Live chat has redefined the way customer support and has soared in popularity over the past few years.
It adds value at both ends of the spectrum, the customer can easily contact and get their questions answered quickly, and the business owner or customer support agents are at a lower risk of losing any potential prospects by establishing a prompt connection.
A lot of sales deals that get closed start with a live chat conversation, particularly for Inbound leads. So, apart from being a huge part of customer support, live chat can also be of immense help in sales & marketing to easily fill the top of your funnel.
There are a plethora of options in the current market to choose from to start with live chat support for your website. It cannot be disputed that Intercom is one of the pioneers in it and started this whole phenomenon to be mainstream and used by so many new and upcoming businesses.
However, based on your business needs, the number of contacts, and the features wanted, Intercom could get really expensive. As good as a product it is, it might be out of the reach of the budget of many businesses and that's where a search for the best alternatives comes in.
Although there are so many options and a lot of new SaaS tools popped up in this space, this is the list of the best available alternatives that offer the best array of features at the most affordable price compared to Intercom.
Let's get right into it.
Pricing - starts from $19 per month per agent.
Free Plan - No, but a 14-day free trial is available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
Livechat is one of the earliest entrants in this market with a wide array of feature sets. Be it for sales, marketing, or customer support it has all the features covered that you would get in Intercom at a much more affordable price point.
Livechat has strong fundamentals in having an excellent ticketing system for handling customer support queries. You can group agents and automatically filter & assign the incoming requests to the right team to instantly minimize the response time.
LiveChat also has a few more products in its portfolio like ChatBot, HelpDesk, and KnowledgeBase which syncs and works together perfectly.
You can also get some detailed reporting and analytics on the performance & efficiency of each agent, customer satisfaction rating, etc.
In addition to a wide array of native integrations with other third-party tools, LiveChat also has a marketplace with tons of apps in various categories like E-commerce, Analytics, Email Marketing, CRM connectors, CMS Integrations, etc. This gives you complete flexibility to extend the functionality of LiveChat to precisely work as per your needs.
Apart from mobile apps, LiveChat also has desktop apps for both Windows and macOS.
Get a 60-day exclusive free trial of LiveChat and a 10% discount off the first payment
Pricing - starts from $29 for up to 1,000 contacts and all the features included.
Free Plan - No, but a 14-day free trial is available.
Outseta is an excellent all-in-one tool to manage all your subscription-based business types, whether it a membership program or a SaaS product.
Additional to live chat, Outseta comes with a full-blown CRM, authentication system, billing, email & automation, a knowledge base, etc. This saves a lot of money as it replaces many of the tools that you need to run a successful subscription business.
The live chat widget can be completely customized to match your brand colors and logo. The chat history can be synced with the CRM making it incredibly easy to keep all the records of each customer interaction organized.
The helpdesk aspect is full of rich features whereby you can assign tickets easily to support agents and have a shared inbox for each department of your company to have the tickets and support emails organized.
You can also build all your support docs right within Outseta. It is possible to categorize the support articles under different categories and the articles can contain rich text, image, and video content. The articles can be optimized for SEO for the possibility of better organic traffic.
When it comes to email automation, you can send one-off broadcast emails and drip campaigns with follow-up sequences as well. Outseta gives you detailed tracking metrics and statistics on a campaign level and also on the basis of each individual email.
It is also possible to segment your customer base under various lists based on their subscription, or any custom activity like joining date, pipeline stage, etc. that you can set up easily.
Outseta also gives the ability to build custom sign-up forms to build your email list without the need for any additional pop-up tool. You can embed these sign-up forms right into your website, build stand-alone sign-up form pages, or build even custom HTML or Javascript sign-up forms.
Having a CRM, live chat, help desk, email, billing, and subscription management in one place under a single login is a huge time saver, particularly for early-stage SaaS startups that are mostly managed by a small team of 2 to 4 people at most.
You can just connect your Stripe account and manage all the subscription needs within Outseta including free trial sign-ups, upgrades, downgrades, cancellations, etc. with no additional coding needed.
As the billing, live chat, help desk, and CRM are all available within Outseta, it is easy to get an overall birds' eye view of each and every customer. This helps to better serve your customers and there improving your revenue numbers.
Pricing - starts from $25 per month for 2 seats and up to 5,000 page views.
Free Plan - Yes, available for 1 seat and up to 1,000 page views.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
Continually is an automated chatbot-focused live chat tool with a simple and easy-to-use interface.
It is possible to set up a simple welcome sequence or even complex chatbots on Continually. This helps to make your website a lead generation or an active support agent 24 X 7.
You can send a pre-defined message to your website visitors landing on a specific page and once they reply back or engage in the conversation, you can join the chat. This helps you to maximize the effectiveness of your support agents to the fullest capabilities.
The visual builder interface helps you build even complex navigation paths for chatbots. You can drag and drop the messages, edit the answers and connect them to other elements of the chatbot easily.
