Every seat is a fee, and every AI resolution is another $0.75. Arbyn charges $99, flat.
Help Scout is a serious shared inbox, and at light AI volume it is genuinely cheaper than we are: one seat on annual Standard stays under $99 all the way to about 98 AI resolutions a month. The model turns as soon as their AI starts working, because the thing you are paying for is the AI doing its job. The only lever that bounds that line is a cap that switches AI Answers off for the rest of the month.
The real bill
What you’d actually pay.
Three scenarios at Help Scout's own published rates, on their cheaper annual seat price. Read the first one before the other two: at light AI volume Help Scout costs less than Arbyn, and we would rather you heard that from us than caught us hiding it. The seat counts and the resolution volumes are our assumptions. The rates are theirs. Every figure below uses their $0.75 list rate, and their pricing page says pre-paid discounts are available without publishing one, so these are list-price ceilings, not necessarily what a high-volume buyer pays.
One person, about 300 conversations a month, and AI Answers resolving 60 of them on its own. One seat on annual Standard is $25, and 60 resolutions at their $0.75 is $45. That is $70 against our $99, so Help Scout is cheaper here and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Arbyn Starter is $0 for 150 AI conversations a month, but 300 conversations is past that, so Arbyn Agent at $99 is the fair comparison. The seat count and the resolution volume are our assumptions. Both rates are theirs.
Two people on the inbox and the AI resolving 500 conversations on its own. Two annual Standard seats is $50, and 500 resolutions at their $0.75 is $375. Their bill has crossed ours and it keeps going, because the meter is their AI doing the job you hired it for. Arbyn is $99 at 500 resolutions and $99 at 5,000. On monthly billing the seats are $30 each, so this figure understates them.
Peak season is exactly when a per-resolution meter runs hardest. Three annual Standard seats is $75, and 1,000 resolutions at their $0.75 is $750. Two caveats, both against us: $0.75 is their list rate and their pricing page says pre-paid discounts are available, so a high-volume buyer may pay less than this. And you can bound the AI line by setting a monthly resolution cap, which works by switching AI Answers off for the rest of the cycle. Arbyn is $99 with no cap, no counter and nothing to switch off.
Verified July 2026, read first-party in the same session this was written. From helpscout.com/pricing: seat prices on annual billing ($25 / $45 / $75 per user per month, behind a Monthly/Annual toggle that loads on Annual with a '-16%' badge), user limits ('Up to 25', 'Up to 50', 'Unlimited (minimum 10)'), the Free plan (5 users, 1 Inbox, 1 Docs site, Contacts at '100/mo' against 'Unlimited' on the paid plans), the AI Answers add-on rate ('$0.75/resolution', 'Pay per resolution on a monthly basis'), the 'Pre-paid discounts available' line, the definition of the meter ('A resolution is a single conversation that is resolved by AI Answers without human assistance') and its escalation carve-out, the monthly cap ('If you hit your spending cap, AI Answers will be disabled automatically for the remainder of the monthly cycle'), the add-on Inbox and Docs prices, and the SMS and phone rows marked 'Via integration'. Monthly seat prices ($30 / $54 / $90) are from their Shopify App Store listing, which also shows 4.6 stars from 18 reviews. Billing in arrears is from docs.helpscout.com/article/1746-ai-resolutions-pricing. The Shopify sidebar verbs (refund, cancel, edit, duplicate) are from docs.helpscout.com/article/294-shopify. Seat counts and resolution volumes in the scenarios are OUR assumptions and the arithmetic is OURS; every rate is theirs, and every scenario uses their cheaper annual seat rate, so each one understates them. Verified against helpscout.com/pricing.
Pricing model decoded
Two meters. Your team, and their AI working.
Help Scout's plan table is a normal per-seat table, and it is not the whole price. AI Answers is an add-on that meters separately, at $0.75 for every conversation it resolves on its own, with no included allowance and the charge arriving after the month that caused it. There is a cap you can set, and it is worth knowing exactly what the cap does before you rely on it.
The thing you are paying for is their AI working. Their FAQ: 'A resolution is a single conversation that is resolved by AI Answers without human assistance', and 'You'll only be charged for one resolution per conversation, even if AI Answers responds to multiple questions.' The unit is the resolved conversation, not the message, the seat or the AI reply. That is a fair meter, and it is narrower than a raw conversation count. It is also the meter that rewards you least when their AI gets good, because every conversation it takes off your team is a conversation that lands on your invoice.
