Cove vs Groove.
Cove is the AI-native helpdesk for lean teams. £99/month flat, unlimited users, AI included. Groove Plus is $25/user/month and AI is an add-on. We share an audience: small support teams who don't want a bloated helpdesk. We disagree about whether the AI should do the first draft.
Side by side.
Sources: groovehq.com/pricing · Cove pricing on covesupport.io
If you want AI doing the first draft,
Cove is built around it.
AI is the product, not an add-on
Groove added AI as a paid module on top of an inbox built around humans writing replies. The shape shows: AI lives in a sidebar, gets opted in, and is metered separately. Cove was built around the AI moment from the first commit. The drafting, the citation trail, the human approval step are the centre of the product, not a tab.
Flat price beats per-user, especially with AI
Groove Plus is $25/user/month. Ten users is $3,000/yr before the AI add-on. Twenty users is $6,000/yr. Cove is £99/month regardless of headcount, with the AI included. The crossover point is around 5-6 users and widens as you add AI volume. More on per-user maths.
Shadow Mode means zero-risk trial
Cove can run alongside Groove for 30 days. We import your conversations via the Groove API, mirror new ones in read-only, and your team sees Cove's drafts on real tickets without anything being sent. If it isn't better, you walk. No migration weekend, no cutover risk.
Citation trail by default
Cove's drafts cite the sources they used: your knowledge base, prior tickets, your docs. The drafting view shows the reasoning steps and which documents each step pulled from, so an agent can verify before approving. Groove's AI surfaces suggestions; the source-citation depth and review workflow isn't where the product is built.
Honest section.
Groove is right if you don't want AI in the loop.
A calm, human-first inbox
Some teams have a strong opinion: every reply should be written by a human, top to bottom. Groove is built for that team. Cove's whole product assumes the AI does the first draft and humans approve. If you don't want that workflow, no amount of pricing argument fixes the fit. Stay on Groove.
Public-facing knowledge base
Groove ships a public knowledge base product alongside the inbox. If your help centre is a customer-facing site (themed, searchable, branded) and you want it in the same tool as the support inbox, that's a Groove feature Cove doesn't have today. Cove's knowledge base is internal-only, indexed for AI citation.
Tiny teams (1-3 users)
For a one-person or two-person team on Groove Starter, the per-user maths is cheaper than Cove's flat fee. We're priced for teams of 5-25 agents. If you're a founder-led team of two without AI ambitions, Groove's the lighter spend.
How Cove imports your Groove.
The import runs through the Groove API in under an hour for most accounts under 50,000 tickets. Nothing is mutated in your Groove instance. You keep Groove live while Cove ingests.
We don't import: public-facing knowledge base themes and custom domains, Groove AI configuration, satisfaction-rating widget settings, custom Groove integrations.
Questions we get.
Can I keep Groove during a trial?
Yes. Shadow Mode mirrors your Groove inbox into Cove read-only. Your team sees Cove's drafts on real tickets without anything being sent. Groove stays the source of truth until you decide to cut over.
We don't really want AI in our replies. Should we switch?
Probably not. Cove's whole product assumes AI does the first draft. You can ignore the drafts and write from scratch, but you'd be paying for the centre of the product and not using it. Stay on Groove if "no AI" is a deliberate position for your team. We'd rather tell you that than win the wrong deal.
What happens to our public knowledge base?
Cove imports your articles into our internal knowledge base for AI citation, but we don't publish a public-facing KB site today. If your customers actively read your hosted Groove KB and that's part of the trust experience you've built, that's a real loss in switching. Some teams keep the Groove KB live alongside Cove until we ship our own public KB.
How does Cove's AI compare to Groove's AI add-on?
Groove's AI is opt-in and additional. It surfaces summaries and reply suggestions when the agent asks for them. Cove's AI is default and included: drafts every ticket, cites every source, waits for human approval. Different defaults, different shapes of inbox.
Is Cove cheaper than Groove for every team?
For 1-3 users on Groove Starter, Groove is the lighter spend. From 5 users upward, especially with Groove's AI add-on, Cove is meaningfully cheaper. For 10 users, the gap is roughly £400-700/yr in Cove's favour before AI is added.
What if Cove doesn't work for us?
Shadow Mode means you find out during trial, not after switching. Nothing is destructive. You stay on Groove. We don't have a cancellation department because there's nothing to cancel until you cut over.
Talk to a founder.
Four fields. We reply within a working day, usually faster. We will not put you in a sales sequence; we will read what you wrote and write back.
Run by founders. Read by founders. Replied to by founders.