Comparison
The Helply alternative
that gets customers answered before your team has to.
You're pricing AI support, and every vendor's meter moves the bill differently. Outlearn is an AI support agent that reads the systems your team already writes in, answers customers, and hands hard questions to your team in the helpdesk you keep. When the agent gets better, your bill gets smaller, because you pay for its replies, not for your ticket traffic.
Helply is the former Groove, rebranded in May 2026 as an AI-first helpdesk with a $1-a-ticket price and unlimited free human seats. Their pricing page is unusually clear, and you should read it before you read a Helply alternative page, ours included. A ticket is billable whether their AI solved it or not, and that difference is what this page prices. The arithmetic doesn't always favor us, and the page says so where it doesn't.
Updated
- What the bill tracks
- We earn less when the agent works
- No commitment to find out
- Start this afternoon, not next quarter
- Nothing to rip out
- Keep the helpdesk your team knows
Outlearn bills the AI replies it writes. Helply bills every ticket that arrives, solved or not: a ticket their AI missed costs the same $1 as one it solved.
A free tier and a 14-day trial with no card, against a booked demo, a 250-ticket floor and a $3,000 annual minimum.
Outlearn answers in front of Zendesk, Intercom, LiveChat or Slack and hands over with the conversation intact. No migration, no retraining.
Outlearn is an AI support agent, not a helpdesk, and it won't become one. It reads 20 systems your team already works in, answers in chat, email and Slack, and can call your own API for details like an order status or a license reset. When a person needs to step in, it escalates to your team in the helpdesk you run.
Helply is the former Groove, a twelve-year-old product rebranded in May 2026 and rebuilt AI-first. It's a full B2B helpdesk: shared inbox, ticketing, unlimited free human seats, and WhatsApp, SMS and Discord in the channel list. AI customer service at $1 a ticket, with the human seats thrown in. If you want one vendor running the whole desk, that's the product they built, and they built it well.
Helply replaces your helpdesk; Outlearn adds an AI layer to the one you keep. So comparing a Helply alternative comes down to three numbers: the helpdesk you keep paying for, the AI you buy, and what the bill does when the AI misses.
Short answer
Pick Outlearn if you already run a helpdesk you like. It answers ahead of that desk from the 20 systems your documentation actually lives in, every source refreshed within 30 minutes, and you pay for AI replies rather than for every conversation that arrives. Most teams pricing a Helply alternative want the AI, not a new inbox.
Outlearn gives your team fewer conversations to handle: the agent answers first, and people get what's left. Helply is the full-helpdesk option, built for a buyer replacing the platform outright. Outlearn isn't a helpdesk, and adding an AI layer is a different purchase from swapping platforms. Read Helply alternative roundups with that split in mind.
- 20
- Systems it reads for you
- 50.4%
- Solved by Outlearn automatically
- $0
- What you pay for a handoff
- 8
- Helpdesks on the receiving end
Outlearn vs Helply at a glance
| What the AI reads, and who sees it | ||
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge connectors | 20 third-party systems | ~10 |
| Confluence, SharePoint, Box, Dropbox | Yes | No |
| Different people see different answers | on your knowledge base | No |
| Reaches Notion and tools beyond the twenty, via MCP | Yes | No |
| What it costs | ||
| Billing unit | AI response | Ticket, resolved by AI or not |
| Entry price | $0 free tier, then $99/mo | $250/mo equivalent |
| Minimum commitment | None, monthly | $3,000/year, annual contract |
| Volume floor | None | 250 tickets/month |
| Off-topic questions billed | No | yes, any conversation counts |
| Human agent seats | Billed by your helpdesk | Unlimited, free |
| Cost per resolved conversation | $0.20 | $1.99 |
| What each one is, and is not | ||
| What it is | AI layer on your existing helpdesk | Full helpdesk replacement |
| Shared inbox / ticketing | No | Yes |
| CRM and product-analytics context | Salesforce and Stripe actions | 14 named integrations |
| How you buy it | ||
| Self-serve signup | Yes | no, demo request only |
| Free trial | 14 days, no card | No |
"Connect a content source once and we'll continuously sync your content" is the promise on the Add Knowledge Sources screen, and the layout shows how it's kept: auto-sync sources grouped into knowledge bases, ticketing systems, team chats and cloud storage, plus manual imports for files and URLs. Nobody moves material into a copy for the agent. Confluence, SharePoint, Box and Dropbox are all here, and none of them is a source Helply lists.
