Kelu vs Help Scout AI
Help Scout AI is Help Scout's native AI — great if Help Scout is your helpdesk. Kelu is helpdesk-agnostic: Support Ticket AI runs inside Zendesk, Freshdesk, Front, Intercom, Jira SM, Linear, and Salesforce, and the same knowledge base powers a widget, Slack / Discord / Teams bots, and MCP.
Feature comparison
Information about Help Scout AI is drawn from Help Scout's public product pages.
Where Kelu focuses differently
Not locked to Help Scout
Help Scout AI answers inside Help Scout. Every other surface — customer widget, community Slack, docs MCP, another helpdesk — needs its own tool. Kelu covers all of them from one knowledge base, and its Support Ticket AI runs inside Help Scout too if that's where the tickets are (via helpdesk-generic integrations for connected sources).
Broader source coverage
Help Scout AI retrieves from Help Scout docs. Kelu indexes 25 source types including GitHub, Notion, Confluence, Google Drive, OneDrive, Salesforce, and every major helpdesk (Help Scout can be added as a source too).
Every chat surface, one knowledge base
Widget, Slack, Discord, Teams, MCP, browser extension, form deflector, Support Ticket AI — all included on Pro. The same knowledge answers your customers on your site, in your community Slack, and in your support agent's helpdesk.
Public pricing and a free tier
Help Scout AI features are gated by paid Help Scout tiers. Kelu has a $0 free plan (100 questions/mo, no credit card) so you can evaluate on your own docs before committing.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use both Help Scout and Kelu?
Yes — many teams do. Keep Help Scout as the helpdesk, use Kelu to power the customer-facing widget, the community Slack/Discord bot, MCP for AI IDEs, and as an alternative agent-copilot inside Help Scout via generic integrations.
Does Kelu replace Help Scout Beacon?
It can. Kelu's widget covers the same 'ask AI on the page' use case with hybrid retrieval, citations, abstention, and a standalone form deflector for pre-submit ticket deflection.
How does answer quality compare?
Kelu layers full-text (BM25) and reciprocal rank fusion on top of vector search, rewrites the query with an LLM before search, and reranks with a cross-encoder. Abstention refuses low-confidence questions. LLM-as-judge evals score every answer for groundedness.
How does pricing compare?
Help Scout AI features come bundled in paid Help Scout tiers. Kelu is standalone: Free (100 questions/mo), Pro $99/mo (1,000 questions, 5 KBs), Enterprise custom — priced separately from your helpdesk.
How is data handled?
Your content and end-user conversations are never used to train models. PII masking runs before every LLM call; zero-retention mode is a per-workspace toggle.
See for yourself
Connect your docs and get your first AI-powered answer in under 5 minutes. No credit card required.