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A Comprehensive Guide to Intercom Alternatives

Natalia Tomchyshyn January 15, 2021

When it comes to satisfying your customers, there’s no doubt that Intercom s one of the first tools that comes to mind. This exceptional help desk software is designed to streamline customer communication and ensure that high-velocity teams can effectively manage their workflows. So why look for alternatives to Intercom? Because the best option comes out after compare similar chat solutions.

In today’s business landscape, merely having a customer communication tool is not enough. Customers now expect businesses to be omnipresent, accessible across various channels, regardless of their size. While Intercom can certainly help you achieve these goals, it’s essential to consider the alternatives that can provide even better results.

One significant advantage of Intercom is its ability to facilitate communication with your target audience through various touchpoints, including websites, mobile apps, live chat, social media, and email. However, it’s crucial to acknowledge that this help desk software has its drawbacks, such as high prices and a lack of certain essential customer service features. So, where should you turn next? The answer lies in exploring the world of help desk alternatives.

To save you time and effort, we have meticulously curated a list of the best Intercom alternatives. These alternatives have been carefully selected to cater to the needs of both small and large businesses, ensuring a seamless transition and a painless experience. By exploring these alternatives, you can find a solution that not only matches but exceeds your expectations, providing enhanced functionality, affordability, and a comprehensive set of customer service features.

Customer Service Implementation Is Half The Story

A seamless live chat tool experience is essential for effective customer support. It’s frustrating when you have to wait for minutes on end to receive an answer that could have been easily found through a quick online search. In today’s fast-paced world, consumers expect instant responses, and studies have shown that their patience typically lasts no longer than 10 minutes. Once this limit is exceeded, they begin exploring alternative solutions and more convenient ways to address their specific issues.

That’s why simply installing a live chat tool isn’t sufficient. Before making a decision, it’s crucial to thoroughly consider various factors that contribute to a positive user experience. From user-friendliness to real-time notifications, every aspect needs to be carefully evaluated. The demand for effective live chat solutions is high, and not all vendors can keep up with the competition. Some may alter the tool’s scope, while others compromise on pricing to offer refined features. Consequently, choosing the right live chat tool for your business is not only challenging but can ultimately make the difference between delivering exceptional customer service or settling for mediocrity at best.

Given my expertise as a help desk expert, I can suggest several outstanding Intercom alternatives that excel in delivering instant and user-friendly live chat experiences. Let me know if you’d like to explore those options further.

Intercom in a Nutshell

Before we delve into the realm of Intercom alternatives, let’s first explore the merits of Intercom itself and understand why it has become a popular choice for businesses. Intercom is a comprehensive customer system that serves as a catalyst for growth by streamlining various processes. Its primary objective is to guide customers through the entire sales journey, starting from acquisition, fostering engagement, and extending to post-sale services.

At the core of Intercom’s feature set lies its robust messaging system, which seamlessly caters to marketing, sales, and support teams. The live chat system, fortified by a range of intelligent bots, empowers businesses to generate more leads. Notably, Intercom’s chatbot, known as “Operator,” has been meticulously designed to simulate human-like conversations, ensuring a natural and engaging experience for users.

The system can be divided into four distinct phases: occupation, qualification, transformation, and testing. Each phase encompasses a set of functions that enable prompt and effective responses to customer inquiries. Furthermore, these modules provide invaluable insights into customer behavior, allowing businesses to anticipate potential questions and tailor personalized solutions. By equipping agents with pertinent data in advance or on-demand, Intercom facilitates a more personalized approach to resolving issues. This versatility makes Intercom a versatile solution that caters to a wide array of business models.

However, it’s always prudent to explore alternative options that may better suit your specific needs. So, let’s delve into a curated selection of Intercom alternatives that showcase comparable features and functionalities, while providing their own unique advantages.

What Makes Intercom Special?

To begin exploring the best alternatives to Intercom, it’s essential to understand the distinctive features that make Intercom stand out. By identifying these key components, we can then delve into detailed comparisons and recommend a suitable alternative that aligns with your specific needs. Intercom encompasses three crucial elements that contribute to its success:

By understanding these key components of Intercom, we can now proceed to explore alternative options that offer similar advantages while catering to your specific requirements. Please share your preferences, and I’ll be delighted to recommend the best Intercom alternatives for your business.

Platform Support

Intercom works on most platforms, from Facebook, Instagram, and X, to Salesforce, Stripe, and Jira Cloud. The system has its own App Store, where you can find seamless integrations to the following tool categories:

This is just the native integration list. If you include the fact that the tool has an open API, this integration list will more than double.

