10 Best Intercom Alternatives & Competitors

You’re looking for an Intercom alternative or else you wouldn’t have landed on this page.

Good news! We’ve got a list of 10 Intercom chat alternatives waiting for you. Our team has created a quick handbook that will help you find the best alternative to Intercom Chat. With our short guide, you will explore the following:

A Quick Look at Top Alternatives for Intercom Chat

What is Intercom Live Chat?

Intercom, a live chat tool, helps businesses interact with website visitors in real-time. This customer support live chat software features in-app messaging, integration marketplace, and conversational chatbots. It offers detailed customization settings that help its users create a chat widget look as per their expectations.

With this live chat software, your agents can proactively reach out to customers and learn about their pain points faster. It even helps you create a centralized inbox that captures communication requests from all the platforms.

Now, if the software offers such amazing features, then why look for its alternative? Let’s find out in the next section.

Why Search for Intercom Chat Alternatives?

We explored and found the top five reasons why a lot of businesses wish to switch from Intercom. We’ve listed them for you below.

• They don’t have a strong customer support process. Many of their customers have repeatedly complained about how the Intercom team reached out to them late or did not reply to their messages. This has provoked a lot of their customers to leave the brand.
• Intercom isn’t meant for businesses of all sizes. Their base package starts at $79/user/mon. It can be expensive for those who don’t have that kind of budget.
• The chat software also lacks robust reporting. Many customers have requested Intercom to add more reporting sections that give them a clear image of how the teams are performing.
• It can be a challenge for businesses to set up Intercom on their websites. One of the challenges that many business owners come across after subscribing to Intercom is its setup.
• Another drawback of using Intercom is that many customer messages don’t show up in its inbox. The agent has to click on a separate customer window to check all the messages and see if they missed out on something or not.

These drawbacks have helped us understand why many businesses search for Intercom live chat alternatives. These drawbacks can help you identify the right set of features that can help you find the best Intercom chat alternatives easily. In case you need a kickstart on the features, the section below will help you out.

Top 5 Features Intercom Live Chat Alternatives Must Have

Here’s a list of top features your business should consider when assessing Intercom live chat competitors.

• Identify Metrics That Help You Assess Performances

One of the first features you should look for in Intercom Chat alternatives is a detailed reports section with more in-depth metrics. With access to detailed reports, you can understand if your operators performed up to the mark. This will allow you to identify their knowledge gaps and train them accordingly.

• Short & Straightforward Setup Process

You would want to dive into the support process right away once the chat gets enabled on your website. That means you need to identify whether the setup process is smooth or not when searching for an alternative to the Intercom system.

• Builds a Conversational Chatbot

Intercom is mostly advertised for its ability to help its users build a conversational chatbot for all purposes. So when you start your journey to replace Intercom, ensure that its competitor offers you the same ability. To set up a conversational chatbot, check if the live chat software provides branching logic or AI-powered functionalities.

• Offers a Proactive Customer Service Experience

This may not sound like a feature, but it does play a crucial role in deciding whether one should opt for a specific service provider or not. There are multiple complaints from Intercom’s previous and existing customers that their issues were never resolved or the team reached out to them late. Considering this, you need to look for a service provider that offers prompt and proactive support to its customers.

• Get a Chat Tool that Fits Your Budget

 

Pricing matters to many businesses who wish to switch from Intercom. That’s because they find Intercom to be an expensive tool as it starts from $79/mon. If that’s something that doesn’t fit your bill, then we’d recommend you to check out affordable options yet competent live chat software.

With these features, you can find a suitable alternative to your Intercom system. However, we’ve built a quick list for you to narrow down your options even further. We’ve used specific selection criteria to curate this list for you. Let’s understand these standards below.

Our Selection Criteria for Intercom Chat Alternatives

We followed through three prime selection criteria while building this list of Intercom alternatives for you. These include the following.

• Pricing

Since many people complained about how exorbitant Intercom is, we decided that one of our first criteria would be pricing. We wanted to make sure that people searching for alternatives to Intercom find an option that matches their budget.

• Customer Ratings

To understand the brand perception and experiences of existing and previous customers, we’ve referred to product ratings online. This has helped us list products as per their ratings. Please note that we’ve only compiled a list of products with an overall rating from 4.2-5.0.

• Word-of-Mouth or Customer Feedback

Another criterion we felt would help us curate this list of best Intercom alternatives was customer feedback. We’ve gone through case studies, online feedback and even monitored how many existing customers have readily shared a reference for all the tools.

