Help Scout is customer support software built around a shared inbox, where a team answers email and chat together. It was founded in 2011, has worked fully remotely from the start, and is a public benefit corporation. More than 12,000 customer-facing teams use it, and it has handled more than 3 billion conversations.
Alongside the inbox sit Docs, a help center for self-service articles, and Beacon, a widget that brings help articles and chat onto a website or app. Plans run from Free through Standard and Plus to Pro.
AI in the inbox
AI Answers replies to customers in Beacon using a team’s own help content. Inside the inbox, AI Drafts writes a first reply, AI Summarize condenses long threads, and AI Assist adjusts tone or translates.
The team has kept shipping in 2026, with response time goals in May, SMS conversations through Twilio in August, and a customer portal for Plus and Pro in the same month.
The app directory
Help Scout lists more than 100 integrations, including Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce and WooCommerce. Customer records can hold up to 50 contact and 50 company properties, filled through the API or Beacon.
Order details beside every conversation
The Shopify app shows a customer’s most recent orders in the sidebar, products and discounts included, with figures such as lifetime value and average order value. Agents can refund, cancel, edit or duplicate those orders without leaving the conversation.
WooCommerce stores use the Help Scout extension, which puts the customer’s store data in the sidebar. It also works from the shop’s side. A Get Help button on the My Account and My Orders screens lets a customer raise a conversation about a specific order, and staff can open one from the order page with a Report an Issue box.
Systems with no ready-made app, like a warehouse platform or an in-house database, use a custom sidebar app, on every paid plan. It displays its content in a panel beside the conversation, so an order history, a delivery status or a refund button can sit next to the customer’s message.
Support history on the CRM record
Help Scout’s HubSpot integration runs in both directions. The sidebar shows the customer’s HubSpot properties, recent deals, lists and workflows. From the other side, an agent can add a new contact to HubSpot, or add a conversation to the contact’s Activity tab, where anyone opening the contact in HubSpot can read it.
Salesforce brings customer activity from Salesforce into Help Scout. For every conversation to reach a CRM record without an agent picking it, the route is the Inbox API and its webhooks, below.
The Inbox API
The Inbox API covers conversations, customers and mailboxes, and connects with OAuth. Internal integrations use a simpler client credentials sign-in, with tokens valid for two days.
API access comes with the paid plans, and the rate limit grows with them: 200 calls a minute on Standard, 400 on Plus and 800 on Pro.
Webhooks announce new conversations and customer replies as they happen. They’re signed, and failed deliveries get up to ten more attempts. The help center has its own Docs API.
Answers without the second tab
Help Scout’s sidebar apps and Inbox API leave a lot of room to bring other systems into the conversation. Order history from the warehouse, delivery status from the carrier and a refund button from the payment provider can all sit beside the customer’s message, and every closed conversation can be logged on the CRM record automatically.
Agents answering customers by checking another system in a second tab is a warning sign in its own right. And before adding another support tool to fill the gap, audit the stack you already have.