Zoho Desk vs Zendesk vs Help Scout

Pick up to 4 tools and see their free plans, entry prices, platforms and limits in one table. Every fact comes from each vendor's own pages, checked 7 November 2026.

Compared on	Zoho Desk Free plan · from ₹420/user/mo Visit Remove	Zendesk Free trial · from $19/agent/mo Visit Remove	Help Scout Free plan Visit Remove
What it is	Help desk software with email, chat, phone and AI agents, priced per user in a tiered plan ladder	Customer service software with ticketing, messaging, voice and AI agents	Shared inbox and help desk for customer support teams, with an AI chatbot billed per resolution
Free plan	Three user licenses with email ticketing; the page says these three users are not included after upgrading to a paid plan	No	Up to 5 users, 1 inbox, 1 Docs site and 100 contacts a month; 10 saved replies, tags and articles each
Cheapest paid plan	₹420/user/mo billed annually (Express)Zoho Desk pricing	$19/agent/mo billed annually (Support Team)Zendesk pricing	Not publishedHelp Scout pricing
What it covers	Billed annually; the pricing page we read showed rupee prices only and no monthly-billing prices.	Cheapest self-serve plan; email-based support. AI agent usage is billed per automated resolution.	Not stated
Free trial	15-day free trial on any plan, no credit card needed; the account reverts to the Free plan afterwards	14-day free trial of Suite Professional (Copilot included in the trial)	15-day free trial of Standard and Plus, no credit card needed; Pro is not offered as a trial
Platforms	Web	Web	Web
Integrations (vendor's figure)	360+ apps	1,800+ apps, partners, and integrations	100+ tools
Open source	No	No	No
Good for	Teams already using other Zoho products Small teams that want a free three-user starting point	Handling customer emails as tracked tickets in a small support team Combining chat, messaging and phone support in one queue Resolving common questions with an AI agent that is billed only for requests it resolves without a human	Small and mid-sized teams that want a shared inbox rather than a heavy ticketing system Teams that want a free starting plan for up to five people
Watch out for	Generative AI on Express needs your own OpenAI or DeepSeek key Light agents cost ₹345 a month each on Professional and Enterprise Monthly-billing prices and USD prices were not shown on the page we read	No free plan; the 14-day trial runs on Suite Professional Support Team is email-focused; messaging, live chat and telephony need a Suite plan Copilot costs extra ($50/agent/month paid yearly) except on Suite Enterprise + Copilot	Envoy chatbot resolutions are billed on top of the plan at $0.75 each Additional inboxes cost extra ($10 a month paid annually, $12 monthly) Plan limits on inboxes and users are stated differently in different parts of the pricing page
Made by	Zoho	Zendesk	Help Scout

Entry prices are the cheapest paid plan, as each vendor publishes it; “What it covers” says what that price is per (a user, a channel, a brand, a number of contacts). The sources are listed on each tool's page.

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