Software Alternatives & Reviews

Discourse VS HelpScout

Compare Discourse VS HelpScout and see what are their differences

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

HelpScout logo HelpScout

Help Scout is a simple, straightforward way to provide excellent support
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13
  • HelpScout Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-14

Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

HelpScout videos

No HelpScout videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

+ Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Discourse and HelpScout)
Forums
100 100%
0% 0
Help Desk
0 0%
100% 100
Forums And Forum Software
Customer Support
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Discourse and HelpScout. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Discourse and HelpScout

Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

HelpScout Reviews

The Best Help Desk Software in 2020
HelpScout really focuses on the customer interface. It values the customer journey and makes it easy for them to navigate. It is set up in a way to boost internal team collaboration. However, because of this emphasis on team collaboration, HelpScout's structure and ticketing systems are not as defined. It doesn't have a dedicated customer-facing portal or ticket numbers....
Source: www.jitbit.com
Help Scout Alternative - Have you outgrown Help Scout?
With over 500 more integrations than Help Scout, it’s easy to understand why many customers see Kayako as one of the best Help Scout alternatives. With Kayako you can connect to all the apps your team already uses. As you scale the need for automation becomes critical. Kayako helps save you time through a simple and easy setup for workflow automations across multiple apps.
Source: www.kayako.com
Top 10 Alternatives to Zendesk: Analysis of Leading Help Desk Software Solutions
Help Scout is preferred by many freelancers and small businesses for the right balance of features and affordability. In fact, it offers a free app for shared inbox. Its paid plan starts at $20 per user/month, providing you with a reliable set of automation, reporting and integration tools.
8 Zendesk Alternatives to Rock Your Customer Service
Also I don’t see Front (frontapp.com) in the list. Front is the biggest alternative to Zendesk & HelpScout on the customer service use case.
The 20 Best Help Desk Apps and Knowledge Base Tools for Customer Support
Dive into an email, and you'll see a familiar sidebar with information about the customer where Help Scout pulls in social media information and previous conversations to give your emails a personal touch. Help Scout also offers your customers a quick poll at the bottom of your emails to ask how well your team did at support, and you can see your team's productivity and...
Source: zapier.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Discourse seems to be a lot more popular than HelpScout. While we know about 23 links to Discourse, we've tracked only 2 mentions of HelpScout. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
View more

HelpScout mentions (2)

  • Makers, what are the tools you can't live without?
    Slack for communication Helpscout for customer support Calendly for meeting scheduling Usermaven for website and product analytics Contentstudio.io for social media management. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Have you ever done a product comparison chart on your site?
    Not my site, but Helpscout (https://helpscout.com) has my favorite product comparison model. Source: about 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Discourse and HelpScout, you can also consider the following products

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Freshdesk - Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software that lets you support customers through traditional channels like phone and email, social channels like Facebook and Twitter, and your own branded community

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

Zendesk - Zendesk is a beautiful, lightweight help-desk solution.

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.

LiveAgent - LiveAgent is a fully-featured web-based live chat and help desk software. It harnesses the power of a universal inbox, real-time live chat, built-in call center, and a robust customer service portal. Start your free 1 month trial today!