Management Features

With so many platforms on the list, the vendor made sure you can manage them as effectively as possible. Starting from the Accelerate plan, you can use automated systems to streamline customer messaging and reduce manual operations. Plus, Intercom ensures your support line is in good hands with

Customer Service Software Update & Support

Last but not least, Intercom has a really good support system. You get access to customer care and can be sure your system will get updated with the latest and greatest features.

Source

What Are the Benefits of Intercom?

Intercom is a customer engagement platform that provides conversational solutions for support agents and marketing teams. It helps companies study their customers and use this knowledge to personalize customer messaging and experience. How exactly can Intercom benefit a large or small business?

Look Into the Pros and Cons of Intercom

Now, let’s summarise the software’s advantages and shortcomings to simplify the comparison between the alternatives to Intercom.

What Are Intercom’s, Strong Sides?

What Does Intercom Need to Work On?

Why Should You Use an Intercom Alternative?

If you feel Intercom can fail to meet your demands, consider other help desk software. For example, you might want more collaboration features or self-service options or don’t want to spend much time on onboarding. Besides, considering its drawbacks, Intercom can be difficult to tailor to small business needs. It doesn’t offer a free version, and the lowest plan is not affordable, so you might want to consider Intercom free alternative.

What Is Intercom Pricing?

Intercom offers two pricing sections for different business sizes:

For most businesses section includes three paid plans:

There are no prices on the pricing page, so you’ll need to contact the vendor to find out the quote.

For very small businesses section includes:

This one comes with a price of $74/month if billed annually.

Source: Intercom

What Are the Closest Intercom Alternatives?

Overall, Intercom is a very powerful tool, and matching it in terms of features and quality is hard. However, there are a few alternatives to Intercom that are not only equally good but in certain cases even better. Before we proceed, we’d also like to stress that we understand that some of the tools might not fit all your business needs. Although, you also need to acknowledge that these tools are being worked on and they never stay in one place. Thus, now that this is out of the way, move on to the alternatives.

Our alternative Intercom list contains chat software that can help polish up customer communication and load off the tedious work for live chat agents. We’ve weighed up their pros & cons compared to Intercom and added a quick pricing overview. So, what are the best alternatives to Intercom?

Is LiveChat the Best Among Intercom Chat Alternatives?

For many, LiveChat is even better than Intercom, and that wouldn’t be an understatement. LiveChat is outstanding chat software with customizable chat tools and in-depth reports. It’s functional, easy to use, and doesn’t take long to set up. Furthermore, LiveChat provides many integrations with different platforms. You won’t be losing on anything but the advanced functions found in premium tiers of Intercom.

Source

LiveChat Key Features

Source: LiveChat

Why Is LiveChat a Good Alternative to Intercom?

What Are LiveChat’s Flaws?

What Are LiveChat Integrations?

While not as extensive as Intercom’s list, LiveChat allows you to hook your tool to popular platforms such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Zendesk, and Dropbox. Plus, the support system has its app store where you can find official integration apps.

How Much Does LiveChat Cost?

LiveChat is highly affordable and quite capable compared to Intercom pricing. The company offers four pricing plans and a 14-day free trial.

Free/freemium plan

Not available

Paid plans

Source: LiveChat

Keep in mind that prices rise if paid on a monthly basis. You can learn more about the plans by visiting the LiveChat Pricing plan.

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Can Freshchat Replace Intercom?

Freshchat is omnichannel chat software that helps support agents, marketing teams, and sales teams improve customer experience through a customizable messaging widget. You can use an audio chat to support, engage, and grow your customers.

Source

What Can You Do with Freshchat?

Source: Freshchat

The Best Freshchat Features

Freshchat’s Flaws List

FreshChat Integrations

The widget’s ability to hook to a different platform is directly tied to the core vendor API. In other words, if any Fresh product has native Google Analytics integration, then the widget can connect there as well unless stated otherwise. Currently, the integration list includes WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Analytics, and Sugar CRM, among other things.

How Much Do You Have to Pay for Freshchat?

The chat system is not pricey, but the feature list isn’t as rich as you might be led to believe. Currently, there are four pricing plans starting with a free plan.

Free/Freemium plans

The Free plan includes up to 100 agents, 100 campaign contacts, chatbots, analytics, inbox views, conversation topics & labels, bulk actions, email, mobile SDK, Shopify, WordPress

Paid plans

Source: Freshchat

A solid alternative to Intercom. You can learn more about the features and pricing of other plans by visiting Freshchat’s official pricing page.

