Help Scout

Help Scout offers 3 pricing plans:

Basic:

$8/mo/user

Main features include:

1 Mailbox
Beacon
Saved Replies
Help Scout for iPhone
Help Scout branding

Standard:

$15/mo/user

Main features include:

All Free features
5 Mailboxes
1 Docs knowledge base
Reports
Workflows
Satisfaction Ratings

Plus:

$27/mo/user

Main features include:

All Standard features
Unlimited Mailboxes
3 Docs knowledge bases
Teams
Custom Fields
Free inactive Users

Annual payment earns you one month free. You can start with  a 15-day free trial, with no credit card required. For annual billing you'll get a 10% discount.

Zendesk Support

Zendesk Support offers 4 princing plans:

Essential:

$5/mo per agent when billed annually
or
$9/mo when billed month-to-month

Main features include:

Unlimited email addresses
Twitter and Facebook channels
Basic knowledge base
Agent Macros

Team:

$19/mo per agent when billed annually
or
$25/mo when billed month-to-month

Main features include:

All Essential features
Branded Help Center
Customer portal
Public Apps Marketplace

Proffessional:

$49/mo per agent when billed annually
or
$59/mo when billed month-to-month

All Team features
Multilingual content
Insights analytics
Custom private apps

Enterprise:

$99/mo per agent when billed annually
or
$125/mo when billed month-to-month

All Professional features
Custom agent roles
Multibrand support
Multiple schedules
Hourly Insights analytics

The 30-day free trial starts with the Professional plan. No credit card is required and there are no cancellation fees. If no payment method is added at the end of the trial period, the account is deleted 90 days after the trial expiration date.

Zendesk is a bit more pricey but for annual billing you'll get a 15% discount.

Help Scout

Help Scout integrates with your email service, therefore the interface is quite simple and the UI has a clean look and feel.

Zendesk Support

Since August 2016 a new version of the agent/admin interface of Zendesk is available, with a more clean and modern design. You can choose from a selection of templates that will match your brand, or you can start creating your design from scratch.

Help Scout

Helpscout's main features include: shared email inbox for managing tickets, Docs (for building a help center), saved replies, reports, office hours filtering, phone conversations, or voicemail integration.

Help Scout is packed with great features and some of them are only available with the Plus plan. Be sure to check the full features list before committing to a plan.

Zendesk Support

The Help Center is designed to give you a complete self-service support option (knowledge base). Users can use the information you are providing or turn to a community forum for answers.  Your Agents can also use the Help Center to help solve tickets. You can deliver all the content in multiple languages.

Top features include: Unlimited email addresses, Twitter and Facebook channels, Knowledge base, Branded Help Center, Public Apps Marketplace, Multilingual content, Business hours & SLAs, Insights analytics, Multibrand support, Auditing & admin controls.

Help Scout

The user interface is uncluttered and pretty intuitive.

There are five menu items on the top left side of the screen:

Home: This is where you go when you first login. Once you get started you can add several brands, products, or email addresses into your account. These options will appear on the dashboard.

Mailbox: You can support several brands, products, or email addresses from a single account. Each mailbox has unique permissions, settings and folders.

Docs: Here you can create up to 5 knowledge base sites so customers can find answers from any device.

Reports: This section will help you keep track of all the important support metrics, employee performance and customer satisfaction.

Zendesk Support

Zendesk will give you the option to transform your interface to match your brand. With familiar customization tools, you can easily tailor the look and feel.

There are five menu items on the left side of the screen:

First, a Home button gives you access to your dashboard, where you'll find a snapshot of your current configuration, and on the Views section you'll find your unsolved tickets.

Next is the Reporting section, where you will get detailed snapshots of ticketing, agents, customers, self-service, and more. Last button on the bottom left corner will take you to your settings where you'll find all the fine-grained controls for your account.

The last button in the bottom left of the screen is a link to the Admin home page, here you'll find the tools you need to configure Zendesk.

Two more menu items can be found on the top right corner:

First (next to the search box) is a menu item that lets you select between the Support section and the Help Center. Next, if you click on your avatar you can access all your Profile Settings.

Help Scout

Although Help Scout is suitable for small teams because of its pricing and simplicity, the Plus plan offers a feature that will allow you to group users into teams. This way if your business and support team grows you can still keep things simple and organized.

Zendesk Support

Without a doubt Zendesk is the most popular help desk sofware out there, this doesn’t mean that there is no competition. Using Zendesk if you have a small team would work fine, even tough . Zendesk will best suit you if you are planning to expand or you already own a large company that will require advanced features like advanced analytics and reporting, segmentation or retargeting.

Help Scout

The reporting interface is really great, and one of Help Scout's strongest points.

The reports available (four or five depending if you have Docs installed or not) can be viewed at any time via the Reports dropdown menu.

The Conversations report shows you how much volume you're handling during a certain time period, the Productivity report measures efficiency across the help desk, the Team and User will give you insights about how members of your team are doing. The Happiness report will show how your team is being rated by customers. If you have Docs installed, this report will help you understand what your customers are searching for in the knowledge base you have created, and how helpful the information is, as well as what percentage of customers are still sending an email after browsing the knowledge base.

Zendesk Support

Zendesk Reports are available for all plans and provide metrics such as daily ticket activity, service level agreement compliance, average resolution time, customer satisfaction, agent performance, ticket resolution time, and efficiency.

Insights provides advanced reporting and metrics but is available only for the Professional and Enterprise plans.

Help Scout

An iPhone app is available for replies on the go. You can check in on your mailboxes, manage conversations, and share tickets with your team members.

A well-documented APIs is available for developers to create their own integrations.

Right now a live chat option is not available out of the box but you can easily integrate third party apps like Olark, ClickDesk, HipChat, and many more.

Zendesk Support

Zendesk offers a built-in chat option and phone support software (both paid separately), a mobile app (both for iOS and Android), integrated apps so that you can offer fully scalable customer support. The Help Center gives you a lot of flexibility.

If you're planning on expanding your support team, Zendesk will give you more flexibility.

Help Scout

Help Scout has  40 web app integrations available, so you can account with your favorite apps and services like: Talkdesk, Nicereply, Slack, MailChimp, Shopify, Mixpanel, Bigcommerce, Campaign Monitor, KISSmetrics, Infusionsoft, Olark, Pipedrive, SnapEngage, WooCommerce, Constant Contact, PipelineDeals, FreshBooks, FullStory, Bronto, Google Apps Integration, eBay, and Amazon Integration, Smooch.

The free plan doesn't give access to integrations.

Zendesk Support

Zendesk offers more than 350 integrations available, called apps. The apps are found in the Apps Marketplace with  some of the most popular being: SalesForce, ZenCart, Magento, JIRA, TeamViewer, Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, PlanBox, MailChimp, and 8X8.

If you wish to create your own custom app, you can take advantage of Zendesk's API.

Help Scout

There are more ways in which you may contact their support:

Email: via a direct email address or a web form.
Phone: you may schedule a call with one of their experts.

A decent knowledge base is available (with walkthroughs and video tutorials available), as well as a blog.

Zendesk Support

Zendesk has a dedicated support section where you can access the knwoledge base, Getting Started tutorials and the community forum.
If you can't find here the answers you need, or you just need to get in touch with them about pricing or billing, then you have all the options available: contact form, phone support (with separate phone numbers for different countries and time zones) and social media (if you're looking for a quick answer).

There's a huge knowledge base available, with a lot more information than Help Scout, but not as well organized, so it might take some time until you find your way around.