FreeScout Pricing: Managed vs Self-Hosted
The cheapest managed FreeScout starts at about $95/month. Self-hosted, this stack measures 2 GiB across 2 services, which fits a $13/month flat plan with room left over.
#the numbers
Managed prices as of June 2026, each linked to its source. The self-hosted row is not an estimate: the RAM figure is what this stack allocates in its compose file, and the plan is the smallest one that holds it.
| Option | Plan | Monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted on Miget ★ | 2 GiB, 1 vCPU | $13 | the whole stack, flat - no per-user or per-request metering, and the plan holds your other apps too |
| Zendesk | Suite Team | ~$275 | $55/agent/mo at 5 agents |
| Help Scout | Standard | ~$125 | $25/seat/mo at 5 seats |
| Freshdesk | Growth | ~$95 | $19/agent/mo at 5 agents |
Help desks price per agent; FreeScout is flat with unlimited agents (modules are one-time licenses).
#the difference, plainly
$82/month, or about 86%, against the cheapest managed tier - $984 over a year. Worth stating what that money buys and what it costs, because the honest answer is not "it is just cheaper".
- You gain a bill that does not move with usage, no execution or seat metering, and root on your own data.
- You gain spare capacity: the plan is sized for this stack, and anything else you deploy inside it is free.
- You take on upgrades, backups and the pager. Managed services charge for exactly that, and for some teams it is worth every dollar.
- You should not switch for the saving alone if your team has nobody who wants to own it.
#what it costs on other platforms
Same stack, published rates elsewhere - estimates from each platform's own pricing page, not quotes. Per-service platforms are the expensive case here, because every container in this stack is its own paid service.
| Platform | Estimated monthly | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Miget ★ | $13 | flat plan, 2 GiB - databases included, no meters |
| Heroku | ~$100 | no volumes; nothing between 1 GB ($50) and 2.5 GB ($250) dynos - 2 GB containers cost far more than shown |
| Render | ~$29 | per-service instances (0.5 GB $7, 2 GB $25) - every container is its own paid service |
| DO App Platform | ~$29 | no persistent volumes - stateful containers need managed DBs/Spaces (base $5 Spaces included here) |
| Railway | ~$22 | usage-based ($10/GB RAM-mo); vCPU billed separately at $20/vCPU-mo on top |
| Fly.io | ~$14 | cheapest sticker price - but burstable shared CPUs (1/16 core; dedicated vCPUs cost ~2-3×), no compose deploys (one app per container, manual wiring), managed DBs billed extra |
#sizing, if you outgrow the small plan
The $13 plan is the smallest that fits. For production traffic you generally want the next tier up, and dedicated vCPU if the workload is CPU-bound rather than idle-waiting.
| Use case | Plan | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Fits the stack | 2 GiB, 1 vCPU shared | $13 |
| Comfortable, room for your own apps | 2 GiB, 2 vCPU shared | $19 |
| Dedicated vCPU (production) | 4 GiB, 2 vCPU dedicated | $43 |
1 GiB suits a support team. Modules and attachments live on the /data volume - keep replicas at 1 (modules are on local disk).
Run FreeScout yourself
The compose file is open source and runs locally with docker compose up. One step to deploy it to
Miget on the $13/month plan, databases included.