Intercom alternative

All prices here come from each company's own page, checked on 5 November 2026. They change often, so look again before you buy.

You're in good company if you like the product and dislike the invoice. Here's how one user put it on Indie Hackers back in 2019:

"I'm looking into moving away from Intercom. Not because it isn't good (it's quite awesome actually) but because of the price." Noah Prail, Indie Hackers, 2019

The way Intercom charges has changed since then. The feeling is still around.

One more thing has changed. The company now calls itself Fin, after its AI, and Salesforce finished buying it on 10 September 2026. Salesforce says Fin will keep serving its customers. The announcement says nothing about prices or contracts. The help desk is still sold under the name Intercom, so that's the name used here. A new owner doesn't force you to move, so don't rush because of the headline.

How the Intercom bill works

Intercom's pricing page has two main parts: a price for each person and a price for what you use.

• People. Intercom calls each person a seat. Essential is $39 per person a month, or $29 if you pay yearly. Advanced is $99, or $85 yearly. Expert is $139, or $132 yearly. New customers can get Essential for $10 less.
• The AI. Fin costs $0.99 each time it gets what Intercom calls an outcome, and that can only happen once per chat.
• Messages. WhatsApp, SMS, bulk emails and phone are charged by use. Replying to emails from customers is included.
• Add-ons. Copilot, an AI helper for your team, is $35 per person a month. Product tours and surveys start at $99 a month. Extra tools for improving Fin start at $100 a month.

Read what counts as an outcome. It counts when a customer says the problem is solved. It also counts when they don't ask for more help after Fin replies, or when Fin finishes a set task. You pay nothing if Fin can't answer or the customer asks for a person.

That middle rule matters. Someone who gave up and closed the window also didn't ask for more help. So open some of those chats and read them yourself.

Work out which part you really use

Intercom does four jobs. Look at your last invoice and ask which ones you'd miss:

1. The inbox and chat bubble. Your team answers customers. Almost every tool below does this.
2. Fin. An AI answers first. Plenty of tools have one now, and you can even keep Fin and leave the Intercom inbox.
3. The help center. Your how-to articles. This is often the easiest part to move.
4. Tours, surveys and in-app messages. You talk to users inside your product. This is the hardest part to replace, so if you rely on it, check it first.

If you only need the first three, your choice gets much simpler.

Pick by the job you need done

Each one, and who should skip it

Crisp: for one flat price

Crisp charges one price for your whole team, however many chats you get. The free plan gives two people website chat and a shared inbox, with no AI. Mini is $45 a month for four people and around 90 AI chats. Essentials is $95 for ten people and around 450 AI chats, and it adds a help center. Plus is $295 for 20 or more people and around 1,350 AI chats.

Skip it if you expect the AI to handle thousands of chats. People's chats are covered by the flat price. The AI only gets a set amount.

Featurebase: for a software company that wants the closest swap

Featurebase has an inbox, a help center and an AI called Fibi. It also has boards where customers vote on what you build next. Growth is $37 per person a month, or $29 if you pay yearly. Fibi costs $0.49 each time it fully solves a chat, about half of Fin's price, and handing a chat to a person is free. Featurebase says it can bring over your Intercom chats, articles and users.

Skip it if you need WhatsApp today, because its feature table still lists that as coming soon. Its pricing page lists banners and surveys but not product tours, so check before you count on those.

Help Scout: for teams that mostly use email

Help Scout feels like a shared email inbox. The free plan covers five people, one inbox and one help site. Standard is $30 per person a month, or $25 yearly, and adds live chat, SMS, WhatsApp and Instagram. Its AI costs $0.75 per solved chat. The AI is free for your first three months, and you can set a monthly cap.

Its rule for charging is a bit tighter than Fin's. You don't pay for a chat if the customer asks more questions, searches your articles or asks for a person.

Skip it if website chat is the heart of what you do. Other tools here are built around it.

Chatwoot: for free, if someone can run a server

Chatwoot is open source, which means anyone can use its code. You can run it on your own server for free. You'll need a Linux server with at least 4GB of memory, and the free version has no AI. If that sounds like another language, Chatwoot can run it for you instead. Those plans start at free for two people and 500 chats a month. The free one has live chat only and keeps 30 days of history. Paid plans start at $19 per person a month.

