Help Scout vs Front 2026: Pricing, Plans and Key Differences

Choose Help Scout if a support team needs a shared inbox, Docs knowledge base and customer conversations with straightforward plan steps. Choose Front if customer requests routinely involve operations, account management and several internal teams sharing ownership. Both handle collaborative support; the deciding questions are channel mix, routing method and the service goals you must enforce.

Compare the required tier

These USD prices were checked October 18, 2026 on the Help Scout and Front pricing pages. Figures are per user or seat per month with annual billing. Front Starter and Professional have a one-license minimum. Help Scout Pro requires at least ten users; Standard and Plus are the relevant starting tiers for smaller teams.

Requirement	Help Scout	Front
Paid entry and team limit	Standard $25/user; up to 25 users.	Starter $25/seat; up to ten seats and one channel type.
Several channel types	Standard lists live chat, SMS and supported social messaging alongside inboxes.	Professional $65/seat; up to 50 seats. Enterprise $105.
SLA policies	Standard: one unconditional policy. Plus $45: two conditional policies. Pro $75: unlimited.	Professional and above: response and resolution time-goal rules, warnings and breach actions.
Automatic assignment	Plus: round robin. Pro: balanced assignment.	Professional and above: load balancing with agent capacity limits.
Knowledge and automation	Native Docs sites; Standard has basic workflows, Plus advanced, Pro unlimited.	Native knowledge base; ten Starter rules, twenty Professional rules, unlimited on Enterprise.
AI subscription boundary	AI Answers adds $0.75/resolution after its trial.	Copilot adds $20/seat on Starter/Professional; included in Enterprise. Autopilot is a separate usage add-on.

Two different shared inbox purchases

A five-person software support team answering product questions can start by assessing Help Scout Standard. It has one basic SLA policy, so a common first-response promise does not automatically force a higher tier. A team promising different response times to paid and free customers needs conditional policies: Help Scout documents those on Plus and Pro. At five users, Plus is a $225 monthly subscription equivalent.

A logistics team handling customer email while coordinating dispatch and account managers has more cross-team work. Front's Professional tier supplies multiple workspaces and omnichannel coverage, while its time-goal rules can warn teams before a response or resolution becomes overdue. Five Professional seats total $325/month annually. That comparison is useful when service goals matter; the $125 five-seat Starter headline does not include the same workflow.

Assignment also changes the decision. Round robin distributes turns, while balanced routing assigns according to active workload. Help Scout places these methods on different plans. Front's load balancing can cap an agent's assigned workload and queue additional conversations. Demonstrate what happens when an owner goes unavailable and when everyone reaches capacity before choosing a plan.

Count inboxes, knowledge sites and automations as well as people. Help Scout charges separately for additional inboxes and Docs sites; Front's rule allowance can matter when every customer segment needs a separate routing or escalation branch. A team managing several brands should map the exact sites, domains and workspaces it needs, rather than treating a shared mailbox as the complete deployment.

Buyer questions

Does Help Scout still charge paid plans by contacts?

The current public paid plans charge per user. Legacy contact-based subscriptions have different entitlements and should be evaluated against their own terms.

Can Front Starter combine email and website chat?

Starter is limited to one channel type. Professional is the relevant tier for combining channel types in one deployment.

See the shared inbox shortlist, Help Scout review and Front review for the wider buying context.