What is Intercom & Why do you Need an Intercom Alternative?
Intercom is a comprehensive customer service solution that focuses on enhancing the customer experience through a combination of automation and human support.
The goal of Intercom is to optimize customer interactions by integrating automated processes and human assistance, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction and cost reduction.
Top Features:
- In-context support through Messenger, allowing customers to choose between self-serve options or live assistance
- Automated support to reduce team workload
- Messenger-first ticketing solution to treat customers as individuals, providing personalized resolutions for diverse inquiries
- AI bot Fin makes resolving support questions faster
- Personalized approach using live, first-party insights to craft efficient, effective, and engaging interaction
But if Intercom has such fantastic features, why do you need an alternative? Let’s see why:
- Customer reviews show that the menu layouts, API, and finding the message trail of a particular string on Intercom can be confusing.
- The reporting and managing of the conversations might not be very user-friendly.
- Intercom’s customer support may take a few days to answer.
- Pricing may not be very budget-friendly, especially for small businesses, as its complex pricing structure might appear unscalable and unpredictable.
Talking about pricing, you might want to see Intercom’s pricing plans:
- Starter: Starting from $74 per month, this plan provides Basic features for getting started with customer messaging.
- Pro: With the Pro plan, you can get customized pricing based on specific business needs, like advanced features to accommodate a growing customer base.
- Premium: If you need a comprehensive set of features for optimizing customer engagement, you can get a custom price for the Premium plan.
Now that we know what Intercom is and why you may need an Intercom alternative, let’s see our options.
13 Best Intercom Alternatives
In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the top alternatives to Intercom, offering you a range of affordable and powerful solutions to enhance your customer interactions.
1. LiveChatAI
LiveChatAI lets you create unique AI bots for your website by providing the content you want the bot to be trained on.
It uses ChatGPT's language abilities to have quality conversations with visitors. It can especially be beneficial for e-commerce, where AI can act like a personalized shopping assistant, engaging customers and enhancing their experience.
Top Features:
- Can be incorporated into your website using the embed script
- Human-agent hand-off option & live chat feature
- Supports 95 languages and offers 24/7 support
- Can be implemented across various channels
- GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 power
Pricing:
LiveChatAI offers a forever-free plan if you want to try it first.
It offers 3 pricing plans: Basic, Pro, and Expert.
- Basic: Designed for personal use, this plan costs $39 per month with one seat for live chat. It provides 1 AI bot, 5 million character data import.
- Pro: Aimed at small businesses, the Pro plan costs $89 per month. It offers more advanced features like 25 AI bots, 10 million character data import.
- Expert: Tailored for experts, and customer service departments, the Expert plan is priced at $389 monthly. You can also remove LiveChatAI branding on this plan.
2. Help Scout
Help Scout is a customer support platform designed to assist businesses in delivering efficient and effective customer service.
It offers a range of tools and features to improve customer interactions, streamline support processes, and enhance team collaboration.
Top Features:
- Mailbox to manage customer emails and inquiries in one central mailbox
- Workflows to automate and streamline your customer support processes
- Knowledge base to empower customers to find answers on their own
- Reporting to gain insights into your support operations
- Live chat to engage with customers in real-time
Pricing:
Help Scout offers three pricing plans: Standard, Plus, and Pro.
- Standard Plan: Designed for growing teams, the Standard plan costs $20 per user per month, billed annually. It allows a maximum of 25 users who are members of your Help Scout team.
- Plus Plan: Aimed at growing teams as well, the Plus plan costs $40 per user per month, billed annually. This plan has everything in the Standard plan and advanced permissions.
- Pro Plan: Geared towards larger teams with 10 or more users, the Pro plan costs $65 per user per month, billed annually. It provides comprehensive support for teams that require significant scale and service.
G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Help Scout has 350+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 9.2
- Quality of Support: 9.1
- Ease of Setup: 9.1
3. Tidio
Tidio is a customer communication platform that offers live chat, chatbots, and support ticket management for businesses.
It provides various features and pricing plans to help businesses engage with their customers, provide support, and enhance their online presence.
Top Features:
- Offline messages and multilanguage chat
- Post-communication surveys
- 35+ e-commerce templates
- Tickets from chats to turn chat conversations into support tickets
- Auto solve to solve tickets when they’re done automatically
Pricing:
Tidio offers a free plan with 50 live chat conversations, 100 chatbot triggers, and unlimited tickets.
