Assist Scout vs. HubSpot Service Hub: Deep-Dive Comparability

Should you’re purchasing for customer support software program and evaluating Assist Scout vs. HubSpot Service Hub, this complete comparability of options, pricing, use instances, assist, and scalability will enable you to decide which device is the most effective match for what you are promoting.

Fast look: Who’s Assist Scout greatest for vs. who’s HubSpot Service Hub greatest for?

Assist Scout is the higher choice for rising groups, whereas HubSpot Service Hub is the higher choice for small groups that plan to remain small. 

HubSpot Service Hub’s Starter plan ($15/seat monthly) is a lower-cost choice than Assist Scout’s Commonplace plan, however HubSpot’s next-tier plan jumps to 6 instances the per-user value ($90/seat monthly). This makes it cost-prohibitive in case you’ll ever want extra superior options (and even one thing as primary as a information base) as your workforce scales.

Whereas Assist Scout’s Commonplace plan prices extra ($25/consumer monthly) than Service Hub’s Starter plan, it consists of extra options, and the value will increase for shifting to higher-tier plans are a lot much less dramatic. In reality, Assist Scout’s most costly plan is $15/consumer monthly lower than HubSpot’s Skilled plan.

Assist Scout’s free plan vs. HubSpot Service Hub’s free plan

Should you’re a small enterprise or startup in search of a free platform that will help you higher arrange and handle your requests from clients, each Assist Scout’s and HubSpot Service Hub’s free plans are nice choices to contemplate. 

Assist Scout’s greater consumer restrict (5 customers on Assist Scout versus two seats on Service Hub) makes it a sensible choice for bigger groups. Assist Scout additionally provides you entry to options you will not discover in Service Hub’s free plan, equivalent to tags, e-mail snoozing, and a information base builder.

Nonetheless, HubSpot does provide a few channels you will not discover in Assist Scout’s free plan, particularly dwell chat and Fb Messenger. This makes it a more sensible choice for very small groups who’re extra centered on delivering real-time assist.

The desk beneath exhibits what’s included in Assist Scout’s and HubSpot Service Hub’s free plans.

It is also value noting that the assist you will get entry to as a free plan buyer differs between Assist Scout and HubSpot. 

As a Assist Scout free plan buyer, you possibly can attain out to our assist workforce for one-on-one assist, take certainly one of our dwell courses, and entry all of our self-service assets. HubSpot Service Hub’s free plan clients solely get entry to neighborhood, self-service, and AI assist.

For the rest of this submit, we’ll be evaluating Assist Scout’s and Service Hub’s paid plans.

Assist Scout vs. HubSpot Service Hub: Characteristic comparability

Each Assist Scout and HubSpot Service Hub allow you to ship assist on the most important channels: e-mail, dwell chat, self-service, and social. 

All of Assist Scout’s paid plans offer you entry to a shared inbox for managing e-mail, chat, and social assist (by way of Fb Messenger and Instagram) and the power to create a information base. Service Hub’s paid plans embrace e-mail, chat, and social assist (Fb Messenger solely) on its Starter plan, however the capacity to create a information base requires a subscription to the Skilled plan.

For cellphone and SMS assist, Assist Scout provides integrations with suppliers like Aircall, Talkdesk, Textline, and Textual content Request. Service Hub provides cellphone assist natively, and whereas it is doable to make use of the platform to ship SMS assist with out an integration, you will want a Advertising and marketing Hub Skilled subscription or greater and might want to buy the Advertising and marketing SMS Add-On.

Channel pricing comparability

Dialog administration options

Each Assist Scout’s and HubSpot Service Hub’s shared inboxes centralize all assist requests from all channels, giving your workforce a single place to see and handle all buyer inquiries. 

Each instruments additionally provide options that make it simpler to route, handle, and reply to requests:

• Ticket assignments that allow you to assign particular tickets to particular brokers.

• Buyer profiles that present key details about the particular person requesting assist.

• Inner notes that allow you to collaborate on replies privately.