With the help of these crucial factors, we were able to create a list of alternatives that’ll help your business choose the best option in the market. Let’s explore all the choices below.

What are the Best Intercom Alternatives?

We have created and listed some of the best Intercom alternatives for you below. You can find some of their core features, pros, cons, and complete pricing details.

Best Intercom Chat Alternatives

1. ProProfs Chat

ProProfs Chat is one of the best alternatives to Intercom. That’s because it offers a wide range of features and integrations to remain in power with its competitors in the market. What’s more, users can find new feature updates almost every month, therefore improving their experience with every chat.

You can also automate your support queue with the help of their chatbot feature. As an add-on, the chatbot will help you answer frequently asked questions, route visitors to the correct department, and create tickets in the absence of agents. This not only enables you to manage the support queue 24×7 but also avoids frequent operator burnouts.

On top of this, you can find access to 100+ customization features that will help you design a chat widget as per your requirements. Users will also find other beneficial features, like announcements, chat greetings, automatic routing, and more.

Top Five Features:

• Builds seamless support automation experience with a chatbot
• Offers instant, proactive support with chat greetings
• Announces upcoming updates, sales, discounts, and more
• Helps you escalate chats and even schedule callbacks
• Offers integration with 50+ popular platforms

Pros:

One of the most significant advantages of using ProProfs Chat is its in-depth reports. They have detailed information for visitor’s behavior, operator’s performance, and even for the chatbot’s performance. This helps businesses identify support shortcomings and improve their support process further.

Cons:

They should introduce more chatbot templates for their users. It will help them set up a chatbot in a matter of seconds rather than take minutes.

Pricing Plans:

• Essentials Plan: $10/user/mon
• Premium Plan: $15/user/mon
• Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

2. Zendesk Chat

Zendesk Chat, customer support and sales tool, is another option we recommend you check out. This live chat solution competes on multiple grounds with Intercom. It offers various integration options to its customers that can simplify the support process even further. It is even known for its chatbot functionality. It has helped its users manage incoming queries and make sure none goes unanswered.

What makes Zendesk Chat a valid alternative to Intercom is its ability to translate chats into 40 different languages. That means you can cater to customers from other regions worldwide and answer their questions with ease.

Top Five Features:

• Offers automatic chat routing to help you resolve customer issues
• Helps you set canned responses for frequently asked questions
• Integrates with native knowledge base and helpdesk
• Allows you to automate support requests via a chatbot
• Enables you to customize your branding in the chat widget

Pros:

We like how their live chat is available in 40 different languages. This helps businesses to send messages to their customers in their native language.

Cons:

They need to work on their customer service and support experience. They don’t take up cancellations on priority which may lead to deduction of subscription cost for a long time.

Pricing Plans:

• Suite Team Plan: $49/agent/mon
• Suite Growth Plan: $79/agent/mon
• Suite Professional Plan: $99/agent/mon

3. LiveChat

LiveChat is also one of our top picks for Intercom alternatives. You’ll see a range of feature options that will allow your agents to offer quick, spontaneous support to visitors in real time. These options include customer engagement features like eye-catchers, routing rules, targeted messages, and ticket assignment.

LiveChat is also known for its detailed reporting system that includes complete data summary, chat and agent reports, ticket reports, eCommerce reports, and much more. They even offer you the option to connect their live chat system with multiple messaging platforms. These messaging platforms include Facebook, SMS, email, WhatsApp Business, Apple Business Chat, and others.

Top Five Features:

• Automates incoming requests with its chatbot feature
• Routes chats to the correct department both automatically and manually
• Offers multiple chat widget customization options
• Delivers in-depth stats on how your agents are performing
• Offers 200+ integrations for improved support experience

Pros:

They have a chatbot that is perfect for any business size. They have multiple templates that allow you to create and set up a chatbot functionality on your website.

Cons:

LiveChat often has lag issues that have disappointed many of their customers repeatedly. Due to performance lag, it becomes difficult for their customers to offer real time support the right way.

Pricing Plans:

• Starter Plan: $16/user/mon
• Team Plan: $33/user/mon
• Business Plan: $50/user/mon
• Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

4. HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch, another Intercom alternative, offers a seamless live chat experience to its users and their customers. With a live chat tool like HelpCrunch, you can create saved responses to answer some commonly asked questions. You can even get a sneak peek into what your customers are typing. This will help your agents prepare an answer in advance.

