Migrate from Help Scout to Intercom

Help Scout Conversations map to Intercom Tickets as the primary conversation container. The Help Scout Open and Closed statuses map directly to Intercom Open and Closed. Help Scout's Pending status has no native Intercom equivalent; we create a custom Ticket attribute (such as a status label or tag) to preserve the Pending context so teams do not lose the waiting-for-customer signal. Thread history, public replies, and attachment references transfer as Ticket conversation parts. We resolve the owner (agent) by email match against Intercom Admins.

Help Scout Customer records (email, name, phone, address, company association) map directly to Intercom Contacts. The Help Scout Customer Properties custom fields (if the source account is on Plus tier) map to Intercom custom attributes on the Contact. We resolve the company reference from Help Scout Customers to an Intercom Company record, creating the Company first if it does not exist before Contact import so the lookup relationship is satisfied at insert time.

Help Scout Mailboxes (shared inbox containers, up to 10 per account on Standard, unlimited on Plus/Pro) map to Intercom Inboxes. If the source account uses Help Scout Teams and Departments for routing, we map those to Intercom Teams for inbox assignment. Routing rules that send conversations from specific mailboxes to specific agents or teams become Intercom assignment rules and inbox routing. Help Scout Mailbox-level Custom Fields (up to 10 per mailbox, Plus/Pro only) are preserved as Intercom Ticket attributes scoped to that inbox's tickets.

Help Scout Docs articles organized within Collections and Sub-collections map to Intercom Help Center Sections and Articles. Help Scout Collections map to Intercom Sections; Sub-collections map to Articles within a Section, or we create nested sections if the destination plan supports hierarchy. Published status, article body content, author attribution, and visible/hidden state transfer. If the Help Scout Docs has multi-language articles (translations stored in separate Collections), we create Intercom Help Center translations per article, noting that Intercom supports article-level translations but not a separate translation object structure.

Help Scout Tags applied to Conversations transfer as Intercom Tags on Tickets. Help Scout Tags applied to Docs transfer as Intercom Tags on Articles. Tags applied to Customers do not have a native equivalent in Intercom Contacts because Intercom does not tag Contacts; we either create Intercom Contact Segments as a replacement or map the tag to a Contact custom attribute. The tag strategy for Customer tags is decided during scoping based on how the customer uses tagging in Help Scout.

Help Scout Custom Fields (Dropdown, Single line, Multi line, Number, Date) are gated to the Plus plan and exist at the Mailbox level (up to 10 per mailbox). We map them to Intercom Contact custom attributes or Ticket custom attributes depending on whether the field is a Customer Property or a Mailbox-level field. If the source account is on Free or Standard tier (no Custom Fields), this mapping is skipped. Dropdown fields with up to 100 options map to Intercom select attributes; number and date fields map to the equivalent Intercom types.

Help Scout Customer Properties are custom fields set specifically at the Customer record level. These map to Intercom Contact custom attributes. The field type (text, number, dropdown, date) is preserved. We detect the Plus-tier requirement during scoping; if the source is on Standard, Customer Properties exist as standard Help Scout properties and map to Intercom standard Contact fields (phone, address, company) where possible, with remaining data in custom attributes.

Help Scout Users (agents and team members) map to Intercom Admins and Agents. Help Scout role assignments (Admin, Member, Collaborator) map to Intercom's permission levels. We match by email address and preserve the role. Help Scout's unlimited-user model means the user count during migration has no billing constraint in Help Scout; in Intercom, each mapped user counts toward the per-seat license count, which is a cost impact we flag during scoping.

Help Scout Automatic Workflows (triggered by conversation status, mailbox assignment, or customer properties) do not migrate to Intercom as code because Intercom uses a different automation model (Rules engine, not visual workflow builder with the same trigger-action vocabulary). We deliver a written inventory of every active Help Scout Workflow with its trigger, conditions, and actions mapped to a recommended Intercom Rule equivalent. The customer rebuilds automations in Intercom's Rules engine post-migration. Workflows with complex nested conditions or multiple triggers are flagged as higher-effort rebuild items.

Attachments embedded in Help Scout conversation threads (images, PDFs, documents) are exported as binary blobs via the Inbox API and re-attached to the corresponding Intercom conversation parts. We note that Intercom restricts certain file types (.exe, .sys, .scr, .wsf, and others) for security reasons; if the source attachments include any restricted types, we flag them during scoping and recommend the customer whitelist specific file extensions in Intercom Settings before migration begins.