Skip the server route if nobody on your team would happily look after one. "Free" then costs somebody's weekend.

Gorgias: for online stores

Gorgias charges by tickets, and a ticket is one conversation with a customer. It never charges per person. The help desk starts at $10 a month for 50 tickets, then 40 cents each. The AI starts at $30 a month for 30 automated replies.

Skip it if you don't run an online store. It's built around orders.

Tidio: for simple chat on a small site

Tidio starts at $24.17 a month, billed yearly, for 100 chats. Its AI, Lyro, starts at $32.50 a month, billed yearly, for 50 chats. It's easy to understand and a lot less tool than Intercom.

Skip it if you get lots of chats. You're buying separate bundles for people and for the AI.

HubSpot: for chat tied to your customer records

HubSpot's live chat is free with its free customer database, and every chat is stored in one inbox there. It makes sense if you already use HubSpot. It's a lot to set up if you only wanted a chat bubble.

Zendesk or Freshdesk: for big teams with complex rules

These suit larger teams that need tickets sorted and passed around. Zendesk starts at $25 per person a month, or $19 yearly, for email and tickets. Live chat comes with the next plan up, at $69, or $55 yearly. Freshdesk starts at $19 per person a month, billed yearly, with the first 500 AI sessions included.

Skip both if you're a team of three. You'd spend more time setting rules than answering people.

Fin on its own: if you like the AI and not the inbox

You can keep Fin and move your team to another help desk, such as HubSpot or Freshdesk. It costs $0.99 per outcome with no seat fees. A monthly minimum applies, and Intercom's example is 50 outcomes.

If you only need a bot that answers from your help pages, you may also be weighing up Chatbase or a Chatbase alternative. If your customers like messaging on Instagram and you want that same feel on your site, consider a ManyChat alternative for websites.

Do the sums on one busy month

Picture a team of two with 500 chats a month. The AI finishes 300, and people handle the other 200. Then picture a great month when chats double and the team stays the same. These use monthly billing, with no new-customer deals.

Crisp's bill jumps because 600 AI chats won't fit in Essentials. It still looks like the easy winner, so check one thing. Its plans cover "around" a set number of AI chats. Ask whether a chat the AI tries and then hands to a person counts, because that could push you up a plan sooner.

The table also pretends every AI finishes the same 300 chats. They won't. A cheap AI that solves half as much is no bargain.

Then there's the strange part of paying per solved chat. Few things in business feel as odd as reading that your robot had a great month and feeling your stomach drop.

Be fair to it, though. Say someone on $20 an hour clears six chats an hour. Each chat costs you about $3.33. Next to that, 99 cents is cheap, even as the bill climbs. So the real question is whether another tool can do the same work for less.

When to stay on Intercom

Moving takes real time, and Intercom does plenty well. Stay if:

• You qualify for its startup deal. If you've raised under $10 million and have 15 staff or fewer, you can apply for up to 93% off in year one. It drops to 50% off in year two and 25% off in year three, so put the full price in your plans now.
• You use tours, surveys and chat together. Splitting those across several tools can cost you more than you save.
• Fin is saving you a hire. Then the bill is doing its job.
• You'd save very little. Saving $30 a month won't pay for a week of rebuilding.

Try cutting the bill first

These are quick to check, and they might solve the problem:

1. Set a spending limit on Fin. Intercom offers limits and alerts, so a busy month can't surprise you.
2. Count your paid seats. You pay for every full seat. Someone who never replies to customers or sends messages may not need one. Advanced and Expert include free Lite seats for people like that.
3. Check your plan. Advanced costs $60 more per person than Essential, paying monthly. If you don't use its automatic rules and separate team inboxes, you may not need it. Changes to a lower plan usually start at renewal, so check that date.
4. Remove add-ons nobody uses. Copilot alone adds $35 per person a month.
5. Look at message charges. WhatsApp, SMS and bulk emails are all billed per use.

Are you solving support or sales?

Look at last month's chats. If most say "how do I reset my password?", you have a support job. Use the list above.

If most say "which plan do I need?", or you have plenty of visitors and few sign-ups, that's a sales job. Many people who can't decide never type a word. They just leave, and a tool that waits for a question won't catch them. If you want chat to book sales calls, you may be shopping for a Drift alternative too. Salesloft, which owns Drift, says it has now moved from Drift to a product called 1mind.

