The 12 Best Intercom Alternatives and Competitors in 2024
Over the past few years, Intercom has made quite a few changes. Previously, the tool was most aligned with sales and marketing and was seen primarily as a messaging platform. However, it has since made strides to align more with the needs of customer service teams. Additions like customer profiles and the ability to add notes to conversations are both examples of how they’re trying to add more functionality for support.
However, the most significant change they’ve made is their heavy focus on AI, even billing themselves as an “AI-first customer service platform.” Tools like their AI-assistant Fin certainly seem impressive. However, a lot of their most impactful features are limited to their higher-cost plans, making them out of reach for many.
Even though they may have a heavier AI focus than some, there are quite a few options available that offer similar functionality, sometimes at a more competitive price. With that in mind, we put together a list of 12 Intercom alternatives to consider.
The 12 best Intercom alternatives for 2024
If supporting customers and transparent pricing are your priorities, here are the 12 best Intercom alternatives to check out:
Help Scout
HelpCrunch
Olark
HubSpot Service Hub
Zendesk
Freshdesk
LiveChat
Tidio
Crisp
Zoho Desk
LiveAgent
Hiver
1. Help Scout
Best Intercom alternative for complete customer support.
Help Scout is a complete customer communication platform. Built and used by support professionals, it has all the tools teams need to do their best work and deliver a top-notch customer experience. Its quick setup, intuitive interface, and suite of support-centric tools make it a hit for teams of all sizes.
Inbox
Help Scout’s shared inbox makes it easy to collaborate on customer support issues across multiple channels (email, chat, social media) and ensures the customer experience is seamless no matter how your customers prefer to connect.
Features include:
The ability to send private notes and tag a team member when working with customers.
A searchable library of saved replies to streamline responses.
Tags, custom fields, and automatic workflows to keep you organized and increase productivity.
A customer management feature that allows you to view key customer details from within the conversation window.
Inbox also has an easily navigable user interface that makes it quick and painless for your team to jump in and start supporting customers.
Messaging and self-service
Help Scout is also great for customer engagement. Beacon, the platform's multi-purpose web widget, can be placed on any website or within your app, allowing you to communicate with customers and clients without disturbing their experience. Beacons can be used for live chat, for sending targeted, proactive messages like announcements or surveys, and to provide access to self-service opportunities.
With Help Scout, you can easily create a knowledge base with documentation that lets customers search for and learn about different features all on their own. Your knowledge base is customizable to ensure it matches your brand and website’s overall look and feel to create a cohesive experience. Plus, as an added bonus, it can be accessed by your customers at any time through a well-placed Beacon.
AI tools
Make conversation handoffs easier with AI summarize, a handy AI tool that can create a bulleted summary of any conversation with just one click. On-demand summaries allow teammates to get up to speed more quickly without getting bogged down by long email threads.
AI assist is an editor tool that can help your team compose better customer responses and support articles. The feature can shorten or lengthen text, adjust its tone to be friendlier or more professional, check for spelling and grammar errors, and even translate the copy into other languages like French, Spanish, or Japanese.
AI drafts can write entire responses using past conversations and content from your knowledge base articles. Support team members can review the drafts for accuracy and make edits as needed or simply send the generated response, saving time and getting customers responses in record time.
AI answers is a new feature that lets your customers ask an AI assistant a question from any Beacon and receive a specific answer based on your Docs site content within seconds. The feature also links to relevant support articles in case the customer needs more information. Currently, AI answers is in the testing phase, but keep an eye out for further announcements!
Mobile apps and integrations
Help Scout offers both Android and iOS apps, making it easier to review customer emails and provide support on the go via a smartphone or other portable devices. The platform also integrates with other popular software in your technology stack such as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot, bug and issue tracking tools like Jira, and ecommerce software like Shopify, making it easier to collaborate with others across your business.
