Helply (formerly Groove) vs Intercom
A side-by-side comparison of Helply (formerly Groove) and Intercom on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
2 of the 21 capabilities tracked on both differ.
| Measure | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Usage only | $29/seat/mo |
| Charged per | Not published | Each agent seat |
| AI billed at | $1 per ticket | $0.99 per AI resolution |
| Included, where the other says no | 0 capabilities | 1 capability |
Capability by capability
2 of the 21 capabilities tracked on both products differ.
Channels
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedIncluded. One of the eight channels feeding Helply's single queue, and on every Classic Groove plan. | IncludedAll plans | |
| Live chat | IncludedIncluded. In-app widget on Helply; branded chat widget for web and mobile on every Classic Groove plan. | IncludedAll plans |
| In-app messenger | IncludedIncluded. | IncludedAll plans |
| Voice | NoHelply enumerates eight channels and voice is not one of them. Classic Groove offers call logging, which records a call against a conversation rather than carrying one. | IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go |
| SMS | IncludedIncluded. | IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go |
| IncludedIncluded. | IncludedAll plans, pay-as-you-go | |
| Instagram / Facebook | IncludedClassic Groove only, on every plan, and counted against the plan's channel allowance at $10 per extra channel. Helply's published channel list is Slack Connect, Microsoft Teams, Discord, email, WhatsApp, SMS, in-app widget and a webhook API, and does not include Instagram or Facebook. | Not published |
| Slack Connect | IncludedIncluded, and threaded into the same queue as email rather than mirrored. Named as a first-class B2B channel: "Slack Connect threading". | Not publishedA Slack integration is included on every plan, but Intercom does not say whether it covers Slack Connect shared channels, which is the thing a B2B support team actually needs. Recorded as Unknown rather than credited. |
| Microsoft Teams | IncludedIncluded, alongside Discord. | Not published |
| Community forum | Not published | NoNo community product. Nothing in the plan comparison offers forums, member profiles or moderation, so a team that wants customers answering each other buys that elsewhere. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | IncludedIncluded, with unlimited seats. "Bring your whole team. Engineers triaging bugs, AEs reading churn signals, PMs scanning feature requests." | IncludedAll plans. Multiple team inboxes arrive at Advanced, so the entry plan is a single shared inbox. |
| Ticket queues | Not published | IncludedAll plans carry the ticketing system. The customer-facing tickets portal is Advanced and above. |
| SLA policies | IncludedIncluded on Helply, with per-account SLAs called out for enterprise. Classic Groove gates SLA management to Plus and Pro. | IncludedExpert |
| Business hours | Not published | IncludedExpert only, as team office hours, alongside team reply time settings. Neither is available on Essential or Advanced. |
| Macros / saved replies | IncludedIncluded. Saved replies on Helply; instant replies on every Classic Groove plan, though instant replies that carry actions are Plus and above. | Not published |
| Custom fields | IncludedClassic Groove: customer overview with custom fields on every plan, plus company fields and field categories. | Not published |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Round-robin assignment | IncludedIncluded on both products. Classic Groove offers round robin with load balancing on every plan for assignment, but gates chat routing with load balancing to Plus and Pro. | IncludedAdvanced |
| Load balancing | Not published | IncludedExpert only, as workload management. Advanced gets round-robin assignment but not capacity-aware distribution. |
| Triggers | Not published | IncludedSimple automations are on every plan; the Workflows automation builder starts at Advanced. |
| Workflow builder | IncludedIncluded. "Workflow rules with conditions" on Helply. Classic Groove ships a custom rule builder on every plan but gates time-based rules and advanced rule automations to Plus and Pro. | IncludedAdvanced |
| Escalation rules | Not published | IncludedAll plans, and they carry billing consequences that are published: an escalation triggered by workspace-level guidance or escalation rules is not charged as an outcome, while a handoff written into a Procedure is. |
AI resolution
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous resolution agent | IncludedIncluded at no extra charge. "The AI agent loads full account context, your KB, past tickets, CRM, Stripe, product usage, and only resolves a ticket when it has high confidence in a complete, correct answer." | IncludedAll plans, metered |
| Resolution over knowledge base | IncludedIncluded, and trained on resolved tickets and macros as well as articles. | IncludedAll plans. Fin answers from the help centre and the Procedures a team writes, and the vendor is explicit about the boundary: "Fin trains only on your knowledge and Procedures, never on data you haven't approved". |
| Action-taking (API calls) | IncludedIncluded. Refunds, plan changes, seat provisioning, password resets and rate-limit increases executed across Stripe, the CRM and the auth provider, chained across multiple steps with failure handling. | IncludedAll plans, through Procedures, which Fin executes and which can end in a configured handoff to a workflow, a team or a teammate. A successful Procedure handoff is itself a billable outcome at $0.99. |
| Handoff to human | IncludedIncluded, on customer-set thresholds. "You set the thresholds, Helply respects them, and the agent log shows every decision it made and why." Handoffs carry the issue, customer history, resolution attempts and full thread. | IncludedAll plans |