Other than this, users can also find features like online status indication and notifications quite helpful. What’s more, it offers multi-product support. That means you can use HelpCrunch chat on desktops and mobile devices.

Top Five Features:

• Brings engagement to your website with an eye-catcher
• Improves proactiveness with chat triggers
• Captures lead with offline and pre-chat forms
• Helps agents process requests 5X faster with quick actions
• Offers chat widget customization and CSS styling options

Pros:

We like that HelpCrunch enables its customers to set up email marketing campaigns along with their live chat system. This gives their users the complete freedom to offer support and, at the same time, run a marketing campaign simultaneously.

Cons:

One of the consistent complaints we’ve gathered about HelpCrunch’s live chat is how their mobile app fails to notify their agents about incoming chats. This can be bad for those who wish to address customer complaints on the go.

Pricing Plans:

• Standard Plan: $12/member/mon
• Premium Plan: $20/member/mon
• Enterprise Plan: Chat with them

5. Drift

Drift, an automation support tool, is the perfect Intercom alternative that your business can consider. A lot of us are aware that Drift is known for its abilities in customer support automation. But just like Intercom, it offers live chat as a support solution to maintain a human touch during the entire conversation.

Like its chatbot, Drift’s live chat assists its users in reducing the sales cycle and help their customers find the best solution. What’s more, it allows you to personalize each conversation experience and enables agents to capture the data before the conversation starts. This helps them understand prospects and customers better. This way, they can take the discussion in the right direction and personalize solutions per customer’s needs.

Top Five Features:

• Brings support automation to life with a chatbot
• Easily syncs with your calendar to schedule callbacks
• Helps you test your chatbots for improved conversations
• Allows you to target the right audience
• Offers in-depth reports to understand how you are performing

Pros:

Drift’s ability to help its users create personalized interactions is one of the biggest advantages so far. Even though it uses automation at each step, it still allows its live chat users to add a personalized conversation feel for their customers.

Cons:

The feature names are too complex. They haven’t even explained them adequately. This has led many users to keep getting back to their support team explaining what specific features do for its customer.

Pricing Plans:

• Premium Plan: Request a quote
• Advanced Plan: Request a quote
• Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

6. Olark

Another alternative to Intercom that we believe you should give a try is Olark. It is a lot cheaper than Intercom and offers a list of features that can assist your business in building a delightful experience for customers. With Olark, you can reach out to customers and offer them a solution proactively.

Olark also offers in-depth information on how agents perform during a conversation and where they need to improve. This has helped many of their users identify support process loopholes and enhance the overall experience of their customers.

Top Five Features:

• Offers advanced reporting on agent’s performance
• Helps you secure comprehensive data on customers
• Assists you to secure customer data with advanced privacy settings
• Allows you to target the right customers with triggers
• Automates incoming support requests with a chatbot

Pros:

Simple interface and easy accessibility throughout the software is what makes Olark a better competitor to Intercom. That means users won’t be confused about where to find a certain feature in the software and focus on offering a simplified experience to their customers.

Cons:

They should enhance their file-sharing features for sure. Many users have complained that they can’t send images to customers during an ongoing chat, which has hampered their real-time experience.

Pricing Plans:

Starts at $29/seat/mon.

7. Acquire.io

Want to delight your customers digitally? Consider checking out Acquire.io. This live chat software claims to suffice the needs of modern businesses for customer support. You can come across a list of features to support the statement. From viewing customer chat history, easy routing to measuring active engagement, Acquire.io helps you do all of that.

Just like other live chat solutions in this list, Acquire.io also supports chatbot functionalities. With its chatbot, you can help your agents focus on queries that take more time to resolve. It will even allow you to route customers to the correct department automatically. The best part is, it needs no coding skills. That means all you have to do is enable it on your website, and you are ready to automate support queries hassle-free.

Top Five Features:

• Connect you with customers via video, voice & co-browsing
• Offers self-service options in the chat widget
• Automates your support work with chatbots
• Helps you share files during an ongoing chat
• Allows you to customize the chat widget

Pros:

It’s proactive and helps you engage with website visitors faster than you expect. That’s one of the aspects where it beats Intercom full and square.

Cons:

They don’t show the base price for their tool that’ll prepare their prospects about the kind of investment they need to make for its subscription. Their lack of clarity and transparency towards their prospects can be a drawback for those looking for an affordable Intercom alternative for their business.

