Help Scout's calm, plus verified customers on every plan.
Start free with email and live chat in one inbox, a branded help center in your customers' language and customers verified on first contact. No credit card. Bring the whole team, every channel and the AI agent when you grow.
No credit card. Email, live chat, portal and knowledge base included.
Help Scout facts checked 3 October 2026 from its public pages. Sources at the bottom.
A real helpdesk. Free.
Free plan, not a trial. Everything a small team needs to answer customers well.
Zono Free
- Email and live chat in one inbox
- A help portal or help center on your own domain, with automatic SSL
- A knowledge base
- One brand kit for your portal, chat widget and customer emails
- One extra language for your portal, widget and emails, with your own translations
- Sign customers in with your own app
- Customers verified on first contact: Envato, Shopify, WordPress, Gumroad, LemonSqueezy or your own license server
- Limited AI credits each month
- A small team with unlimited tickets
- No credit card
Help Scout
Free plan: up to 5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month.
Zono and Help Scout, line by line
Zono:Free plan, not a trial: a small team with unlimited tickets, email and live chat, a branded portal and knowledge base, customer verification and free AI credits every month. No credit card
Help Scout:Free plan: up to 5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month
Zono:Email and live chat on Free; Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, LINE and TikTok on Premium. Replies go back where the customer wrote
Help Scout:Email and Beacon live chat on every plan; WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger from Standard
Zono:An AI agent on Premium, grounded in your knowledge base, saved replies and resolved tickets. Confidence threshold, escalation keywords, a live activity feed and a stop button; it acts on its own only once you switch it on. Cap it with a monthly budget or bring your own OpenAI or Anthropic key
Help Scout:AI Answers is an add-on billed per resolution
Zono:Portal, chat widget and customer emails in your customers' language, with your own translations: one extra language on Free, no limit on Premium. Right-to-left languages supported
Help Scout:Docs sites: 1 on Free, up to 5 on Pro
Zono:Free: sign customers in with your own app, with one identity secret for chat and portal and portal single sign-on. Premium: "Continue with" Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Entra ID, Keycloak or any OpenID Connect provider
Help Scout:Beacon secure mode verifies signed-in visitors in live chat
Zono:Premium: 14 tools for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or VS Code, with OAuth sign-in or API tokens
Help Scout:Not listed on Help Scout's plans page
Zono:Envato, Shopify, WordPress, Gumroad, LemonSqueezy or your own license server, verified on first contact on every plan
Help Scout:Not part of Help Scout's published plans
Switching from Help Scout
- Start on the free plan. No credit card needed.
- Run Zono alongside Help Scout on email and live chat until you are sure.
- Import customers and knowledge base articles from CSV.
- There is no automatic ticket importer. If you want help moving over from Help Scout, we help by hand.
- Upgrade to Premium when your team grows.
- Want a hand moving over? Email [email protected].
Zono or Help Scout?
Sources
Help Scout facts come from its public pages, checked 3 October 2026. Prices and plans change; if something here is out of date, tell us at [email protected] and we'll fix it.
Answer your next customer free.
Upgrade when you grow.
No credit card. Email, live chat, portal and knowledge base included.