Analytics
Measure success and make data-driven decisions with Help Scout reports. Track metrics like conversation volume, keep an eye on Docs performance, or track customer satisfaction and feedback to identify areas for improvement. Want to track something else? No problem! Use tags and custom fields to report on what matters most to you.
Support
Another way that Help Scout can make a difference in how you connect with customers is through support. We offer 24/6 support with team members based all over the world. We also have helpful resources like live classes, blog content, ebooks, and a robust help center, ensuring that no matter what country, location, or area you’re in, we’ll be there to help you succeed.
Compared to Intercom, Help Scout is extremely affordable, with many of the same tools at a more competitive price point. If your focus is on providing quality support to your customers, then Help Scout is a smart choice.
Looking to switch to Help Scout from Intercom? Our platform’s data migration capabilities don’t require any IT involvement, making it easy to bring your customer data and conversation history to Help Scout.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $22/user per month.
2. HelpCrunch
Best Intercom alternative for multi-channel messaging.
HelpCrunch is another Intercom competitor to consider. Much like Intercom and Help Scout, HelpCrunch allows agents to easily manage customer interactions across all of your channels from a single tool. Speaking of channels, aside from email and live chat, HelpCrunch supports tons of messaging platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. You can even add Telegram and Viber chatbots to the mix.
Besides conversation management, HelpCrunch also has email marketing and automated messaging tools as well as a knowledge base builder to help customers find helpful information without needing to contact support. AI-wise, Help Crunch is in the process of rolling out AI features. The first is their AI-powered writing assistant that can help with your copy’s spelling, grammar, tone, length, and translation.
If HelpCrunch seems like the right choice for you, they also offer free data migration from other popular help desks like Intercom and Zendesk.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $12/member per month.
3. Olark
Best Intercom alternative for stand-alone live chat.
If you’re looking for chat software that can help engage website visitors, Olark is a great choice. You can customize your chat experience to match your brand guidelines, grab important customer info upfront with pre-chat surveys, and when your team is offline, they have chatbots to help respond to customer queries.
If you’re intimidated by creating your own chatbot flows, Olark will build them for you! If you choose to pay for Olark’s CoPilot program, their team will build bots catered to your business’ needs and use cases.
Other Olark features include automatic targeted messaging, integration with other tools in your tech stack, in-depth reporting capabilities, and searchable chat transcripts, ensuring that they can be easily referenced in the future.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $29/seat per month.
4. HubSpot Customer Platform or HubSpot Service Hub
Best Intercom alternative for large businesses who are already HubSpot users.
HubSpot is a popular martech tool with a plethora of features for SaaS and other online businesses. HubSpot’s all-in-one suite of tools, HubSpot Customer Platform, includes software for landing page creation, lead generation, email marketing automation, customer support, sales prospecting, operations, and more.
This is why HubSpot makes sense as an Intercom alternative for large brands who are already active within the HubSpot ecosystem. All of the tools integrate with each other, and you can keep all of your customer comms in one place.
However, if you aren’t a current HubSpot customer and are just interested in a customer support tool, you can sign up specifically for their service offering, Service Hub. Both products have a freemium option and paid plans that start at $15 per seat.
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $15/seat per month. Learn about other tools similar to HubSpot.
5. Zendesk
Best Intercom alternative for AI-first enterprise companies.
Zendesk is a well-known customer service software solution and probably the most robust tool on this list, making it a great Intercom competitor for enterprise companies focused on scalability.
When you sign up, you get access to a shared inbox that can track SMS, voice, email, and social. There is also a live chat solution, access to its knowledge base builder (Guide), the ability to create a community forum or customer portal, workflows and triggers to help automate mundane tasks, macros (saved templates) for responding quickly to FAQs, reporting dashboards, access to tons of integrations, and more.
Much like Intercom, Zendesk is an example of a company that has made a strong push toward AI. They offer a virtual agent, agent assist features, AI-powered ticket routing, and even tools for identifying content gaps in your knowledge base. While AI-first isn’t for everyone, if it is for you, then Zendesk is a good option.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $19/agent per month.
