Help Scout vs Hiver
A side-by-side comparison of Help Scout and Hiver on what each one charges, what it meters, and which plan every capability actually sits on.
The short answer
13 of the 41 capabilities tracked on both differ, mostly in AI resolution and AI assist. Help Scout starts at Free, then $25/seat/mo, Hiver at $25/seat/mo.
| Measure | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Free, then $25/seat/mo | $25/seat/mo |
| Charged per | Each agent seat | Each agent seat |
| AI billed at | $0.75 per AI resolution | $0.03 per minute |
| Included, where the other says no | 0 capabilities | 7 capabilities |
Capability by capability
13 of the 41 capabilities tracked on both products differ.
Channels
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| IncludedAll plans, including Free | IncludedAll plans. "Connect inboxes from Google, Microsoft, Zoho, and more to manage customer emails efficiently." Hiver in Gmail requires a Gmail or Google Workspace account; Hiver Omni is provider-agnostic. | |
| Live chat | IncludedStandard and above. Not on Free. | IncludedGrowth and above. Listed under Channels on the Hiver Omni comparison and named on the Growth card as part of Omnichannel. Includes a customisable widget, pre-chat form, chat templates, transcripts, message routing, offline settings, chat alerts and chat CSAT. |
| In-app messenger | Not published | NoLive chat is a website and app widget with a pre-chat form and offline contact form. Nothing in either comparison describes a persistent in-product messenger with outbound campaigns or product tours. |
| Voice | Paid add-onAircall add-on on Standard and Plus; preferred Aircall pricing on Pro. Help Scout publishes no price for it. | Paid add-onHiver Omni only, add-on on all three plans at $30 per voice seat per month with 1,000 pooled minutes and $0.03 a minute after. Not offered on Hiver in Gmail. |
| SMS | IncludedStandard and above, listed alongside live chat. | Paid add-onPart of the Voice add-on. The product navigation describes Voice as "Native voice and SMS support"; SMS has no row of its own in either plan comparison, so no separate gate is published. |
| IncludedStandard and above. | IncludedUnknown. WhatsApp is named as a Hiver Omni channel in the pricing FAQ and on the security page, and appears as a component on the status page, but there is no WhatsApp row in the Channels section of either plan comparison, so no plan gate is published. | |
| Instagram / Facebook | IncludedStandard and above. Instagram and Messenger. | Not published |
| Slack Connect | Not published | IncludedPro and above. Hiver calls it Slack channel: "Manage customer conversations from private and public Slack channels right from Hiver." That is Slack as an inbound support channel rather than Slack Connect specifically. A separate all-plans Slack integration handles internal alerts and discussion. |
| Community forum | Not published | NoHiver ships a Help Center and a Customer Portal for submitting and tracking requests. Neither pricing page lists a community forum. |
Ticketing
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Shared inbox | IncludedAll plans. Free 1 Inbox; Standard 2, Plus 5, Pro 10 included, extras at $10/mo annual. | IncludedAll plans, but quota'd: 2 Shared Inboxes on Growth, 5 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Send-from aliases are 1 per Shared Inbox on Growth and unlimited above it. |
| Ticket queues | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | IncludedAll plans. "Tickets Log any customer request as a ticket in one click." Routing, assignment, tags, custom views and a personalised agent view sit alongside it. |
| SLA policies | IncludedOne basic SLA on Standard, two advanced on Plus, unlimited on Pro. None on Free. | IncludedPro and above. SLAs are named on the Pro card, along with SLA reports and SLA-based automations. |
| Business hours | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | IncludedUnknown. Listed in the Analytics section as "Define your team's working hours so SLA and performance reports are more accurate" with no plan stated. |
| Macros / saved replies | IncludedSaved replies on all plans. Free caps at 10, paid plans unlimited. | IncludedAll plans, unlimited per account. Hiver calls them Email templates, and they are one of the objects the account export covers. |
| Side conversations | NoNot on any plan. The matrix has no row for a conversation held beside the customer thread. | Not published |
| Custom fields | IncludedPlus and Pro. | IncludedAll plans, quota'd hard: 2 Custom Fields on Growth, 10 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Two fields is a real ceiling for anyone categorising beyond tags. |
| Custom objects | NoNot on any plan. Custom fields cap at 10 a conversation and customer properties at 50, which are fields rather than objects. | IncludedElite only. "Use your own data sets to power dynamic workflows instead of creating separate rules for every condition." Exports as CSV from the object's edit screen. |
| Ticket forms | IncludedEvery plan including Free. | IncludedUnknown. Web Forms appear as a Channels row on the Hiver Omni comparison with no plan stated, and the June 2026 changelog lists Web Forms for Hiver in Gmail as still in testing. |
Routing & automation
