Help Scout vs Kayako vs Jitbit

Help Scout

Help Scout is a polished shared inbox that hides most of the help desk machinery. Customers get normal-looking email replies, agents get a clean interface with saved replies, notes and collision detection, and the Docs knowledge base and Beacon widget are easy to set up. On the Plus plan it comes to about $6,300 over 3 years for 5 agents, less than half of Kayako. For small, customer-facing teams that care about a personal tone, Help Scout is hard to beat.

It does run out of room: there is no real SLA management, reporting is basic, and customer-facing AI is billed per resolution, just like Kayako's. Help Scout's pricing model also changed twice between 2024 and 2025, which is worth keeping in mind if predictability matters to you.

Kayako

Kayako is a more structured help desk. SLA policies with breach triggers, monitors, custom fields on conversations, users and organizations, and pre-built plus custom reports are all included. Kayako Messenger combines live chat and help center search in one widget, and the customer timeline shows every email, chat and social conversation in one view. Kay, the AI agent, can resolve tickets and take actions such as refunds, billed at $1 per resolution.

The cost is higher and harder to pin down. Kayako One is quote-only; at the reported $79 per agent per month it's around $14,200 over 3 years for 5 agents before AI usage. Admins also report a steeper learning curve for routing rules than anything in Help Scout. If you have SLAs to meet and several channels to cover, Kayako has more of what you need. If your team is small and mostly answers email, Help Scout is the simpler and cheaper choice.

Detailed feature comparison

	Help Scout	Kayako	Jitbit
	A simple help desk focused on email.	Veteran help desk rebuilt around an AI agent	Help Desk Software built for email. Trusted by thousands of companies across 50+ countries.
Pricing: 3 years / 5 agents	$6300	$14220	$3897
Pricing: 3 years / 10 agents	$12600	$28440	$8367
Active Directory	✅ Only Azure AD is supported	❌	✅ Integration via a script for your server or ADFS and SAML
Activity Dashboard	❌	✅ Real-time dashboards for team workload and SLA status	✅ Live overview dashboard
Asset Management	❌	❌	✅ A complete asset management module tightly integrated into the rest of the app
Canned Responses	✅ They are called Saved Replies. You can insert them in ticket replies	✅ Macros that insert replies and update ticket properties	✅ 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	✅ Custom fields for conversations, users and organizations	✅ 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	✅ Built-in satisfaction ratings after conversations are completed	✅ Optional CSATs in email notifications and a report
Design Customization	✅ Customize Knowledge Base with externally hosted CSS files	✅ Help center and Messenger branding; the agent interface is not customizable	✅ Unlimited customization options. Change colors with a live preview, add custom CSS and JS
Email Notification Templates	❌	✅ Customizable email templates	✅ You are able to completely change a template for any notification type
Escalation	❌	✅ Escalation via SLA breach triggers and monitors	✅ 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	✅ Can be done via API	✅ Migration from other help desks via the API or Kayako's onboarding team; no self-service CSV export	✅ Import and Export tickets via CSV files
Internationalization	✅ You can manually translate some parts of the app	✅ Multilingual help center and localized customer-facing content	✅ Available in 16 different languages
ITIL Compliance	❌	❌	✅ Support for most ITIL processes
Knowledge Base	✅ It's called Docs and it is highly customizable	✅ Public and private help centers	✅ Customizable Knowledge Base optimized for search engines
Live Chat	❌	✅ Included in Kayako Messenger	✅ A free live chat component in the web widget
Mobile Apps	✅ iOS and Android	❌	✅ iOS and Android
Multi-channel support	❌	✅ Email, live chat, Facebook and X (Twitter) in one shared inbox	✅ 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	✅ Most must-have reports are included	✅ Pre-built and custom reports; some users find custom reports hard to build	✅ 13 reports with an ability to build your own and to export everything to Excel
REST API	✅ Separate APIs for KB and tickets	✅ REST API covering conversations, users and organizations	✅ API covers all the app features
Single-Sign-On	✅ Separate add-on for $5 per user per month	✅ JWT-based SSO only. No SAML or Active Directory support in the current version	✅ SAML, Google login, Windows-integrated etc.
SLA Management	❌	✅ SLA policies with targets per priority and automated breach triggers	✅ Full SLA automation via actions/triggers
Support Widget	❌	✅ Kayako Messenger widget with chat and help center search	✅ Two different versions of a web widget
Third-party Integrations	✅ 80+ apps	✅ Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, Stripe and others; no large app marketplace	✅ 30 native integrations and 500 more via Zapier
Ticket Collaboration	❌	✅ Private notes, @mentions and collision detection	✅ See when other techs are viewing tickets in real-time, assign multiple people to a ticket
Workflow Automation	✅ Very basic automation features are available	✅ Triggers, monitors and macros, plus AI actions via the Kay agent	✅ 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.