Why Guzman & Baker switched from Help Scout to Helploom: Pricing, design, and features that make sense
Posted on by Preet Mishra
Guzman & Baker Behavioral Health Services provides compassionate mental health care for all ages across Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri. While bootstrapping the practice, they were looking for customer support software and tried several options: Crisp, Tawk.to, and Help Scout.
Help Scout felt like overkill. While the help center somewhat worked, it lacked the clean, modern design they desired, and the platform was built around case management through email inboxes and chat, features they simply didn't need.
For their bootstrapped business, the pricing didn't make sense either.
Finding Helploom on Reddit
They stumbled across Helploom on Reddit. What caught their attention was the new help center and the clean, minimal design. They signed up and started setting up their account.
What made them switch
They shared what ultimately made them switch to Helploom:
- Pricing: Help Scout's pricing didn't align with their bootstrapped business needs. Helploom's unlimited pricing felt like a no-brainer. (Read more about the comparison here.)
- Design: Helploom's help center had the clean, minimal design they desired.
- Help center that works: The new help center implementation was exactly what they'd expect from a help center. Simple to setup, a modern editor and a fast, beautiful help center.
- Simple live chat and AI agent: The live chat and AI agent were extremely simple to set up, understand, and go live with.
The surprise: AI chat quality
What surprised them the most after switching was the AI agent quality and how easy it was to setup the model with their help center (knowledge base).
For a behavioral health practice, consistency matters. Patients need to feel understood and supported, and the AI chatbot delivers that, available 24/7, even when the team isn't.
"I appreciate the minimal design and focus on customer support via chat along with help center. What surprised me the most was the quality of the AI chat support that was available and how easy it is to 'train' the model and respond in a consistent manner with our brand. I also appreciate your openness to communication while building out your product, as well as being open to feedback and requests. I am currently bootstrapping our practice. I appreciate the affordable cost and great quality product!"
— Travis, Guzman & Baker Behavioral Health Services
Priority support from the founder
Right away, they needed to customize their subdomain. The system had defaulted to their full business name, but they wanted it to be simply "guzmanbaker". They reached out, and within hours, the feature was added to the settings.
But that wasn't all. They needed to embed help center articles directly into modals on their website, clicking on provider photos would show their bio in a modal, without the Help Center header. This was a feature that didn't exist yet.
I shipped the widget API the same day, allowing them to call window.Helploom("article", "<article-id>") to open articles in a custom view.
What you can learn from this
- Try before you commit: They tested multiple tools (Crisp, Tawk.to, Help Scout) before finding the right fit. Don't settle for the first option.
- Pricing matters for bootstrapped businesses: Enterprise pricing doesn't make sense when you're just starting out. Find tools that scale with you, not against you.
- Design and simplicity matters: Good design and a simple experience aren't just nice to have. It affects how your team uses the tool and how your customers experience it.
- Responsive support makes a difference: When you're building a business, you need tools that respond quickly to your needs, not tools that make you wait.
Wondering whether you need Helploom?
If you're bootstrapping your business and need customer support software that doesn't cost a fortune, Helploom is a great fit. It's free to start without any commitment or credit card. You can add AI chatbot capabilities on the paid plan. The pricing is designed for bootstrapped founders who want customer support software without enterprise costs.