Support starts before the support team
In an early-stage company, the founder is usually the support team. The same questions arrive every day: how to get started, what a plan includes, why an integration is not connecting. Each one is quick to answer, but together they take time away from building the product.
The answers often already exist on your website, in your docs or in old replies. Helpnest turns that material into an AI support agent that answers in your tone and hands harder conversations to you in a shared inbox. Helpnest for Startups gives early-stage teams a paid plan at no cost while they set it up.
Three offers, depending on your stage
Founder Launch is for bootstrapped and pre-seed founders. It includes the Startups plan free for 3 months: 4,000 AI credits a month, 5 agents, 5 team members and no Helpnest branding.
Startup Growth is for teams with regular support volume or more than one product. It includes the Growth plan free for 3 months: 16,000 AI credits a month, 15 agents, 10 team members and 5 workspaces.
Accelerator Partner is for companies referred by an accelerator, incubator or fund. It includes the Growth plan free for 6 months, plus a shared onboarding session with our team.
Every offer includes every model, the shared inbox, self-learning and revenue attribution. Credits are not a count of replies: each AI reply uses 1, 5 or 20 credits depending on the model, and replies from your team are always free. The models and credits guide explains the rates.
More than free credits
A free plan only helps if the agent gives good answers. Every startup in the pilot can ask us for a launch review: before you go live, we check your knowledge sources and first answers with you, and point out gaps your customers would hit.
We also help with migration. If your answers live in an FAQ page, a Notion doc or a folder of saved replies, we will help you bring them into Helpnest as website sources, files or Q&A pairs. The data sources guide covers the formats.
Who can apply
The program is for companies that have raised less than $5M in total funding, or are bootstrapped. You need a live product or website, or plan to launch within 3 months, and you should not already be paying for a Helpnest plan. We accept one application per company, from a work email address.
This first run is a pilot for 50 startups. Keeping it small means we can review every application by hand and help each team launch properly. We will open more spots once the pilot is running smoothly.
How it works
Apply on the startup program page. It takes about two minutes and no card is needed. You get a confirmation right away, and we usually reply within a few business days.
Once you are approved, sign up with the email address you applied with. The plan is applied automatically, and approved startups skip the waitlist. If you already have an account, the plan is active immediately. Your Billing page shows when the free period ends.
Two weeks before it ends, we email you a reminder. You can keep the plan at the regular price, $5/month for Startups or $20/month for Growth. Otherwise your account moves to the Free plan, and your agents, knowledge and conversations stay in place. The program documentation has the full details.
Make the most of your free months
Start small. Pick the ten questions you answer most often, make sure each one has a clear, current answer in your docs, and add those sources first. Test them in the playground before you install the widget.
Then put the agent on one high-traffic page, such as pricing or onboarding, and read the first week of conversations. Turn on self-learning so that answers you give in the inbox become knowledge the agent can reuse. By the end of your free period, you will know whether Helpnest saves your team enough time to be worth paying for.
Apply for Helpnest for Startups. If you run an accelerator or fund and want to offer this to your portfolio, email hello@helpnest.app.
Build on what you know.
See the setup workflow in our docs, or join the Helpnest waitlist.
Read the quickstart →