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6. Freshdesk
Best Intercom alternative for call center support.
If Zendesk isn’t the right tool for you but you want an alternative to Intercom that has a similar vibe, you should consider Freshdesk.
Freshdesk plans offer access to help desk ticketing software that can help you manage communication across just about any channel. For teams that are focused on voice, such as call center teams, you can even add on Freshcaller, the company’s phone solution. With Freshcaller, you can buy a phone number right from the tool and manage calls using helpful features like call transferring, queue callback, and IVR (phone trees).
In addition, Freshdesk has a strong AI component in Freddy AI. Freddy helps power chatbots, provide agent support via generative AI, and even provide insights into analytics. For Freshcaller users, Freddy can also power speech-enabled IVR experiences.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $15/agent per month. Learn about other tools similar to Freshdesk.
7. LiveChat
Best Intercom alternative for chat automation.
Looking for an Intercom alternative that is a bit more budget friendly? LiveChat offers features for support, sales, and marketing, making it a similar tool to Intercom — but for a fraction of the cost.
LiveChat comes with tools for reporting, a ticketing solution, routing rules, AI-powered agent assistance, and more. Its live chat tool has a lot to offer as well, from automation and canned responses to chat transfers and personalization.
One thing to note about LiveChat products is that they usually need to be purchased separately. You need LiveChat for chats, HelpDesk for ticketing, KnowledgeBase for self-service, and ChatBot for bot support. However, with the recent push toward AI, the tool is now promoting a bundle consisting of LiveChat and ChatBot together. The idea is that you can use bots for routine customer inquiries, giving your human agents more time to focus on complex questions.
While the bundle may not fit into the “smaller budget” category, with plans starting at $72 per month ($20/person for LiveChat; $52 for ChatBot), if you’re focused on chat support and automation, it could be worth it.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $20/person per month. Learn about other tools similar to LiveChat.
8. Tidio
Best Intercom alternative for video chat.
Tidio’s easy-to-use interface makes it a great tool for quick setup within your customer support and marketing teams. In fact, Tidio boasts that teams can easily get started within five minutes!
While the platform’s strength is definitely chat, you can also use Tidio to manage your email as well as messaging channels like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. If you’re interested in live video chat, Tidio has you covered there, too. You can easily connect with prospects and existing customers through video, helping you build better customer relationships.
For teams more focused on AI-powered chatbots like Intercom’s Fin, Tidio’s Lyro AI Chatbot product might also be a good choice; these plans start at $32.50 per month. If AI is important to your strategy, definitely make a point of looking at both options and their pricing plans when making your decision.
Price: Free plan available. Paid live chat plans start at $24.17 per month.
9. Crisp
Best Intercom alternative for startups and small businesses.
Crisp is a great tool for startups and small businesses due to its completely free plan, simple interface, and robust feature set.
Crisp’s top features include co-browsing, a CRM, a shared inbox, a chat widget with audio and video chat options, chatbots, a ticketing system, a knowledge base, mobile apps for on-the-go support, and more. Plus, it supports a number of integrations with popular platforms like Slack, Zapier, Salesforce, and WhatsApp.
If your interest in Intercom was sparked because of its AI tools, Crisp is starting to roll out improvements to its chatbot experience, incorporating all of the new AI tech that’s come about over the last couple of years. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for AI functionality at a lower price point.
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $25/month per workspace. Learn about other tools similar to Crisp.
10. Zoho Desk
Best Intercom alternative for sales-focused teams.
Zoho Desk is a support-focused offering from the Zoho suite of products. Zoho’s CRM platform is a popular sales tool, making its help desk software an ideal solution for sales-centric teams who can benefit from the entire suite of tools.
Zoho’s support features include ticket management, automation, a knowledge base builder, and omnichannel communication. It’s also another option for those looking to create community forums to augment their self-service options and to create more customer engagement.
