this section, we will compare and contrast the pros and cons of both platforms to help you make the best decision for your business.

Zendesk Pros & Cons

Pros:

  • Reliable work-horse for large enterprises
  • All-in-one solution
  • Help Center
  • AI-powered automated answers
  • Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support
  • 1,000+ apps and integrations –
  • Robust APIs
  • Free trial

Cons:

  • Too complex for small businesses and hard to use
  • Confusing pricing plans

Help Scout Pros & Cons

Pros:

  • Easy-to-use & affordable
  • Best price-to-features ratio
  • Convenient knowledge base
  • Used by 10,000+ businesses
  • 15-day free trial
  • Tag tickets
  • Live Chat

Cons:

  • Slightly outdated design
  • No voice support

Zendesk vs Help Scout Price Comparison

Let’s take a look at these two’s pricing plans to see which one offers better pricing.

Zendesk Pricing Plans

Zendesk’s pricing comes in three tiers: Suite Team, Suite Growth, and Suite Professional. Each tier offers various features such as messaging, support channels, AI-powered tools, and dashboards. Users can choose the plan that best fits their needs and budget. Higher tiers offer more advanced features for larger teams with increased support demands. All pricing is based on a per-user per-month cost.

Suite Team — $49 per user per month

  • Industry-leading ticketing system
  • Messaging across web, mobile and social
  • Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support
  • Help Center
  • AI-powered automated answers

Suite Growth — $79 per user per month

  • Self-service customer portal
  • AI-powered knowledge management
  • Customizable ticket layouts
  • Service Level Agreement (SLA) management
  • Multilingual support and content

Suite Professional — $99 per user per month

  • Live agent activity dashboard
  • Integrated community forums
  • Private conversation threads
  • Customizable and shareable dashboards
  • Advanced voice capabilities

Help Scout Pricing Plans

Help Scout’s pricing comes in three tiers: Standard, Plus, and Pro. Each plan offers different levels of mailbox and Docs site options, as well as additional features such as live chat and custom fields. The Enterprise plan caters to larger businesses with added security measures and tiered discounts for higher user counts.

Standard — $20 per user per month

  • 2 Mailboxes
  • 1 Docs site
  • Add up to 25 users
  • Live chat
  • In-app messaging

Plus — $40 per user per month

  • 5 Mailboxes
  • 2 Docs sites
  • No maximum user count
  • 25 free light users
  • Custom fields

Pro — $65 per user per month

  • 25 Mailboxes
  • 10 Docs sites
  • 50 free light users
  • Tiered discounts
  • Enterprise security

Zendesk vs Help Scout Features Comparison

While these tools share some similarities, there are also some key differences. In this section, we will compare these two software programs’ features and help you decide which one is right for you.

Zendesk Features

Zendesk makes customer service better. Zendesk builds software to meet customer needs, set your team up for success, and keep your business in sync. It’s everything you need, in one powerful package.

  • Ticketing system
  • Live Chat
  • Help Center
  • Voice (call center)
  • AI and chatbots

Ticketing system

A great customer experience starts with a fully integrated ticketing system. It’s the go-to place for questions, requests, and concerns from customers. And it provides you with complete information about each customer so that you can offer personalized support.

  • Email with unlimited addresses: Zendesk’s email integration is ready to use out-of-the-box, and you can create unlimited email addresses. Plus, their customizable HTML and text templates make it easy to brand your communications.
  • Contact form: Place a contact form on your website so customers can reach out to you 24/7.

Live Chat

With Zendesk, you can get messaging that is personalized and engaging right out of the box or customize it to your own liking.

  • Web widget: Support your customers by embedding support onto your website. This will allow them to take actions like submit a ticket or chat with an agent in order to get the help they need quickly and easily.
  • Mobile SDKs: Support your app development for iOS and Android by utilizing Zendesk’s native software kits.
  • Unlimited concurrent chats: Unlike some competitors, Zendesk’s agents can handle multiple chats at the same time.
  • Automatic translation: The dashboard automatically translates conversations (powered by Google Translate).

Help Center

Not only is self-service quick and convenient for customers, but they actually prefer it! That’s why a knowledge base is such an important part of your customer experience strategy. Zendesk’s help center software organizes critical information and empowers both customers and agents with that data.