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Does HelpCrunch Have a Better Live Chat Than Intercom?

HelpCrunch is a customer communication platform that improves efficiency with multi-channel support and automation. HelpCrunch has all the features you need to deliver on the quality and time aspects of customer service.

Source

What Are the Best HelpCrunch Features?

Source: HelpCrunch

What Are HelpCrunch Advantages Compared to Intercom?

What Are HelpCrunch’s Flaws?

What Can You Integrate HelpCrunch With?

When it comes to integration, HelpCrunch works with a wide range of systems, including Slack, WordPress, Google Analytics, WhatsApp, and Zendesk. More can be added through the API.

What Is HelpCrunch Price?

It is the perfect system for companies that don’t mind spending less for fewer features. If your budget is tight, the company made sure you can still leverage their tools for as long as you have $15 per month per agent.

Free/Freemium plans

Not available

Paid plans

Source: HelpCrunch

You can learn more about the features and prices by visiting the HelpCrunch pricing page. It is among the best Intercom alternatives, especially in the price-to-performance department.

Why Should You Use LiveAgent Instead of Intercom?

Another good alternative to Intercom is LiveAgent. With this help desk software, you can deliver excellent customer experience on every channel using a robust ticketing system and the core chat support feature. You can place all customer conversations into one thread and send appropriate responses based on the customer type. With this tool, you can ensure no one is wasting time and no customer request is left unanswered.

Source

What Are LiveAgent’s Core Features?

Source: LiveAgent

How Good Is LiveAgent?

What LiveAgent Features Lack Improvement?

What Are the Best LiveAgent Integrations?

Among the many Intercom alternatives, LiveAgent has perhaps the most extensive and the most eclectic list of integrations. Out of the box, you get access to 133 integrations plus the API. The list includes popular software solutions such as WordPress, Magento, Shopify, MailChimp, Pipedrive, and Slack.

How Much Does LiveAgent Cost?

LiveAgent offers four pricing options and a 14-day free trial for the paid plans. The rich-featured free plan makes LiveAgent one of the best alternatives to Intercom.

Free/freemium plans

Paid plans

Source: LiveAgent

As you can tell, among the many Intercom alternatives, this one is the most packed. You can learn more about the other tiers by visiting the LiveAgent pricing page.

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Zendesk Chat vs Intercom: Compare the Features

Zendesk Chat isn’t among the key Intercom competitors, but it is worth looking at. For many, this platform is the epitome of quality in the help desk space. And to some degree, it applies to their customer communication system.

It is a powerful solution, full of different features that you can use straight out of the box. The system doesn’t require any kind of setup. Just specify criteria, set a schedule, and let the magic happen.

Source

What Can You Use Zendesk Chat For?

Source: Zendesk

What Are the Pros of Zendesk Chat?

What Are Zendesk Chat’s Shortcomings?

What Are Zendesk Integrations?

The platform can connect to a vast amount of third-party apps and websites out of the box. If you need to connect it to a proprietary solution, Zendesk Chat makes it easy by giving you proper access to the API.

Zendesk Chat vs Intercom: Who’s More Expensive?

Zendesk was never known to be cheap, and rightfully so; you get access to the top-tier features. Yet, the company offers four pricing plans, one of which is free.

Free/freemium plans

Paid plans

Source: Zendesk

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Is Gorgias an Alternative Intercom?

Gorgias is an all-in-one help desk platform that is especially good for eCommerce businesses. You can integrate it with Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce and track customer data from your stores. Ticket categorization, autoresponders, and collaboration features allow you to provide a delightful customer experience.

How to Use Gorgias Features?

Source: Gorgias

What Makes Gorgias a Good Help Desk Tool?

What Does Gorgias Need to Improve?

Gorgias Integrations

You can integrate Gorgias with over 85 apps. The featured Gorgias integrations include Attentive for SMS conversations and Recharge for subscription management. Also, the list includes Instagram, Facebook, AirCall, and eCommerce tools like Reveal, Okendo, and Klaviyo.

Gorgias Pricing Structure

Gorgias offers several plans with a limited number of seats, tickets, and active integrations. However, you can have unlimited stores on each plan.

Free/freemium plans

Not available

Paid plans

Source: Gorgias

Gorgias Migration Made Simple

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Can Re:amaze Replace Intercom?

You can use Re:amaze as an alternative Intercom if you deal with eCommerce. This help desk software provides marketing features and improves customer experience with advanced chat support tools. With Re:amaze, you take care of customer queries while increasing customer retention and qualifying leads.