Where Outlearn and Helply actually differ
01
Outlearn resolves conversations before they reach your helpdesk
Outlearn closes 50.4% of conversations by itself, so the queue in your existing helpdesk shrinks to the ones that still need a person. Those land on your team the way they always did, and customers get an answer when the agent has one.
Your team already writes in more than one place. Outlearn reads twenty systems: Confluence, SharePoint, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Dropbox; GitHub, Gmail, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce; and five helpdesk knowledge bases. It revisits every source within 30 minutes. Every answer carries the articles it was built from, one click away, so a wrong answer traces back to a doc you can fix.
Before grading a Helply alternative, check whether it can show different material to different people. On Outlearn an anonymous visitor sees the public docs, a customer sees the articles for their plan, and an employee sees the internal runbooks. We'll volunteer the boundary: that works where Outlearn can read users and groups, currently the knowledge base. Files pulled from Drive or SharePoint aren't split by audience.
Some support answers live in your systems, not your docs. An order status. A subscription state. A license reset, a Salesforce record, a Stripe charge. Outlearn calls your own API and returns the live detail. And when a person needs to take over, it routes the conversation into one of eight helpdesks, and once it hands off, we stop charging for that conversation.
02
What happens to your bill when their AI has a bad month?
Nothing. Helply's own FAQ defines a billable ticket as any customer conversation processed through Helply. No exclusion for conversations the AI escalated. None for the ones it couldn't answer. None for spam or duplicates.
Their own Zendesk comparison works the example for you: 3,000 tickets a month, 40 percent resolved by AI, $3,000 a month. The 1,800 conversations the AI did not resolve cost exactly the same as the 1,200 it did.
That's not sharp practice; it's the oldest price in support, and it was the right one for twenty years: a ticket was a unit of human attention, so a price per ticket was a price for the work. You're also buying the inbox, the ticketing and the seats, not just the robot. It just means the bill stays the same whether their AI resolved 65 percent of those tickets or 30, so the invoice can't tell you how the AI is doing.
Outlearn bills a credit per AI reply. Hand a conversation to a human and our meter is done with it. Ask something off-topic and the agent declines it, and that one isn't billed at all. When you shop for a Helply alternative, check that one thing first: does the invoice care whether the AI worked?
A visitor asks what the product costs, and the agent answers in three short blocks with the real price and a question back. The 3 Sources chip lists the articles the answer came from. That whole exchange costs one credit, and a ticket never opened, so nobody billed anybody for one.
03
The $199 plan doesn't replace your helpdesk
When you search for a Helply alternative, every page that prints a single number is hiding a column: the helpdesk you'll still pay for. Outlearn Growth is $199 a month, and it's the AI, not the platform underneath it.
Outlearn doesn't provide the inbox or the ticket lifecycle. It answers in your widget, your email and your Slack, and when a person's needed it hands the conversation into Zendesk, Intercom, LiveChat, Slack or four others, and nothing the customer said gets lost.
So the arithmetic is $199 plus whatever you already pay Zendesk or Intercom, against $1,538 for the lot in the worked example. If you already pay for a helpdesk you like, we're far cheaper. Were you going to replace that helpdesk this year anyway? The gap closes fast, and you should price both properly rather than trusting either of our marketing pages.
04
Helply's free human seats save real money
Seats. They charge nothing per seat and invite your whole company in for free. For a twenty-person team on a per-seat incumbent, that alone can pay for the migration.
Outlearn has no seat pricing either, but you keep paying your helpdesk's seat pricing, because you keep the helpdesk. On seats specifically Helply wins, and we don't change that equation by arguing about it. If you keep your desk when you pick a Helply alternative, its seat pricing stays too, whichever AI you choose.
Their case against per-seat pricing is also just correct. We're not going to pretend otherwise to win a paragraph.
05
Only one of them has a signup button
With Outlearn you can start today: the free tier is 100 credits a month, and paid plans carry a 14-day trial with no card. Helply's way in is a demo request, an annual contract and a $3,000 yearly minimum, with a 250-ticket monthly floor underneath it.
For a company that's already decided to replace its helpdesk, that's a completely normal enterprise motion, not a criticism. It's only a problem if you're still at the stage of finding out whether an AI agent can answer your customers at all. At that stage you want a Helply alternative you can try today, free, not one that opens with a contract.