• Spherical-robin and load-based routing that mechanically assign incoming requests equally.

• Saved replies that allow you to create canned responses to steadily requested questions.

• Auto-replies that allow clients know their requests have been obtained.

• Tags that allow you to label and report on particular varieties of requests.

• Views that group collectively conversations that meet particular standards (tags, assignees, and so on.).

• Workflows that mechanically route, type, and carry out actions on requests.

It is value noting that whereas among the options above can be found in Service Hub, they are much extra difficult to arrange and use than in Assist Scout. For instance, you want tremendous admin permissions to create tags in HubSpot, and the assistance doc describing how one can use them is so centered on the CRM use case that it is tough to find out how they’ll really be utilized in assist.

Tags in Assist Scout, then again, may be created by anybody in your workforce in lower than a second. Should you do must limit entry for particular customers, you possibly can, however it’s not the default.

Service Hub does provide one characteristic you will not discover in Assist Scout: skill-based routing. It enables you to auto-assign requests to particular customers primarily based on {custom} abilities you create within the system.

The desk beneath exhibits the lowest-cost plan you will should be on to get entry to every platform’s completely different dialog administration options.

Data base and self-service options

Each Assist Scout and HubSpot Service Hub allow you to create customer-facing information bases. On each platforms, you possibly can customise the design of your assist heart, type articles into classes, see revision histories, publish multi-language articles, optimize your articles for engines like google, and entry reviews exhibiting how your assist heart is performing.

Assist Scout’s information base builder (Docs) is considerably inexpensive than Service Hub’s. You’ll be able to create two Docs websites on the Commonplace plan ($25/consumer monthly), three on the Plus plan ($45/consumer monthly), and 5 on the Professional plan ($75/consumer monthly). Further Docs websites will also be added to any plan for $20/web site monthly.

HubSpot solely consists of its information base builder on its Skilled and Enterprise plans. You’ll be able to create one information base on the Skilled plan ($90/seat monthly) and as much as 25 on the Enterprise plan ($150/seat monthly).

Assist Scout can be the higher selection if you have to create each inside and exterior information bases. Whilst you can technically create an inside information base on HubSpot by setting all the articles to personal, it’s important to do that for each single article you publish. In Assist Scout, you possibly can set whole collections to personal, or you may make the complete web site non-public with restricted docs.

Nonetheless, HubSpot is the higher selection if you have to create buyer portals; Assist Scout doesn’t have a buyer portal characteristic. Service Hub’s buyer portal characteristic aggregates all the tickets for a selected buyer into a non-public hub and may also show information base articles you created particularly for these clients.

Reporting and analytics options

Each Assist Scout and HubSpot Service Hub provide pre-built and {custom} reviews — and report exporting — so you possibly can simply observe your KPIs and monitor quantity traits total and by channel. Each additionally provide workplace hours, which is a technique to outline the instances once you provide assist so your reviews aren’t negatively impacted by days/instances when nobody is working.

The important thing distinction between Assist Scout and HubSpot is HubSpot’s {custom} dashboards functionality. Whereas Assist Scout provides pre-built dashboards and the power to create {custom} reviews, Service Hub provides you the power so as to add {custom} reviews you have created to {custom} dashboards that function a one-stop store for viewing all the reviews you care about probably the most.

AI options

Assist Scout and HubSpot Service Hub each have quite a lot of AI options.

Each instruments allow you to reply clients’ questions mechanically by way of generative AI. Assist Scout’s AI Solutions makes use of information out of your assist heart and web site and works by means of its dwell chat widget. HubSpot’s Breeze Buyer Agent makes use of information out of your information base articles, HubSpot CRM, and any recordsdata you add, and it may be used to answer to requests from any channel.

Each instruments even have AI copilot options that assist your workforce work sooner. Nonetheless, Assist Scout’s copilot options are extra centered on the assist use case, whereas Service Hub’s are extra centered on their advertising and marketing and gross sales use instances. 