It also has various pricing plans for its services:
- Starter Plan: Priced at $29 USD per month, this plan offers 3 seats and 100 live chat conversations.
- Communicator Plan: Priced at $25 USD/mo per seat, this plan allows you to take Shopify-specific action from the chat widget.
- Chatbots Plan: Starting from $29 USD monthly, this plan offers 3 seats. You can also increase the chatbot triggers for a tailored price in this plan.
You can also get Chatbots & Communicator plans together as the Bundled Solution plan.
- Tidio+: Starting from $394 USD monthly, this plan offers fully-customized features.
G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Tidio has 1400+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 9.4
- Quality of Support: 9.4
- Ease of Setup: 9.3
4. Crisp
Crisp is an all-in-one customer support platform that facilitates instant connections between businesses and their customers.
It offers a range of evolving tools that help companies harness the power of customer conversations to drive growth.
Top Features:
- Chatbot for automated conversations
- Ticketing system to optimize customer support operations
- CRM capabilities to tailor interactions
- Shared inbox to promote collaboration and teamwork
- Knowledge base to provide instant solutions to customer queries
Pricing:
You can try any of Crisp’s flan for free for 14 days. It offers 3 pricing plans:
- Basic: This is a forever-free plan for personal websites and anyone who wants a basic chat to communicate with visitors. The Basic plan includes 2 seats.
- Pro: This plan costs €25 monthly per workspace. It includes 4 seats and is designed for early-stage startups to improve customer relationships.
- Unlimited: Including 20 seats, this plan costs €95 and is ideal for companies looking for a full-featured solution to communicate with customers.
- Enterprise:** You can also go for the Enterprise plan and book a demo if you need custom solutions.
G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Crisp has 100+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 9.1
- Quality of Support: 9.0
- Ease of Setup: 8.9
5. Drift
Drift, founded in 2015, introduced Conversational Marketing to adapt to the shift in B2B sales toward buyer-controlled processes.
Using AI-powered tools, Drift helps businesses connect with potential customers through personalized conversations, aiming to enhance lead quality and foster lasting customer relationships.
Top Features:
- Real-time dashboard to improve customer experience
- AI bot deflection to answer any question at any time
- Live chat feature
- Custom chatbots
- Estimated wait time and response timer
Pricing:
Drift offers three pricing plans: Premium, Advanced, and Enterprise.
- Premium: Designed for small businesses, this plan provides the necessary conversational tools for business growth starting at $2,500 per month, billed annually.
- Advanced: Focusing on engaging audiences using personalized messages and streamlining pipeline growth, this plan is custom priced.
- Enterprise: Geared towards scaling personalization and pipeline generation across the entire customer lifecycle, you can get custom pricing for this plan.
G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Drift has 1000+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 8.7
- Quality of Support: 8.8
- Ease of Setup: 8.4
6. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a comprehensive customer communication management platform that aids businesses in efficiently handling interactions across multiple channels like phone, email, live chat, SMS, and social media.
It streamlines call distribution, promotes personalized service, and offers in-app call management for improved customer relationship building.
Top Features:
- Response editor to craft and send the best response
- Teams to make it easier for your employees to collaborate
- Mobility to manage tickets even when you're on mobile
- Ticket assignment to ensure that every ticket is automatically assigned
- Integrations to connect Zoho Desk with other software your business uses
Pricing:
You can try Zoho Desk for 15 days for free.
Zoho Desk provides three pricing tiers: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise.
- Standard: Aiming at augmenting customer service efforts, the Standard plan costs €12 per user per month, billed annually.
- Professional: Priced at €20 per user per month, billed annually, this plan provides simplified collaboration and process automation tools suitable for fast-growing teams.
- Enterprise: With advanced AI and customization capabilities for high-level support, the Enterprise plan costs €35 per user per month, billed annually.
G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Zoho Desk has 4500+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 8.5
- Quality of Support: 8.3
- Ease of Setup: 8.2
7. LiveChat
LiveChat is a comprehensive customer service platform that offers online chat and web analytics capabilities.
It is designed to enhance customer service and drive sales for businesses with a user-friendly design.
Top Features:
- Integration with various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, SMS
- Reports of chats, agents, customers, and e-commerce analytics
- E-commerce integrations to enhance the shopping experience
- Customizable agent profiles, chat widgets, and accessibility features
- Canned responses and file sharing
Pricing:
LiveChat offers four pricing plans: Starter, Team, Business, and Enterprise.
