Help Scout vs Intercom: plans, AI fees, channels and fit in 2026

Pick Help Scout if your customers write email from outside a product and you want a human team answering, with AI drafting included. Pick Intercom if customers chat from inside your product at volume and you want Fin, its AI agent, answering first at $0.99 per outcome.

Help Scout is an email-first support desk with a knowledge base beside the inbox and AI drafting included. Intercom is a messenger-first support platform rebuilt around Fin, its AI agent, which is priced per outcome. Help Scout is built to make a human team efficient. Intercom is built to reduce how much a human team has to touch.

• Pick Help Scout if customers write email from outside any product, a knowledge base can answer part of the volume, and you want the AI line capped.
• Pick Intercom if customers are logged into your product when they write, the volume is high and repetitive, and you want an AI agent to take the first pass.
• Pick neither if the people writing in are named clients with history, where an automated first answer carries consequence. Both desks close the ticket and keep no record of what was promised. Sektra keeps that record per client, as the last section shows.

What is the difference between Help Scout and Intercom?

Help Scout is an email-first desk. Conversations read like email, a Docs knowledge base sits beside the inbox, and AI Assist, AI Summarize and AI Drafts work for the agent on every paid plan. Automated answers are an optional add-on. It is a tool for a human-run support queue, and the queue is its scope.

Intercom is a messenger-first platform rebuilt around Fin. In-app chat is the primary channel, and the stated goal is resolving as much inbound as possible without a person. Email is supported, with the platform assuming customers are logged in and chatting. Everything is priced on that assumption.

How much does Intercom cost compared with Help Scout?

The two bills are built differently, and the shape matters more than the headline. Help Scout charges per user, with a free plan for five users and one inbox, then $25 to $75 per user per month on monthly billing, verified October 2026. AI drafting is in the seat price. AI Answers is billed at $0.75 per resolution, you can set a monthly cap, and new accounts get three months of unlimited resolutions.

Intercom charges per seat, $29 to $132 per seat per month depending on plan, with lite seats included on Advanced and Expert. Fin is $0.99 per outcome on every plan. Copilot, Intercom's assistant for human agents, is $29 per agent per month billed annually. Live chat, support email and in-app messaging are included; SMS, WhatsApp, phone and email campaigns are pay as you go.

A ten-person team on Help Scout Plus pays about $5,400 a year on monthly billing, or 16 percent less on annual. AI Answers adds $0.75 for each question it closes. The same team on Intercom Advanced pays $10,200 a year, plus $0.99 per Fin outcome, plus $3,480 if every agent gets Copilot.

Intercom's economics assume Fin absorbs inbound that would otherwise need a seat. If it does, the per-outcome fee replaces salary. If it does not, it is a line on top of a higher seat price.

How does Intercom count an outcome?

Intercom counts an outcome when a customer confirms the issue is resolved, or does not ask for more help after Fin responds. It also counts one when Fin completes a procedure, including a handoff. You are charged once per conversation even if several questions are answered.

Help Scout counts a resolution when AI Answers closes a conversation with no escalation, no knowledge base search, no follow-up question and no request for more help. It counts at most one per conversation.

Channels and the knowledge base

Help Scout starts from the mailbox. Email is the core, with the Beacon chat widget and a help center around it. The knowledge base is central enough that AI Answers is a way to put it in front of customers automatically.

Intercom starts from the messenger in your product, which is where Fin runs and where proactive messages, banners and tooltips live. Help Scout's shape is built around customers writing from outside any product. Intercom's is built around customers inside your app.

How each treats AI

Help Scout's included AI works for the agent: drafting, summarizing, expanding and translating. Its per-resolution AI is optional and capped, so the AI line is a bounded number. Intercom's AI is the product. Fin takes the first pass at everything and hands off what it cannot close, and the pricing assumes teams let it. That design is built for high-volume, repetitive support, where a wrong first answer costs little.

Which is better: Help Scout vs Intercom?

How much of your inbound do you want answered without a person? If the answer is a lot, and your volume justifies it, Intercom is built around that outcome and prices accordingly. If the answer is some, with a human staying close, Help Scout's included assistance plus a capped answers add-on is built for that.

If the answer is none, because the people writing in are clients whose questions carry history and consequence, both tools answer a question you did not ask. Support tools model a conversation that opens, is resolved and closes. Client relationships do not close, and the expensive failures are a commitment nobody tracked and an account that went quiet. The three-way comparison with Front covers the operations angle.

Moving from Help Scout to Intercom, or the other way

Both desks hold the same kinds of things: conversations with notes and tags, contacts, saved replies and a knowledge base. The models differ, because Help Scout keeps conversations as email threads and Intercom keeps them beside the messenger with Fin taking the first pass. Expect the history and the contacts to carry over in some form, and expect workflows and automations to be rebuilt.

Check four things before the move. Contacts with their custom fields, tags and the views built on them, saved replies and knowledge base articles, and the reporting history you want to keep. Ask each vendor in writing what its import accepts and what its export includes, and keep a full export of the old desk before you cancel it.

The support mailbox itself stays where it is. If it runs on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the mail history lives in that mailbox whichever desk reads it. That lets the two desks run in parallel on the same address for a few weeks. The parallel run playbook covers the steps.

Where Sektra fits

We build Sektra for that third answer. It is a shared inbox that syncs two-way with Gmail, Outlook, IMAP and WhatsApp Business, so the mail stays where it is.

It keeps the desk basics: assignment by rule, round robin or current workload, notes and mentions on the thread, and a typing indicator when a teammate is already replying. It does not host a public help center, and it does not deflect with an agent. A person always sends.

The memory layer is a record per client of every commitment with its date, every open question, the people and the history, built from the mailbox on connect. Set a silence watch with the day count you choose and Sektra tells you the day a client goes quiet, and the morning digest lists who owes you a reply. The assistant drafts from that record.

Every AI feature is part of the plan, with no per-resolution or per-outcome fee, and plans are on the pricing page. The row-by-row pages are Sektra vs Help Scout and Sektra vs Intercom. Customer success teams shows the inbound it is built for, and the product page covers the memory layer.

Both desks are built for a defined shape of inbound. The expensive purchase is a tool built for a shape of inbound you do not have.