To establish loyalty and retention, it is imperative for businesses to cater to every user’s needs. This requires a genuine understanding of customers’ motives on your platform and customizing the experience to their needs.
However, this can be challenging when different arms of the organization are sometimes on different pages. You must pick the right communication tool to create a productive and successful business environment.
Communication tools are applications designed to integrate with various mediums to facilitate effective collaboration and reduce potential errors in cross-communication. One such well-known tool is Intercom, which initially started as a chat widget that companies used to open up a direct communication channel with their customers.
It offers personalization through behavior-driven messages and transparency for ease of self-navigation, among other features such as product tours, email marketing, custom-built apps, and customer management.
Yet, it is important to note that a communication tool that helped one organization grow might not be equally rewarding for your company. As the saying goes, Just as one size doesn’t fit all, it is important to choose the right tool that suits the specific needs of your business.
Why Look for Options?#
While Intercom features like creating targeted marketing campaigns make it a strong contender in the current market, businesses have a specific combination of needs, which Intercom alternatives can provide.
Like many CRM tools with a part of customer support built into them, some business workflows look for powerful tools like Zendesk alternatives to fit into their product map best.
So, we have curated ten decisive Intercom alternatives covering what’s in the market, top features, and price points to help you make the most appropriate decision for your work style.
Alternatives to Intercom#
DevRev#
When we discuss valuing a customer’s voice, no one does it better than DevRev. It is a product-led support platform that connects developers to customers directly and helps organizations become customer and product-centric.
One of the biggest advantages of using DevRev is the fact that the platform connects customer conversations to tickets and issues tied to product features that do not exist with the other alternatives.
With DevRev, since the developers are directly connected to the customers’ feedback and tickets, it helps better prioritize the product roadmap across the organization. It enables companies to attain a faster product market fit.
Top Features:
PLuG Widget - Insert a conversation widget into the product with a few lines of code, engage with users in real time, and provide self-service resources from the knowledge base powered by AI and machine learning.
Trails - A visual map of product capabilities and features and how they are connected to APIs, microservices, customers, tickets, and issues.
Vistas - Create a view of the work and customers based on your specific requirement and then share them with your co-workers to collaborate in real time.
Pricing:
Pricing starts at $9.99 per user per month. Users can get started for free with no credit card and can use the platform for free for a few months.
Tawk.to#
Tawk is a live chat software that users have rated highly for its impressive features, like offline forms, visitor tracking, customizable branding, file sharing, and screen sharing.
The best part here is the business model allows for the Tawk API features to be 100% free, with no hidden agendas.
Not only that, you get to hire live customer support agents through the tool who will help in generating highly qualified leads, resulting in better advertising ROI.
Top Features:
Track sentiment — Set up a chat widget within minutes by copying a line of JavaScript to your website’s HTML. Use the live chat to support users before they purchase and track increased interaction levels.
Assign conversations — See the entire journey alongside customer data to respond to users with context and create a positive customer experience.
Chat pages — Create a customizable landing page with various chat links for users to approach you and chat directly regarding the platform.
Pricing:
Free — All features are with company branding. To remove the watermark, you are charged a subscription fee of $19/month . You are provided live agent support 24/7 for 365 days at $1/ hour.
Drift#
Drift is an all-in-one conversational AI tool covering service, marketing, and sales. It is primarily built for the sales and marketing teams.
Integrating Drift into your application can speed up your deal cycles through features like customer prospecting and visitor intelligence.
Automated customer support provides customers with immediate and accurate help and a massive boost to your sales team’s efficiency across the entire sales cycle. Chatbots, live chat, and video features are a given for any customer conversational tool, as is for Drift.
Top Features:
Drift reporting - Track and measure website and app engagement with key business metrics, insights, and analytics.
Drift Fastlane - Qualify buyers through referenced tech stack data and transfer them instantly to the sales conversations and avoid waiting in queues.