You can also set up various triggers based on which the message loads. Some of these triggers include the percentage of page scroll done by the visitor, immediately after the page loads, a pre-defined & timed delay, click of a specific button or text, any custom Javascript, etc.
Continually also lets you build multiple bots for different types of prospects and use cases. For example, you can build a welcome sequence for new visitors, a specific bot for your pricing page, for your blog, etc.
Continually also a scheduler built-in which makes it incredibly easy to get leads and appointments completely on auto-pilot. It also saves you money as you do not need to use an external booking tool like Calendly, Acuity, etc. You can connect your Google or Office 365 Calendar to have everything streamlined for all of your team members.
It is also possible to completely customize your availability and the meetings appear on your calendar as and when your customers book it through the website. If you have your Slack account connected, you get a notification in Slack as soon as someone books a meeting and also a reminder before the meeting starts to make sure you didn't miss any of the meetings.
With Continually, you can pre-qualify the leads and set up the message option available only on specific chatbots based on the responses. This helps to make sure that you spend your time chatting only with the best prospects who are really interested in your product or service.
Pricing - starts from $15 per user per month + $39 per company per month for the LeadBooster add-on.
Free Plan - No, but a 14-day free trial is available.
Pipedrive is an extremely well-known CRM with a huge user base. However, there is a very useful add-on called LeadBooster that adds live chat along with many other useful features for sales teams.
Apart from live chat, LeadBooster also gives access to a chatbot builder, a prospector with a database of millions of B2B contacts, and web forms.
Chatbots could be of huge help for small to medium scale businesses that do not have a large sales or support team. It helps to make sure none of the incoming leads or queries are missed. Setting up a simple chatbot to get the required information from the website visitor can be later used to contact when the sales or support representatives are available.
Similar to Livechat Pipedrive also has a huge array of native integrations and a marketplace to integrate various third-party apps and extend the functionality of the tool.
Pipedrive also comes with a built-in scheduler that lets you send meeting links in the live chat. It is also possible to qualify the incoming leads with the chatbot and if the lead is qualified, book an appointment with one of your sales representatives.
Having your CRM, lead generation, live chat, and appointment booking all in a single tool is a huge time saver for any small to medium size sales & support team.
Get a 30-day free trial of Pipedrive here (Instead of the usual 14-day trial)
Free Plan - Yes, available for live chat.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
Drift is one of the pioneers when it comes to the usage of live chat as a means of a conversational marketing tool.
Apart from live chat, you get a whole marketing suite with Drift that includes Email Communication, Meetings Scheduling, Chatbots, Email Bots, Sales Prospector, etc.
Drift is one of the most expensive on this list when you are considering an Intercom alternative, but the suite of features it offers makes it completely worthy.
Also, if you do not need all the fancy features and looking for just a basic live chat tool, Drift's free plan is excellent and covers the need for small businesses.
Pricing - starts from $50 per month.
Free Plan - Yes, available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
HubSpot is a suite of marketing and sales tools that offers a wide array of features. The best part of HubSpot is its generous free plan that consists of a complete CRM tool.
Live chat is offered as a feature in HubSpot's marketing suite and it is completely free to use. Even for the paid plans that start at $50 per month, it is incredible value for money for all the features it offers along with the live chat.
Apart from live chat, you get a CRM, email marketing, appointment booking, chatbots, landing pages, ad management, A/B testing, retargeting, campaign reporting, marketing automation, social media management, etc.
Pricing - starts from $18 per month for 3 chat operators.
Free Plan - Yes, available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
Tidio is one of the most feature-rich live chat tools with excellent value for money. The free plan is a very generous offering for up to 3 chat operators with limits on the number of emails and the number of visitors that can be contacted.
You get live chat, email marketing, and chatbots with Tidio. The backend of the tools gives all the information about your visitors and the pages they have visited that helps to tailor your messages accordingly.
Tidio gives a real-time list of visitors and the live typing feature gives a peep of what your visitors are typing. This lets you be prepared and significantly reduces the response times.
If you need additional chat operators on top of the 3 that's included by default, it costs just $10 per seat making Tidio one of the cheapest in the market.
Tidio's chatbot builder is one of the best as well which has a lot of useful templates to work with.
Pricing - starts from $19 per month per agent.
Free Plan - Yes, available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
JivoChat lets you connect with your prospects and website visitors across numerous channels, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Apple Business Chat, Email, etc.
It is a truly multi-channel support system that even supports callback, where the visitors can easily request a call from you at a later time. This is very useful for industry types where you need a more hands-on approach by the sales team to explain things over a call.
There is a basic plan that is free for up to 5 agents and it can be used for unlimited websites and chats. JivoChat supports customization of the chat widget set up in almost 20 languages, which is a very handy feature for international businesses that need to support their customers in various languages.
Pricing - starts from $15 per month per team member for live chat, $29 per month per team member for live chat + email.
Free Plan - No, but a 14-day free trial is available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
HelpCrunch is another all-in-one support tool which apart from an excellent live chat feature, also has email marketing, knowledge base, help desk, and popups.
