What is Intercom? (Complete Guide + 2025 Reviews)

Intercom is a customer communication platform designed to help businesses build better relationships with their customers. It is mainly aimed at sales teams, of marketing and support that seek to engage, acquire and support users in a personalized way.

Its promise is to centralize all customer interactions (live chat, emails, in-app messages) in one place to provide a seamless experience. In 2025, Intercom is positioned as a leading solution in customer service based on AI, aimed at automate support while improving customer satisfaction.

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What is Intercom for? (Use case)

Intercom is a customer service platform that helps businesses communicate with their users through real-time messaging, automation, and engagement tools. Its main objective is to make interactions more personal and effective, whether to answer a question, guide a new user or announce something new.

The benefits for users are numerous: reduced response time, support available 24/7 thanks to Chatbots, and an improved overall customer experience.

For a SaaS business, Intercom makes it easy to onboarding new customers with product visits. For a e-commerce site, it can reduce cart abandonment by engaging visitors in real time. Les SMES, on the other hand, use it to centralize their support channels and offer quick assistance without requiring a large team.

Intercom's key features

Intercom offers a comprehensive range of features to optimize every point of contact with the customer.

• Business Messenger: This is the name of Intercom's live chat, which allows for real-time conversations on your site or app to engage and help customers instantly.
• Fin AI Agent: An AI-based chatbot that can automatically understand and resolve a large portion of common support requests, freeing up your teams for more complex cases.
• Shared inbox (Inbox): A collaborative space where your teams can manage all customer conversations, whether they come from chat, email or social networks.
• Product Tours: Create interactive guided tours to help new users discover the features of your product, promoting faster adoption.
• Help Center: Build a knowledge base where customers can find answers to their questions themselves, reducing the volume of support tickets.
• Outbound messages: Send targeted and automated messages to users based on their behavior to inform, engage, or retain them.

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Advantages and limitations of Intercom

Like any tool, Intercom has strengths but also aspects to consider before engaging.

✅ Benefits

• All-in-one platform: Intercom brings chat, email, email, automation, and a knowledge base together in one place, unifying customer communication.
• AI power: Its AI features, like Fin, make it possible to automate a significant part of customer support and assist human agents.
• Proactive engagement: The tools make it possible to target users with personalized messages, which is ideal for onboarding and marketing.
• Ease of use: Despite its advanced features, the interface is designed to be intuitive for non-technical teams.

❌ Boundaries

• High cost: Price can become a barrier, especially for small businesses or those that are growing rapidly, as pricing is based on seat count and usage.
• Price complexity: The pricing structure is often perceived as complex and not very predictable, with additional costs for certain functionalities or a higher volume of use.
• Learning curve: To fully exploit the power of the tool, adaptation time is necessary to master all the advanced functionalities.

How much does Intercom cost? (Prices 2025)

Intercom pricing is primarily based on the number of “seats” (users on your team) and may vary depending on the features included. The platform offers a 14-day free trial.

• Essential Plan: Starting at $29 per seat per month (billed annually), this plan includes basic features like shared inbox and simple chatbots.
• Advanced Plan: Starting at $85 per seat per month, it adds more advanced automations, multiple inboxes, and social media integrations.
• Expert Plan: This plan, starting at $132 per seat per month, is for larger businesses and includes advanced workload management features and more detailed reports.
• Startup plans: Intercom offers an “Early Stage” program with significant discounts for eligible young businesses.

Add-ons, like Proactive Support Plus (starting at $99/month), can be added to any plan. It is important to note that some services, such as resolutions by the AI Fin agent, may incur additional costs.

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Our opinion on Intercom (Test & Recommendations)

Intercom is undoubtedly an extremely powerful tool for businesses that place customer experience at the heart of their strategy. Its ability to unify all communication channels and to inject a dose of relevant AI into them is a real asset for increasing efficiency.

The strengths we observed are the fluidity of the interface and the intelligence of the automations that make it possible to manage a large volume of conversations with a small team. However, the complexity of its price schedule is a significant limitation. The cost can quickly rise, making it less accessible for small businesses or businesses with a limited budget.

We especially recommend it for growing SaaS businesses and e-commerce sites that need a robust tool to manage customer support and engagement at scale. For the smallest structures, it is essential to calculate the return on investment well before making a commitment.

Final grade: 4.5/5

Alternatives to Intercom

If Intercom does not meet your needs or your budget, several solid alternatives exist on the market.

• Zendesk: Very focused on customer support, Zendesk is a very complete solution that is distinguished by the robustness of its ticketing system.
• HubSpot Service Hub: Ideal if you already use the HubSpot ecosystem, it integrates seamlessly with the CRM for a 360 degree view of the customer.
• Crisp: A French alternative that is positioned as simpler and more affordable, offering a good balance between features and price.

Integrations available with Intercom

Intercom's strength also lies in its ability to connect to the ecosystem of tools you already use. The platform integrates with over 300 applications.

Some of the most popular integrations include tools for CRM suchlike Salesforce, collaboration platforms like Slack, payment tools like Stripe, and project management software like Jira.

For more advanced automations, Intercom connects natively to Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom workflows between nearly all of your applications. A robust API is also available for developers who want to create custom integrations.

How do I get started with Intercom? (Quick guide)

Getting started with Intercom is a fairly simple and well-guided process.

1. Create an account: Start by signing up for the 14-day free trial to explore the platform without commitment.
2. Install Business Messenger: Integrate the chat widget on your website or application by copying a simple code snippet.
3. Set up your inbox: Invite team members, set the rules for assigning conversations, and personalize your greetings.
4. Importing your customers: Connect your data sources to get a unified view of your users and start segmenting your audience.
5. Launch your first campaign: Create a product visit for new subscribers or a targeted message to announce something new.

For a complete start, Intercom offers numerous resources and detailed guides on its official site.

If you want support in integrating Intercom into your project and your existing tools, do not hesitate to call on experts. The TurnK team can help you optimize your setup, contact us to discuss.