HappyFox Help Desk vs. Help Scout

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
HappyFox Help Desk
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
HappyFox is a web-based customer support ticketing system hosted in the cloud. It helps track and manage all customer support requests across multiple channels like email, chats, social media and phone in a centralized ticket support system.
$29
per month per agent
Help Scout
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Help Scout is help desk software. The vendor’s value proposition is that that their solution reduces time spent on training users because Help Scout is simple to use and set up and scales like any enterprise product. This solution includes multiple mailboxes to support as many email addresses as needed in order to work collaboratively across teams, and manage several products or brands from one account. Reports on conversation trends, team performance, productivity, and customer happiness are…
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
Pricing
HappyFox Help DeskHelp Scout
Editions & Modules
Basic
$29
per month per agent
Team
$69
per month per agent
Enterprise Plus
$89
per user/per month
Pro
$119
per month per agent
Growth - Unlimited Agents
$23988
per year 20,000 Tickets / year
Scale- Unlimited Agents
$47988
per year 150,000 Tickets / year
Scale Plus - Unlimited Agents
$71988
per year 1,000,000 Tickets / year
Enterprise Pro
Contact Sales
Standard
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
Plus
$90
per month starts with 200 contacts
Company
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HappyFox Help DeskHelp Scout
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscounts are offered for annual and biannuall billing on per agent plans.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HappyFox Help DeskHelp Scout
Considered Both Products
HappyFox Help Desk
Chose HappyFox Help Desk
HappyFox delivered a more cost effective solution and asset management had no limit. The main problem I saw with the various other services I demoed, was the up charges. The pricing seems manageable until you see that they charge for every 100 or so of this and 100 of that. …
Chose HappyFox Help Desk
HappyFox has a customer tracking gadget or capacity, which acts as a feedback and survey solution. The classification of complaints is another feature that HappyFox embraces. The escalation management has been a suitable experience for HappyFox. Calls and live chat are the …
Chose HappyFox Help Desk
HappyFox Help Desk has more functionality than SupportBee and is better IMO if you have multiple departments working on a single ticket. The SupportBee interface in some ways was simpler, but it also just had way fewer functions. There's a lot of stuff with smart rules you can …
Chose HappyFox Help Desk
Mojo was an okay ticket system but it was difficult to track. You also couldn’t consolidate between messages very well, which would leave you with long threads to deal with and waste time. With Mojo, it suited our needs for a time but as the company grew, it became clear we …
Chose HappyFox Help Desk
HappyFox's only true competitor of those listed above was Zendesk. Mojo and Spiceworks each had major letdowns. Mojo was not as intuitive and lacked the ability to customize and trigger things. Spiceworks was limited to windows as far as client use. Both of these options cost …
Help Scout
Chose Help Scout
Help Scout is better for emails while Intercom is better for chats from what we found
Chose Help Scout
I also have used Zendesk previously, which is much more complicated; however, it can offer much more possibilities for customizing.
Chose Help Scout
Only have minimal experience with G-Suite for a much smaller company. This worked well for that organization but did not have similar specialization functions that suite our larger organization very well. Help Scout's pricing makes sense, and continues to service our needs …
Chose Help Scout
We primarily chose HelpScout because they were an affordable, moderately robust, HIPAA compliant solution. All the other options (e.g. Zendesk, Freshdesk, Kayako, etc.) were out of our price range or did not provide the necessary features that our team has come to rely on.
Chose Help Scout
Help Scout is a way better looking product. In the last two years they have stepped up their game. I hope to use their live chat soon. Zendesk is clunky and the user interface is terrible.
Chose Help Scout
This is tricky because there's helpdesk apps and chat apps (now Help Scout offers both).

