11 Best Intercom Alternatives for Customer Service Free

This translates into some 8% of the entire global live chat market. Join our community of happy clients and provide excellent customer support with LiveAgent. Intercom assists with the onboarding and retention of customers through targeted email and in-app messages triggered by time or behavior. The chat enables you to send targeted, behavior based Zendesk messages to customers. Intercom features phone support, online support, and a knowledge base.

Now, their use cases comprise support, engagement, and conversion. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. You can enable some forms for collecting user info on the go.

There’s a plethora of features to help bigger teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. Pricing also plays an important factor when choosing any customer service tool, as pricing plans and the number of agents can make a huge difference in costs between the two options.

The availability of extensive and useful integrations is important to provide high-quality service efficiently. It should be easy to integrate any type of third-party application into the platform itself. Before Live Chat was available, customers had to wait for long periods of time for replies to their queries. But now, with the introduction of live chat, customers can get answers to their questions immediately. The customer service tool should include an automated response as it plays a crucial role in the same.

What are the best free Intercom alternatives for small businesses?

This comprises prepared answers to standard queries, complaints, as well as other issues a customer can possibly have regarding products/services. Kustomer also offers multichannel support for services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, SMS, Calls, and email to provide complete support from one place. Interestingly enough, many small businesses prefer instant messaging tools powered by Facebook. WhatsApp Business Chat and Facebook Live Chat Plugin are among the most frequently installed solutions for business massaging on a budget. Intercom is not among the best-rated WordPress live chat plugins. The integration can be a little bit clunky, and some of the users were surprised by the lack of a free version of Intercom.

Businesses, ecommerce in particular, have recognized the value of this technology. Convert website visitors into customers with a fast chat widget. LiveAgent is multilingual, making it easy to overcome language zopim vs intercom barriers. LiveAgent is proud to have the fastest live chat widget on the market, with chat displayed speeds at 2.5 seconds. Zendesk offers a basic plan that is affordable and will suit my needs.

Intercom vs Zopim

When you compare Zendesk, Desku is a step ahead when it comes to delivering a seamless live chat experience for handling interactions beyond transactions. If you’re looking for an Intercom alternative specifically designed for ecommerce platforms such as Magento or Shopify, Gorgias is among the best Shopify chat apps. With Gorgias, you can connect with customers in real-time on your site or over social media.

Chatra’s minimum functionality is really quick and easy to learn. Here are some of the things that our marketing department at Live Typing is especially fond of. The comparison of several popular chat services for your website. Intercom doesn’t really provide free stuff, but they have a tool called Platform, which is free. The free Intercom Platform lets you see who your customers are and what they do in your workspace. The top three products and services offering customers that use

Zendesk Chat (Formerly Zopim) for Live Chat are

Marketing (801), E-Commerce (708), Ecommerce (593).

If you need a powerful support platform that can help you provide world-class customer service, LiveAgent is a good choice. With over 190 integrations and 175 features, this all-in-one help desk solution has everything you need to provide personalized support to your customers. LiveChat is one of the most popular help desk apps and, obviously, live chat solutions.

So, let’s discuss the live chat capabilities of both Zendesk and Kustomer. When we compare Desku to Kustomer, it features more customization options, affordability, and a slightly better user experience. In contrast, Kustomer provides multichannel support and more streamlined customer interactions.

The trigger feature reduces cart abandonment and increases conversions. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the hardest on your pocket. Zendesk can be more flexible and predictable in this area as you can buy different tools separately (or even use their limited versions for free). Though Intercom chat window says that their team typically replies in a few hours, I received the answer in a couple of minutes.

Struck not in a bad way, more like in a very neutral ‘huh, this may be interesting’ way. And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. Through using either Kustomer or Zendesk, you can select an appropriate time to send the automated response and designate recipients for that using the drop-down menu.

For instance, in this blog you can read why the Outreach (a tool for active sales) IT juggernaut preferred Zendesk to Intercom and almost picked Desk.com. If you can afford it, Intercom is the first thing you should try out. It’s very unlikely that this sophisticated tool will disappoint you.

The tool was later integrated with Zendesk, making it more robust. Intercom is usually matched against ZenDesk, a ground-breaking powerhouse among helpdesk platforms. In fact, Intercom’s marketing strategy is based on how it’s different from ZenDesk, https://chat.openai.com/ which started out as a ticket system for incoming customer queries. The Intercom live chat is familiar to those entrepreneurs who have recently decided to go online and raise their own loyal client base by individually working with each one of them.

If you’re looking for a customer service platform that can grow with your business, Freshdesk is a great option. It offers features like knowledge bases, email management, chat, and social media monitoring tools. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform. Also, it’s the pioneer in the support and communication tools market.

Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. “Know who your users are” is the top reason why over 160 developers like Intercom, while over 17 developers mention “Real-time user chat” as the leading cause for choosing Zopim. It eliminates the need for users to wait on hold or talk with a support rep to get an answer instead of automatically responding to a user’s issue. Other competitors of these two services are Intercom, ServiceNow, SpiceWorks, and Kayako. Customer service plays a vital role in the success of any business.

Ticketing systems can help to increase customer satisfaction and reduce complaints received each month. Ticketing systems keep track of messages, response time, and types of issues brought up. Kustomer provides support through email, live chat and phone. There is also a Help Centre and a comprehensive Knowledge base. Let’s review them one by one to find the best messaging platform or customer database software for your business. We have reviewed and tested several customer messaging solutions.