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Skills-based routing | NoNot on any plan. Routing is round robin on Plus $45 and load balanced on Pro $75, neither of which reads a skill. | IncludedElite only. Named on the Elite card: route reimbursement emails to payroll specialists and so on. |
| Round-robin assignment | IncludedPlus and Pro. | IncludedUnknown. Round robin assignment and load balancing are Automations rows with no plan stated, though the per-plan automation quota applies to both. |
| Load balancing | IncludedPro only, listed as multiple routing types. | Not published |
| Triggers | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | IncludedAll plans, quota'd: 10 rule-based Automations per Shared Inbox on Growth, 20 on Pro, unlimited on Elite. Scheduled, custom-field-based and app-based automations sit in the same section, as does making outbound API calls from an automation. |
| Workflow builder | Included150 basic workflows on Standard, 500 advanced on Plus, unlimited on Pro. None on Free. | Not published |
| Escalation rules | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | Not published |
AI resolution
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous resolution agent | Paid add-onAI Answers add-on at $0.75 a resolution, on Standard $25 and above. Three months free from signup and a monthly spend cap that switches it off rather than overrunning. | IncludedAll plans, and the comparison marks the AI Agents block "ALL PLANS" explicitly. "AI Agents Resolve requests end to end, analyze conversations, and automate customer operations." No allowance, cap, overage or per-resolution price is published for it anywhere. |
| Resolution over knowledge base | Paid add-onAI Answers add-on at $0.75 a resolution, on Standard $25 and above. Three months free from signup and a monthly spend cap that switches it off rather than overrunning. | Not published |
| Action-taking (API calls) | NoNot on any plan. AI Answers is described as answering, never as doing. | IncludedAll plans. "Looks up orders, issues refunds, and updates records across your systems." Hiver claims coverage of tools without APIs too: "If your humans can see it in a browser, our agent can too." |
| Handoff to human | Paid add-onAI Answers add-on at $0.75 a resolution, on Standard $25 and above. Three months free from signup and a monthly spend cap that switches it off rather than overrunning. | IncludedAll plans. Part of Guardrails: "Decide when AI steps in, when it should hand off and set the bar for what needs human review." |
| Guardrails & citations | Not publishedThe pricing page describes the sources AI Answers reads and not whether a reply cites them. | IncludedAll plans. Guardrails decide when AI steps in and when it hands off, observability shows every action taken across connected systems, and "Human in the loop Pauses for approval on actions you mark sensitive." |
AI assist
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Reply drafting | IncludedPlus $45 a user and above. | IncludedAll plans. AI Copilot drafts replies, and AI Suggested Response returns "ready-to-send, contextual responses based on your connected knowledge sources". |
| Tone rewrite | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | IncludedAll plans. AI Compose "Polish and refine the tone, grammar, and structure of your replies." |
| Summarization | IncludedPlus $45 a user and above. | IncludedAll plans. AI Summarizer condenses long email threads; the Voice add-on adds AI call summaries. |
| Translation | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | Not published |
| Next-best-action | NoNot on any plan. The four AI rows are Assist, Drafts, Summarize and Answers. | Not published |
| Auto-tagging | NoNot on any plan. Tags are unlimited on paid tiers and applied by hand or by a workflow. | IncludedAll plans. "AI Tagging Automatically categorize all incoming emails by topic or type to improve routing and analytics." |
| Sentiment analysis | NoNot on any plan. Not among the four AI rows. | IncludedAll plans for AI Sentiment Analysis and sentiment reports. Customer Intelligence, which turns sentiment into account health and churn signals, is Elite only and marked Coming soon on the Hiver Omni comparison. |
AI voice
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Voice agent | NoNot on any plan. The matrix lists phone and voice as "via integration" on every tier, which is Aircall billed separately, so there is no voice layer to put AI on. | Not published |
| IVR replacement | NoNot on any plan. The matrix lists phone and voice as "via integration" on every tier, which is Aircall billed separately, so there is no voice layer to put AI on. | Not published |
| Real-time transcription | NoNot on any plan. The matrix lists phone and voice as "via integration" on every tier, which is Aircall billed separately, so there is no voice layer to put AI on. | Not published |
| Call summarization | NoNot on any plan. The matrix lists phone and voice as "via integration" on every tier, which is Aircall billed separately, so there is no voice layer to put AI on. | Paid add-onVoice add-on only, $30 per voice seat per month. Call recordings and transcripts are saved automatically and each call gets an AI-generated summary. |
Knowledge base
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Public help center | IncludedAll plans. Free 1 Docs site; Standard 2, Plus 3, Pro 5 included, extras at $20/mo annual. | IncludedGrowth and above. The Hiver in Gmail Growth card names Help Center directly; the Hiver Omni Growth card folds it into "self-service support". Nested categories, custom branding, a custom domain, a contact form, third-party code snippets and an internal help centre are all in the Help Center section. |