In Assist Scout, you should utilize AI to: 

• Robotically draft replies to e-mail requests utilizing information out of your assist heart, web site, and former assist conversations.

• Flip lengthy dialog threads into summaries to stand up to hurry on conversations rapidly.

• Modify the tone, spelling, or size of an e-mail reply or information base article you have written or translate a reply/information base article into a unique language.

HubSpot’s Breeze Assistant is a chatbot that makes use of the data in your HubSpot platform to reply workers’ questions by means of a chat interface. Nonetheless, it does have a few functions which are particularly for buyer assist groups:

• Use it to generate new content material for a information base article, to vary the voice or tone of an present article or to rewrite, broaden, or summarize content material in a assist doc.

• Use it to create a abstract of responses to a suggestions survey.

Service Hub additionally has a information base agent that screens your assist heart and buyer assist conversations to determine gaps in your information base content material. It pulls these gaps right into a report, finds conversations the place your workforce supplied the lacking data in replies to clients, after which — at your request — mechanically turns these replies into assist articles.

Assist Scout vs. HubSpot Service Hub: Pricing comparability

Each Assist Scout and HubSpot Service Hub use hybrid pricing fashions. The bottom software program for each merchandise is user-based, that means your per-month worth will improve as you add new customers to your account. Nonetheless, pricing for his or her AI chatbots is usage-based, that means you will pay extra primarily based on the variety of requests that your AI brokers resolve.

Assist Scout has 4 pricing packages:

• Free: $0 monthly for as much as 5 customers.

• Commonplace: $25/consumer monthly.

• Plus: $45/consumer monthly.

• Professional: $75/consumer monthly.

So far as usage-based pricing, AI Solutions begins at $0.75/decision after a three-month free trial. AI Help is included in all paid plans at no extra value, and AI Summarize and AI Drafts are included in Plus and Professional at no extra value.

HubSpot Service Hub has 4 pricing packages:

• Free: $0 monthly for as much as two seats.

• Starter: $15/seat monthly.

• Skilled: $90/seat monthly.

• Enterprise: $150/seat monthly.

HubSpot’s Breeze Assistant is included in all plans at no extra value. The Breeze Data Base Agent is included within the Skilled and Enterprise plans in case you even have an lively Breeze Buyer Agent subscription. 

So far as usage-based pricing, Service Hub’s Breeze Buyer Agent (out there solely on the Skilled and Enterprise plans) works on a credit-based system. You get 3,000 credit every month on the Skilled Plan and 5,000/month on the Enterprise plan. 

Every dialog you deal with makes use of 100 credit, so that you get between 30 and 50 dealt with conversations every month to your base plan value. If you have to deal with extra conversations than what’s included in your plan, you should buy extra credit for $10 per 1,000 credit, making the usage-based worth $1/dialog.

General, Assist Scout is rather more reasonably priced than HubSpot Service Hub, notably for rising corporations. Whereas HubSpot Service Hub’s Starter plan has a decrease value than Assist Scout’s Commonplace plan, it provides far fewer options, and the price of upgrading to get the options you are lacking will value you $15/consumer monthly greater than Assist Scout’s most costly plan.

As one HubSpot buyer writes: “We’re on the Professional plan for many HubSpot options. We obtained a 90% low cost the primary 12 months, a 50% low cost the second 12 months, and we might be paying full worth subsequent 12 months. These reductions have been an enormous assist, however our HubSpot bills are rising a lot sooner than income. At this 50% discounted charge, HubSpot is greater than twice the expense of our whole expertise stack (over 100 companies) on Azure.”

* Buyer quotes featured on this submit have been frivolously edited for readability.

Ease of use and setup

When evaluating Assist Scout and Service Hub on ease of use and setup, Assist Scout is the clear winner. Assist Scout has greater scores than HubSpot Service Hub on G2 for ease of use, ease of setup, and ease of admin. 

