Cove vs Help Scout.
Cove is the AI-native helpdesk for lean teams. £99/month flat, unlimited users, AI included. Help Scout Plus is $45/user/month and AI Answers bills $0.75 per resolution. Both are calm, email-first products. We just price differently.
Side by side.
Sources: helpscout.com/pricing · Cove pricing on covesupport.io
For lean teams answering email,
Cove is cheaper and AI-first.
Flat price beats per-seat plus per-resolution
Help Scout Plus is $45/user/month. AI Answers is $0.75 per resolution on top. For a team of 10 doing 1,000 AI resolutions a month, that's $5,400/yr in seats plus $9,000/yr in AI fees. Cove is £99/month total. Same team, same workload. More on the math.
AI-native, not AI-added
Help Scout added AI Drafts and AI Answers on top of a 15-year-old product. They work, but they sit beside the inbox. Cove was built around the AI moment from the first commit. The drafting, the citation trail, the human approval step are the product. Different starting point, different shape.
Shadow Mode means zero-risk trial
Cove can run alongside Help Scout for 30 days. We import your conversations via the Help Scout 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.
Hire without checking the bill
Adding a sixth user to Help Scout Plus is another $540/yr. Adding a tenth user is $5,400/yr in cumulative seats. Cove's flat price means hiring decisions are about whether you need the person, not whether you can afford another seat licence.
Honest section.
Help Scout is a great product.
Beacon (the in-app widget)
Beacon is the embeddable chat / contact widget Help Scout drops onto your product or site. If you need a customer-facing in-app messenger that opens conversations directly into your support inbox, Help Scout has it and Cove doesn't. Cove is email-first today.
Public Docs sites
Help Scout's Docs product is one of the better-designed public knowledge base tools. If your help centre is a customer-facing brand surface and you want a polished public site (with search, theming, custom domain), Help Scout's Docs gives you that out of the box. Cove indexes your knowledge for AI citation but doesn't yet publish a public Docs site.
Mature product, fifteen years in
Help Scout has been refining the same calm, email-first inbox since 2011. Permissions, workflows, reporting, integrations, mobile apps, multilingual support: the surface area is deep and the polish shows. Cove is a focused new product. If you want the broadest, most-battle-tested support inbox in this category, Help Scout earned that position fairly.
How Cove imports your Help Scout.
The import runs through the Help Scout Mailbox API in under an hour for most accounts under 50,000 conversations. Nothing is mutated in your Help Scout instance. You keep Help Scout live while Cove ingests.
We don't import: Beacon widget configurations (Cove is email-first today), public Docs site theming (we don't publish public KB sites yet), Help Scout reports (different data model).
Questions we get.
Can I keep Help Scout during a trial?
Yes. Shadow Mode mirrors your Help Scout inbox into Cove read-only. Your team sees Cove's AI drafts on real tickets without anything being sent. Help Scout stays the source of truth until you decide to cut over.
How does Cove's AI compare to Help Scout's AI Drafts and AI Answers?
Help Scout's AI Drafts (unlimited on Plus) drafts a reply on request. AI Answers ($0.75/resolution) attempts autonomous deflection. Cove drafts on every ticket by default with sources cited, then waits for human approval. The pricing difference is the headline: Cove's AI is unmetered and unlimited inside the flat £99/month.
What about Beacon? We use it on our site.
Cove is email-first today and doesn't have an in-app widget yet. If Beacon is load-bearing for your support flow, we're not the right fit yet. If you mostly use Beacon as a contact form that creates email tickets, a plain mailto link or any contact form posting to your support address works the same way into Cove.
Is Cove cheaper than Help Scout for every team?
For teams of 1-3 on Help Scout Standard ($25/user/mo), the seat cost is similar. Once you're on Plus, using AI Answers in volume, or growing past 5 users, Cove becomes meaningfully cheaper. For teams that need Beacon, public Docs sites, or Help Scout's specific integrations, the price isn't the only variable.
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 Help Scout. 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.