| Custom domain | Not published | IncludedUnknown. "Host your Help Center on your own domain for a consistent brand experience" is a Help Center row with no plan stated. |
| Multi-brand | IncludedDocs sites by tier: 1 on Free, 2 on Standard $25, 3 on Plus $45, 5 on Pro $75, and $20 a month for each one beyond that. | IncludedUnknown. "Multiple Help Centers Create separate Help Centers for different products, teams, languages, or audiences" is a Help Center row with no plan stated. |
| Versioning | NoNot on any plan. The Docs rows cover sites, branding, articles, contact forms and access control. | Not published |
| Localization | NoNot on any plan. AI Assist translates agent text, not articles. | Not published |
| In-product widget | IncludedThe embeddable support hub: 1 on Free, 5 on Standard $25, unlimited on Plus $45 and Pro $75. | Not published |
| AI answers over KB | IncludedAll paid plans, metered at $0.75 per resolution with no included allowance. Delivered through Help Scout's own Beacon widget over Docs content; there is no bring-your-own-helpdesk version. | IncludedUnknown plan, all-plans knowledge sources. AI-powered search lets customers "ask questions in natural language and get AI-generated answers from your articles", and the Knowledge Hub feeds AI Copilot and AI Agents from Notion, Confluence, Google Drive or a website. |
Self-service
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Chatbot flows | NoNot on any plan. AI Answers is a retrieval agent, not a flow anyone builds. | Not published |
| Order lookup | NoNot on any plan. AI Answers replies from content; the matrix describes no transactional actions. | Not published |
| Returns / RMA | NoNot on any plan. AI Answers replies from content; the matrix describes no transactional actions. | Not published |
| Account actions | NoNot on any plan. AI Answers replies from content; the matrix describes no transactional actions. | Not published |
QA & workforce
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Conversation QA scoring | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix runs to roughly sixty rows across ten sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Automated QA coverage | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix runs to roughly sixty rows across ten sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | IncludedElite only. "AI QA Automatically evaluate your team's responses to score quality, flag gaps, and surface coaching opportunities." AI QA Coach, the real-time version, is marked Coming soon. |
| Calibration | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix runs to roughly sixty rows across ten sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Agent scorecards | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix runs to roughly sixty rows across ten sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Forecasting | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix runs to roughly sixty rows across ten sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Scheduling | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix runs to roughly sixty rows across ten sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
| Adherence tracking | NoNot on any plan. The plan matrix runs to roughly sixty rows across ten sections and none of them is quality assurance or workforce management. | Not published |
Reporting
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Prebuilt dashboards | IncludedEvery plan, but the history is the gate: 30 days on Free, two years on Standard $25, all-time on Plus $45 and Pro $75. | IncludedAll plans. Basic reporting on Growth, advanced pre-built reports for tags and users above it. |
| Custom reports | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | IncludedPro and above. Custom reports and custom dashboards are named on the Pro card as Advanced Analytics. |
| Raw data export | IncludedPaid plans. Reporting data only, delivered to CSV or Excel "with the exception of conversation thread contents". | IncludedNo plan gate published for the account export, which runs self-serve from Admin Panel > Settings > Export data and returns XML. Reporting exports are separate CSV downloads, and scheduled data exports are a plan-gated comparison row. |
| Data warehouse sync | NoNot on any plan. The export row goes to CSV or Excel and no further. | Not published |
| CSAT / NPS | IncludedStandard $25 a user and above. Not on Free. | IncludedPro and above. CSAT surveys are named on the Pro card, with CSAT survey reports, CSAT-based automations and chat CSAT alongside. Results export as CSV and filter by user. NPS is not offered. |
| Real-time reporting | NoNot on any plan. Reporting is described by history window, not as a live dashboard. | Not published |
Collaboration
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| Internal notes | Not published | IncludedAll plans. Notes carry @mentions, Collaborators pull in people outside the Shared Inbox, and Shared Drafts allow co-writing a reply before it sends. Notes export as part of the account export. |
| Assignment | IncludedEvery plan including Free. | IncludedAll plans. Routing and assignments, with out-of-office and agent availability so conversations are not assigned to people who are away. |
