Support inside your product.
A help desk behind it.
Use the HelpSpot API to build request forms, ticket history, and help articles directly into your app, in your own design. Your team still works every request in a full help desk.
Build support into your product
An API for both sides of the desk
The public API covers what customers do: submit, track, reply, and search help articles. The private API covers what staff do: filters, search, time tracking, and reports.
Customers never leave your product
Your components, your design system, your brand. Customers get help where they already are, already signed in, with their account attached to every request.
Build the tooling you actually need
Internal dashboards, status boards, custom notifications. Pull filters and saved reports into any system you run, or hand the work to an AI agent through the MCP server.
Why not just drop in a widget?
Most help desks offer an embed. It works until you want support to look and behave like your product.
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Someone Else's Design
An iframe or script tag that looks like the vendor's product. Restyling stops at a logo and an accent color.
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Fixed Intake Forms
You get the fields the widget supports. Nothing is prefilled from what your app already knows.
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Customers Start Over
Users who are already signed in retype their name and email, then wait for a reply in a separate inbox.
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Your Components
Render forms, request lists, and articles with your own design system. HelpSpot supplies the data.
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Smart Intake
Pull categories and custom fields from the API and prefill them with account data. Field rules still apply.
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Already Signed In
Pass the customer ID and email from your session. Every request lands tied to the right customer.
How headless support works
Your front end. HelpSpot's back office.
Enable the API
Turn on the public and private APIs in Admin settings. Set up categories, custom fields, and knowledge books the way you normally would.
Build your interface
Call HelpSpot from your backend. Render request forms, ticket history, and help articles with your own components.
Work it in HelpSpot
Requests land in the inbox next to email. Agents assign, reply, and automate. Replies show up in your app and the customer's inbox.
A support center inside your app
Customers submit, track, and reply to requests without leaving your product. request.create opens a ticket exactly like the portal form. customer.getRequests lists a customer's history. request.get returns the full public conversation, and request.update adds a reply.
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Create requests with custom fields and attachments
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List every request for a signed-in customer
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Show the full public conversation thread
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Let customers reply and upload files in place
Forms that already know who's asking
request.getCategories and request.getCustomFields return your live HelpSpot configuration, so your form always matches what agents expect. Prefill what your app already knows and ask customers only for what it doesn't. Requests arrive categorized and ready for automation rules to route.
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Categories and custom fields pulled from the API
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Show category-specific fields only when relevant
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Prefill customer ID, email, plan, and account data
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Change a field in HelpSpot and your form follows
Answers where the questions happen
Your knowledge base doesn't have to live on a separate site. kb.search, kb.getBookTOC, and kb.getPage let you show articles inside your product, right next to the request form. Write once in HelpSpot and publish everywhere.
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Search articles from inside your product
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Render full book tables of contents
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Article HTML ready to style with your CSS
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Helpful and not-helpful votes recorded in HelpSpot
sUserId: ACME-4821
xStatus: Resolved
Push updates back into your product
Triggers, automation rules, and mail rules can call a webhook when their conditions match. HelpSpot sends everything it knows about the request to your endpoint, including the customer, the note, and custom fields. Use it to show in-app notifications, update a status badge, or sync a record.
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Called from triggers, automation rules, or mail rules
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Full request data sent to your endpoint
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Every webhook call logged in the request history
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Drive in-app notifications and status badges
Build the tooling your team needs
The authenticated private API gives your internal tools the same reach your staff has. Pull filters into dashboards, search requests, log time, merge duplicates, and run saved reports. API tokens carry the permissions of the staff member who created them, so nothing sees more than it should.
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Filters and saved reports in any dashboard
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Create and update requests with full control
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Time tracking, merges, and subscriptions
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Bearer tokens scoped to a staff member's permissions
[
{
"xRequest": 12745,
"fullname": "Jane Cooper",
"sTitle": "Double charge in September",
"xPersonAssignedTo": "Sam Moore",
"age": "2 hours"
}
]
Find open requests about the CSV export bug. The fix shipped in v4.2, so add a note to each one.
Add a private note to 14 requests: "Fixed in v4.2. OK to confirm with the customer."
A headless interface for AI agents
Headless isn't only about your UI. HelpSpot MCP lets Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, and any MCP-compatible agent work your help desk directly. Agents can find and update requests, add notes, search and edit knowledge base articles, and build reports from live data. Because the agent can reach your other systems too, it can tie support into the rest of your business.
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Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, and other MCP clients
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Combine HelpSpot with the other tools your agent can reach
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Require approval before any change, and switch individual tools on or off
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Every operation respects the staff member's permissions
Ready to simplify your support?
Every channel.
One queue.
