You got the deprecation notice. Halp is gone. You look up Atlassian Assist – the replacement – and discover that the Slack-native conversational ticketing you relied on is now locked behind JSM Premium at $51+ per agent per month. Your lightweight internal helpdesk just became an enterprise line item.
If you’re searching for a Halp alternative that gives you back what Halp did – ticket creation inside Slack, automatic routing, no separate portal – without forcing you into the full Atlassian ITSM stack, you’re in the right place. This post breaks down what happened to Halp, what Atlassian Assist actually is today, and where OfficeAmp fits as a Halp alternative for Slack teams that just want their helpdesk back.
What is the best Halp alternative for Slack teams?
The best Halp alternative for Slack teams is a tool that replicates Halp’s lightweight conversational ticketing experience inside Slack – without requiring a full Jira Service Management subscription. OfficeAmp is built natively for Slack and Microsoft Teams, lets employees submit tickets directly in chat, auto-routes requests to the right person, and starts at $1/user/month – a fraction of Atlassian Assist pricing on JSM Premium.
What Happened to Halp: The Atlassian Acquisition and What Came After
Halp was genuinely good. It was a lightweight, Slack-native Slack ticketing system that let employees turn Slack messages into trackable tickets – no portal, no extra login, no behavior change. For small and mid-sized teams, it was exactly the right tool.
In May 2020, Atlassian acquired Halp with the intent to integrate conversational ticketing into their broader service management platform. The Halp atlassian acquisition made sense strategically – Halp Jira integration was already one of its most used features, and there was a natural home for it inside Jira Service Management. Halp was rebranded as Atlassian Assist and the atlassian Halp integration deepened over time.
But the path for existing users got complicated. From May 9, 2023, new customers could no longer purchase Halp as a standalone product. Existing customers had until June 4, 2024 to continue using Halp independently. After that date, the Atlassian Assist Halp functionality became exclusively available through Jira Service Management Cloud plans – meaning teams that just wanted a simple Slack helpdesk were now required to adopt the full Atlassian ITSM stack to keep it.
The Halp Jira integration that users loved didn’t disappear – but it moved behind a paywall that most small teams weren’t budgeting for.
What Atlassian Assist Is Today
Atlassian Assist – the atlassian assistant that replaced Halp – is now the conversational ticketing layer inside Jira Service Management. The assist atlassian product has genuine strengths for the right team.
For large IT organizations already deep in the Atlassian ecosystem, it works well. The Atlassian Assist Slack integration lets agents create and manage JSM tickets directly from Slack. ITIL workflows, change management, SLA reporting, asset and configuration management, and the full Jira Service Management feature set are all there. If you’re running a mature IT operation on Jira and Confluence, Atlassian Assist is the natural choice.
The problem is the Atlassian Assist pricing. Assist is only available on JSM Premium – which starts at $51.42 per agent per month on an annual plan. For a team with five IT staff, that’s over $3,000 per year before any additional Atlassian Marketplace apps, implementation, or training costs. A product that cost most small teams a fraction of that as standalone Halp now requires a significant enterprise commitment.
Why Atlassian Assist Doesn’t Fit Every Team
For teams searching for a Halp alternative for small teams, the issue with Atlassian Assist isn’t the product itself – it’s the context it now requires. Here’s where the fit breaks down for most growing companies evaluating internal help desk software.
Atlassian Assist pricing is a dramatic jump.
Moving from standalone Halp to JSM Premium at $51.42/agent/month is not a minor upgrade – it’s a completely different budget conversation. For a team that just needed a simple employee helpdesk to manage IT requests inside Slack, that price point doesn’t reflect the problem being solved.
Ecosystem lock-in.
Atlassian Assist Slack functionality requires a full JSM subscription. Teams not already using Jira Software and Confluence are being asked to adopt an entire enterprise stack just to get conversational ticketing back. If your team doesn’t live in the Atlassian ecosystem, this is a significant overhead tax for a feature that should be simple.
Complexity mismatch.
Atlassian Assist is enterprise ITSM. Most small and mid-sized teams don’t need CMDB, change management workflows, or formal SLA reporting. They need an internal ticketing system that captures requests consistently and routes them to the right person. Wrapping that in a full ITSM platform creates a tool that does far more than needed and requires someone to own and maintain it.
Agent-based ceiling.
Per-agent pricing makes collaborative internal ticketing expensive fast. As G2 reviewers of JSM note, the platform “can get very expensive when compared to other ITSM alternatives” – particularly for smaller teams or anyone needing to add agents for limited purposes. OfficeAmp’s unlimited agents model is a direct contrast: your whole team can use it without a per-seat ceiling.
How OfficeAmp Fills the Gap
OfficeAmp was built on the same core belief that made Halp worth using: your Slack helpdesk should live where your team already works. Not in a separate portal. Not behind a new login. Inside the tool people are already in all day.
That belief translates into a direct feature match for what Halp users valued. Ticket creation in OfficeAmp works through conversational ticketing in Slack and Microsoft Teams – an employee sends a message, a ticket is created, and the right person gets notified automatically. No portal, no friction, no behavior change. Just like Halp worked.
From there, OfficeAmp adds what Halp didn’t always have at scale. Automated ticket assignment routes every request to the right team or person without manual triage. A Kanban board gives IT managers full visibility across all open requests without leaving their workflow. The Smart QnA feature on the Pro plan uses AI-assisted FAQ search to deflect repeat questions before they become it helpdesk Slack tickets – reducing volume automatically over time.
