Help Scout vs Zendesk

Two customer support tools side by side. Prices are the starting plan a small business would pick, in USD.

Compare	Help ScoutHelp Scout	ZendeskZendesk
In one line	Shared inbox that feels like email, plus a help center	Full ticketing across email, chat, phone, and social
Starting price	From $25/person	From $19/person
Six-person team	$150/mo	$114/mo
Plans	Free (5 users, 100 contacts/mo); Standard $25/user/mo; Plus $45/user/mo; Pro $75/user/mo; 16% off annual	Support Team $19/agent/mo; Suite Team $55/agent/mo; Suite Professional $115/agent/mo, billed annually (monthly $25/$69/$149)
Pricing model	Free tier	Free trial
Free trial	15 days	14 days
Users	Per user; 5 on free	Per agent
Integrations	Shopify, HubSpot, Slack, Jira, 100+	1,500+ apps
Team size	2–10 people · 11–50 people	11–50 people · 51–200 people
Available in	US · UK · CA · AU	US · UK · CA · AU
Phone support	None listed	Plans not stated (US)
Live chat	None listed	Plans not stated
Support hours	Not published	Phone: 8am-6pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (excluding holidays)
Incidents posted	6 incidents posted on Help Scout's status page in the 90 days to Oct 27, 2026; 0 marked major or critical by Help Scout. Status page	Zendesk has a public status page. Status page
Capterra score	4.6 / 5 from 226 reviews	4.4 / 5 from 4,094 reviews
Trustpilot score	3.0 / 5 from 40 reviews	1.8 / 5 from 742 reviews
Fit: Retail shop	60	50
Fit: Restaurant or café	40	30
Fit: Service business	80	65
Fit: Agency or studio	75	60
Fit: Trades or contractor	55	40
Fit: Online store	90	85
Why people pick it	Simple for the team Docs site included	Handles any channel Deep reporting
Where it falls short	Per-user pricing adds up Light on automation	Complex setup Per-agent cost
	Visit Help Scout ↗	Visit Zendesk ↗

Six-person prices are what a team of six would pay on the published plans; "Not listed" means those plans don't cover six. How we calculate prices

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