We first used just an email inbox (of course not scalable but we were very small), then we turned to Freshdesk, which was painful to use. It had some cool features but in general it was …
Chose Help Scout
Help Scout easily plugs into Gmail and allows us to create reports based on our tagging. We found its price point for us as a nonprofit was a good fit. Customer service was also supportive. It also allows us to have an external help desk for our common questions from clients.
Chose Help Scout
We liked Help Scout better because of the help center integration and ability to split out multiple inboxes.
Chose Help Scout
They all had their positives and negatives. For us, it came down to signing a BAA (Zendesk wanted $28,000 to sign one). We enjoy working with vendors who can support healthcare initiates such as we are building.
Chose Help Scout
I've tried almost every single other live chat support tool. Most of them are easy to plug and play into the HTML page layout, but in terms of usefulness and cost, a smaller startup will always choose Help Scout no matter what. It's easily the best option for a bootstrapped …
Chose Help Scout
We did test out several other support desk tools before finally deciding to go with Help Scout. The main tipping point was the fact that Help Scout almost appeared invisible to the end user (our customer). To them, it just feels as if they are reaching someone via email, not …
Chose Help Scout
It has been an ongong debate about whether or not we should switch to Zendesk. They are all about prioritizing customers, delaying response time, and treating the customer like cattle. I'm sure we will switch someday because key heads in the company used to use it, but the …
Chose Help Scout
My team used Zendesk for years and then we switched to a lighter solution.
Chose Help Scout
DevRev, Fin by Intercom and HelpCrunch
Features
HappyFox Help DeskHelp Scout
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
HappyFox Help Desk
9.6
Ratings
18% above category average
Help Scout
8.8
Ratings
9% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets10.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Expert directory9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications10.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission10.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Ticket response9.50 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
HappyFox Help Desk
9.1
Ratings
15% above category average
Help Scout
8.5
Ratings
8% above category average
External knowledge base9.20 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
HappyFox Help Desk
9.1
Ratings
16% above category average
Help Scout
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Customer portal9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration9.40 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
HappyFox Help DeskHelp Scout
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
HappyFox Help DeskHelp Scout
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(0 ratings)
7.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
HappyFox Help DeskHelp Scout
Likelihood to Recommend
The biggest factor in my selection of this product was how our techs wanted to use a Help Desk. Everyone was already accustomed to email because that's how everything was done in the past. More than that, people often responded to inquiries on their phones via email. I needed a help desk software that could be used almost entirely by email. After demoing HappyFox, I knew I had found what I was looking for. Tickets, based on what department they are for, arrive in the appropriate tech's inbox. Techs can respond and HappyFox will forward their reply to the customer. All conversations are logged on the site so that they can be reviewed later, by us or the customer. With Smart Rules we could begin to get creative and open up even more options to allowing our techs to work solely through email. For example our managers have the ability to assign tickets to employees purely through email based on the text they enter. We also have the ability to respond to an email and close it. This speeds up resolution times by allowing everything to be handled through email. For everything else the web interface is a breeze to use
Read full review
Small businesses that want a conversational type of customer support experience. Nothing wrong with support tickets, but it does make you feel like a number. Also, we needed to get up and running quickly so the "inbox" feel of the dashboard was already familiar with the team so they could adopt the new software quickly.
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Pros
  • HappyFox is restricted in what it can offer (particularly the free version,) yet it functions exceptionally well as a support ticketing framework.
  • Clients have an portal to submit tickets, mind progress, and react to support assistant's updates or plans.
  • Administrators can track tickets, see what's left open, and set up plans that ensure tickets are not overlooked and are given the best possible priority to get dealt with.
Read full review
  • Extremely simple to use and understand as a user - treats communications like human beings and provides a much more personal feel to communication (as opposed to making people feel like numbers).
  • The email newsletter.
  • They are super responsive. They are pretty rad and transparent: if something goes wrong on their end they are not afraid of admitting fault. Which leads me to trust them because I can believe them. I know that tells you very little about the product, but as leadership, that's something that I really need
  • Help Scout does exactly what it needs to (facilitate organized, efficient conversations between customers and support people) without getting in the way.
Read full review
Cons
  • Their interface is a bit busy and overwhelming sometimes.
  • Still getting notified on too many tickets I haven't even looked at, despite our in-house specialist assuring me I don't have any incorrect alerts set up. Seems HappyFox Help Desk is working on this.
Read full review
  • It is a bit slow sometimes, but not very often.
  • I've noticed more network errors with their server in the past year.
  • Small annoyance - they use a lot of lightbox popups and if you click outside the box all of your work is lost.
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Likelihood to Renew
The way we have our implementation customized has allowed us to tailor the application to exactly how we would like to use it. We didn't have to change our procedures and fear the potential of poor adoption. Instead we customized the application to be used the way we already ran our help desk. From there on out we reaped the benefits of quicker resolutions, increased transparency, and much happier end users. After setting up Smart Rules, HappyFox does a lot of thinking for us. Tickets go where they need to go, close when they are supposed to close and even remind techs of inactivity. This removes the necessity for micromanagement, which is appreciated by our employees and managers alike
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We are receiving feedback from the organizational level that they may want us to transition to a different solution to provide consistency across the company.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
Help Scout is a great solution for support teams. There are many articles and webinars to help you learn how to use Help Scout. There are also many features to help make your workflows easier and more efficient. I would readily recommend Help Scout to any small or medium-growing support teams.
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Alternatives Considered
Mojo was an okay ticket system but it was difficult to track. You also couldn’t consolidate between messages very well, which would leave you with long threads to deal with and waste time. With Mojo, it suited our needs for a time but as the company grew, it became clear we needed a more robust ticket system to work efficiently.
Read full review
This is tricky because there's helpdesk apps and chat apps (now Help Scout offers both). We first used just an email inbox (of course not scalable but we were very small), then we turned to Freshdesk, which was painful to use. It had some cool features but in general it was ugly, slow, using the interface was very non-intuitive and the prioritization was hard. I have to say this was more than a year ago, so probably they have changed, but anyway. Zendesk is very expensive considering the features are almost the same AND the chat app needs to be paid separately. As chat we used Tawk.to, it was functional but metrics were not that good and it was buggy at times. Comparing Help Scout with their competitors, at least for us, made it a no-brainer to hire them. The price was very attractive considering the amount of features, the great support and the quality of the app. I don't regret my decision at all because Help Scout, unlike other helpdesk companies, tries to have their app "smart" and not a big, corporate thing piled with features. It does what it needs, it's easy to use and helps you achieve your goals regarding support for your customers.
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Return on Investment
  • Through Email support, the company conducts a marketing plan, through sharing of catalogs.
  • Survey and feedback are conducted and attained from HappyFox.
  • HappyFox supports live chat, an easy way to perfect the satisfaction of clients.
Read full review
  • We are able to retain our customer base due to the outstanding customer service our Customer Experience department provides. Without an organized tool like Help Scout, this would not be possible. We pride ourselves in quick response times to customers and are able to do so by effectively routing tickets to the right agents.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Help Scout Screenshots

Screenshot of Build better relationships with your customers, and work together better as a teamScreenshot of Tools designed specifically for team collaboration on customer supportScreenshot of Docs Knowledge Base provides self-service that sets your customers up for successScreenshot of The conversation report can change the conversation with your customers from problems to praise by pinpointing what they write in about and when.Screenshot of Productivity Reports track your team's customer-helping velocity and identify sticking points to push through with even greater momentum.Screenshot of Happiness Reports are the closest you can get to your customer's true feelings without hiring a telepath.