| Collision detection | Not published | IncludedAll plans. "Prevents multiple teammates from working on or replying to the same conversation simultaneously." |
| Approvals | NoNot on any plan. Nothing in the matrix reviews a reply or an article before it goes out. | IncludedUnknown. "Set up step-by-step approval workflows so stakeholders can review and sign off on sensitive replies" appears in the Hiver in Gmail Collaboration section with no plan stated. |
Enterprise
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| SAML SSO | Paid add-onAdd-on on Plus and Pro, at a price Help Scout does not publish. Unavailable on Free and Standard. | IncludedElite only. "Let users log in securely through your identity provider with SSO. Supports OIDC and SAML." Named on the Elite card alongside HIPAA and custom roles. |
| SCIM provisioning | Not publishedNot listed in the published plan matrix or the security page. | IncludedUnknown. SCIM provisioning appears in the Hiver Omni Security and team management section with no plan stated. The Hiver in Gmail comparison has no SCIM row and lists an Okta integration instead. |
| Custom roles | Not publishedAdvanced permissions and Teams appear as rows in the plan matrix, but the matrix is icon-only and Help Scout publishes no text describing which plans carry them. | IncludedElite only, and capped at 6 custom roles on Hiver in Gmail. "Create tailored permission roles to control what each team member can access and do." |
| IP allowlist | Paid add-onAdd-on on Plus and Pro, at a price Help Scout does not publish. | Not publishedNot listed in either plan comparison or on the security page. |
| HIPAA / BAA | Paid add-onPro only, and an add-on even there. Requires a signed BAA. Price not published. | IncludedElite only. "HIPAA compliance Handle protected health information with a HIPAA-compliant setup." No Business Associate Agreement is referenced on the pricing pages, the security page or the terms, so the compliance claim is published and the contract that normally backs it is not. |
| SOC 2 | IncludedNot plan-gated. SOC 2 Type 2 for Security and Availability, report on request. | IncludedAll plans. SOC 2 Type II, with the full report released on request to security@hiverhq.com under a non-disclosure commitment. |
| ISO 27001 | Not publishedNot claimed anywhere on the security page, which names only SOC 2 Type 2 and penetration testing. | IncludedAll plans. Hiver publishes the ISO/IEC 27001 certificate for viewing rather than gating it behind a request. |
| GDPR | IncludedNot plan-gated. A DPA is published, though the security page says only that Help Scout adheres to relevant privacy regulations without naming GDPR. | IncludedAll plans, alongside CCPA. The privacy policy sets out access, deletion, restriction and portability rights, though portability is qualified as available "if it is possible, given our then-current automated systems and data architecture". |
| Data residency | Not publishedThe security page says only that Help Scout is hosted in AWS. No region choice is offered on the pricing page or the security page, and no data-residency product is published. | NoUnited States only. "All our services and data is hosted in the USA." The status page names the infrastructure as AWS us-west-2, and the last database backup is also held encrypted in Google Compute storage. No EU or other region is offered on any plan. |
| Data retention policy | Not published | IncludedTiered rather than configurable: analytics history is 12 months on Growth, 18 on Pro and 24 on Elite. This is a depth limit on reporting, not a customer-set retention policy for conversation data, and no configurable retention setting is published. |
Developer
| Capability | Help Scout | Hiver |
|---|---|---|
| REST API | IncludedAll paid plans. Inbox API for customers, users and conversations; Docs API for articles. | IncludedPro and above. Bearer-token keys created by an admin in Developer settings, carrying admin privileges. The Hiver Omni API is early access and enabled per account by emailing support, so on Omni the API is gated twice. |
| GraphQL API | NoNot on any plan. The matrix lists API access with per-tier rate limits and nothing else. | Not published |
| App framework | IncludedEvery plan including Free. | Not published |
| Published rate limits | IncludedPublished per plan in the pricing matrix: Standard 200 calls/min, Plus 400, Pro 800. | IncludedAll plans with API access. 1 request per second per account and 5,000 requests per day, with 429 Too Many Requests, exponential backoff guidance and a documented blacklisting risk for repeated retries. |
Both entries last checked Sep 9, 2026.
What Help Scout costs
$25/seat/month
4 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Per user per month - Free tier
Yes - AI pricing
$0.75 per AI resolution - Vendor calls it
AI Answers resolution - Human handoff
Not billed - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
None published - Automation export
Not offered
2 of 9 not published by Help Scout, checked
What Hiver costs
$25/seat/month
3 published plans, billed annually- Billing unit
Per user per month - Free tier
No, 7-day trial - AI pricing
Not published - Vendor calls it
minute - Human handoff
Not published - Reopened chat
Not published - AI billing window
Not published - Data export
Self-serve - Automation export
Not offered
4 of 9 not published by Hiver, checked