Pricing:
The Free & Premium is fit for individuals and small businesses as they provide Custom Chatbots and Drift Intel. The Advanced & Enterprise is ideal for medium-sized and large organizations due to features like lead routing, Fastlane, multiple languages, and custom RBAC.
HelpCrunch#
A customer engagement platform that runs on an open API with chatbots and desk ticketing systems. HelpCrunch provides a rule-based chatbot that works on any customer scenario you create it for by automating repetitive questions, leading potential qualifications, and promoting self-service.
You can ensure customer retention and satisfaction through in-app targeted messages and smart email blasts.
The multi-channel integration is an extended arm of this feature. The cherry on top is that Intercom provides free migration to make onboarding as smooth as possible without data loss.
Top Features:
Customization — Localize the tool for different markets with custom wallpapers, sizes, colors, and asset styles to match your brand.
Mobile Apps & SDK — Provide in-app support, respond to users on the go, and manage your team globally.
Deep Reporting — Analyze your support team’s performance and plan methods to improve your customer support technique.
Pricing:
You can enjoy the basic features for free. For an additional widget and 3 auto messages & pop-ups, you are charged $12/month. Pro features such as 5 widgets, unlimited auto messages, and pop-ups, you pay $20/month. If you choose the enterprise model, you can Negotiate the price for pro + unlimited access.
Tidio#
Tidio is built primarily for e-commerce businesses. It helps a company’s buyers make purchases quickly and confidently by backing them up with intelligent recommendations, 24/7 omnichannel chat support, and order tracking.
The vital characteristics are real-time visitor monitoring, live chats, virtual AI supporter, and chatbot integrations with tools like Wix, Shopee, and Mailchimp. These various sets of features can all be managed conveniently in the Tidio shared inbox, which acts like a standard dashboard for all platforms.
If you are an online store with a custom plan, you can get your AI bot to analyze customer requests and learn from previous behavior.
Features:
Drag-n-drop — An excellent and intuitive way to customize and build your chatbot to promote branding for free.
Cart saver — Reduce abandoned carts among customers by offering suitable product discounts and free shipping.
Time-based recommendations — When a user spends a quantifiable amount of time on a product, provide custom suggestions to promote purchase.
Pricing:
Regular features are free of charge. Mid-sized teams can opt for the $15.83/month model for five operators and communicator support. At $32.50/month , you get Chatbots, 35+ templates, and can accommodate 40,000 users. For Tidio +, you are charged $240.83/month , where you can customize engagements with dedicated specialists.
Freshdesk#
If call center support is what you are looking for, Freshdesk may be a good choice for you. You can host your call center and grow your business on this platform. Use the helpdesk software to manage your call center team and chatbots to help your support team to guide users.
Its strong email management, categorized knowledge base for all stakeholders, and social media monitoring tools are the features you need as a mid-sized business to generate leads.
Freshdesk also has a live chat app messaging solution to enable conversations with users across multiple channels.
Features:
Help widget — Embed a form within your product to allow users to raise questions and nudge them when they rage-click.
Custom SSL certificates — Manage customer and agent logins using IP whitelisting and simplify secure login through SSO.
Pricing:
Regular features are free. At $15/month , the Growth model can accommodate up to 2000 bot sessions. At $39/month, the Pro model offers up to 3000 bot sessions/month. At $69/month , the Enterprise allows up to 5000 bot sessions.
Olark#
A well-designed live chat tool with unique features like chat translation and visitor co-browsing is hard to find in other live chat alternatives. Olark allows authorized storage of customer data in your CRM and provides in-depth reporting to help you ensure a smooth customer experience.
You can easily set it up to match your brand with reporting dashboards and customizable widgets. It is compatible with most CRM tools, like Salesforce.
It is a perfect tool for small-sized businesses that want to increase customer engagement by organizing customer data, automating messaging using AI-powered bots, and enabling offline messaging to ensure constant customer support.
Features:
PowerUps — Nudge users’ purchases and support through other glitches by co-browsing with them for a personalized experience.