In a nutshell, both these companies provide great customer support. I tested both of their live chats and their support agents were answering in very quickly and right to the point. Zendesk team can be just a little bit faster depending on the time of the day.

LiveAgent is the ultimate customer service solution with coverage of all relevant channels, reliable ticket system and a fair price tag. Intercom plays a very important role in the customer experience through messaging platforms, team collaboration products, and a valuable knowledge base solution. Fast-growing companies and established enterprises could pick Intercom or Zendesk, while small businesses would be better off with Chatra and JivoChat. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. What makes Intercom stand out from the crowd are their chatbots and lots of chat automation features that can be very helpful for your team.

So, it becomes very important for any business to handle this aspect well. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution.

Zendesk’s customer support is also very fast, though their live chat is only available for registered users. On one hand, Zendesk offers a great many features, way more than Intercom, but it lacks in-app messenger and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom has all its (fewer) tools and features integrated with each other way better, which makes your experience with the tool as smooth as silk.

Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

New Tools

You can monitor customer success metrics to evaluate team performance. It also allows you to archive chat transcripts, so you can search through conversations on previous interactions with customers with ease. WhatsApp integrations, knowledge base, customer forum, automation, API, IVR, video calls, unlimited history, websites, chat buttons, tickets/mails, call recording, 24/7 support. LiveAgent gives access to all these features while Crisp has limited offerings. Are you looking for a better live chat software for your business?

You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now. Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. All customer questions, be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landing in one dashboard, Chat PG where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently. It guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. Both tools have their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as different pricing plans to consider. So, it can become a difficult task to choose, but you have to consider which of the points mentioned above are most important to you.

Zendesk supports integration for more than 500 apps and services. It is also able to create webhook triggers for almost everything. For example, there is a third-party service called Zopim, which has a built-in chatbot integration with Zendesk.

Intercom lets businesses send their customers targeted in-app messages. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing.

• LiveChat is one of the most popular help desk apps and, obviously, live chat solutions.
• LiveAgent is a very popular alternative to Intercom that works great with smaller support teams.
• The free Intercom Platform lets you see who your customers are and what they do in your workspace.
• What makes Intercom stand out from the crowd are their chatbots and lots of chat automation features that can be very helpful for your team.
• The company behind LiveChat provides a whole range of interconnected services such as ChatBot and HelpDesk.

In the duel between Zendesk vs Intercom, it seems that Zendesk chat rises slightly above Intercom. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Zendesk chat is right for your business. Also Smooch provides setting of pop-up notifications and targeted messages and possibility of customization.

And we had one goal in mind—finding the best alternative to Intercom. LiveAgent is the top-rated help desk software for SMBs in 2020, offering great alternative to Zoho Desk. Zendesk chat provides a personal connection with customers who need support.

You can also train an AI chatbot to learn from customer queries and handle their queries. Therefore, your customers don’t have to search the knowledge base themselves. Moreover, it also has features for you to offer live chat on your own website.

On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution is great because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to easily improve your customer experiences. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. Increase sales, target your audience effectively, and create compelling campaigns with our help. LiveAgent is a powerful customer service software with efficient communication and response times.

The cheapest plan for small businesses – Essential – costs $39 monthly per seat. Advanced plan is rather a team plan that costs $99/mo per seat. For each additional seat, you would have to pay another $99/mo. But that’s not it, if you want to resolve customer common questions with the help of the vendor’s new tool – Fin bot, you will have to pay $0.99 per resolution per month. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients.

It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it has so many advanced features. I’m pretty sure it’s a benchmark for other chat widgets out there. But I don’t want to sell their chat tool short as it still has most of necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers and live chat analytics. If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments.

SMBs, especially from the ecommerce sector, should focus on features that allow for fast and convenient communication with customers. It should also be easy to track and manage all customer interactions in one app. From the customer’s perspective, functionalities that help with order tracking and self-service are also essential. LiveAgent offers a range of features including self-service portals, social media integrations, knowledge bases, automation, and unlimited support.

The cheapest (aka Essential) ‘All of Intercom’ package will cost you $136 per month, but if you only need their essential chat tools only, you can get them for $49 per month. If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. It’s great, it’s convenient, it’s not nearly as advanced as the one by Zendesk. Just as Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers who ask for help.

It’s nice and convenient but not nearly as advanced as Zendesk. However, the Zendesk support itself leaves much to be desired. If you create a new chat with the team, land on a page with no widget, and go back to the browser for some reason, your chat will go puff. Setting up and configuring automated responses in Kustomer or Zendesk is a piece of cake. With its unique combination of features, Desku handles the needs of modern enterprises very well.

LiveAgent is the most reviewed and #1 rated help desk software for SMB in 2023. Stay closer to your customers and help them faster with LiveAgent. As a freelancer, I don’t need all the integrations and support that Intercom provides.

LiveAgent is praised by users for its effective communication with customers, improving customer service and satisfaction, and increasing sales conversion rates. Basic service`s feature is a huge number of out-of-the-box integrations. You can integrate Smooch profile with Zendesk, Viber, Slack, Telegram, email and many other services.

Whether it’s email, social media, call center, knowledge base or live chat, LiveAgent has got your back every day 24/7. Intercom gives you the ability to see who your customers are and what they do in your web and mobile apps in real time. Zendesk chat allows businesses to reach out and connect to customers before they ask a question. The clothing rental company, Le Tote, uses an automated trigger feature to offer help when its customers are lingering at the checkout. In 2014, they acquired Zopim, a Singapore based live chat company.