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.
Stop renting Help Scout
1 month of Help Scout equals this one-time price.
Assumption: Standard shown for a three-person desk (3 x $25 = $75/month), the same baseline as the Zendesk and Freshdesk rows on this product. The add-ons are the part worth reading: the AI assistant is billed per resolution and extra inboxes are $10 each a month, so the bill grows with the work as well as the headcount. Helpora is $69 once, for any number of people working the queue.
How Help Scout pricing grows with you
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 2026-09-03
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. Full honest limitations are on the 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 a pricing tier.
- It keeps working if the vendor doesn't. Self-hosted software can't be sunset or price-hiked out from under you.
Fair trade-offs: you host it, back it up, and apply updates yourself — see the product page for honest limitations, and the full Helpora vs Help Scout comparison.
Sources
- Help Scout — price checked 2026-09-03 —
source “standard$25per user/mo ... $45per user/mo ... pro$75per user/mo ... add-on$0.75/resolution ... additional inboxes $10/mo”
Competitor prices change — 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.