Replace a subscription · every price cited

The self-hosted Help Scout alternative

Helpora: Self-hosted first-response tracking for internal teams: the clock starts when a request arrives and stops only when a human actually answers — and nothing can be closed that was never answered. Own it once, run it on your own server, and stop paying Help Scout every month.

Own Helpora for $69 Try the live demo

Stop renting Help Scout.

Rented Help Scout Standard $25 per user/month, Plus $45, Pro $75 on annual billing (the page's default, '-16%'); monthly $30, $54, $90. AI Answers add-on $0.75 per resolution; additional inboxes $10/mo annual, $12 monthly. Every tier meters per user, the add-ons separately again ^[1] billed every month, for as long as you use it; your data in their cloud

Yours

Helpora

$69 once · self-hosted · your data on your server

1 month of Help Scout costs what Helpora costs once.

Buy once

How we counted: Standard for a three-person desk on annual billing (3 x $25 = $75/month), the baseline of the Zendesk and Freshdesk rows; monthly the same desk is $90. Re-read 2026-09-26 in both billing states: $25/$45/$75 are the annual prices the page opens on, not month-to-month. The add-ons are worth reading: the AI assistant bills per resolution and extra inboxes are $10 or $12 each a month, so the bill grows with the work as well as the headcount. Helpora is $69 once.

How Help Scout pricing grows

Help Scout meters per user per month, and then meters the AI assistant AGAIN by the resolution and each additional inbox by the month.

“add-on$0.75/resolution”, their own page, read 2026-09-26

What Help Scout does that we don't

Help Scout is a full customer-support desk — shared inboxes, a knowledge base, an AI assistant, and integrations into Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot.

“salesforce, jira, and hubspot”, their own page

Who should stay with Help Scout

Stay with Help Scout if you answer CUSTOMERS at volume and want the knowledge base, the AI assistant and the integrations. Helpora answers a narrower question about COLLEAGUES: the clock starts when an internal request arrives and stops only when a human actually replies, and nothing can be closed that was never answered.

What Helpora deliberately doesn't do is on its product page.

Why owning beats renting Help Scout.

One payment

No monthly, per-seat or per-location fees. The license is perpetual.

Your data stays on your server

It never lives in Help Scout's cloud.

No plan ceilings

Records and users are limited by your hosting, not by a pricing tier.

It keeps working if the vendor doesn't

Self-hosted software can't be sunset or repriced out from under you.

The fair trade-offs: you host it, back it up and apply updates yourself. See the product page for its limits, and the full Helpora vs renting comparison.

Questions about moving off Help Scout.

Is this a customer-facing helpdesk?

It is built for internal requests — IT, facilities, HR, ops. There are no customer accounts and no branded ticket site: requesters use the request form and follow their request with a reference and passphrase.

Does it read my mailbox?

No IMAP polling and no inbound mail parsing. Requests are filed through the request form. The desk is told of new requests by email through your own SMTP, and from 1.0.3 the requester can be emailed when you reply or settle, once you switch it on.

Can requesters log in and see their tickets?

No requester passwords. A requester follows their request, reads replies, writes back and adds a photo with a reference and a passphrase, or signs in with their work account and sees My requests; the people working the queue have accounts, roles and 2FA.

Can I make the numbers look better?

Deliberately not. The first-response stamp has one writer and cannot be moved, deadlines only ever move later, the only pause ends automatically, and nothing can be settled that was never answered. That is the product.

Related on this site

Front-office software Coworking & workspace software IT support & managed-service software Helpora vs SaaS pricing What's new in Own It 3.3

Sources

Help Scout: price checked 2026-09-26, source“Monthly Annual -16% Standard $25 per user/mo ... Plus Popular $45 per user/mo ... Pro $75 per user/mo ... [Monthly] Standard $30 per user/mo ... Plus Popular $54 per user/mo ... Pro $90 per user/mo ... AI Answers Add-on $0.75 /resolution ... (additional Inboxes $10/mo) ... [Monthly] (additional…”

Competitor prices change, so always confirm on the linked page. We only print figures we could verify on the date shown. This vendor is tracked in the Price Observatory: every figure verbatim, dated, re-checked quarterly.

Replace Help Scout with Helpora.

Open the live demo first; it costs nothing.

See Helpora Helpora vs renting All alternatives