Which is the best and free alternative to intercom.io?

Question

Hi! I  am looking for the best alternative to Intercom.io. Please help me.

Daniil Kopilevych · Accepted Answer

Recommend to SaaS, e-commerce and other online businesses that are looking for an affordable Intercom alternative.
HelpCrunch vs Intercom full comparison - https://helpcrunch.com/intercom.html

Live chat, in-app messages, emails, and ticketing.

Answer

Freshchat is totally what you are looking for. Great pricing and incredibly powerful. It's the newest from Freshworks Inc. and packs everything for businesses of all kinds. It's free to get started with and packs as much as 10 active agents.

Kunal Bhatia · Answer

I'm currently using the free tier from Drift and it's great. To get started you can get plenty of value from the free version when you customize the implementation. If things pick up, their next tier starts at $50 a month.

Daria Zabój · Answer

I recommend LiveChat, it's not free but the brand offers different plans so that you can choose one that is suitable for your needs. I mostly like LiveChat for its simplicity and the variety of features that are constantly added to the software.

anand mohan pal · Answer

In addition to every thing else, Retainly also has tools to accelerate your lead generation and website conversion.

Soujanya · Answer

Yes, chatterbox is the best replacement for Intercom. Chatterbox works with our internal communication app Slack and no need to login in another portal to communicate and it is Free for 2000 contacts and unlimited conversations-which is huge.. :-) and the leads stores in a segment within Retainly to continue engaging them for conversions. :-)

Bhargav Bojjawar · Answer

Yes, I recommend chatterbox as a replacement of Intercom. we have connected Slack with Chatterbox to communicate with our website visitors and now we are able to attend each and every chat right from slack. chatterbox bot probe the contact information of the chat visitors and save those leads into a segment of Retainly where we can continue engaging them with Auto responders and Drip campaigns.. :-) and it is Free to start.

Daniil Kopilevych · Answer

Best free alternative to Intercom

Sam Rye · Answer

I recently got set up with Freshchat after Drift just showed itself to be too buggy, and I found Intercom was just too pricey for me. I wanted the Live Messaging feature, cross platform support, and the ability to track users on my site. Freshchat does all of that on the free plan.

Next up I'll look into their ability to send email news, trigger messages based on user behaviour and the likes.

Answer

It's one of the best alternative to intercom.io

Ayush Mittal · Answer

Nothing beats Intercom except them being pricey so I chose UserEngage for live chat, in-app user behaviour, drag & drop modules to set triggers, conditions and actions.

It is working pretty well for me. They have brilliant support and tutorials plus its integration with Zapier is handy to send data to different CRMs and other services.

Tip - I chose the lowest paid plan and every month before the billing date, we delete the unknown data to stay within the limit of our plan.

Answer

I have heard good things about Crisp

Arjun Paliath · Answer

A moden way to engage with visitors and generate leads. Also enables the self support aspect with built in FAQs.

Saurabh Chauhan · Answer

Already using Crisp with best experience. Simplest UI with all features you need under single roof.

Alex Shvalev · Answer

Chaport is cheaper and simpler alternative to Intercom. It has free forever plan for 5 agents with unlimited chat history and beautiful desktop apps for Mac & Windows.

Cordell Yee · Answer

Drift has excellent features for the free tier, which are completely valuable at the price. Live chat and email + slack integrations cover most needs.

Tamas Ratkai · Answer

Drift is really awesome and easy to use.

Brad Konia · Answer

I've tested many of the popular live support apps, but in my view, Crisp beats them all. There are so many reasons why I love Crisp that it would take me an hour to write them all down. Therefore, I'll just mention a few of its major benefits. Before I begin, I want to be clear that I don't work for Crisp and have no financial interest in the company. I'm simply a satisfied customer who's happy to help them succeed, because they surely deserve it.

1. It works like Intercom in the sense that you have a unified inbox for all your customer interactions. Crisp makes no distinction between a customer chatting live on your website vs a customer emailing you vs a customer texting you. It all goes into the same inbox and when you reply, Crisp automatically replies using the same channel that the customer used. Therefore, the operator isn't distracted by having to manage a separate queue for each form of communication. Additionally, if a customer starts out on live chat and then goes offline, your reply will automatically be routed to his email. He can then continue the conversation by replying to the email, or by clicking a link in the email to resume the live chat. This helps to retain customers who might otherwise be lost due to their impatience in waiting for a reply from a live operator.

2. Yes, I said it supports text messaging. This works via a Twilio integration and it works beautifully. These days, most people use text messaging as their primary communication channel, so this makes it convenient for them to communicate with your company using a method they're already comfortable with. Text messages drop into the unified inbox and can then be picked up and responded to by any of your chat operators. So unlike conventional text messaging, the conversation is between the customer and your support department, it's not limited to any one operator and any other operator can jump in and continue a conversation that began with another operator. it also supports MMS, so you can send and receive pictures and video as well. This is great because the customer can text you a screen shot of his phone.