The analytics dashboard shows resolution time, ticket volume, and team performance – so you can actually see whether your internal helpdesk is working. And because OfficeAmp uses unlimited agents on all plans, your whole team can collaborate on tickets without the per-agent cost ceiling that makes Atlassian Assist pricing prohibitive at scale.
Pricing starts at $1/user/month (Standard) and $2/user/month (Pro) on annual plans. See the full pricing breakdown here. There’s a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, so you can test it in your actual Slack workspace before committing to anything.
Atlassian Assist vs OfficeAmp: How They Compare
Both tools handle conversational ticketing in Slack, but they sit at opposite ends of the complexity and pricing spectrum. Here’s an honest side-by-side.
| Feature | Atlassian Assist (formerly Halp) | OfficeAmp |
|---|---|---|
| Current status | Active – bundled into JSM Premium | Active – standalone product |
| Standalone product available | No – requires JSM subscription | Yes |
| Pricing model | Per agent – JSM Premium only | Per user + base fee; unlimited agents |
| Starting price per agent | $51.42/agent/month (annual) | $1/user/month + $29 base (annual) |
| Unlimited agents | No – per-agent pricing | Yes – all plans |
| Requires Jira Service Management | Yes – JSM Premium required | No |
| Slack native | Yes – via JSM integration | Yes – purpose-built for Slack |
| Microsoft Teams native | Limited | Yes – fully supported |
| Knowledge base / FAQ automation | Yes – via JSM knowledge base | Yes – Smart QnA on Pro plan |
| Setup time | Days to weeks – requires JSM configuration | Same day |
| Best for (team size) | 100+ employees, existing Atlassian ecosystem | 20–200 employees, lean IT |
| Free trial | JSM free plan (3 agents max, no Assist) | 14-day free trial, no credit card required |
When Atlassian Assist Is the Right Choice
To be fair, there are scenarios where Atlassian Assist is genuinely the right answer, and it’s worth saying so clearly.
If your team is already running Jira Software and Confluence as core tools, adding JSM Premium to get Atlassian Assist makes a lot of sense. The integration between the three products is tight, and the conversational ticketing layer slots naturally into a workflow that already lives in Atlassian.
If you need enterprise ITIL capabilities – change management, CMDB, asset tracking, advanced SLA reporting – Atlassian Assist inside JSM Premium gives you all of that alongside conversational ticketing. For a mature IT team, the premium price reflects real capability.
And if your team is 100+ people with dedicated IT staff and a budget built for enterprise tooling, Atlassian Assist is a serious, well-integrated product. It earns its complexity at that scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Atlassian Assist (formerly Halp)?
Atlassian Assist is the conversational ticketing tool that replaced Halp after Atlassian’s acquisition in 2020. It allows employees to create and manage Jira Service Management tickets directly from Slack. The Atlassian Assistant is now exclusively available on JSM Premium – meaning teams need a full Jira Service Management subscription to access the Atlassian Assist Slack integration. It is no longer available as a standalone product.
What happened to Halp after the Atlassian acquisition?
Atlassian acquired Halp in May 2020 and rebranded it as Atlassian Assist, integrating the Halp Jira and Halp Confluence functionality deeper into Jira Service Management. From May 2023, new customers could no longer purchase Halp standalone. On June 4, 2024, Halp was fully deprecated – all remaining users were required to migrate to JSM. The Atlassian Help transition effectively ended lightweight, standalone Slack ticketing for teams not already on the Atlassian stack.
What is the best Halp alternative for Slack teams?
The best Halp alternative depends on your team size and tooling. For teams of 20–200 people who want conversational ticketing inside Slack without the Atlassian ecosystem overhead, OfficeAmp is purpose-built for this. It replicates Halp’s core experience – ticket creation in Slack, automated routing, resolution tracking – at a fraction of Atlassian Assist pricing, with no JSM subscription required. A 14-day free trial is available with no credit card.
How much does Atlassian Assist cost?
Atlassian Assist pricing starts at $51.42 per agent per month on the JSM Premium annual plan. There is no standalone pricing for Atlassian Assist – it is only available as part of a Jira Service Management Premium or Enterprise subscription. The JSM Standard plan ($20/agent/month) does not include Atlassian Assist. For teams that previously paid for Halp standalone, this represents a significant price increase for equivalent Slack it support functionality.
Is there a free Halp alternative?
OfficeAmp offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required – making it the most accessible Halp alternative for teams evaluating their options post-deprecation. The Standard plan starts at $1/user/month plus a $29/month base fee on annual billing. For context, JSM’s free plan supports only 3 agents and does not include Atlassian Assist functionality. OfficeAmp’s trial gives your full team access to test real internal ticketing inside Slack before committing.
Does OfficeAmp work as Halp did?
Yes – the core experience is very similar. Employees submit requests directly inside Slack or Microsoft Teams through conversational ticketing, tickets are created and routed automatically, and agents can track resolution from a Kanban board without leaving their workflow. OfficeAmp also adds capabilities Halp lacked at scale: an analytics dashboard, Smart QnA for FAQ deflection on the Pro plan, full customizability of ticket categories, and unlimited agents on all plans. You can explore the full feature set here.
Halp was a genuinely good product. It got the core idea exactly right: the best internal ticketing system is the one that lives where your team already works. Employees don’t change their behavior for software – software needs to meet them where they are.
That category didn’t disappear when Halp was deprecated. The need for a lightweight, Slack-native internal helpdesk for growing companies is, if anything, larger now than it was in 2020. What changed is that Atlassian moved upmarket, and the teams Halp was originally built for are now looking for an alternative that shares the same philosophy.
OfficeAmp is that alternative. Start your 14-day free trial – no credit card required.