Groove vs Helpscout vs Jitbit

Groove

You ever spend a solid afternoon chasing down tickets and wondering where the hell every thread went? Groove sits in that space between messy inbox chaos and a clean, searchable knowledge base. You can import conversations from other tools so the history stays intact, then export reports or data if someone asks for it later. It’s the kind of setup that just makes sense when you’re juggling customer emails, chats, and notes from teammates.

For folks who want a little control over how things look, Groove offers design customization, so you can tailor the look and feel without fighting the interface. The knowledge base is where you’d actually point teammates and customers for self-service, with an organization that makes sense once you’ve spent a minute poking around. And the built-in reports and analytics give you a window into response times, workload, and what topics keep popping up, which helps you decide what to improve next. It’s not flashy, but it’s the kind of tool that tends to be there when you need it.

Helpscout

You know that moment when a ticket lands and you wish you had a clean path to solve it without chasing your own tail? Helpscout feels like that path, but stitched into a real-world workflow. It sits between your inbox and your help desk so you can see every thread of a conversation, assign tasks, and keep everyone in the loop. The beauty is in the details: it supports Workflow Automation so repetitive steps get handled automatically, leaving you with more time to actually think about the problem and respond thoughtfully.

On the boring-but-important side, there’s Import and Export that plays nicely with other tools you’ve got. You can pull in data from different sources or spit out reports without wrestling with messy formats. And there’s a quick-touch feel to the customer side too—think about a simple Customer Satisfaction survey that you can send after a ticket closes, giving you a sense of how things went. Canned Responses are handy when you want consistency without sounding robotic, so you can reply with confidence, tweak if needed, and move the ticket along without reinventing the wheel every time.

	Groove	Helpscout	Jitbit
	A simple app to replace your shared mailbox	A simple help desk focused on email.	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50 + countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$5220	$6300	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$10440	$12600	$8367
Active Directory	❌	✅ Only Azure AD is supported	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	❌	❌	✅ Live overview dashboard
Asset Management	❌	❌	✅ A complete asset management module tightly integrated into the rest of the app
Canned Responses	✅ Has standard canned replies features	✅ They are called Saved Replies. You can insert them in ticket replies	✅ You can also assign canned responses to specific ticket categories if you need to
Community Forums	❌	❌	✅ Ideas Forum comes out of the box
Custom Fields	❌	✅ Up to ten custom fields per mailbox	✅ Many custom field types, including dependant fields. Various privacy options.
Custom Statuses	❌	❌	✅ Add custom statuses, customize how your customers see them and assign different colors to them
Customer satisfaction survey	❌	✅ Comes with CSATs and a Happiness report	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Can only customize the web widget	✅ Customize Knowledge Base with externally hosted CSS files	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	❌	❌	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	❌	❌	✅ Possible to set up various escalation scenarios via automation
Exchange Integration	❌	❌	✅ Native EWS support instead of IMAP. oAuth support for Office 365
Import and Export	✅ Only via API	✅ Can be done via API	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	❌	✅ You can manually translate some parts of the app	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	❌	❌	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ Good Knowledge Base with basic customization	✅ It's called Docs and it is highly customizable	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	✅ Live chat via the widget	❌	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	❌	✅ iOS and Android	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	❌	❌	✅ Possible to add unlimited channels via integrations and API
On-premise Version	❌	❌	✅ A full on-premises version that runs on Windows Server
Reports and Analytics	✅ Some basic reports on tickets and KB	✅ Most must-have reports are included	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ You are able to access most features via API	✅ Sparate APIs for KB and tickets	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	❌	✅ Separate add-on for $5 per user per month	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	❌	❌	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	✅ Web widget with live chat	❌	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ Around 20 integrations with the most popular apps	✅ 80+ apps	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	❌	❌	✅ See when other techs are viewing tickets in real-time, assign multiple people to a ticket
Workflow Automation	❌	✅ Very basic automation features are available	✅ Automation Rules are very powerful and can go beyond simple if-this-then-that logic

Looking for help desk software? Check out Jitbit. We offer a fully-featured app at a very affordable price. It comes with all the must have features like knowledge base, two-way email integration (including native Exchange and Office 365 support), automation, hundreds of integrations with third-party apps and much more. Available both as a hosted "SaaS" version and an on-premises version you can install on your own server.