3. Magic Browse is like a mini remote desktop thing. You can view your customer's browser window and to a certain extent, you can even control his browser, scrolling, clicking on buttons, etc...

4. Live Translation. This is an absolute KILLER feature which is available in very few live support apps. You chat in your native language and your text is automatically translated into the customer's native language and vice versa. This makes it a breeze to support customers from other countries.

5. Crisp stores your chat history similarly to how the iOS Messages app works. Unlike a conventional live support app, conversations are never really archived, they just get pushed down in the list as newer conversations come in. If a customer replies to an old conversation, that conversation pops back to the top of the list. This is convenient for when you suddenly remember you forgot to tell a customer something. Instead of trying to remember his name or having to switch to another screen to view your history, you can simply scroll down the list of your recent conversations.

6. Crisp provides an extensive API that allows you to do all kinds of advanced integrations with your website. For instance, if a user is logged in, you can push information about that user from your database into Crisp, so when he starts chatting, you know exactly who you're chatting with and you can navigate directly to his record in your CRM.

7. Crisp now provides a help desk, fully integrated with the live chat application.

8. Their pricing structure is extremely fair and a fraction of the cost of Intercom and other similar solutions.

Perhaps most importantly, the Crisp developers are extremely responsive to their customers. They've implemented numerous features based on feature requests I submitted. They really listen to their customers and try their best to give us what we ask for. I highly endorse this product and this company.

Roman Eaton · Answer

This week we have a sweet release, Dashly is one year old! Free live chat, user tracking, and personalized messages. 
You should check it out - https://www.dashly.io/dashly-vs-intercom

Rene Brandel · Answer

It's free and has video calling support now. This is the best way to talk to your customers face-to-face as well.

Szymon Klimczak · Answer

Simple tool for chatting with customers. Powerful chat platform with AI capabilities.

Kesava Mandiga · Answer

Tawk.to is an easy to setup, easy to use, no frills live chat app for websites. And it's free.

Askme · Answer

We are a full stack users of Retainly. We were earlier used Intercom and MailChimp, but found that Retainly does a lot more for a lot less. And the best part is that the entire application workflow is extremely easy when compared to the setup complexities of Intercom. Go for it. Highly Recommended.

Valery Kurilov · Answer

Switched from Intercom to Helpcrunch at SE Ranking and save more than 65k annually.

Olga Kaley · Answer

Dashly is awesome! It's easy to use and affordable yet it's a powerful tool for customer communication. Love the live chat and lead capturing mechanics.

A_Sky · Answer

This one seems pretty well thought as you don't pay more when you have more leads or users engaged in discussions, etc.

Ana Santos · Answer

It's free and gets the job done. Easy to use and allows some basic customization. Never tried intercom so can't make a fair comparison.

Leo Bassam · Answer

I've been using GoSquared since they've launched and it has been absolutely GREAT! What truly attracted me to it is that they are not just building another live-chat... they're building an all-in-one solution for you to communicate, track and visualise your customers.

I personally love it, and I would recommend it to anyone!

Eugene de Beer · Answer

Been using Tawk for a while now, good alternative to Intercom.

Angie · Answer

I'm using Tawk too, as mentioned before it's easy to setup and it works great!

Elen Turovskaya · Answer

I love Dashly's chat as well as lead capturing forms and data collection. It's a cool tool for growing conversion

anand mohan pal · Answer

In addition to every thing else, Retainly also has tools to accelerate your lead generation and website conversion.

Ben Johnson · Answer

HubSpot's live chat software is worth considering! Chat in real-time, match the chat widget to your site's design, build chatbots, and manage everything in one inbox. Plus, it ties in easily with the HubSpot CRM.

Here's more info: https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm/live-chat

Starts free, next plan up starts at $50/mo.

Jeroen Corthout ☕ · Answer

Go for the real thing. You won't regret it.
I wrote a post here about what makes the Intercom product so great: https://blog.salesflare.com/how-intercom-became-a-unicorn-product-b952bb8575c5

Tweegenic1 · Answer

Crisp covers all your customer communications from livechat, email, Facebook Messenger (and even SMS!) and allows you to reply from a simple inbox made for teams.

Tkachenko Arthur ~UA~ · Answer

Because it's part of FB ecosystem

Andrey Azimov · Answer

Using Free Crisp already 10 months in 4 of my projects. All good!

Loïc Bisière · Answer

I leaved intercom for Crisp 6 months ago and I never look back. Best alternative!

Mikhail Kokarev · Answer

Tested it in a company I used to work for. At that time we were using JivoSite, but Chaport turned out to be more applicable for our needs.

