Migrate from Help Scout to Freshdesk

Help Scout Conversations map to Freshdesk Tickets. Each conversation's thread — public replies and internal notes — migrates as a chronological comment sequence on the ticket. We translate Help Scout status (active, pending, spam, closed) to Freshdesk ticket status (open, pending, resolved, closed) using a mapping matrix defined during scoping. Closed and archived conversations migrate with their original resolved status preserved. Help Scout's unique internal Conversation ID is stored in a custom ticket field hs_conversation_id__c for cross-reference.

Help Scout Customers map to Freshdesk Contacts. Standard fields (email, name, phone, address, company name) transfer directly. Customer Properties custom fields (distinct from conversation Custom Fields) map to Freshdesk contact custom fields. We resolve the Freshdesk contact by email as the dedupe key to avoid duplicate records on re-migration. Note that Freshdesk uses singular Contact; Help Scout's 'Company' field on a Customer maps to the Freshdesk contact's company_name or a linked Organization record if the customer uses Freshdesk's Organizations object.

Help Scout Mailboxes map to Freshdesk Groups. Each mailbox's assigned agents and routing preferences inform the Group membership during migration. Conversations tagged to or created in a specific mailbox are routed to the equivalent Freshdesk Group. Help Scout supports up to 2 mailboxes on Standard and unlimited on Plus; Freshdesk Groups are unlimited on all paid plans.

Help Scout Users map to Freshdesk Agents by email match. Role assignment (admin, user) maps to Freshdesk agents with Agent type and Group membership. Help Scout's unlimited-user pricing means large support teams on source will map to a comparable agent count in Freshdesk at per-agent billing rates. Inactive or deleted Help Scout users are held in a reconciliation queue for the admin to provision in Freshdesk before final record import.

Tags applied across Conversations and Customers migrate to Freshdesk Tags. Tag assignments on conversations link to the migrated ticket via the Freshdesk Tags API. Freshdesk Tags are shared across tickets, contacts, and companies, matching Help Scout's cross-object tag model. We preserve all tag names exactly to maintain segmentation used in Help Scout Workflows — noting that the Workflow logic itself requires manual rebuild.

Help Scout Custom Fields (Dropdown, Single line, Multi line, Number, Date) on conversations map to Freshdesk custom ticket fields. We detect the source account's plan tier during scoping — Free and Standard accounts do not have Custom Fields in their schema and will skip this mapping entirely. For Plus and Pro accounts, we match field types and option lists, mapping Help Scout Dropdown options to Freshdesk dropdown custom fields with equivalent choice values. Required field flags carry over. If the Freshdesk destination plan does not support custom fields, we fall back to mapping values as tags or conversation notes.

Help Scout Docs articles within Collections migrate to Freshdesk Knowledge Base articles with category hierarchy preserved. Article content, published status, author attribution, and internal article notes transfer. The Docs-to-Freshdesk section mapping preserves the navigation structure. Help Scout Docs Beacon widget configuration does not migrate; Freshdesk has its own widget setup in the portal settings that the admin configures post-migration. Additional Docs sites ($20/month on Help Scout) are migrated as separate Freshdesk knowledge base portals if multiple portals are in scope.

Help Scout Saved Replies migrate to Freshdesk Canned Responses. Each saved reply's content, shortcut code, and folder assignment transfer to the equivalent Freshdesk folder structure. We export saved replies via the Help Scout Inbox API and import them via the Freshdesk Canned Response API. Note that Freshdesk Canned Responses support placeholders and personalization which must be reviewed for compatibility with migrated shortcut codes.