What Are Re:amaze Key Features?

Source: Re:amaze

What Are the Benefits of Re:amaze?

Are There Any Cons in Re:amaze?

How Can You Extend Re:amaze Functionality?

Make your customer communication more comprehensive with Re:amaze integrations. Those include chatbots, email marketing, eCommerce platforms, payments, CRM, and social media. The most popular apps are AirCall, Facebook, Google Analytics, BigCommerce, Shopify, Slack, Amazon, Zapier, and Help Desk Migration.

How Much Does Re:amaze Cost?

Re:amaze offers three paid plans, each with a 14-day free trial. Compared to other Intercom alternatives, the price quotes can be less affordable for companies with small profits.

Free/freemium plans

Not available

Paid plans

Source: Re:amaze

Improve Your Re:amaze Data Migration

Why wait to experience the benefits of Re:amaze? Try our free Demo migration and start enjoying your customer service workflows.

Is Front Similar to Intercom?

Front is a customer communication hub that helps companies run make-or-break conversations with customers. It provides an email and ticketing system and brings together inbound and outbound communications.

The Best Features of Front

Source: Front

What Are Front’s Perks?

What Are Front’s Disadvantages?

What Are the Best Front Integrations?

Front’s marketplace offers integration with tools for automation, telephony, billing, feedback management, knowledge content, and logistics. On the top of the marketplace page, you’ll find Aircall, Asana, ClickUp, Microsoft Dynamics, Grammarly, and GitHub.

What Is Front’s, Price Tag?

Front comes with three paid plans and no free plans. Still, you can check the tool using a 7-day free trial.

Free/freemium plans

Not available

Paid plans

Source: Front

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Is Zoho Desk a Feasible Intercom Alternative?

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based help desk system that improves your business health with robust ticket management and omnichannel customer support. It provides automation and in-depth analytics to meet the needs of any scale. With Zoho Desk, you can streamline team collaboration, apply AI, and measure customer satisfaction. However, this software is more about ticketing than chat support.

What Is Zoho Desk Feature List?

Source: Zoho Desk

What Are the Best Capabilities in Zoho Desk?

What Are Zoho Desk’s Drawbacks?

Zoho Desk Integrations

To extend Zoho Desk’s functionality, you can integrate it with other Zoho apps like Zoho CRM or Zoho Projects, or numerous third-party apps. If your company offers phone support, you can streamline it with multiple Zoho telephony partners. The other apps include G-Suite, Slack, Salesforce, Intercom, Jira, Zapier, and more.

Is Zoho Desk Cheaper Than Intercom?

Free/freemium plans

Paid plans

Source: Zoho Desk

Ensuring a Painless Zoho Desk Data Import

Start your journey to Zoho Desk today. Try our free Demo migration today and upgrade your customer service effortlessly.

Why Is HubSpot Chat Among Intercom Alternatives?

With the HubSpot Chat widget, you can provide customers instant support and save the interactions for further contextual communication. You can customize the widget to the feel of your brand and enable a great customer experience using personalized messages and chat routing.

What Are HubSpot Chat Use Cases?

Source: HubSpot

What Are the Benefits of HubSpot Chat Over Intercom?

What Features Are Missing in HubSpot Chat?

HubSpot Chat Integrations

HubSpot’s App Ecosystem offers over 1,000 apps for various business departments, including marketing, customer service, sales, productivity, and finance. The free HubSpot integrations include Google Ads, Facebook, Gmail, Outlook, and Slack.

Is HubSpot Chat Free?

HubSpot Chat is a free live chat tool unless you want to integrate it with the Marketing Hub to get more features. If yes, the price starts at $45/month for 1,000 marketing contacts and reaches $3,600/month for 10,000 marketing contacts.

Source: HubSpot

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The Takeaway

And so concludes our list of best Intercom alternatives. With so many solutions out there, picking a communication system can be tiresome. We hope our list of Intercom alternatives will prove to be useful, but in the meantime, this is all we have for now. If you feel like any of these alternative tools suit you, but you need to move your old data to start working on them, we can help. Just test drive our Migration Wizard and see how your customer service data will look on your new platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

You can switch to Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, or HubSpot Service Hub from Intercom. Those help desk solutions are more scalable compared to Intercom. They all have a wide range of features and supported integrations.

HelpScout is a great Intercom competitor for support and sales. As for CRM solutions, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, and HubSpot Service Hub are great options.

Intercom is a help desk solution aimed at managing the workflows of customer support teams. Plus, it enables agents to communicate with customers with behavior-driven messages and personalized content personally.


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