- Starter: Designed for small offices, this plan costs $20 per month per agent, billed annually. It provides basic live chat functionality.
- Team: Aimed at businesses with a full-time support team, the Team plan costs $41 per month per agent, billed annually. It offers more advanced features than the Starter plan.
- Business: Geared toward customer service departments, the Business plan is priced at $59 per month per agent, billed annually. It includes comprehensive features for managing customer interactions.
- Enterprise: Tailored for Fortune 500 companies, the Enterprise plan involves an individual contract with annual billing. Pricing details can be obtained by learning more about this plan on the LiveChat website.
G2 Rating: 4.5/5
LiveChat has 700+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 9.3
- Quality of Support: 9.1
- Ease of Setup: 9.0
8. Front
Front is a customer operations platform that blends help desk efficiency with email familiarity, aiding teams in support, sales, and account management.
By centralizing messages, automating workflows, and enabling real-time collaboration, Front enhances customer service for businesses, fostering efficiency and growth.
Top Features:
- Advanced collaboration tools to enhance team coordination and productivity
- Workflow automation to streamline communication management
- Analytics to drive informed decision-making with insights
- Omnichannel inbox to simplify communication management
- Integrations & API to connect and synchronize customer data, context, and communication channels with external systems
Pricing:
Front has a Starter plan for smaller teams that must quickly gain control over message overload across channels. This plan costs $19 USD/seat/mo.
The other plans of Front go like:
- Growth: Priced at $59 USD/seat/month, billed annually, this plan includes standard features with a minimum of 5 seats.
- Scale: Priced at $99 USD per monthly seat when billed annually. It is designed for teams requiring personalized workflows, strong team oversight, and top-tier enterprise security.
- Premier: Focused on teams desiring comprehensive services and partnerships to meet extensive enterprise requirements, this plan costs $229 USD per seat per month.
G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Front has 1800+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 9.2
- Quality of Support: 9.2
- Ease of Setup: 8.7
9. HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot Service Hub is a unified customer service solution that centralizes data and channels, empowering teams to meet modern customer expectations with automation and self-service options.
When integrated with HubSpot CRM, it enables more efficient support and ties service efforts to business success, simplifying company growth.
Top Features:
- Conversational tools engage with customers
- Shared inbox to streamline the communication within your team
- Help desk automation to boost efficiency and reduce response times
- Knowledge base to empower customers to access self-service solutions
- Help desk automation to boost efficiency and reduce response times
Pricing:
Hubspot Service Hub offers lets businesses start with free tools and upgrade as they grow with plans like Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.
- Starter: This plan starts at $45/month, including everything in the free plan, conversation routing, and simple ticket automation.
- Professional: Starting at $450/month, the Professional plan includes everything in the Starter, help desk automation, and knowledge base.
- Enterprise: Starting at $1,200/month, the Enterprise plan includes features like playbooks, user roles, and conversation intelligence.
G2 Rating: 4.4/5
HubSpot Services Hub has 2000+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 8.6
- Quality of Support: 8.9
- Ease of Setup: 8.2
10. Zendesk Suite
Zendesk Support Suite provides businesses with a unified platform to engage in natural conversations with customers across various channels while maintaining a seamless experience and consolidating interactions for agents.
It enhances customer support by enabling multi-channel communication and context management.
Top Features:
- Multichannel personalization to engage customers across various communication channels
- Efficient issue resolution utilizing AI and automation
- Self-service help to empower customers to find solutions independently
- Unified customer view to access customer data in a centralized agent workspace
- Ticket management for organized tracking and efficient resolution
Pricing:
Zendesk Suit offers a free trial with access to all features on the Support Professional plan. Its Basic Plans start at $19/agent/mo.
Other plans go like:
- Suite Team: This plan is available for $55 per agent per month, and it offers basic features and support, suitable for teams.
- Suite Growth: For this plan, the pricing is set at $89 per monthly agent for 5 agents. It includes more advanced features and support compared to the Team plan.
- Suite Professional: Suite Professional costs $115 per agent monthly. This plan is designed to provide high-level features and support tailored for professional teams.
You can also go for the Suite Enterprise to get a customized plan to meet specific enterprise requirements.
G2 Rating: 4.3/5
Zendesk Support Suite has 5700+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 8.5
- Quality of Support: 8.4
- Ease of Setup: 7.9
11. Freshdesk
Freshdesk, a product of Freshworks Inc., is a modern customer support software that converts inquiries from email, web, phone, chat, messaging, and social media into unified tickets.
