How Much Will Intercom REALLY Cost You?
Last updated on June 13th, 2023
We use the Intercom live chat app across 2 very
different web apps. This is a break down of what it costs, why we prefer it
and alternatives we also used and liked such as
LiveChat.
Related: Can I See the Customer's Screen from Intercom in One Click?
Yes.
What do our two Intercom installations cost us?
Company one
15,000 users + 3 modules = $741 per month
Intercom was costing $741 for 15,000 users when using the standard Inbox,
Messages and Articles modules.
This covers 2 support agents and additional agents would cost $39 each on the
pro plan and $19 each on the lower plan.
Company two
2,500 users + 3 modules = $284 per month
$284 for around 2,500 users for standard Inbox, Messages and Articles modules.
Do you need to buy all the Intercom modules?
The 3 basic modules together come to a total of around $136 to $202 depending
on if you get the base plan or the pro plan.
If you get an individual module then it can range from $87 to $150 so getting
all of them makes sense and they do all work together very effectively.
If you want an effective minimum solution then we’d recommend ‘Inbox’ and
‘Messages’ because it means you can chat and send email campaigns to sign
ups which is the heart of it. However, you may as well get all of them based
on the pricing.
The messages module (email campaigns / in-app messages) makes up a significant
and powerful part of Intercom.
Early startup and small business pricing
If you’re an early stage startup then get Intercom 95% cheaper at $65 per
month for 10 seats and up to 1,000
customers. There's also a separate small business plan here for $67 per month
paid annually.
Intercom is good for SaaS but not if you’re Facebook
Intercom costs more depending on how many users you have.
If you’re a free consumer product with 100,000 sign ups then maybe it’s not
the right chat tool for you.
If you’re a SaaS company then it’s a great tool but you might want to trim old
users from Intercom occasionally (though not from your own database of
course).
Once you start adding more users then the costs go up
Intercom’s 3 main standard modules with 10,000 users costs $563 / month.
For 30,000 people it’s $1241 / month.
Above 50,000 users you can contact them for a custom enterprise plan.
How do you keep these costs down? Remove inactive users.
If you've got enough money then paying $400 or paying $1,400 for something so
important is not going to matter to you.
However, if you're a smaller company and you like to keep costs down, you can
do it by removing inactive users.
We’ve used Intercom across 2 projects and we use all 3 main modules.
In one of them we regularly clear out inactive users from Intercom to reduce
costs.
They’re in the database and when they do return to the site, the API adds them
to Intercom anyway.
We have not tested it yet but we recently come across a tool that promises to
remove inactive users from Intercom for you.
Any problems with this approach?
Intercom Messages module lets you email all the users and if they’re not all
there then… well, you can’t email them all.
However they are on our system and we can bring them back in or use an
alternate tool to send them emails.
Why do we use Intercom and not some other service?
We played with a few but simply put, Intercom helps replace a number of other
processes made of in-house work and
tools
and it would be crazy to think about switching and going back to using
multiple tools.
We agree internally that, whatever the cost is, the return rate is so much
higher.
See the case studies at the bottom to understand the details.
How much do Intercom add-ons cost?
HelloScreen Co-Browsing: Upscope is
for seeing and drawing on your customer's screen remotely without
downloads. It Starts from $18 / month per seat and works across all major
live chat systems. It's instant interactive screen sharing that's a support,
sales and onboarding dream with 43% faster support and 99% less stress when
supporting your least technical customers.
Statbot.io: $60 / month and provides more in-depth stats
than Intercom’s own which are great for performance management and reporting.
Also check-out Notion for another set of incredible
Intercom stats though their pricing is by request.
Toky.co $15 / agent / month for VOIP calling. You can click
on phone numbers directly within Intercom to call the user and it works across
a number of other CRM and sales tools. Also, add it to your home page for
customers to call you.
Aircall $30 / agent / month is another VOIP calling
system that integrates with Intercom and it's worth comparing their features
with Toky if you're shopping around.
See a full set of integrations here: https://www.intercom.com/integrations
Here are some alternatives
There are a range of live chat companies out there and here are some we've
either used or think are great for certain niches.
Give each member of your team their own live chat channel
Inzite.com uniquely gives every one of your team
members their own personal live chat box so people can reach them directly.
It makes it feel more human and engaging and is perfect for high ticket
items where you want to talk to a qualified person.
This is great for education, financial advisory, legal and more.
You can embed your profile onto your site using the Inzite widget and
people can chat to you, call you or schedule a meeting with you.
Check out Inzite.com here.
We used LiveChat before Intercom and would still use it
We used LiveChat
before Intercom and it was solid.
I guess we only switched because of the onboarding emails that Intercom has
though my co-founder still talks lovingly of LiveChat's features for support
specifically.
What I liked:
The pricing is simple. It starts from $16 per logged in agent.
It had all the apps and features we needed to run support cleanly as a team.
It has all the integrations that many other live chat systems have.
I can't think of anything bad to say about it and I'd still consider it for a
new project. That tells me a lot about how much I appreciated it.
Re:amaze is a live chat app with 5 star reviews
Reamaze is popular among both SaaS and
e-commerce companies.
It also has 5 star rated reviews for its
e-commerce integrations.
We’ve covered how Re:amaze is a good alternative live chat
app.
See a set of case studies on using Intercom to grow a business
If you'd like to learn more about the day to day practical use of Intercom in
making sales, doing marketing and lots more then read some case studies on how
it feels to use it.