  • Contextual self-service: With the web widget and mobile SDK, you can embed your help center and suggest relevant articles to your audience.
  • Multilingual content: Give your customers the ability to receive help from you in their own language by localizing your help center into over 40 different languages.
  • Theme customization: You can use themes to unify the look and feel of your help centers, no matter how many products or brands you have.
  • Search: Allow customers to find the answers they need by expanding the help center search to include all relevant resources.

Voice (call center)

Even in this day and age of technology, sometimes the quickest solution is to talk with a real person. Zendesk’s integrated voice solution not only syncs with all other channels but also lets agents have access to customer information as soon as they receive the call. Now that’s what’s called convenience!

  • Voicemail: With automatic voicemail-to-ticket creation, you can easily keep track of customers’ needs and follow up with them promptly. Enable optional voicemail transcription to get a quick overview of why each customer is calling.
  • Text messages: With Zendesk’s easy-to-use messaging system, you can respond to customer inquiries quickly and easily. Automated alerts keep you updated on current issues, and proactive text messages help prevent future problems.
  • Call routing: With Zendesk, you can ensure that your customers will always be able to reach a live agent by routing calls directly to a specific group of agents or sets of groups. You can also route calls received after business hours or when agents are busy to an alternate phone number.
  • Call recording: Recording calls makes it easy to QA, saves time by reference, and shows when troubleshooting.

AI and chatbots

With Zendesk’s AI capabilities, your support team can get answers to customers quickly and efficiently. Whether or not agents are logged in, the bot will always be there to help.

  • Answer Bot AI-powered bot solution: Answer Bot provides instantaneous responses to customer questions by using machine learning to reply immediately with available, relevant information. Answer Bot can deliver answers via email, ticket form, live chat, messaging channels such as Slack or API and/or SDK.
  • Automate interactions: The key to setting up your bot lies in Flow Builder. This tool allows you to direct the conversation between a bot and your customers. Furthermore, you can publish flows in multiple languages without needing any coding knowledge.
  • Intelligent triage: With Zendesk’s advanced AI, you’ll barely have to lift a finger to understand what customers need and how they’re feeling. This way, you can always connect them with the perfect agent for the job.

Help Scout Features

Help Scout is the customer communications platform designed to give scaling companies the flexibility and power they need to grow, at an affordable price. Help Scout’s top features include:

  • Shared inbox
  • Knowledge base
  • Live Chat
  • Messages
  • Integrations

Shared inbox

Having a shared inbox for your team helps improve productivity and build strong working relationships. Help Scout’s easy-to-use interface will have your team responding to customer emails in no time. You’ll also get access to robust tools for organization, automation, and collaboration.

  • Assignments: With Email Assignments, you can make sure every email goes to the right person or team. It’s easy to use and makes staying on top of your email inbox a breeze.
  • Private Notes: Use the private notes feature to collaborate with teammates on problems and find solutions before replying to emails.
  • Saved Replies: Quickly and easily find answers to frequently asked questions so that you can insert them into replies with just a few clicks.
  • Tagging: Automating workflows, categorizing types of customer requests, and creating detailed reports is as simple as tagging customer conversations.

Knowledge base

Fewer customer questions and increased happiness? Yes, please! Help Scout’s knowledge base is designed for customers to help themselves so that they can have fewer conversations. Their knowledge base is easy to update for customer service specialists and easy to use for customers.

  • Create articles fast: With just a few clicks, you can add text, images, hyperlinks, tables, and videos to your articles. You can also select categories, add related articles and customize your SEO details.
  • Help articles across your site or app: If you want to see the Beacon help widget in action, look no further than Help Scout’s very own knowledge base articles. By addressing commonly asked questions and reducing incoming email requests, we’re able to offer relevant and helpful content that everyone can benefit from.
  • Provide outreach options in Docs: With their easy-to-use email and chat features, your customers can quickly get the help they need without leaving your Docs site.
  • Gain insight from Beacon activity: To find out which areas customers are struggling with, keep track of the web pages and Docs articles they read before asking questions. You can then look for patterns and update any outdated content.

Live Chat

With Help Scout’s live chat support, customers can easily find help center articles and get the answers they need.

  • Lead with instant answers: Make article recommendations to customers based on the page they are viewing, so they don’t have to search for answers.
  • Self-help is easy: Customer experience is crucial, and Help Scout’s design makes it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for without leaving the page.
  • Easy escalation: Customers can easily find answers to their questions by starting a live chat with your team in the same place they were viewing articles.
  • All-in-one support tool: If live chat is unavailable, you can send customer support requests to your Help Scout email queue.