The cost control works by switching the AI off. Their FAQ, verbatim: 'Yes - you can set a monthly cap on AI Answers resolutions. If you hit your spending cap, AI Answers will be disabled automatically for the remainder of the monthly cycle.' That is a real control and we are not going to claim they have none. It is also the whole choice on their side of the table: an AI bill you do not bound, or an AI that stops answering your customers until the next cycle. Arbyn's $99 needs no such choice.
Pro has a floor before the AI has done anything. Their plan table: Standard is 'Up to 25' users, Plus is 'Up to 50', and Pro is 'Unlimited (minimum 10)'. Ten seats at Pro's $75 annual rate is $750 a month, or $900 on monthly billing, before a single AI resolution. The rates are theirs. The multiplication is ours.
The AI charge arrives after the month that caused it. Their docs: 'Charges for AI Resolutions are billed in arrears, meaning any charges you incur in a month will be billed on your next billing date.' Their pricing page also says 'Pre-paid discounts available' without publishing a discounted figure, so the $0.75 used everywhere on this page is their list rate and a high-volume buyer may well pay less than our worked examples show. We are not going to pretend our list-price maths is their invoice.
Their Shopify actions are real, and a person fires them. Their integration doc: agents can 'refund, cancel, edit, or duplicate your customer's most recent orders right in the customer sidebar.' Partial or full refunds up to 100% of product value, cancel can void the transaction and restock the items, and an order can only be cancelled if it has not been fulfilled. Order edit and duplicate are things Arbyn does not do, and that is a real gap on our side. The difference is who clicks. On Help Scout a human does, while their AI answers from your content and hands off. On Arbyn the agent performs the Shopify mutation itself, after your one-click approval on anything that moves money.
Side by side
Feature for feature. Honestly.
Where Help Scout and Arbyn actually differ. Not marketing checkboxes, just real features that work today, as of 2026.
| Capability | Arbyn$99 flat | Help Scout |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat $99/mo | Per user seat, plus $0.75 for every conversation their AI resolves on its own |
| Cost predictability | Fully flat | Two meters. The AI one is billed in arrears, and the only bound is a cap that turns the AI off |
| Unlimited conversations | Yes | Contacts are unlimited on all three paid plans and capped at 100 a month on Free. The seat is the meter, not the conversation |
| Unlimited AI resolutions | Yes | No. $0.75 each, with no included allowance, from the first one once the 3-month introductory period ends |
| Email + chat + IG + FB | Email + chat, IG/FB soon | Email, chat and Docs, plus WhatsApp on their paid plans. SMS and phone/voice run through a third-party integration on paid plans. We read no first-party line on Instagram or Facebook, so we claim none |
| Acts inside Shopify | Yes, in-thread | Yes, and a person fires it. Their sidebar can refund, cancel, edit or duplicate a recent order. Their AI does not act: it answers from your content and hands off |
| Replies in your voice | Voice Fingerprint | No brand-voice model claimed on the pages we read. AI Answers answers from the knowledge sources you add to it |
| Free plan | Yes, 150/mo | Yes. $0 for 5 users, 1 Inbox and 1 Docs site, capped at 100 contacts a month |
| Setup time | In minutes | Not published |
The honest part
Where Help Scout actually wins.
A page that only says “we win” is a sales pitch, not a comparison. So here are three things Help Scout genuinely does better than Arbyn today, no hedging. Take them seriously if they matter to your store. Most Shopify store owners weigh them against a flat $99 a month (or $0 to start) and an agent that can act on the order, and switch anyway.
Where Help Scout is genuinely ahead, stated plainly.
Help Scout's pricing page is clearer than most in this category, and two of the attacks we could have run at them are simply false. There is no runaway AI bill: you can set a monthly resolution cap and they publish it on the same page as the rate. And their meter is narrower than a raw conversation count, in a way that works in your favour. Their FAQ: 'A resolution is counted only if the customer receives an AI response and doesn't use escalation, search the knowledge base, ask more questions, or indicate that they need more help.' A conversation their AI half-answers does not bill. New accounts also get three months of unlimited AI Answers resolutions at no charge, starting the day the account is created.
