ShareMail vs Help Scout
Help Scout is a proper helpdesk with a knowledge base, live chat and reporting, and it wants your mail to live inside it. ShareMail is the other choice: leave the mail in Gmail and add only the collaboration.
What Help Scout does well
- An excellent knowledge base and customer-facing docs product
- Live chat, social channels and mature reporting
- A genuinely free tier for very small teams (5 users, 1 inbox)
Their pricing, as published
Standard $25/user/mo (about $21 billed annually), Plus $45 (about $38), Pro $75 (about $63). A free plan covers 5 users and 1 inbox. AI Answers is billed at $0.75 per resolution.
Side by side
| ShareMail | Help Scout | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $6/user/mo | About $21/user/mo billed annually (free for 5 users, 1 inbox) |
| AI | No meter, ever. If we ship AI it is an opt-in bolt-on at a flat price | AI Answers at $0.75 per resolution, so your bill grows with your customers |
| Where you work | Gmail stays your client; ShareMail adds the team layer | A separate helpdesk your team logs into |
| Knowledge base | None | A strong one, customer-facing |
| Feels like | Email, with your team in it | Tickets, with case numbers and statuses |
| Where your email lives | In your Gmail. ShareMail is a layer on top and never becomes the system of record | Ingested into Help Scout, which becomes the system of record |
| Mail delivery path | Untouched. Gmail sends and receives, we never sit in the path | Help Scout sends through its own infrastructure |
| If you leave | Disconnect. Your mail is already in Gmail; comments, tags and assignments export in full | Export what their plan allows, then migrate |
Help Scout column: their published pricing and documentation, read September 2026 (source). Pricing and packaging change, so verify current terms with Help Scout directly before you decide. ShareMail's column describes the product as it runs today plus the commitments in our pledge; anything not yet shipped says so.
Choose Help Scout if…
You want a customer-facing knowledge base and live chat as much as you want a shared inbox, and you are happy for a helpdesk to become the system of record.
Choose ShareMail if…
Your team answers email out of Gmail, you want comments, assignments, shared drafts and rules on top of it, and you would rather not pay per seat for a platform, or for AI you did not ask for. The whole inbox is on every plan, from $6 a seat.
Other comparisons
We keep these current and we do not hide the parts where the other tool wins.