10 Best Intercom Alternatives in 2019 – Reliable Live Chat & Customer Support for Businesses!
Live chat and customer support are parts that make any business a two-way transaction. A good business not only creates products that find solutions for their customers but also needs to stay reachable and accountable. Many products have come on the market to make this side of the story simple for both big and small businesses. But apparently, reliable customer support is not easy to achieve. Also, money plays a crucial role. Price to performance ratio among the products in the market requires deep analysis. When we researched to find the best Intercom alternatives, our primary concern was to find products that are both relevant and functional in 2019.
Intercom got popular due to its consistent innovation toward simplifying support and live chat. Since we live in a surplus society, Intercom now has some head-to-head competition. Out of these new competent platforms, some live by their promises and expectations. Here are our top 10 Intercom Alternatives to end your hunger.
1. HelpCrunch
We'll start our list of the best Intercom alternatives with HelpCrunch. This platform is clearly designed for startups and small businesses. Upon testing, we found that HelpCrunch is a new-age live chat software. It is a fantastic tool for all the three steps of user experience; onboarding, supporting and retaining. Its admin dashboard is the most impressive part of the tool compared to all the other intercom alternatives we reviewed. A good admin panel ensures an easier and faster get around time. The platform has a pretty straightforward integration method and takes no more than 10 minutes to install. It is fully customizable and functions smoothly with its great design.
We have also checked the user reviews of HelpCrunch on various website, and almost all of them were positive. People openly praised their customer service for their faster replies at the time of need. HelpCrunch deserves the first spot on this list.
2. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is among the best customer support software and ticketing system. Its website boosts its credibility by tagging it as an award-winning online help desk software, which upon using it, felt like the right description. The software allows you to provide customer care over emails, phones, websites and even through your brand’s social media accounts. The platform allows up to 3 agents on your website to monitor your different products, compared to the other platforms which allow only one at most. Freshdesk also encourages you to create multiple desks, where you can handle different requests—without chaos.
The service is integrated with most of the top customer care platforms. It also allows you to automate many of its services including ticket routing and scenario.
3. Zendesk
Zendesk is an old player. Everybody in customer support knows that Zendesk is a proven cloud-based customer service platform. The platform’s biggest advantage is that it’s fast. Right from its installation, to its integration, everything is lightning fast. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to set it up. It caters to all businesses of all sizes; big, medium, small—you're good to go. Some of the big names that use Zendesk are Tumblr, Sony, Airbnb and many more.
The program has a free trial period post to which subscribers are charged $5 per month. The Platform can be accessed through all the major operating systems and web. The platform is tagged as one of the best CRMs in the market for its most intuitive, simple and clean user experience. On the list of best alternatives, while comparing Intercom vs Zendesk, it takes third place due to its support and a cheaper pricing plan.
4. Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk claims to be the industry’s first context-aware helpdesk software. After using it for some time, we found the claims pretty close to reality. While most of the context-aware rebuttals, like Google Assistant, hit the spot, sometimes things lie flat and naked. But of course, having automated context-aware support is one step up compared to the other deals. Zoho puts the customer service of your company at the heart of it by making customers more empowered and agents more productive.
Zoho Desk also supports automation, and most of the repetitive tasks could be mechanized. It is a great platform where your entire team, across departments, can collaborate and bring productivity to the next level. And Zoho Desk knows customers are important and should be helped when they need help, not when you are open. For that reason, Zoho Desk is available over a variety of channels and encourages integration with other businesses tools. Zoho Desk is undoubtedly a feature-packed intercom alternative.
5. Userlike Live Chat
Finally, a free option to consider. Userlike Live Chat is a live chat software that offers an extensive free plan as well as paid plans for premium features. They offer messenger support that can be easily integrated with other apps so your customers can reach out to you from your website, Facebook and Telegram.
With Userlike's free plan, you can enjoy unlimited chats and respond to customers quickly with the help of canned messages. The platform has an intuitive browser-based chat system which makes it easy for both your agents and your customers to use. And with a premium plan, you'll get access to many more features, like customizing your chat widget to match the look of your website and integrating your chat with other business tools, like MailChimp and Slack. Userlike is a free party where everyone is welcome.
6. LiveChat
Let’s talk about a premium online chat service. LiveChat is the software which allows customer service to handle the queries right from the social media, or from the mobile or the web. It is available on Windows, macOS, and all currently available mobile platforms. LiveChat is incredibly customizable and allows you to rebrand it completely if that’s something you would like to do. LiveChat might look simple, but it’s a powerful beast under the hood that completes the communication gap between the customers and businesses.
Apart from all its fancy features, the platform also integrates with over 100 SaaS solutions. This tremendously increases the reach of your brand over 150 countries and 26,000 businesses.
7. LiveAgent
With 175+ support features, LiveAgent is one of the most versatile Intercom alternatives on the list. The platform is known for providing excellent customer support, which connects all the input networks, like website and Facebook, to your agents. This allows agents to proactively serve the queries from your customer body, and resolve them as soon as possible. Maybe, even before you say ASAP.
The platform is available in 39 languages. It can be used both under a SaaS license, or a self-hosted license. There are plenty of features due to which the platform is on our list. Ticketing, automation, priorities, email templates, voice integration, knowledgebase, forum are some out of 175+ features.
8. Tawk.to
Tawk.to is a live chat support software that lets you monitor the visitors on your website. The platform is highly customizable and can be altered to match your brand image and color. The site claims to have a super-fast set up - with about a minute-long integration time. Post the installation, you can log in to the dashboard and send invitations to your team members. After this step, you can create shortcuts and start serving your visitors. The platform also features strong analytics through which you can review chat history and track your team progress.
One thing that turns people off from Tawk.to is its self-branding on its software. Of course, you can remove the branding with a monthly payment of $15 per month, or $144 per annum, but it’s quite at the high end. Anyway, we get what we pay, don’t we?
9. Freshchat
Freshchat is a modern messaging app for live chat. The software allows you to engage with your customers and convert them to loyal customers. Freshchat allows you to send a triggered message to your website visitors and actively helps your sales and marketing team.
Freshchat is clear on its focus on context-based messaging experience for its users. With the help of sales bot and intelligent message routing, the platform is capable of creating a wonderful Live chat experience for website visitors. The platform can be accessed across the web and mobile devices. You can also integrate its services into other social and business applications. Doing this will drastically shorten the time in which you respond to your customers, and improve the overall customer service for your brand.
10. UseResponse
And finally, we get to the final recommendation for the best Intercom alternatives. UseResponse helps you in collecting feedback from your customers and provide them with apt customer support. The platform’s USP is that it is completely customizable. Its open-source nature allows you to alter its customer feedback system as per your website’s requirement. You can use the service both by installing its software on your server or access its features on the cloud. It is famously known for its all-in-one support software where it can be used as a bug tracking system, FAQ, ideas bank and much more.
The software is cleanly organized into four platforms; knowledge base, help-desk with ticketing, live chat messengers and feedback with ideas. This clean organization of the platform makes it very easy to optimize your tasks. It is also integrated with some of the major business apps, which further simplifies customer care. The program comes with a free trial.
We are open to suggestions. If you disagree with our list or have a suggestion that we have missed - perhaps one of your favorite live chat and customer support software, let us know in the comments. Also, to get instant tech updates, follow TechNadu’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Thanks!