Luciano Larrossa · Answer

The best. Simple and easy to use!

Lucas LC · Answer

Jivo is MUCH better than Intercom for sure... No doubts about that

Matteo Martinelli · Answer

Great product with great vision for the future.

Customer lifecycle tool made simple.

Luca Micheli · Answer

It has Video chat, Email Template Builder, Visual Funnel Builder, In-app Surveys, NPS and so on. 
Most of people that switched from Intercom are in love with Customerly for the features they have right now and because is cheaper than Intercom

Leszek · Answer

Absolutely agree

Drag and drop automation lets our customers chose exactly who and when receives an email, chat message or a pop-up form.

As to the price - it's around 3/4 of Intercom so it's a fair deal for a better product.

Paolo Musolino · Answer

The fully integrated tool your online business needs to scale up and automate your engagement.

Dmitry Fedotov · Answer

Very good product I use my websites and recommend it to all my clients.

Alexander Spoor · Answer

Great free plan, inexpensive alternative plans, proper desktop and mobile app and good UI/UX. Really good stuff.

Answer

I consider this as a good free alternative to Intercom. Definitely better than Tawk and Olark.

Alexander Isora 🦄 · Answer

Chatra is very affordable and powerful software, I recommend it.

Parth Shrivastava · Answer

Kommunicate brings in the best of human and bot into one platform. The best part: you can integrate any type of or your own bot in websites and apps (SDKs available for leading native and hybrid platforms). Total control and flexibility.

Ido Cohen · Answer

A free and open source alternative. It directs visitors' messages via a Telegram bot to your phone. You can self host the server or use the free hosted version.

John · Answer

Very complete tool for the entire life cycle of the digital client, it is convenient to have the information of the behavior of the users and be able to use it to create personalized communications.

Answer

Liked it!

Kam Leung · Answer

Papercups is an open source alternative to Intercom

Giacomo Lawrance · Answer

I use this on many of my sites, and it is awesome! Really recommend it - barely any branding either!

Primer · Answer

Definitely this! I switched from Intercom to Drift immediately upon becoming aware of it. Why? UX / functionality etc is almost identical to intercom but their free tier is much much more friendly to the cash poor developers out there!

Pranay Sanghavi · Answer

have used it since  year - the free tier for a startup product is sufficient. but am now looking at intercom - have applied for their startup program that starts at US$50 a month for a year

Answer

Best free full featured Intercom alternative is Bitrix24, with a caveat - you can use it inside apps like you can Intercom. Here's a comparison chart to help you decide if that's what you need or not - https://www.bitrix24.com/alternatives/free-intercom-alternative.php

Cheryl Sabarita · Answer

Free and opensource slack like and live chat that you can embed in your website.

Travel Buddy · Answer

Not as polished as intercom I think, but hey it has free tier

Ilya Azovtsev 💌+🤖=🚀 · Answer

I know this one, Intercom is better but anyway Jivo is ok

Paulo Andraus · Answer

great tool. Easy, fast, reliable!

Davi S.P. · Answer

Easy to use, Connect you with all your social networks. Awesome and very light app to download on pc and mobile. And has a new feature: instant callback, the best feature ever for online businesses

Paul Razvan Berg · Answer

Slick interface and transparent pricing.

Guillaume CABANEL · Answer

So easy to use!

Yoshiki Schmitz · Answer

Lets you customize the greeting message for free - unlike Drift

Tigran Hakobyan · Answer

We use Crisp at Inapptics and it's great!

Adam Wham · Answer

Using it. Free. Great!

Cesar Augusto Orlando · Answer

We use in our site and it's great. Best value for money in the segment

Masoud Ardestani · Answer

It's a fantastic product!

Joris Knaapen · Answer

Awesome functionality, contemporary look and feel, mobile and desktop apps and friendly pricing.

David Cruz · Answer

It offers integrations to other services like Slack on the free version. This is a huge perk compared to the top voted recommendations. It has an really clean and simple user interface for the user and for the agents. Totally the best one yet.

Harshal Katre · Answer

Its good for chatting with free tier but the limit on Monthly Visitors is kind of a deal breaker while considering an upgrade.

Dave Wilson · Answer

Has features for support, outbound engagement, website integration etc and very affordable.

Lee Preslan · Answer

Free!

Palash Bagchi · Answer

Disclaimer: Retainly Founder.
Neither Intercom nor Retainly is just about live chat. Chat is a miniscule feature of both the platforms. Discover the power of automation for your marketing and revenue generation with these tools. Additionally while intercom focuses on customer support, Retainly has added strength into marketing and customer retention. Their approach is different.

Matthias Esterl · Answer

We chose smallchat, because it feeds the discussion directly into a slack channel (no seperate interface, etc). Works like a charm!