That moment before someone gives up is why we built Possible, so read this knowing it's our own product. Possible is an AI built on real sales psychology. It asks each visitor the right question at the right moment, remembers the answers, and guides them to a sale, sign-up or booking. It's free to start. There's more on our AI sales assistant for SaaS, and Possible vs website chatbots spells out how it differs from a chat tool. It won't reset anyone's password, so you'd still want one of the tools above for that.

Test it with your own questions

Every AI looks clever on its own demo. Fin says its AI solves 76 of every 100 chats. Help Scout says 73, and Tidio says 75. Each company counts in its own way, and each number is an average of other people's businesses. Your questions are the only score that matters.

Several of these tools have a free trial: 14 days for Intercom and Crisp, 15 for Help Scout and 10 for Featurebase.

1. Pull ten real questions from last month's chats. Include two awkward ones, like "Can I get a refund if I've used it for a month?"
2. Load your own help articles into two tools. Two is plenty.
3. Ask each one the same ten questions. Use your customers' words, typos included.
4. Mark each answer. Was it right? Did it pass to a person when it got stuck? Would you be happy if a customer read it?
5. Try it on your phone. Some of your customers will meet it there.
6. Check the billing page afterward. See how many of your ten chats it counted.

Pick the one you'd trust on a day you're away.

How to leave without losing anything

1. Check your renewal date. If you paid for a year, plan the move for close to the end of it.
2. Export your contacts. In Contacts, select the people you want, click More, then Export users. Choose all columns, not only the ones on screen. The file comes by email, and the link dies after one hour, so don't start this on your way to lunch.
3. Save your old chats. From the Inbox you can download 200 to 300 at a time as PDF or text. For more, someone will need to use Intercom's API, which is a way for software to fetch data. Each request can cover up to 90 days.
4. Check what your new tool can import. Ask about chats, articles and contacts before you pay.
5. List what you built by hand. Note your saved replies, automatic rules and messages to users. Expect to rebuild these.
6. Check what your team sees beside each chat. Ron Pastore moved from Intercom to Help Scout and wrote about it in that same Indie Hackers thread. His biggest hurdle was losing the full history of what each user had done. His team built a small add-on to bring it back.
7. Try the new chat bubble on one page. Two bubbles on one page confuse everyone.
8. Remove Intercom after a good week. Then cancel it, and set a reminder to check that no new invoice arrives.

Questions about Intercom alternatives

What is the best alternative to Intercom?

For most small teams, it's Crisp, because you pay one flat price however many chats your team answers. Choose Featurebase if you run a software company and want something close to Intercom. Choose Help Scout if most of your support is email.

Is there a free alternative to Intercom?

Yes. Crisp is free for two people, Help Scout for five and Featurebase for one. HubSpot has free live chat, and Chatwoot is free on your own server. Each has limits. Crisp's free plan has no AI, for example, and Help Scout's has one inbox.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Intercom?

Usually, yes. Crisp's Mini plan is $45 a month for four people. Four people on Intercom Essential cost $156 a month at full price, before any AI. Check your own sums, since Intercom's startup deal can make it much cheaper in year one.

Is there an open-source alternative to Intercom?

Yes. Chatwoot is the one to try first. You can run it on your own server for free, but someone has to look after that server, and the free version has no AI.

How much does Intercom cost?

Essential is $39 per person a month, or $29 if you pay yearly. Advanced is $99, or $85 yearly. Expert is $139, or $132 yearly. Fin, its AI, adds $0.99 for each chat it settles, and there's a 14-day free trial with no card.

Are Intercom and Fin the same company?

Yes. The company now goes by Fin, the name of its AI. Its help desk is still called Intercom on its pricing page.

Did Salesforce buy Intercom?

Yes. Salesforce finished buying Fin, formerly Intercom, on 10 September 2026. It says Fin will keep serving its customers, and its announcement doesn't mention prices or contracts. Before you sign a long contract, ask what happens to your price at renewal.

Can I keep Fin if I leave the Intercom help desk?

Yes. Fin works with other help desks, including Salesforce, HubSpot and Freshdesk. You pay $0.99 for each chat it settles, with no fee per person, and a monthly minimum applies.