So the disagreement is not that their bill is unbounded. It is what the bill is a function of. Help Scout's price moves with how many people you hire and how well their AI works, which means the better their AI gets, the more of your invoice it becomes. And the one lever that bounds it is a cap that switches AI Answers off for the rest of the cycle, so past the cap your customers stop getting AI answers until the 1st. Arbyn is $99 whatever happens: unlimited conversations, unlimited AI resolutions, no seat fee, no minimum, nothing billed in arrears, and $0 for your first 150 AI conversations every calendar month.
Stay with Help Scout if you are running a support floor of several people who live in a shared inbox all day, if you need HIPAA or SAML on the paperwork, or if your AI volume is light enough that a $25 seat and a handful of $0.75 resolutions comes in under $99. Switch to Arbyn when your AI volume has started deciding your bill, when a cap that turns the AI off mid-month is not something you can absorb, and when you want the agent to perform the real Shopify action in the thread instead of handing the ticket to a person.
- 01Help Scout is genuinely cheaper than Arbyn for a small team with light AI volume, and we are going to say it plainly rather than bury it. One seat on annual Standard is $25 a month, and at $0.75 a resolution you stay under our $99 all the way to about 98 AI resolutions. If you are a one-person store doing light AI volume, buy Help Scout.
- 02They cap the AI bill if you want them to, and a quiet month with them costs almost nothing. You can set a monthly cap on AI resolutions, and they market it as predictable billing. Twenty resolutions in January is $15 on their AI meter. Flat pricing only wins once the volume shows up, and we are not going to claim they have no cost control.
- 03They edit and duplicate Shopify orders from the sidebar, and Arbyn does not edit orders or line items at all. Help Scout is also a shared inbox built over more than a decade: collision detection, saved replies, SLA policies, workflows, light users, and HIPAA and SSO/SAML on Pro. If you have six people living in a queue all day, that is the product they sell and we are not trying to be it.
Where Arbyn wins
Three reasons store owners actually switch.
One bill, and no counter
Arbyn Agent is $99 a month at any volume: unlimited conversations, unlimited AI resolutions, no seat fee, no minimum, nothing billed after the fact. Add a second person, a seasonal helper, an agency, a co-founder, and the price does not move. Arbyn Starter is $0 with 150 AI conversations every calendar month on full features.
Help Scout's Pro plan is 'Unlimited (minimum 10)' users, which is a floor of $750 a month on annual billing or $900 on monthly before AI Answers has resolved a single conversation. The seat rates are theirs. The multiplication is ours. And their cost control works by switching the AI off: their FAQ says that if you hit your cap, 'AI Answers will be disabled automatically for the remainder of the monthly cycle.'
Arbyn performs the Shopify action
Arbyn updates the shipping address on its own. Cancel an order, issue a refund, apply a discount so the checkout already has the code on it, send a gift card, reship, start a return: you approve with one click and then Arbyn performs the real Shopify mutation and confirms it to the customer, writing every action to the order timeline. That approval is a deliberate money control, not a missing feature. Arbyn does not edit orders or line items, and we say so.
Help Scout's Shopify sidebar is real, and a human clicks it while reading the ticket. Their AI does not act: AI Answers 'gets all of its information to help your visitors from the knowledge sources you add to the agent', and their pricing page promises 'No dead ends. Your team is always a click away for more complex asks.' Their sidebar can also edit and duplicate an order, which Arbyn cannot do at all.
Arbyn sells, not just answers
Product quizzes, a bundle builder, discount offers, in-chat upsells, abandoned-cart recovery inside the chat, with revenue attribution on every order Arbyn sources. All live, on the same $99, with no second product to buy and no extra meter attached to any of it.
Help Scout's ecommerce page has no sales agent on it. The one revenue-adjacent feature is proactive messaging, in their words: 'Use in-app or on-site messages to promote sales, guide shoppers through checkout, recommend products, or even collect surveys and feedback.' That is a rules-based message you configure, not an agent that sells.
Arbyn vs Help Scout: common questions
Not at every volume, and we will not pretend otherwise: below a certain volume Help Scout genuinely costs less than Arbyn, and this page shows you exactly where that line falls rather than hiding it. What Arbyn gives you instead is a bill that does not move: $99/mo flat for unlimited AI conversations and resolutions, with no per-ticket, per-resolution or per-seat fees, plus a free plan with 150 AI conversations a month. Help Scout is priced per user seat, plus $0.75 per ai resolution, so their bill climbs with your store while ours stays put. If you are small and staying small, they may well be the cheaper choice. If you are growing, the flat line wins.
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