Ryan DiMascio · Answer

Embeddable chatbots - enough said.

Naman Bhutani · Answer

Interakt is a similar tool like Intercom, it has almost all the features/applications as Intercom and at 1/5th the price. Interakt starts at $49/month for all its application combined and also has a free-forever plan to test it for as long as you want.

Laura Pezza · Answer

I use this tool on my website (www.thequietplaceart.com) and I find it great! Easy to use, but at the same time with lots of functionalities and levels of customizations. Highly recommend it.

Roberta Lorenzi · Answer

I us Customerly to manage marketing automation for my blog. I tried many solutions so far and Customerly turns out to be the best.

Gianni Genovesi · Answer

Cheeper than Intercom and more powerful too!
What else are looking for?

Marco Carotenuto · Answer

The best app for manage customer and to send funnel sales

Ilaria Ciamarone · Answer

Is simple, complete and it allows me to have constantly a view of my work’s progress! The best solution to increase your leads !

Pietro Astolfi · Answer

Amazing tool!! it's very useful and requires only a small time to be learnt. Moreover, it has an appealing pricing system (which always helps :)).

Fabio Maier · Answer

Great service and affordable plan.
Definitely a very good product.

Sam Rye · Answer

I've been trialling ConvertFox and I'm impressed so far. It's pretty feature complete - Customer Database and site tracking, Live Chat, Email to individuals or segments, and automations. I believe they have some good stuff in the pipeline around online forms and the likes too.

Sam Rye · Answer

Probably the most feature-complete alternative I've found.

Just launched their android app too!

Vineet Gupta · Answer

After a good amount of experience with ProProfs Chat (1 yrs and 7 months), I feel that it would be the perfect alternative to Intercom. I started using the tool for free and now we are at the business plan. So as your business grows, you get to increase your bandwidth and get onboard with their paid plans. But if you are a newbie and don't feel like investing much, then you can give their forever free plan a try.

Jason Grills · Answer

ProProfs Chat can be a suitable alternative that allows you to get started at as low as $9 a month.

There is no cap on the number of incoming chat requests and the interface is pretty simple and self-explanatory. On top of that, you can also use cutting edge features such as canned messages, pre-chat forms and visitor monitoring to engage your customers and drive more sales with zero add-on investments.

The best part what I liked is they never push you for a paid subscription until you have explored the features to your understanding and satisfaction. You can opt for a 15-day free trial without having to furnish your credit card information. Isn’t that great?

Jason Grills · Answer

We are currently using ProProfs Chat. And we started with its forever free plan a few months back. It is simple to use and easy to install. We added the live chat tool to our WordPress website and ever since haven’t thought of shifting from it.

The free experience is equivalent to any purchased subscription for the tool. So, if you are looking for a free live chat tool that helps you provide the best customer experience, then give this tool a try.

Victoria Abed · Answer

Love this tool. Just upvote the product, then click on it, and proceed to HelpCrunch website. That’s it. 😀

T1 · Answer

It meets the needs of our company in the best way. good prices. A real alternative.

Ilya Azovtsev 💌+🤖=🚀 · Answer

We've been using HelpCrunch for almost a year after switching from Intercom. Their team is doing a great job shipping new features super fast. 
We use their platform a lot for in-app messaging and email marketing.

Conor Graham · Answer

- fantastic for capturing leads

Paul Anderie · Answer

Live chat can gets frustrated for website users. More and more people are not engaging with live chat, when they don't get an instant reply.

With HelloBox you can provide communication channels your users are already using. This results in a much higher engagement rate. For e-commerce sitea, we've seen a 4X increase in engagement with HelloBox compared to a "simple" live chat channel.

Antoine · Answer

Awesome chat!

Answer

Dashly is a good choice for a SaaS. With their live chat and lead capturing we makes cost per lead 15% cheaper. Awesome!

Lu · Answer

Dashly is really good alternative for Intercom. Guys have nice live chat, an opportunity to use personalized messages and the most important for my work tasks – lead capturing. Thanks for your app!

Dragos Rotaru · Answer

Sends text messages to your phone and only costs 8 bucks a month. You can ping to unlimited sites and the price is the same.

Roman Eaton · Answer

Dashly is a good one! Now it has a free option to use!

Raghavender Rao Jitta · Answer

Try Gist for free for 21 days.

Ryan Lewis · Answer

I love that it is a complete solution to the vast majority of my needs at a fraction of the price others offer. Without needing to cobble together a Frankenstein of tools, I can take care of my support, email and website marketing needs with only WordPress and GIST.

Matt Boyce · Answer

Free tier for small businesses. Built specifically for businesses with a local presence. Combines text messaging with live chat on your website, plus offers payments and video chat from the same dashboard.