Your Product
Requests created through the API land in the same inbox as everything else, tagged with how they arrived.
Connect unlimited mailboxes from Office 365, Gmail, Exchange, or any IMAP server into one shared inbox.
Hosted Portal
For customers outside your app, a portal with fully editable HTML, CSS, and PHP templates. Run as many as you need.
Knowledge Base
Publish books on the web for search engines and pull the same articles into your product through the API.
Email Parser
Any system that can send email can open a request. Add simple tags for customer ID, name, category, and custom fields.
Zapier
Create requests from Slack, web forms, and 5,000+ other apps without writing code.
Built for the way developers work
Standard HTTP
Standard GET and POST calls. Responses in XML, JSON, or serialized PHP. Works with any language or framework.
Your Authentication
Access keys, portal logins, or Black Box authentication that checks credentials against your own user system.
Live Lookup
Agents see plan, usage, and account data from your product right inside every ticket. No syncing.
Database Access
Self-hosted installs get direct SQL access. Point Tableau, Power BI, or your own services at the data.
Built on by technical teams
Companies that wire HelpSpot into the rest of their stack.
"We've embedded HelpSpot into our business and workflows, with tight integrations across remote, cross-functional teams and products, providing clarity and transparency for all stakeholders."
"Thanks to the flexibility of the API, we have been able to integrate it into many of our other systems, including payroll, automatic feedback surveys and analytics."
"We've integrated HelpSpot with Jira so we can quickly push requests from HelpSpot into Jira for further processing. HelpSpot makes this easy."
"It's easy to build an adequate help desk application, it's hard to build a good one, and it's especially difficult to build a great one. HelpSpot is a Great One."
Deploy Your Way
Same price, same features. Choose the deployment that works for you.
Same powerful features and pricing across all hosting options.
US Cloud
CloudUS-East Region
Dedicated AWS infrastructure with 99.9% uptime. Managed updates and automated backups.
EU Cloud
CloudFrankfurt Region
GDPR-compliant hosting. Full data sovereignty with all information isolated within the EU.
Self-Hosted
EnterpriseOn-Premise Infrastructure
Complete control on your own hardware. Ideal for air-gapped networks or strict compliance.
Maximum Control & Data ResidencyHeadless Support FAQs
Headless customer support separates the interface customers see from the system that manages their requests. Your product renders the request forms, ticket history, and help articles. HelpSpot stores the requests, routes them, and gives your agents a full workspace to answer them.
No. Headless is optional and can be partial. Many teams start with email and the hosted customer portal, then add an in-app request form or help search through the API. Use as much or as little as you need.
The public API works like the HelpSpot portal and needs no staff login. It can create and update requests, list a customer's requests, and read knowledge books. The private API requires a staff API token and gives full control over categories, assignment, filters, and reporting. For most in-app support centers, call HelpSpot from your backend so tokens and credentials never reach the browser.
You have options. Every request has a secure access key that retrieves and updates it without a login. Customers can also sign in with portal credentials, and Black Box authentication lets HelpSpot check those logins against your own user system. Or keep authentication entirely in your app and pass the customer ID and email with each request.
Use a webhook. Triggers and automation rules can call your endpoint when a request is updated, and HelpSpot sends the full request data. You can also poll the API for changes. Customers with an email address on file get replies by email too, so nobody misses an answer.
XML by default, or JSON and serialized PHP by adding an output parameter. Requests are standard HTTP GET and POST, so any language works. The API manual documents every method with examples.
Yes. HelpSpot rate limits public-facing API endpoints per IP address to protect your installation, and failed logins are limited separately. Calling the API from your backend and caching things like categories and knowledge base content keeps typical integrations well within the limits.
Yes. The HelpSpot MCP server connects Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, and other MCP-compatible agents to your help desk. They authenticate as a staff member, so they only see what that person can see. Agents can be set to ask before making any change, and admins can turn individual MCP tools on or off. See HelpSpot AI for examples.
No. Every HelpSpot plan includes every feature, including the full API, webhooks, Live Lookup, and the MCP server. There are no per-call or per-ticket charges. See pricing.
Yes. The same API is available on US Cloud, EU Cloud, and self-hosted installations at the same price. Self-hosted customers also get direct database access for reporting.
Keep exploring
API & Webhooks
Every integration option in one place: HTTP API, MCP server, webhooks, Zapier, and Live Lookup.
Branding & Portals
Prefer a hosted portal? Edit every template and run a separate portal for each brand.
B2B Customer Support
Account-level history, SLA tracking, and CRM data inside every ticket.
Your inbox is waiting
to be tamed.
Join the teams who switched from chaos to HelpSpot's essential order. Download on-premise or start in the cloud today.