| Guardrails & citations | IncludedIncluded. Guardrails, brand tone and answer format are configurable, with a preview mode for reviewing answers before they go live, and drafts cite account context inline. | IncludedAll plans. Fin can be tested before it reaches anyone: "Before Fin ever talks to a real customer, run realistic Simulations against edge cases, including vulnerable-customer and compliance scenarios." Fine-tuning is opt-out, with data deleted within 30 days. |
| Multilingual AI | Not published | IncludedAll plans |
AI assist
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Reply drafting | IncludedIncluded on Helply. On Classic Groove this is Copilot at $49 per account per month, or the AI assist row, which is blank in the Standard column. | Paid add-onCopilot, sold per seat on any plan at $29 per agent per month billed annually or $35 billed monthly. Every full seat gets 10 conversations a month included; unlimited use is the paid add-on. |
| Summarization | IncludedIncluded on Helply. Classic Groove gates AI summarize to Plus and Pro. | Not publishedNot published. Copilot is described as an assistant for agent efficiency without an itemised feature list, so which of drafting, summarising and rewriting it covers cannot be read off a published page. |
| Translation | Not published | IncludedAll plans, metered: 10 AI auto-translation conversations per agent per month are included free, matching the 10 free Copilot conversations. |
| Auto-tagging | IncludedClassic Groove AI tag suggest, Plus and Pro only. Included on Helply. | Not published |
| Sentiment analysis | IncludedClassic Groove Plus and Pro. Helply replaces it with signal detection: churn language, upsell asks, competitor mentions and plan-limit hits tagged in real time and attributed to the account and its ARR. | Not publishedNot published as a product feature. The Pro add-on analyses conversations for quality; sentiment is not named as an output. |
AI voice
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Voice agent | Not published | IncludedFin Voice exists and is the one part of Fin with no published price: "To use Fin Voice and for pricing details, please contact Sales." Outcome pricing at $0.99 is stated to cover chat and email only. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedIncluded on Helply. Classic Groove includes a knowledge base per plan allowance, with additional ones priced but not published. | IncludedAll plans |
| Custom domain | IncludedClassic Groove supports a custom domain on the knowledge base, with either Groove's SSL or your own. Custom HTML and CSS are not supported. | Not published |
| Multi-brand | Not published | IncludedExpert |
| Localization | Not published | IncludedAdvanced |
| In-product widget | Not published | IncludedAll plans. The Messenger is included everywhere, and the pricing page bundles "free, unlimited live chat, support email, in-app chats, banners, and tooltips" into every tier. |
| AI answers over KB | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Fin is included on every tier and answers from help centre content; only the outcomes it produces are charged. |
Self-service
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Chatbot flows | Not published | IncludedAdvanced and above, as the Workflows automation builder. Essential is limited to simple automations, so scripted multi-step flows are the main reason to leave the entry plan. |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Conversation QA scoring | Not published | Paid add-onThe Pro add-on, from $99 a month, covering analysis of 1,000 conversations a month plus 2,000 credits, with extra credits at $0.01. Sold on any plan. |
| Automated QA coverage | Not published | Paid add-onSame Pro add-on, pitched at full coverage rather than sampling: "see and continuously improve 100% of your customer conversations" and "check if quality meets your standards". |
| Forecasting | Not published | NoNo workforce management product. Workload management at Expert distributes conversations against capacity; it does not forecast contact volume or build a staffing plan. |
| Scheduling | Not published | NoNo shift scheduling. Team office hours at Expert set when a team is open, which is not the same as rostering people against a forecast. |
| Adherence tracking | Not published | NoNo adherence tracking. Nothing in the plan comparison measures agents against a schedule, because there is no schedule to measure against. |
Reporting
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Prebuilt dashboards | Not published | IncludedAll plans, as pre-built reports. |
| Custom reports | Not published | IncludedAdvanced and above. Essential is limited to the pre-built set. |
| Raw data export | Not publishedHelply publishes no export UI, format or API reference on the pricing, security, enterprise or migration pages, and docs.helply.com, developers.helply.com and api.helply.com do not resolve. Groove Classic, no longer sold, ticks "Data export" in all three columns of its feature matrix and offers a self-serve JSON export with no plan gate. | IncludedAll plans, and self-serve, but split by object: contacts export to CSV from the UI, while conversations are reachable only through the API or the S3 export. |
| Data warehouse sync | Not published | IncludedBulk conversation export to Amazon S3 as JSON is documented with no plan condition, which is a stronger position than the UI export it sits beside. |
| CSAT / NPS | IncludedIncluded. Customer satisfaction surveys on Helply; CSAT ratings, customisable rating wording and CSAT reporting on every Classic Groove plan. | Not publishedNot published in the plan comparison. Conversation ratings are widely used in the product but appear on no reachable pricing or plan page, so the tier gate cannot be established. |
| Real-time reporting | Not published | IncludedExpert only. The real-time dashboard sits with SSO, HIPAA and SLAs behind the top tier. |
Collaboration