With automation, AI capabilities, and integration with third-party tools, it streamlines support processes and provides insightful analytics for business growth.
Top Features:
- Integrated social management to manage the Facebook page within the helpdesk.
- Unified team inbox to track support from multiple channels.
- Agent collision prevention to avoid ticket duplication.
- SLA deadline control to set response/resolution timeframes.
- Smart ticket fields to auto-suggest for categorization.
Pricing:
Freshdesk offers a free plan for up to 10 agents to get started.
The other plans include:
- Growth Plan: Provides intuitive support for growing businesses at $15 per agent per month when billed annually.
- Pro Plan: Offers advanced automation for high performance at $49 per agent per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise Plan: Includes full features and bots for enterprise-level support at $79 per agent per month, billed annually.
G2 Rating: 4.4/5
Freshdesk has 2,900+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 8.8
- Quality of Support: 8.8
- Ease of Setup: 8.6
12. Tawk.to
Tawk.to is a messaging and customer management software that facilitates customer communication and transactions.
With a high customer satisfaction score, it offers real-time monitoring, integrated ticketing, and a self-help center, all while being compatible with various platforms and devices.
Top Features:
- Supports communication in 27 languages
- Communication tools to provide versatile communication channels
- Collaboration with features like group messaging and agent-to-agent messaging
- Management and customization with unlimited agents and provides detailed reporting and analytics
- Integration and automation with over 100 integrations and automated triggers.
Pricing:
Tawk.to offers free pricing for its live chat service. They also provide additional features for a monthly fee.
They offer options like hiring live agents starting at $1 per hour, virtual assistants starting at $7 per hour, and removing Tawk.to branding for $12 per month.
In the future, Tawk.to is expected to introduce paid features such as real-time chat translations and in-chat payments.
G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Tawk.to has 150+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 9.2
- Quality of Support: 8.6
- Ease of Setup: 9.2
13. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a customer support and live chat software offering an all-in-one help desk solution, combining features like omnichannel communication, real-time chat, call center, and customer service portal.
It delivers personalized interactions through segmentation, automation, CRM, analytics, and a robust knowledge base.
Top Features:
- Agent collision detection
- Automated ticket distribution
- Real-time chat feature with the knowledge base
- Ticketing system to streamline all customer communication in one place
- Ability to set up a call center
Pricing:
LiveAgent offers four pricing plans: Small, Medium, Large, and Enterprise.
You can also try all plans for 7 days or for 30 days with a company email.
- Small: Small plan is a good starting point for small businesses. This plan is available for a monthly fee of $15 or a discounted rate of $9/mo when billed annually.
- Medium: Ideal for medium-sized businesses, this plan provides a balanced set of features for comprehensive customer support, priced at $35/mo for monthly billing or $29/mo when billed annually.
- Large: This is an all-inclusive plan that comes with high limits and full capabilities to meet extensive support requirements. It costs $59/mo and $49 when billed annually.
- Enterprise: For enterprises seeking a comprehensive solution, this plan is available at a monthly fee of $85/mo and $69/mo when billed annually.
G2 Rating: 4.5/5
LiveAgent has 1400+ reviews on G2, and the scores go like this:
- Ease of Use: 8.9
- Quality of Support: 9.1
- Ease of Setup: 8.7
Before You Leave…
So, that’s it! While Intercom offers a range of features and benefits, there are several compelling alternatives to Intercom that cater to diverse business needs and preferences.
By evaluating options, you can find the perfect fit for your organization's unique requirements.
Remember, the decision to switch from Intercom to an alternative should be based on a thorough assessment of your specific objectives, team dynamics, and customer engagement goals.
Each alternative brings its own strengths to the table, enabling you to forge deeper connections with your audience and elevate your customer experience. Happy exploring!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can you Use Intercom for Free?
No, you can’t. However, you can try it for free for 14 days. It will require your credit card info but once you decide to cancel after 14 days, you won’t be charged.
2. Is Intercom Open Source?
No, Intercom is not open source. So it might not be a good option if you’re looking for open-source customer support software.
3. Can I Migrate my Existing Data from Intercom to an Alternative Platform?
Yes, many Intercom alternatives offer data migration tools or services to help you transition smoothly.
The process generally involves exporting data from Intercom and importing it into the new platform.
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