What each one costs at 1,000 resolutions a month
Helply publishes one rate: $1 a ticket. To resolve 1,000 conversations with AI you run more tickets than that through the system, because not every ticket resolves. So before you price any Helply alternative against them, decide which resolution rate is yours: the table shows their launch-day 65 percent and the 30 to 35 percent their own case studies report.
| Helply at 65% | Helply at 30 to 35% | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tickets or credits needed | 4,000 credits | 1,538 tickets | 2,857 to 3,333 tickets |
| Plan | Growth | $1/ticket | $1/ticket |
| Monthly cost for the AI | $199 | $1,538 | $2,857 to $3,333 |
| Plus your existing helpdesk | yes, you keep paying it | no, included | no, included |
| Human seats | Priced by your helpdesk | Unlimited, free | Unlimited, free |
| Annual commitment | None | $3,000 minimum | $3,000 minimum |
How we calculated this
One resolution is assumed to take four AI responses on a standard 1-credit model; Outlearn doesn't publish an average, and the four-replies figure is one we chose, not one we measured. At two responses per resolution Outlearn drops to Starter at $99; at eight it rises to Scale at $599. A more expensive model costs more per reply, which multiplies the Outlearn figure, so treat it as the floor rather than the bill. The Helply columns divide 1,000 resolutions by the stated resolution rate to get billable tickets, since Helply bills every ticket rather than every resolution. The 65 percent figure is from Helply's February 2026 Product Hunt launch and doesn't appear on helply.com; the 30 to 35 percent range is from resolution rates named in their own published case studies. Outlearn's own measured self-solve rate across qualifying agents is 50.4 percent. Before you renew, run your own resolution rate through the Helply alternative you're considering.
Helply pricing verified 7 August 2026 against their own pricing page.
Cost calculator
Credits, tickets and resolutions are not the same unit, which is why comparing these two means building a spreadsheet. Put your numbers in instead.
Outlearn
Growth · 4,000 credits
$199/mo
$0.20 per resolution
Helply
$1 per ticket · 1,985 tickets billed
$1,985/mo
$1.99 per resolution
That is $1,786 less than Helply a month, because they bill every ticket that reaches them whether the AI solved it or your team did. Outlearn bills the replies it actually writes.
Outlearn bills one credit per AI reply, so your 1,000 resolutions at 4 replies each is 4,000 credits. Helply bills every conversation its AI touches rather than every one it resolves, so their figure divides your resolutions by a 50% self-solve rate, the average across Outlearn agents with at least 30 conversations, to get the units they would charge for. Annual contract, $3,000/yr minimum. Helply prices checked 7 August 2026, ours 7 August 2026.
What support teams argue about on Reddit
Under the new Helply name there's almost nothing written yet, and the Groove-era reviews describe a different product, so this isn't a fake review section. These threads are what practitioners actually argue about in AI support tooling: a messy knowledge base sinks any AI, autonomous agents and permissions are where teams get burned, and everyone wants the model reading their tickets and nobody else's. That's useful context for a Helply alternative search.
“If your knowledge base is messy, AI won't magically fix it.”
“AI configured to resolve T1 tickets. Budget untouched. Good customer service. Pick two. Every day, roll the dice. On a 1, your autonomous agent fucks something up. For every permission it has, roll again.”
“An Azure AI model trained on our tickets (AND ONLY YOURS).”
“If your knowledge base is messy, AI won't magically fix it.”
“AI configured to resolve T1 tickets. Budget untouched. Good customer service. Pick two. Every day, roll the dice. On a 1, your autonomous agent fucks something up. For every permission it has, roll again.”
“An Azure AI model trained on our tickets (AND ONLY YOURS).”
Every quote links to its thread, so you can judge the context yourself.
The helpdesk decision comes before the AI decision
- 1
Decide what happens to the helpdesk
This is the real decision and it comes first. Outlearn doesn't replace Helply's inbox, so you need a helpdesk to hand off into: Zendesk, Intercom, LiveChat, Front, Help Scout or Slack. If Helply is currently your only helpdesk, budget for that before comparing the AI cost.
- 2
Connect the systems of record
Connect Confluence, SharePoint, Google Drive, Notion through MCP, and your existing helpdesk knowledge base rather than uploading copies again. Those sources refresh themselves, so an edited runbook reaches future answers without another import.
- 3
Wire the handoff before you go live
Set up the handoff destination and test it end to end. The visitor never leaves the widget and your agent receives the full transcript, so the escalation path should feel better than the one you're leaving, not worse.
