Help Scout vs Respond.io
Converge Team
Side-by-side comparison for 2026
| Feature | Help Scout | Respond.io |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | From $45/seat/mo | From $199/mo |
| Best For | Small-medium businesses wanting simple, email-focused support | Medium to large enterprises needing advanced automation and AI-powered customer engagement across multiple channels |
| Standout Feature | Clean, intuitive interface with excellent knowledge base | Sophisticated AI agents that can handle complex customer conversations and automatically qualify leads through intelligent workflows |
| Free Plan | ✓ | ✗ |
| G2 Rating | 4.4/5 | 4.8/5 |
Help Scout and Respond.io serve distinctly different customer communication needs. Help Scout ($0-$75/user, G2 4.4) specializes in email-focused support with excellent team collaboration, while Respond.io ($79-$299/month, G2 4.8) is a messaging automation platform designed for WhatsApp Business, Instagram, and other messaging channels.
The choice between them depends on whether you need traditional email support or modern messaging automation and customer engagement.
Feature Comparison
Help Scout excels in email management with shared inboxes, customer context, collision detection, and team collaboration tools. It's designed for traditional support workflows where teams handle customer inquiries through email with occasional live chat.
Respond.io is built for messaging automation with advanced features like conversational AI, workflow automation, WhatsApp Business API integration, Instagram messaging, and sophisticated customer journey mapping. It's designed for businesses that want to automate and scale messaging conversations.
These platforms serve fundamentally different use cases: Help Scout for human-centric email support, Respond.io for automated messaging engagement and sales conversations.
Pricing Comparison
Help Scout offers straightforward per-user pricing from free to $75/user/month, making it predictable for traditional support teams. Costs scale linearly with team size.
Respond.io uses a different model with plans from $79-$299/month based on features and message volume, not user count. This can be more cost-effective for small teams handling high message volumes but expensive for larger teams with lower volumes.
The pricing models reflect their different purposes: Help Scout for team-based support, Respond.io for message-volume-based automation.
Help Scout
Pros
- ✓ Clean, intuitive interface
- ✓ Excellent for email-based support
- ✓ Strong knowledge base features
Cons
- ✗ No native WhatsApp or Telegram
- ✗ Live chat (Beacon) is basic
- ✗ Limited automation capabilities
Respond.io
Pros
- ✓ Comprehensive omnichannel support with deep integrations
- ✓ Advanced AI capabilities for automated customer interactions
- ✓ Powerful workflow automation with visual builder
Cons
- ✗ Complex setup and learning curve for advanced features
- ✗ Higher cost structure with per-agent pricing model
- ✗ WhatsApp API charges add significant ongoing costs
Verdict
Choose Help Scout if you handle primarily email-based support and need robust team collaboration features. Choose Respond.io if you focus on messaging automation, WhatsApp Business communication, or need advanced conversational AI and workflow automation.
Choose Help Scout if: You need email-focused customer support, want excellent team collaboration, prefer per-user pricing transparency, or handle complex support conversations requiring human touch.
Choose Respond.io if: You prioritize messaging automation, need WhatsApp Business integration, want conversational AI capabilities, focus on sales conversations, or require advanced workflow automation.
For teams needing both traditional support and modern messaging without complex pricing tiers, Converge at $49/month provides up to 15 agents across email, chat, and messaging channels with straightforward flat-rate pricing.
Looking for more options? Browse all 750+ platform comparisons, or see all Help Scout comparisons and all Respond.io comparisons.