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| Internal notes | IncludedEvery plan on both products, with @mentions. Lite users on Classic Groove can add notes but cannot reply. | Not publishedNot published as a plan-matrix row. Lite seats are included at 20 and 50 on Advanced and Expert, which implies a collaborator class, but Intercom does not state what a Lite seat can do on any page reached here. |
| Assignment | Not published | IncludedAll plans have assignment; the automation around it is gated. Round-robin arrives at Advanced with multiple team inboxes, and capacity-aware workload management at Expert. |
| Collision detection | IncludedClassic Groove, every plan. | Not published |
Enterprise
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | Not publishedNot published for Helply, which has no plan matrix. Classic Groove's Security & Permissions matrix lists exactly four rows, two-factor authentication, mailbox access permissions, teammate roles and public downtime reporting, and SAML SSO is not one of them. | IncludedExpert |
| SCIM provisioning | Not publishedNot mentioned on either product's published material. | IncludedExpert in effect |
| Role-based access control | Not published | IncludedTeammate roles exist and can be mapped from identity provider groups, which ties the useful version of this to SCIM and therefore to Expert. |
| Custom roles | Not publishedClassic Groove publishes "teammate roles" and mailbox access permissions with no detail on what roles exist or whether they can be defined. Helply publishes nothing on roles at all, which is a notable gap for a product whose selling point is putting the whole company in the inbox. | IncludedTeammate roles, mappable from identity-provider groups. The plan gate is not published. |
| Audit logs | Not publishedHelply logs AI decisions ("Every AI action, resolution, escalation, signal, is logged with the source data it used and the decision it made") but publishes nothing about an administrative audit trail or how to retrieve either. Classic Groove's security matrix does not list one. | IncludedTeammate Activity Logs exist as a feature. Intercom does not publish which plan they require, and they have no documented export path. |
| IP allowlist | Not published | IncludedIP restrictions are listed on the security page alongside SSO, 2FA and SCIM. No plan gate is published. |
| Multi-brand | Not published | IncludedExpert |
| HIPAA / BAA | Not publishedHIPAA and a BAA appear nowhere on the security page, the enterprise page or the Classic Groove feature matrix. | IncludedExpert |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNot plan-gated. SOC 2 Type II, with the report and pen-test summaries "available on request" through the Vanta-hosted trust centre. | IncludedNot plan-gated |
| ISO 27001 | Not publishedNot claimed for either product. Groove's GDPR article mentions ISO 27001 only as a property of its hosting providers, which is a statement about AWS rather than about the product. | IncludedNot plan-gated |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated. GDPR is named on the security page, a DPA is offered on request, and Groove publishes a named DPO contact at dpo@groovehq.com. | IncludedNot plan-gated |
| Data residency | Not publishedNo region choice is published. Groove's GDPR article says only that it is "hosted at AWS", and Helply's security page names no region, no hosting provider and no residency option. | IncludedNot published |
| Data retention policy | Not published | IncludedPublished for AI data specifically rather than as a general policy: fine-tuning is opt-out "with data deleted within 30 days", and third-party model providers are "contractually barred from training on your data, with zero retention once a response is generated". |
| Right-to-erasure tooling | IncludedNot plan-gated. "Request deletion anytime. We maintain formal retention and disposal procedures to ensure your data is securely purged when you leave." Groove puts a figure on it: removal takes up to 30 days after cancellation. | IncludedDocumented as a GDPR workflow, covering both export and deletion of a contact's data on request. |
Developer
| Capability | Helply (formerly Groove) | Intercom |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedGroove Classic, no longer sold, ships a documented v1 REST API on every plan. Helply lists "API access" as included in the $1 ticket price and exposes a webhook API as one of its channels, but publishes no endpoint reference. | IncludedAll plans |
| Webhooks | IncludedEvery Classic Groove plan. Helply exposes a webhook API as one of its eight channels. | Not publishedNot published on the pricing page or in the plan comparison. The REST API is documented with generous limits; webhooks are not named. |
| SDKs | Not published | IncludedAll plans. The Messenger ships as a web and in-app component, and "in-app chats" are bundled free into every tier alongside banners and tooltips. |
| App framework | Not published | IncludedAn app store exists and apps can be built against it. Intercom does not publish an app count on any page that renders, so the size of the ecosystem is unverified. |
| Published rate limits | Not publishedHelply publishes no rate limit, and no API reference to carry one. Groove Classic, no longer sold, publishes 200 calls per minute on Standard, 400 on Plus and 800 on Pro. | IncludedAll plans |
Both entries last checked Sep 9, 2026.
What Helply (formerly Groove) costs
- Billing unit
The only plan Helply sells - Free tier
No - AI pricing
$1 per ticket - Vendor calls it
Ticket - Human handoff
Still billed - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
None published - Automation export
Not published
3 of 9 not published by Helply (formerly Groove), checked
What Intercom costs
$29/seat/month
4 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Seat + usage hybrid - Free tier
No, 14-day trial - AI pricing
$0.99 per AI resolution - Vendor calls it
Outcome - Human handoff
Still billed - Reopened chat
Refunded - AI billing window
1d of inactivity - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Not offered