The widget customization is quite fantastic in HelpCrunch that lets you design and match it perfectly with your brand. It also supports custom CSS styling to get the widget to look exactly the way you want.
Another unique plus in HelpCrunch is that they offer free migration from your current live chat tool, including Intercom, Zendesk, and LiveChat. You get all your contact lists, email templates, and all the automation sequences transferred to HelpCrunch completely free of cost which is a huge time saver if you have a huge list of contacts.
Pricing - starts from $29 per month for 5 seats.
Free Plan - Yes, available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
Customerly has many of the use cases covered for support, sales & marketing including live chat, knowledge base, email marketing, surveys, and NPS.
You can also connect to Facebook Messenger and respond to your visitors from a single dashboard.
It is possible to set up multiple mandatory questions before the visitor can start a chat with you. This will help in gathering a lot of leads to fill up the top of your marketing funnel. Customerly is another tool that supports typing preview in real-time to better prepare and reduce response times.
Another unique and useful feature in Customerly is support for video chat right inside the chat widget. It supports screen share as well which will be an amazing time saver for support teams and completely eliminates the need to switch to a new tool for video calls & screen sharing.
Also based on specific terms in the questions asked, it can be set up to automatically route to a specific team member or department.
Surveys can be used to effectively segment the visitors and handle the chats accordingly. Customerly supports 19 different languages.
Pricing - starts from €29 per month for 3 agents, 1000 contacts, and 20,000 emails.
Free Plan - Yes, available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
Froged is one of the newest players in the live chat space, but one that looks quite promising with the features list and pricing.
Froged is particularly good for SaaS tools with use cases like onboarding, retention, and customer support. It helps you achieve these with live chat, behavioral emails, in-app messages, and a knowledge base.
The live chat widget can be customized even with your company logo which is pretty neat. You can set up a qualification form that has to be submitted before the visitor can initiate the conversation. This helps in pre-qualify the leads and spend your time effectively on the conversations that are the most important.
Pricing - starts from $29 per month for 3 seats.
Free Plan - Yes, available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
The main selling point of GIST is the sheer number of tools it can replace in your tech stack.
You get live chat, chatbots, popup forms, email marketing, appointment scheduling & booking, knowledge base, event tracking, marketing automation, etc.
You can set up chat prompts on various pages based on various triggers like page scroll, the device type of the website visitor, location of the visitor, the number of pages visited, etc.
The trigger can also be a URL parameter that contains a specific keyword you set up. This can be very useful for landing pages for different ad campaigns where you can set up specific messages for various traffic sources.
With GIST, it is possible to schedule all your meetings and appointment right within your live chat tool. You can set up a certain number and type of questions before a prospect is allowed to schedule a meeting with you. This lets you easily pre-qualify the lead.
In addition to one-off meetings, you can also set up a recurring schedule for each day. This is very useful for sales teams who spend a lot of their time on meetings and demos.
The sign-up pages for meetings can also be built inside GIST and a custom link can be generated for this sign-up page that can be shared easily. Meetings can be synced with your Google Calendar to keep everything on track.
GIST also has a pop-up form builder with which you can build responsive forms and build your email list. All the different types of pop-up forms including exit intent, fullscreen overlays, welcome forms, sticky bars, surveys, and slide-in forms can be built easily without any coding required.
Each form can be completely personalized with merge tags if you have already collected the details of the visitor from a prior conversation or from the chatbot submission.
Pricing - starts from $18 per month for live chat, 100 minutes of calls & 100 SMS.
Free Plan - No, but a 14-day free trial is available.
Mobile Apps: Not available.
Callback Tracker is another multi-channel customer engagement and support tool that consists of live chat, call back and text messaging.
It also supports call tracking, bulk SMS, and mass emailing to completely integrate your whole marketing stack within a single tool.
It is good for both the visitors and the website owner as the visitors get a lot of options to contact based on their preference.
With all the plans, you can use the tool on an unlimited number of websites. The limitations are only on the number of minutes when it comes to calls and the number of text messages.
Pricing - $12 per agent per month for 100 monthly chats & 1 website, $19 per agent per month for unlimited monthly chats & 5 websites.
Free Plan - No, but a 30-day free trial is available.
Mobile Apps: Yes, available for both iOS & Android.
If all you need is a simple-to-use live chat system along with a helpdesk tool, Helponclick fits the bill perfectly.
You can add multiple websites under a single account to have all the communication in a single place. Helponclick supports canned messages, real-time typing preview, offline messages, chat transfer to another agent, chat history of returning visitors, etc. to offer a complete live chat support experience.
Apart from mobile apps, Helponclick also has desktop apps for both Windows and Mac OS which is very productive for larger teams.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. These are some of the best Intercom alternatives you can get to use at an affordable price and all the major features covered.
Each has its own strength when compared to Intercom. HubSpot is an awesome choice if you need an all-in-one CRM cum live chat tool and if you need a feature-packed live chat specialized tool, LiveChat is an awesome choice.