- 4
Run the numbers on your real mix
Take one month of your Helply invoice and mark the tickets their AI actually closed. Price that closed volume as Outlearn AI replies. In a Helply alternative comparison, a lower resolution rate widens the gap beyond any table on this page, and an unused $3,000 annual minimum widens it further.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Helply alternative in 2026?
First decide if you're buying a helpdesk or just the AI.
Most of the Helply alternative shortlist is full platforms: Zendesk, Freshdesk, Front, Help Scout. If you already have a helpdesk you like and only want the AI layer, Outlearn is the direct swap: 20 systems with a fresh read every 30 minutes, answers matched to whether it's a visitor, a customer or your own employee asking, and $199 a month at the volume this page prices instead of four figures.
Is Outlearn cheaper than Helply?
For the AI, substantially.
Roughly $199 a month against $1,538 at 1,000 resolutions, because we bill AI responses and they bill every ticket. But Outlearn doesn't include a helpdesk, so a fair comparison adds whatever you pay Zendesk or Intercom. If you already pay for one, we're much cheaper. If you were going to consolidate onto a single platform anyway, price both properly.
Does Helply really charge for tickets the AI doesn't resolve?
Yes, and they're open about it.
Their FAQ's billable ticket is any customer conversation that goes through Helply, with no exclusion for escalated or unresolved conversations. Their own Zendesk comparison prices 3,000 tickets a month at 40 percent AI resolution as $3,000. It's a platform fee rather than a performance fee, which is a legitimate model. It just means the price doesn't track how well the AI works, and the day that starts to bother you is the day to start looking at a Helply alternative.
Why is Helply expensive for low resolution rates?
Because they bill you per ticket, and what you're buying is resolutions.
At a 65 percent resolution rate you run about 1,538 tickets to get 1,000 AI resolutions. At the 30 to 35 percent their own case studies report, you run 2,857 to 3,333 tickets for the same 1,000 resolutions, and pay for all of them. It's the single number to check before ruling any Helply alternative in or out.
Can I try Helply or Outlearn before buying?
Outlearn has a free tier of 100 credits a month and a 14-day trial on paid plans with no card required.
Helply has no free tier, no trial and no self-serve signup. The entry path is a demo request with a 250-ticket monthly floor, a $3,000 annual minimum and an annual contract. If you want to test a Helply alternative before anyone schedules a call, that's us.
Does Outlearn replace Helply completely?
No, and we'd rather be clear about it.
Helply is a full helpdesk with a shared inbox, ticket lifecycle and unlimited free seats. Outlearn is the AI layer: answering, taking actions, and handing off to a human in whichever helpdesk you run. A Helply alternative in the strict sense would be another helpdesk; we replace the AI, not the inbox. Both products do AI answering, human handoff, training on your website and files, and two-way helpdesk integration, so none of that separates them. If you need one vendor for both, Helply does something we do not.
What does Helply cost for 1,000 resolutions a month?
Between about $1,111 and $2,000 a month, because Helply bills tickets, not resolutions.
At a 50 percent resolution rate, 1,000 AI resolutions means roughly 2,000 billed tickets, so about $2,000 a month against Outlearn's $199 on Growth. At a 90 percent rate it's about $1,111. Their floor is 250 tickets a month on a $3,000-a-year annual contract. If you're collecting Helply alternative quotes, set them next to those numbers before you decide.
Price your real ticket mix before you renew
Pull last month's Helply invoice apart: what the AI resolved, what it didn't. If you're vetting a Helply alternative, that unresolved pile is your test. Put it to Outlearn directly: free tier, no card, no annual minimum, connect whatever you answer from today, a knowledge base, a wiki, a shared drive, and ask it those exact questions. Give it ten minutes on the clock and watch whether it answers or hands off. Either way you'll know before a contract enters the picture.
Sources checked 6 August 2026: Helply, about and the Groove rebrand · Helply on Product Hunt, the 65% figure · Outlearn pricing.
Switching from something else?
Switch from Freshdesk
A mature, cheap helpdesk priced per agent, with SSO on its entry plan. Outlearn charges nothing per seat.
Switch from Zendesk
A fair AI meter, exports switched off until you ask, and a bill that counts agents. Outlearn reads your Guide in place.
Switch from ManyChat
ManyChat bills every person you can reach, because Instagram marketing is the job. Outlearn bills the answers it writes.
See every tool
Every platform we have compared Outlearn against, side by side.