Searchable transcripts — Filter keywords, tags, date range, and more in the user chat transcript to locate problems and refer when needed.
Pricing:
You are given a free trial period of 2 weeks, after which you are charged $29/month for full features access like live chat, reporting, integrations, and insights.
HubSpot#
Built on its leading and free CRM, HubSpot Service Hub has a suite of inbound tools from sales to marketing. When sending targeted emails to regular users, HubSpot emphasizes personalizing Call to Action (CTAs), subject lines, and content.
It could be more malleable to get integrated with external apps. Businesses see immense growth through sales prospecting, smooth onboarding through knowledge-base, consulting services, customizable landing pages, website visitor tracking, and automated marketing campaigns.
Features:
Prospect tracking — Build a business leads database by filtering out the most engaged prospects and updating the sales reps about their interests.
Meeting scheduler — Use round-robin and group links to avoid the back-and-forth of meeting scheduling. Use appointment schedules to close more deals by automating sales processes.
Pricing:
The starter pack is $45/month with increased limits feature and marketing automation. The professional pack is $800/month with engagement automation and custom reports. The enterprise pack is $3,600/month with brand management and advanced reporting.
LiveAgent#
The selling point of this live chat helpdesk solution is the real-time mapping of all visitors to your app. You can provide supreme help by detecting if a user needs help.
When the customer opens the LiveAgent widget, the support agents are alerted, who then reply with potential help from the knowledge base by analyzing user data.
Among the other 190 integrations like Salesforce and Pipedrive, LiveAgent also integrates with Slack to receive notifications on newly opened tickets and new onboarded users. The inbuilt call center support, automated ticket distribution, and shared inbox help your agents stay a step ahead in catering to customer needs.
Features:
Hybrid ticket stream — Access a customer’s ticket resolution journey across multiple channels in a single ticket thread.
Mass actions - Perform actions like editing or deleting multiple tickets in bulk rather than spending individual time on similar tickets.
SLA - Service Level Agreement is the agreement on the quality and availability of services between the customers and agents at all times.
Pricing:
The Freemium offers 7 days of ticket history and basic reports. At $15/agent/month , you have unlimited access to ticket history and API integrations. At $29/agent/month , you get premium chat features, unlimited chat buttons, and social networks. The all-inclusive pack is priced at $49/agent/month with features like IVR, call routing, and transfers.
SendinBlue#
SendinBlue is your go-to marketing and sales tool kit with a built-in CRM and free email automation—an intuitive platform for growing B2B and B2C businesses, e-commerce sellers, and agencies.
If you want to communicate with your users, personalize the experience to their individual needs, and onboard new users to your platform, SendinBlue gets the job done perfectly well.
The end-to-end digital marketing campaigns and ability to grow SMBs in challenging markets make it an all-in-one suite of tools for startups and large enterprises. Consider integrating this tool with other customer data analytics tools for increased productivity and returns.
Features:
Transactional emails — Use multiple setup options to tailor your email users’ needs, which you can send using dedicated IPs for high-volume responses.
Facebook Ads — Reach larger audiences by creating ads, finding new leads similar to the best existing customers, and setting up ad parameters.
Email API — Using the most common programming languages for easy integration, witness unparalleled deliverability and GDPR compliance specific to your needs.
Pricing: Basic Access is free for all users. The starter plan is $25/month , and you get up to 20k emails/month. The all-access business plan, priced at $65/month , gives you a minimum of 20k emails plus advanced features.
Conclusion#
Businesses have specific needs per the market and industry requirements, and no single software package can meet all those requirements in the right proportion.
With the increased understanding of the value of quality customer service, tools are becoming much more advanced and tailor-made. We have provided you with a list of Intercom’s features and trust-worthy counterparts like DevRev, Olark, Hubspot, and others that serve businesses of all sizes and requirements to choose from.
Determining the most suitable software is easier when you know what you’re looking for. Pick out the must-have features for your organization and filter out of the software that provides you with those services within your budget. We hope this serves as a guide for your next tool.
