How EmailOctopus supports its more than 30% annual user growth with AI

EmailOctopus makes email marketing simple for small businesses, creators, and anyone who doesn't want to become an expert to send a great campaign. The platform gives customers everything they need to grow an audience and reach it through email, without the complexity or price tag of a larger marketing suite.

That focus on simplicity and affordability shapes how EmailOctopus operates, too. The company has always kept its team intentionally small, even as its customer base has grown. And lately, it's been growing fast. EmailOctopus grew its user base by more than 30% last year and now serves well over 100,000 users. Behind the platform is a lean, but mighty team of 15.

“We’ve been a small team since the very beginning, and we don’t plan to change that,” says Magdalena, customer support manager at EmailOctopus.

For the support team, that creates a challenge: More users inevitably bring more questions. But adding headcount every time support volume increases would work against the lean operating model that helps EmailOctopus keep its product affordable. At the same time, sacrificing the quality or accessibility of support isn't an option. So the team needed to find a way to support more customers without building a bigger, more expensive support operation.

Giving customers answers without adding to the queue

EmailOctopus is designed to be simple enough that customers can learn the product and send their first campaign without ever contacting support. But as its user base grew, the support team found itself spending more and more time on questions that were already answered in its documentation.

“We were overwhelmed in support with very, very simple questions,” Magdalena says. “Something like, ‘How do I add my address to my email?’ It's honestly a five-second search in our documentation.”

The problem wasn't that customers couldn't find the answer. Often, asking a person simply felt easier and more reliable. “You're 100% sure that you're going to get the right answer, and you're not second-guessing whatever you read or wondering if it's still valid,” Magdalena explains.

Meanwhile, plenty of conversations did warrant the team's attention. Email deliverability issues, DNS configuration, account-specific troubleshooting, and even customers just looking for reassurance as they navigated something new could all benefit from human expertise. Help Scout's AI Answers gave EmailOctopus a way to separate the two: Give customers immediate answers to questions that don't require a person, while preserving the team's time for the ones that do.

Today, Magdalena estimates that AI Answers handles 50% of EmailOctopus’s support volume, taking care of nearly all of the simple questions customers ask, along with many of the more complex ones. As the company's user base continues to grow, AI has helped keep that growth from translating directly into more work for the support team.

Building enough trust to put AI first

But before putting AI Answers in front of customers, the team needed to trust what it would say.

They tested AI Answers first, reviewing its responses and using what they found to strengthen the information behind them. Testing exposed holes and inconsistencies in their documentation, helped them identify where additional guardrails were needed, and gave them a chance to refine how AI communicated with customers. “We have a very specific tone of voice,” Magdalena says. “We always write how we speak, no unnecessary technical language or professional jargon.”

As the underlying knowledge and answers improved, so did the team's confidence. Eventually, EmailOctopus made AI Answers the first support option customers see in Beacon, while keeping human support available for those who need it. That change drove more customers toward AI and self-service — and the results were strong enough that what started as an experiment became the team's default approach.

But going AI-first hasn't meant taking humans out of the loop. EmailOctopus uses Workflows and Views in Help Scout to keep visibility into conversations handled by AI. Completed AI conversations flow into a dedicated View that the team can review once more pressing customer conversations are handled.

Most of the time, there's nothing to change. When there is, the team can improve the answer for the next customer. And if someone abandons an AI conversation without getting what they need, the team can spot that too and proactively step in. “Sometimes people talk to AI, they have more questions or something wasn't clear, and instead of asking to speak to a human, they just abandon,” Magdalena says. “Then we have an opportunity to reach out to them and make it right and help them succeed.”

Staying lean without compromising on support

For EmailOctopus, the impact isn't simply fewer conversations reaching the queue. It's being able to maintain the kind of customer experience the company wants to be known for as its user base grows.

The team's internal SLA is 24 hours, but its average response time is actually 30 minutes, and more than 80% of conversations receive a response within an hour. Asked whether the team could maintain that without AI Answers, Magdalena is unequivocal: “To stick to this kind of metric, we absolutely need AI. It's 100% impossible if AI is gone tomorrow.”

That efficiency matters beyond the support queue. EmailOctopus has built its business around keeping email marketing affordable, with paid plans priced up to 60% less than competitors. Keeping headcount lean helps the company protect that advantage as its user base grows.

Without AI Answers, EmailOctopus would have to make trade-offs. Paying customers could continue receiving faster support, while free users and prospective customers waited longer. Or the company could add headcount to keep up with every increase in support volume, raising prices to cover the cost.

AI Answers gives them another option. EmailOctopus can continue growing without growing its support team at the same rate, while keeping both its pricing accessible and human support readily available when customers genuinely need it.

And Magdalena doesn't see AI and human support as being at odds. If anything, she thinks the proliferation of AI makes access to a real person more meaningful.

EmailOctopus still gives customers that choice. “We have the option of AI. We actively use it, but we don't push it down people's throats,” Magdalena says. “Our customers always have a choice.”