As one Assist Scout buyer writes: “What I like most about Assist Scout is the benefit of use. Assist Scout is simple to arrange and, usually, you possibly can keep away from working along with your IT workforce. Assist Scout additionally has a really intuitive interface, which makes coaching your workforce simple! The Assist Scout workforce acquired it proper!”

It’s value conserving in thoughts that HubSpot’s instruments all use the identical interface, which may make it pretty intuitive for groups that have already got expertise utilizing HubSpot’s Advertising and marketing Hub or CRM.

Integrations

Assist Scout provides greater than 100 integrations with the instruments that assist groups most frequently want to hook up with their assist desks, together with cellphone and SMS assist software program, CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, social media platforms like Fb and Instagram, and ecommerce platforms like Shopify.

The general HubSpot platform provides greater than 2,000 integrations, although a lot of these integrations are extra sales- or marketing-focused. Should you filter the checklist by “important apps for customer support,” there are solely 20 integrations listed. 

In fact, in case you’re utilizing HubSpot’s advertising and marketing or gross sales platforms, one massive benefit is the native integration between these techniques and Service Hub, although Assist Scout does have a HubSpot integration you should utilize to attach information between it and HubSpot.

Scalability

Each Assist Scout and HubSpot Service Hub have the fundamental options that groups want whereas they’re small and the extra superior options they’ll want as they develop, so scaling the scale of your workforce on both platform is seamless. Nonetheless, Assist Scout is the rather more reasonably priced choice when scaling.

Whereas HubSpot’s base plan is reasonably priced at $15/seat monthly, it does not embrace pretty baseline options like a information base builder, ticket assignments, collision detection, inbox views, and automatic workflows. So as to add these options, you will have to leap as much as the next-tier plan, which is six instances the fee at $90/seat monthly.

All of Assist Scout’s plans embrace all of these options — even the $25/consumer monthly Commonplace plan — and the price of its plans scale extra moderately ($25 → $45 → $75 per consumer). Assist Scout’s highest-cost plan prices lower than HubSpot’s Skilled plan ($90/seat monthly) and half as a lot as HubSpot’s Enterprise plan ($150/seat monthly).

Buyer assist

Each Assist Scout and HubSpot are extremely rated for his or her buyer assist, whereas Assist Scout has a barely greater ranking (9.1/10) on G2 than Service Hub (8.8/10) for high quality of assist. Each instruments provide e-mail and dwell chat assist to clients on all paid plans, and each have detailed assist facilities, so you will get nice assist once you want it no matter which platform you select.

If all the data above did not make it clear which platform is the most effective to your workforce, here is a last abstract that will help you select the appropriate choice:

• Assist Scout is custom-built for assist groups. It provides extra must-have options in its lower-cost plans, its documentation is all about how one can use its completely different options for buyer assist (not some assist, some gross sales, and a few advertising and marketing), and its integrations are centered on the instruments assist groups want to hook up with their assist desks.

• HubSpot’s Starter plan is an reasonably priced choice for groups with very primary assist wants. If you do not have a devoted assist workforce but and are already utilizing HubSpot’s CRM or advertising and marketing platforms, it may be an economical choice — and in addition intuitive to make use of because you’re already aware of HubSpot’s interface.

• Assist Scout is the extra reasonably priced choice for rising groups. Its highest-cost plan is half the per-user value of HubSpot’s highest-cost plan, and you will not run into points the place your per-user worth greater than quadruples since you want a primary characteristic like a information base or automated workflow.

• With instruments for advertising and marketing automation, buyer relationship administration, buyer assist, content material administration, information administration, and fee processing, HubSpot is the higher selection for companies that may slightly have a single, central platform for a number of enterprise features than a number of completely different instruments specialised in particular person features.

Each Assist Scout and HubSpot Service Hub are leaders within the buyer assist area, and you actually can’t go improper with both selection. Think about the variations between the 2 platforms, choose the platform that appears like it would greatest assist what you are promoting’s distinctive wants, after which begin a trial to guarantee that it really works for you each in idea and in follow.