When it comes to AI, Zoho’s Zia has a lot to offer those seeking an alternative to Intercom. It powers chatbots to help with customer requests, automatically tags tickets to help with organization, performs sentiment analysis, notifies your team of unusual activity in the queue, and more.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $7/agent per month. Learn about other tools similar to Zoho Desk.
11. LiveAgent
Best Intercom alternative for gamification.
LiveAgent is another Intercom alternative you might want to consider if you’re in the market for call center software. It has built-in call center support, multiple customer communication channels (chat, email, social, etc.) SLA management, audit logs, and more.
Another unique feature that might be of interest is LiveAgent’s gamification capability. If one of the ways your team stays motivated is through healthy competition, the platform’s leaderboard, badges, and agent levels might make LiveAgent worth a look.
If AI is a must for your team, LiveAgent also offers an AI assistant powered by ChatGPT to help with text enhancement and reply generation.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $9/agent per month.
12. Hiver
Best Intercom alternative for Gmail or Google Collaborative Inbox users
Hiver is a little different than the other help desk tools on this list. It’s essentially a Gmail extension that gives teams help desk capabilities, but it isn’t a stand-alone product, per se. With it you’re able to have a shared inbox and assign requests to different support agents, offer live chat, and create a knowledge base for self service — tasks you’re not normally able to do in Gmail.
The tool also includes collaboration features like internal notes and the ability to make approval workflows. They’ve also added a few basic AI features like the ability to summarize a customer interaction, auto-close conversations with a thank you, and suggest responses to agents using pre-written responses through their bot, Harvey.
While you can do some of these things in Google Collaborative Inbox, Hiver takes things further, making it a great starter platform for those ready to make the leap to a help desk.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $19/user per month. Learn about other tools similar to Hiver.
What to look for in an Intercom alternative
Intercom is a powerful tool that can bring a lot of value to some support teams. However, if you’ve found it’s not the right solution for your business needs, there are a few features we think you should look for in any alternative you consider.
AI access at a lower price point
Arguably, Intercom’s most attractive features are their AI tools like Fin, but access to those tools comes with a hefty price tag — a drawback for most business owners. Full access runs $139/agent per month, and some features have additional usage fees. There are a lot of options on the market that offer similar levels of functionality for a fraction of that price. So, it may be worth looking around if affordability is a priority for your team.
Ease of use
Flashy features don’t mean a lot if the tool is troublesome to use. Look for tools that have a quick setup and are also intuitive for agents to use. You could even choose to look for options with trials to get a better perspective on what works best for you.
Stable pricing
Most of Intercom’s tools are covered through the monthly subscription cost. However, their Fin AI agent — a bot that answers requests autonomously — is subject to additional volume-based pricing. Each “resolution” Fin AI agent completes costs an additional $0.99. Fin AI Copilot, an AI inbox assistant for agents, is free for the first 10 tickets per agent, but then it requires an additional per-agent fee.
These are just the AI add-ons — features like their proactive support bundle and certain channels like phone, SMS, and WhatsApp all have additional cost implications.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with usage-based pricing or charging more for premium features, but when you do a mix of all of these strategies at the same time, cost becomes confusing and unpredictable. Their pricing calculator helps, but it’s still a lot to get your arms around when trying to make a decision.
Choose your top Intercom alternative
Ready to jump off the Intercom train? The 12 Intercom alternatives above provide great options for sales, marketing, and support.
Reflect on what your goals are and which features are most important to your company. Choosing the right platform is much easier when you know what you’re looking for. Then, it’s simply a case of reading reviews (try asking people in your network or using a site like G2!), testing different options, weighing the benefits, and seeing what works for your team.
If you’re interested in delivering more delightful experiences to your customers, we offer a free 15-day trial of Help Scout. Try our platform today!
Did you know that we also have this guide available in German and French?
Additional content was written by Michael Keenan, Jesse Short, and the team at Help Scout.
Alexa Ahrens
Alexa is a Content Strategist at Help Scout, where we make excellent customer service achievable for companies of all sizes. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
