{"id":47557,"date":"2025-04-30T17:42:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T21:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=47557"},"modified":"2025-04-30T20:18:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T00:18:21","slug":"whither-help-scout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/30\/whither-help-scout\/","title":{"rendered":"Whither Help Scout?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Jalkut<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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Over the past few weeks, many Help Scout customers have received notice that our plans will change to a new pricing model<\/a>. Customers who haven’t received notice yet probably will soon. The new system is based on a rolling average of customer interactions. As they cleverly frame it: “the number of contacts you help each month.” Once notified, customers are granted six-months notice before the changes take effect.<\/p>

The problem, for most Help Scout customers, is that the new system increases their monthly costs. A little for some, and a whole lot<\/em> for others. The closest approximation to my current $22\/month plan starts at $50\/month and covers an average of 100 customer interactions per month. They’re obviously sensitive to the sticker shock this will produce, so they’re offering a two-year “Loyalty Discount” of about $20\/month, reducing my monthly cost to $28.60\/month. That’s still a 30% rise, but coming out to $6, it’s something I can live with.<\/p>

For larger customers, the cost increase could be much worse. Imagine my company employed a three-person support team, handling customer interactions for 500 unique customers per month. Under current Help Scout pricing, I would pay $66\/month. Exactly three times the amount I pay today. But under the new pricing structure, the minimum cost is $266\/month.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

[The] big problem with the free tier is that it removes access to the Help Scout API, and the ability to “Export” your data. Restricting data export is very 2005, and I wonder how it will play out in Europe.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I agree that pricing based on the number of customers helped is not a very attractive model, primarily because it isn’t very predictable. Even the old model of $22\/month seems like a lot for e-mailing his average of 43 customers per month. My support load, even in a month without a big release, is several times that. Yet they don’t even quote plans with more than 100 contacts per month. This seems strange. For a small company, I don’t really see what value this is really adding, unless the AI tools are amazing.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n