Top 5 Intercom Alternatives to Chat with Customers Online

Many small business owners and entrepreneurs are looking for an affordable customer service platform. This is when tools like Intercom may not seem so practical anymore. But there are plenty of intercom alternatives to choose from, with varying price points that will help you with your communication needs regardless of whether you’re in paid or free plan.

In the past, the only way to interact with customers was through live calls or emails. However, in the internet age, we have a number of different options. We can use online chat, email, and even text messages to communicate with customers. While this is faster, it is also a lot less personal. Intercom is a great platform for this but it isn't the only option.

The role that Intercom plays in every customer service team has only grown since it was first released. Intercom is now a base layer that every customer service team uses to communicate with their customers. And because of that, many customer service teams want to know what Intercom alternatives there are to fill the gap when Intercom isn't an option.

Intercom and other similar tools like Drift and Olark can be a great way to improve your customer service and make your customers happy. But, they can cost a lot of money and many small businesses can't afford these expensive tools. This blog will look at the alternatives to Intercom and other similar tools and how to use them.

What is Live Chat Software?

Live chat software is an important tool for any business. It allows you to communicate with your customers instantly and solve their problems or queries without them having to wait. This is especially important if you are an online store because you want to close the sale as quickly as you can.

Why do you need a live chat software?

If you are a small business owner, you probably have a lot to do and a ton of things on your mind. The last thing you want to worry about is having to answer questions about your business on your website. Why? Because if you don't, then you are leaving money on the table. That's why you need live chat on your website.

42% of people prefer to reach out to companies via web-chat because it's easier, faster, and more convenient.

The job of a website is to attract leads, get them into the funnel, get them to convert, collect leads, get them into the funnel, get them to convert, repeat. The more leads you can get into the funnel, the better your chance of converting leads. The help widget and live chat are tools that can be used to get more leads into the funnel of your website. They are tools that will make your website more self-sufficient, make your website more attractive to leads, and help you get more leads into your funnel.

Why Should You Look for an Intercom Alternative?

While Intercom certainly is a piece of software with some cool features, it does have its flaws which is something we all need to be aware of before using it, so let’s take a closer look.

❌High Pricing

Intercom seems like it should be an inexpensive app as far as business communication tools go, but it's actually the most expensive. Even the minimum price of $59/month for one person is more than many other apps cost. The app starts at $59/month and can quickly go to an average of $999/month depending on which package you choose.

❌Multi layer confusing pricing structure

When choosing a service provider, make sure to find out if they’re going to charge you on a monthly basis or pay as you go. You want to do this because it allows you to know how much money you’ll need to put away each month in order to afford the service. Intercom is known for its confusing pricing structure because the pricing depends on the number of customers you interact with, track and whether you need additional tools like knowledge base with help articles. Each additional feature or exceeded limit will cost you.

❌Mostly live chat

Intercom mostly provides live chat, which is fine for some people. But for managing customer support issues the software is seriously lacking in features that are essential for any help desk system.

❌Slow support

If you check Intercom’s online reviews, many owners have complained about the company's inability to respond in a timely manner. Some owners have said that they have not been able to speak directly with anyone from the team at Intercom while others have told us that if they did get in touch with someone, their reply came days later.

What Features Intercom Alternatives should have?

✅Shared Inbox

A customer support team is a crucial part of any company and can be a deciding factor in whether a business succeeds and grows and whether a customer will return again and again. One of the main functions of a help desk is to provide customer support and one of the most important features is a shared inbox. This function allows all members of the support team to see the tickets and provide quick and efficient support for any issues that arise.

A shared inbox is a place where all your employees can send messages. It is an alternative to a company wide email where anyone can reply to. With a shared inbox, you can filter messages in different sections and you can also monitor who is replying to what.

✅Live Chat

Nowadays, live chat is considered as the best way to communicate with the customers. It has become an essential part of customer service.

For any online business, live chat software is a must have these days. There are hundreds of live chat software available in the market. However, only a few of them are good. Do you run your own business? If you do, you must be aware of the importance of live chat. Live chat helps in improving customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

✅Knowledge Base

​​Technology today is a real enabler for a business. It allows a company to connect with customers and build a strong relationship with them. However, technology can also create a barrier if it is not used correctly. Knowledge base is a feature that businesses use to help customers who are stuck on a certain process. It can also be used to create a solid foundation of customer knowledge.