Pricing Plans:

• Teams Plan: Request a quote
• Professional Plan: Request a quote
• Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

8. Freshworks

Freshworks brings a lot more to the table as it isn’t just a live chat service provider but also offers other customer support tools. It runs on the concept of one inbox system that can help you capture incoming support requests from different messaging platforms in one place. What’s more, it even supports self-service options where you can either embed a chatbot or integrate with a knowledge base to show relevant articles in the chat widget.

If that seems less, then surely its enterprise platform Neo will take you by surprise. It helps its users customize integrations with different platforms. This allows you to craft your support ecosystem hassle-free.

Top Five Features:

• Engages and captures customer queries on various messaging channels
• Offers live translation for messages in different languages
• Gives you in-depth visitor intel
• Allows your admins to perform a bulk action
• Helps you integrate with multiple platforms

Pros:

Freshworks brings multiple functionalities to its users. It offers a chatbot, ticketing system, and more with its live chat tool. What’s more, they have a free plan that helps you manage the support process with 100 agents.

Cons:

They don’t have an active support team that has caused inconvenience for their users. Freshworks needs to improve its customer service and support experience for its users to overcome this issue.

Pricing Plans:

• Free Plan: $0/100 agents/mon
• Growth Plan: $13.59/agent/mon
• Pro Plan: $38.07/agent/mon
• Enterprise Plan: $67.99/agent/mon

9. Chaport

Chaport is known for offering a combination of live chat, chatbot, and multichannel support. This comprehensive live chat solution helps you tackle incoming support queries in the absence of your agents and makes sure you never miss out on engagement opportunities. It even captures leads and allows you to customize each of their experiences with the information collected.

With Chaport, your agents can see what your customers are typing. This will help agents understand the customer’s pain points and respond to them faster. Other than that, agents can also join a group chat to help them offer a resolution to customers efficiently.

Top Five Features:

• Helps you create custom bots
• Offers a combination of knowledge base and answer bots
• Allows you to provide multilingual support to customers
• Offers messaging features like offline messages, notifications, & more
• Provides access to detailed reports

Pros:

Chaport is known for its splendid and proactive support process. They’ve reached out to their customers on time and offered instant solutions as well.

Cons:

Their app is not optimized for iPhone users. That means many of them face glitches during an ongoing conversation, which has led to hampering customer’s experience with the brand.

Pricing Plans:

• Free Plan: $0/operator/mon
• Premium Plan: $15/operator/mon
• Business Plan: $23/operator/mon
• Enterprise Plan: Request a quote

10. Tidio

Finally, the last Intercom alternative in the list is Tidio. It is known for helping its users slash down the response time and ensuring that each customer leaves with a solution. It gives you the option to customize its look and feel as per your needs. You can also track who is browsing your website and how much time they’ve spent on each page they’ve scanned.

After monitoring the results, your agents can proactively reach out to website visitors and offer them the solution they came looking for. It even allows you to automate support with the help of its chatbot system. It will help you provide 24×7 support even when your agents aren’t online.

Top Five Features:

• Helps you create canned responses
• Manages incoming chat flow with a chatbot
• Monitors incoming complaints with post-chat form
• Helps you integrate with third-party tools
• Captures support requests in the absence of agents with offline messages

Pros:

From a fantastic support team to their free plan, Tidio users can gain all these benefits easily. They are known for offering spontaneous support and ensuring that no query goes unanswered.

Cons:

They need to work on their reports. There are a few metrics that they miss out on which can prove beneficial to their users for improving the support process.

Pricing Plans:

• Free Plan: $0/mon
• Chatbots Plan: $39/mon
• Communicator Plan: $15/mon
• Mailing Plan: $25/mon

Complete Comparison of the Best Alternatives of Intercom Chat

While the information above helps you understand the ins and outs of every live chat software, we still believe that a quick comparison table will help you even further.

We’ve compared each of these Intercom alternatives to help you understand how they perform when it comes to core features.

Final Verdict: Which Intercom Live Chat Alternative Should You Choose?

After assessing all Intercom alternatives, we found that ProProfs Chat stands out as the final option.

When it comes to features, ProProfs Chat offers a bunch of them. Some of the popular features are inclusive of announcements, chat greetings, automatic routing, and more. It is also chatbot compatible. That means automating your support process won’t be an issue anymore.