Customer support decision
Groove
A capable engineer can build a narrow subset (inbox + RAG-driven drafts + routing) cheaply, but reproducing Helply's full platform (many integrations, ROI attribution, enterprise onboarding, and production polish) is a much larger effort better suited to buying.
Visit website↗$250/mo
$3,000/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off80 h to build
$200/mo20 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Groove alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Receive customer messages, assemble account+KB context, generate AI draft or automated resolution, apply routing/escalation and record ticket outcomes
What it still won’t have
- Per-ticket billing, enterprise contracts and onboarding handled by vendor
- Pre-built integrations and connectors to many B2B systems
- Vendor-provided ROI tracking, SLAs, and hands-on onboarding
- Polish, monitoring, and reliability of a production SaaS platform
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal AI-native B2B support system using Node.js (Express), Postgres, and a retrieval-augmented LLM (OpenAI or compatible). In scope: (1) ingest email and a web chat webhook into a unified inbox; (2) fetch and attach account context from a mock CRM (Postgres table) and KB (vector index using pgvector); (3) implement RAG + prompt templates to produce reply drafts and a confidence score via the LLM API; (4) apply simple routing rules to assign or escalate tickets and tag churn/upsell signals; (5) record tickets, replies, and signals in Postgres and provide a small web UI to review drafts and send replies. Out of scope: enterprise billing, per-ticket metering UI, dozens of third-party connectors, advanced analytics dashboards. Include error handling, retries for external APIs, and unit tests for ingestion, RAG retrieval, and routing logic.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score67
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productHelply | AI-Native B2B Support
- official pricingHelply Pricing: $1 Per Ticket, Unlimited Seats
- official docsFeature Flag Detection for B2B Product Teams
- open sourcechatwoot/chatwoot
- open sourcezammad/zammad
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