✅Customer Portal

Creating a help center portal is an important step towards becoming a serious business. Providing customer support has become an important aspect in deciding the success of a business. There are a number of tools and portals available to help you provide that support and help your customers feel that you are not just a business but a serious business and that they can depend on you.

LabiDesk is walking the extra mile to provide live chat customer service to the businesses. But it's not just live chat, it's also a help desk software which offers the freedom to manage customer service through multiple channels. It's a complete solution.

LabiDesk is an Intercom Alternative that allows users to get help, manage support tickets, create knowledge base articles, manage knowledge bases, monitor support tickets through interactive reports, provide customer support through an easy to use interface that integrates with your favorite channels of communication: Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Email, Instagram, Google Business Messenger, Whatsapp, Telegram and more.

LabiDesk is a full-featured, scalable and intuitive software that supports 24×7 customer service and help desk operations.

Pricing: Free, also Lifetime deal and starting from $19 per website per month.

Crisp is not an Intercom alternative but more of an extension for teams that are already using the customer support platform. It focuses on making interactions between your business and customers easier by integrating with multiple communication channels like Twitter, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. through their one-click setup.

Pricing: Free to $99 per month per website.

Drift is the leading conversational marketing platform for B2B and B2C customer engagement. According to a Gartner report, conversation marketing will replace a combination of marketing, sales, and service by 2020. So it's no surprise that Drift wants to be at the forefront of this revolution!

Drift has a lot of potential and can become powerful if they add some features and plan their pricing strategy in a different fashion. Looking at the positives, it comes with some great features that aim to make it a better alternative for Intercom, yet does fall behind in some areas that may worry existing customers of this SaaS service. It’s important to note that Drift adopts a sales-first approach to fulfilling client needs, with plans structured in such a fashion as they charge the highest prices. There are also serious loading speed issues but this is nothing new when it comes to software startups.

Pricing: From $400 to $1500 per month.

HubSpot Live Chat does indeed deserve its spot on this list of the best Intercom alternatives. This platform does have a free version that comes with limitations, however. As is with almost all free things in this world, there are hidden costs to consider . In this case, you'll need to upgrade from the free plan in order to utilize some of the more advanced features offered by HubSpot. That being said, the cost of upgrading from the free plan aren't that steep when you compare them with intercom's hefty monthly charges . Hubspot also contains a range of marketing tools and a messaging platform which many find convenient as they do not need to switch between various systems for different tasks.

Pricing: Free to $1200 per month per 10 users

Olark is one of Intercom's top competitors and offers robust live chat and customer data tools that help you learn from every online interaction you have - if the need arises, the tool will track page views, save customer conversations in a searchable database.

Olark enables businesses to talk directly with live customers across the web. It’s the easiest way for leading brands to create one-to-one relationships online with their customers. With thousands of customers for some of the world’s biggest companies, Olark is quickly scaling alongside some of today’s most innovative brands in industries such as e-commerce, travel and hospitality.

Pricing: Starting from $29 per user per month.

As you can see there are many different help desk alternatives to choose from. However, by choosing full fledged help desk software like LabiDesk Intercom Alternative which already includes not only live chat but also offer help center to assist customers providing self service, ticketing system to work with customer inquiries and to have the ability to escalate tickets to the right department. Shared inbox to connect all your channels of communication including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, plus knowledge base that offers comprehensive content that allows visitors to answer their questions, and providing your team an overview of all useful information about each user coming in. Choose LabiDesk Intercom Alternative as a help desk alternative and have peace of mind!

Thanks for reading this blog post on "Intercom Alternatives." We hope you enjoyed reading about how companies are using live chat to communicate with their customers. If you want to share your knowledge about live chat with us, please leave a comment in the section below, or hit us up on Twitter @labidesk

Hey? , here are some more apps for your check for outstanding customer support ? Check out these Top 10 Shared Inbox Software to Manage Team Email.