Messages

Help Scout provides a way for customers to come to you through email, live chat, and a help center so that you can offer answers or Messages that let you take proactive steps and anticipate your customer’s needs.

Use Messages to meet customers where they need help, without them needing to reach out. Combine Messages with your shared inbox and live chat for an even better customer experience.

  • Promote: Make your teams aware of any recent changes, from new marketing campaigns to product launches and sales strategies.
  • Update: Keep your customers updated with company news and announcements to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
  • Proactively support: Target specific groups of customers who might need help, welcome new users to your product, or start conversations with trial customers.

Integrations

Help Scout integrates with multiple customer relationship management (CRM) tools, including Salesforce and HubSpot. This allows for the seamless transfer of customer information and communication history between Help Scout and the CRM tool.

Help Scout also integrates with several messaging and collaboration tools, such as Slack and Zendesk, as well as e-commerce platforms like Shopify. These integrations allow for improved communication and collaboration between teams, as well as streamlined customer support processes.

Finally, Help Scout integrates with Zapier, which allows for even more customization and integration options with over 1,000 different apps.

Help Scout’s integrations make it easy to streamline and improve the customer support process.

People’s Choice: Zendesk vs Help Scout

One key aspect when comparing these two services is to compare how other customers rate them. Both of the software has multiple trusted reviews so it’s easy to compare which one is better.

Zendesk Reviews

Zendesk has an average of 4.3-star 3rd party reviews (in legit sites like G2 and Capterra). Other customers seem to love it and consider it as a great option for their customer service software needs.

Help Scout Reviews

Help Scout has an average of 4.5-star 3rd party reviews (in legit sites like G2 and Capterra). Other customers seem to love it and consider it as a great option for their customer service software needs.

Top 10 Customer Support Software

Now it should be clear which platform is better for your needs. In case you’re still not happy with either of them, take a look at this list of the top 10 customer support software that has similar features.

  • #1 Editor’s Choice

1

543 reviews

Best all-in-one customer support software for help desk ticketing.

  • Best price-to-features ratio
  • Used by 10,000+ businesses
  • 15-day free trial

Best 2025

  • 9.6

? Help Scout Offer: 14-Day Free Trial

Help Scout offers a 14-day free trial for all of their available plans. Get your business ticketing system and live chat ready today with Help Scout.

1,170 reviews

Best for Live Chat customer support with fully-fledged customer software add-ons.

  • Affordable ticketing-only plan
  • All-in-one solution
  • Call center support

Excellent

  • 9.4

5,165 reviews

Best for large enterprises looking for an all-in-one customer support solution.

  • Reliable work-horse for large enterprises
  • AI-powered automated answers
  • Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support

Excellent

  • 8.9

3,307 reviews

Best for social media comment management and customer support.

  • #1 platform to connect all social media messages
  • Answer all social media messages in one place
  • Publish social media posts

Very Good

  • 8.8

1,489 reviews

Best for scaling customer support teams that need top-notch features.

  • Custom surveys
  • CRM integrations
  • VoIP calling

Very Good

  • 8.5

176 reviews

Best for minimal & affordable customer service software.

  • Affordable
  • Built-in email marketing
  • Great 3rd party reviews

Good

  • 8.3

2,592 reviews

Best affordable all-in-one customer support solution.

  • 21-day free trial
  • Community forums
  • Social media inquiries to tickets

Good

  • 8.1

1,358 reviews

Best call center customer service software for small and large businesses.

  • Unlimited calling, SMS, & MMS on the Standard plan
  • Ai-powered call and voicemail transcriptions
  • Integrates with Zendesk, Zoho, Hubspot & more

Good

  • 7.8

741 reviews

Best for Gmail-based customer service & help desk software.

  • Works on Gmail
  • Simple & easy-to-use
  • Knowledge base

Good

  • 7.6

484 reviews

Best for solving E-commerce support requests with conversion intent.

  • E-commerce integration (Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce)
  • Help Center / FAQ
  • Satisfaction survey

Good

  • 7.3

Zendesk vs Help Scout Wrap

Choosing the right help desk software can be tricky. There are a lot of factors to consider, and each product has its own unique set of features. In this article, we’ve compared two popular help desk software on the market: Help Scout and Zendesk. We’ve looked at both products from a variety of angles, including price, customer support, features, and more.

So, which one is the best? Well, that depends on your needs and budget. Ultimately, it comes down to what works best for you.

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