Nine customer support platforms compared on the thing that sends people away from Intercom: a bill made of seats, AI outcomes and add-ons that is hard to predict. Three of the nine have a real free plan and two charge per workspace or per ticket instead of per seat.
9 tools compared · Last reviewed
Intercom is the best AI-first support platform on the market and one of the hardest to budget for. Its pricing page on 14 September 2026 listed seat plans at $29, $85 and $132 per seat per month, Fin AI Agent from $0.99 per resolved outcome under a minimum commitment, Copilot at $29 to $35 per agent per month, and Proactive Support Plus at $99 per month. Each line is reasonable; the sum is what people search to escape.
The alternatives split by pricing model, and that matters more than any feature. Crisp charges per workspace with seats bundled and has a free-forever inbox. Chatwoot is open source, free for two agents and $19 per agent above that. Freshdesk and Hiver are per-agent help desks with plain tiers. Front and Missive are shared inboxes for teams that collaborate on email. Gorgias charges per ticket with unlimited agents. Re:amaze has a flat $59 starter. Tidio is a chat-first tool with an AI agent and a free plan. Pick the model first, then the tool.
Every price here was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 14 September 2026 and quoted with its billing term. Nine of the eleven pages we tried published readable prices. Help Scout's site could not be reached from our checker, HelpCrunch's page uses a slider that rendered no readable tier prices, and Kayako publishes only a $1-per-resolution AI rate with no platform price, so none of the three is ranked. Intercom's own seat figures came from its default billing view because the toggle was not readable; its entry says so.
Intercom's seat price is only the start: Fin is billed per outcome, Copilot per agent, proactive messaging per month. A team that budgets the $29 seat and then turns on Fin discovers the real number in the second invoice. Crisp, Chatwoot, Freshdesk and Hiver publish one number per plan.
No free plan
Intercom offers a 14-day trial. Crisp is free forever for a first inbox, Chatwoot is free for two agents and free to self-host, Freshchat is free for ten agents, and Tidio has a permanent free tier. For a startup with two people answering email, that ends the comparison.
It is a product platform, not only a help desk
Intercom's messenger, tours and surveys are superb if you support inside your own SaaS product. If your support is email from customers who never see your app, Front, Missive, Hiver and Freshdesk do the actual job for less and without the parts you will not use.
E-commerce needs order data, not a messenger
A Shopify store's tickets are about orders. Gorgias puts the order in the ticket and prices by ticket volume with unlimited agents; Re:amaze adds chatbots and a flat starter. Intercom can integrate with Shopify but is not built around it.
How we chose
We added the tools people move to from Intercom — Crisp, Freshdesk, Freshchat, Front, Hiver, Chatwoot, Missive and Re:amaze — to our directory alongside Gorgias and Tidio which were already listed, then opened every vendor's own pricing page on 14 September 2026 and read the figures from the HTML. Gorgias's existing listing carried a $50 Starter and $360 Pro that the vendor no longer publishes; it was rewritten the same day from the live page. Prices are quoted with billing terms, and where a page did not publish a figure in readable form the entry says so. Help Scout (unreachable), HelpCrunch (slider, no readable tiers) and Kayako (per-resolution AI price only) are not ranked. Promotional discounts on the day, including a 35% new-customer offer on Intercom Essential, are not quoted.
Best for: Teams of four to twenty who want one flat bill instead of seats
The most direct answer to Intercom's pricing shape. Crisp has the chat widget, shared inbox, knowledge base, chatbot flows and an AI agent, and charges per workspace with seats included: Mini at $45 per month with 4 seats, Essentials at $95 with 10 and Plus at $295 with 20 or more, as listed on 14 September 2026, with extra agents at $10. A ten-person team pays $95, where Intercom's Essential seats alone would be $290 before Fin.
Free tier: Yes — a free-forever first inbox.
Watch out: Automated conversations and AI credits are capped per plan (around 90, 450 and 1,350 conversations), so heavy AI use runs into the ceiling. Reporting is lighter than Intercom's.
Best for: Developers and privacy-conscious teams who want Intercom's channels for free
The open-source alternative. Chatwoot unifies live chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram and SMS in one inbox with an AI assistant, and its cloud pricing on 14 September 2026 was a free Hacker plan for two agents and 500 conversations, then Startups at $19, Business at $39 and Enterprise at $99 per agent per month billed annually. Self-hosting costs only the server.
Free tier: Yes — free for 2 agents on the cloud; free to self-host.
Watch out: The AI assistant is a generation behind Fin, reporting is basic, and self-hosting needs someone who can run infrastructure. Additional AI credits were $20 per 1,000.
Best for: Email-ticket support teams that want a mature help desk at a plain per-agent price
The ticketing workhorse. Freshdesk's SLAs, automations, knowledge base and integrations are as deep as anything here, and its pricing page on 14 September 2026 listed Growth at $19, Pro at $55 and Enterprise at $89 per agent per month billed annually. Day passes for occasional agents at $2 to $12 are a rare, sensible idea.
Free tier: No free plan readable on the page; a free trial is offered.
Watch out: AI is sold separately: Freddy Copilot was $29 per agent per month and AI agent sessions $49 per 100. Chat lives in the separate Freshchat product. Monthly billing was stated as about 20% more.
Best for: Teams that collaborate on shared email addresses rather than run a ticket queue
The shared inbox done properly: internal comments on any thread, assignment, rules, SLAs and analytics across email, chat, SMS and social. Front's pricing page on 14 September 2026 listed Starter at $25 per seat per month for up to 10 seats, Professional at $65 for up to 50 and Enterprise at $105, all billed annually, with Copilot, Smart QA and Smart CSAT as $10 to $20 per seat add-ons.
Free tier: No; a 14-day trial of Professional features, no card.
Watch out: Monthly rates were not readable (annual was stated as 24% cheaper), every AI feature is an add-on, and the seat caps force an upgrade at 11 and 51 seats. No self-service messenger of Intercom's kind.
Best for: Google Workspace companies that want a help desk without leaving Gmail
Hiver turns Gmail labels into shared queues with assignment, SLAs, CSAT and analytics, and has grown into chat, WhatsApp and voice. Its pricing page on 14 September 2026 listed Growth at $25 per user per month on annual billing or $35 monthly, Pro at $55 or $65 and Elite at $85 or $95, stated side by side without a sales call.
Free tier: No; a 7-day trial.
Watch out: Gmail only; Outlook teams should look at Front or Missive. The trial is a short seven days and voice seats were $30 per month extra.
Best for: Small teams that want a collaborative inbox at the lowest per-user price here
Missive feels like an email client with a team inside it: shared and personal mail, SMS, WhatsApp and social, with a chat thread attached to every conversation. Its pricing page on 14 September 2026 listed Starter at $14, Productive at $24 and Business at $36 per user per month billed yearly, the cheapest seat on this page.
Free tier: No; a 30-day trial of Productive, no card.
Watch out: No knowledge base, no customer portal and no AI agent for self-service; it is an inbox, not a support platform. Monthly rates were not readable (yearly stated as 20% off).
Best for: Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce stores with real ticket volume
The e-commerce help desk. Every ticket arrives with the order attached, the AI Agent resolves order questions from real data, and pricing is by ticket volume with unlimited agents: Starter at $40 per month with 50 tickets, Basic at $90 per month or $77 on annual billing with 300, and Pro at $550 or $471 with 2,000, as listed on 14 September 2026.
Free tier: No; a free trial without a card.
Watch out: Starter is monthly-billing only and 50 tickets is small; overage was $0.40 per ticket. Pro is a large jump. Outside e-commerce, most of what you pay for is unused.
Best for: Small online stores that want chat, help desk and chatbots for a flat rate
Re:amaze bundles inboxes, live chat, chatbots, FAQs, a status page and an AI agent, and offers something nobody else here does: a flat Starter at $59 per month for unlimited team members up to 500 responded conversations. Per-member tiers were Basic $29, Pro $49 and Plus $69 per month ($26.10, $44.10 and $62.10 annually) on 14 September 2026.
Free tier: No; a 14-day trial, no card.
Watch out: AI resolutions beyond a small monthly allowance (5, 10 or 20 per user) were $0.85 each, and the interface is dated next to Intercom or Front.
Best for: Small businesses that want live chat with an AI agent and a permanent free tier
Chat-first rather than ticket-first: live chat, ticketing, automation flows and the Lyro AI agent that answers from your help content. Tidio's pricing page on 14 September 2026 listed Starter at $24.17 and Growth from $49.17 per month billed annually, Plus from $300 per month plus usage, and Lyro as a standalone from $32.50 per month annually, with a permanent free plan and a 7-day trial of paid features.
Free tier: Yes — a permanent free plan with a limited conversation allowance.
Watch out: Priced by billable conversations, so a busy site outgrows the lower tiers, and the free plan's Lyro allowance is a lifetime figure, not monthly. Ticketing is lighter than Freshdesk's.
Yes, several. Crisp's Basic plan is free forever for a first shared inbox, Chatwoot is free for two agents on its cloud and free to self-host, Freshchat is free for up to ten agents, and Tidio has a permanent free plan. Intercom itself offers only a 14-day trial.
What is the cheapest Intercom alternative?
Of the prices we read on 14 September 2026, Missive at $14 per user per month billed yearly is the cheapest seat, Chatwoot and Freshdesk are $19 per agent on annual billing, and Crisp's $45 workspace with four seats included works out cheaper still for a small team. Intercom's Essential seat was $29 before Fin outcomes and add-ons.
Which alternative has the best AI agent?
None matches Fin yet. Tidio's Lyro is the most developed on this list for self-service chat, Gorgias's AI Agent is the strongest for order questions because it acts on Shopify data, and Freshdesk's and Chatwoot's assistants are useful but younger. If Fin is the reason you chose Intercom, the honest answer is that you will give some of it up.
Which is best for e-commerce?
Gorgias, if you are on Shopify, Magento or BigCommerce and have enough tickets to justify $40 to $550 a month. Re:amaze is the cheaper small-store option with a $59 flat starter. Tidio suits stores that want chat and an AI agent more than ticketing.
What does Intercom actually cost?
Its pricing page on 14 September 2026 listed Essential at $29, Advanced at $85 and Expert at $132 per seat per month on the page's default billing view, Fin AI Agent from $0.99 per outcome with a minimum monthly commitment, Copilot at $29 per agent per month annual or $35 monthly, Proactive Support Plus at $99 per month with 500 messages, and a Pro analytics add-on from $99 per month. A 35% new-customer offer on Essential was displayed that day.
Will my conversation history transfer?
Contacts and help-centre articles export and import readily; conversation history usually does not move cleanly between platforms. Most teams export Intercom conversations as an archive for reference, migrate contacts and articles, and start fresh in the new inbox. Freshdesk and Crisp offer assisted migrations; HelpCrunch advertises free migration.
