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Comparison

The best Intercom alternatives

Intercom is a customer service platform that also sends outbound email. People searching for alternatives usually fall into two camps: the ones who want cheaper support software, and the ones who realised they're paying per seat and per bulk email to send a newsletter.

Eighteen alternatives below, with what each costs, what its free tier really gets you, and what it is bad at. We make one of them. It's marked, and we're clear it doesn't do support.

18 options Prices checked 2 August 2026 No affiliate links
The short answer

Pick by the reason you're leaving

Nobody replaces a platform in the abstract. Something specific stopped working. Start from that, not from a feature matrix.

Best in-app messaging alternativeUserlist

In-app messages and lifecycle email, without the support desk or the seat pricing.

Most powerful lifecycle messagingCustomer.io

Email, push, SMS and in-app driven by your own event data.

Best if you want the CRM tooHubSpot

A free CRM, and a service hub that competes with Intercom's directly.

Cheapest for outbound at volumeBrevo

Metered on sends, with a permanent free tier.

Best when it was only the outbound emailEmail Bump

Campaigns, flows and a transactional API for $19/mo, no seats counted. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with Intercom

Intercom's Messenger and inbox are excellent. The complaints are about how the bill is assembled.

Bulk email is charged per email, on top of seats. You pay per seat for the platform, and then outbound email campaigns are billed per email sent. So the newsletter you send through Intercom has a marginal cost that a dedicated email platform simply doesn't have.

Add-ons stack. Pro at $99/mo, Copilot at $29 per agent per month, Proactive Support Plus at $99/mo. Each is defensible; together they turn a seat price into something quite different.

Fin is priced per outcome. $0.99 every time Fin resolves something. That's genuinely fair — you pay when it works — and it's also a variable line that scales with your support volume rather than your team size.

It's expensive as an email tool. If what you actually use is the outbound campaigns and the product tours, you're funding a support platform to get at them. Almost everything on this page sends email for a fraction of one Intercom seat.

The baseline

How Intercom is priced

Everything below is compared against these numbers, read on 2 August 2026.

Per seat, plus usage

The structure

Per seat
Messenger, inbox, ticketing, help centreEssential — Seat figures weren't rendering on their pricing page when we checked
Per seat
Adds workflows, multiple inboxesAdvanced — 20 free Lite seats
Per seat
Adds SSO, HIPAA, SLAs, multibrandExpert — 50 free Lite seats
$0.99
per resolved outcomeFin AI — On every plan
Billed on top

Usage and add-ons

  • Bulk email campaigns are charged per email sent.
  • SMS is per message and WhatsApp is per conversation.
  • Pro add-on: $99/mo for 1,000 conversations of analysis.
  • Copilot: $29 per agent per month.
  • Proactive Support Plus: $99/mo for 500 messages.
Side by side

All 18, on the things that decide it

ProviderStarts atFree tierWhat it coversLicenceData region
Email BumpHosted$19/mo at 10,000 contacts5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a monthThe whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggersProprietaryUnited States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
Customer.ioHostedEssentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figureNone, but early-stage startups can get a full year freeEvent-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-appProprietaryUnited States, with an EU data centre option
UserlistHostedBasic from $10/mo per additional 1,000 users, with 10,000 users includedNone — a 14-day trialLifecycle campaigns, broadcasts, in-app messages and transactional emailProprietaryUnited States
HubSpot Marketing HubHostedStarter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contactsFree Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chatCampaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRMProprietaryUnited States, with EU hosting available
BrevoHostedPaid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousandsCampaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pagesProprietaryEuropean Union (France)
ActiveCampaignHostedPriced per tier and contact count; no static price table is publishedNone — a 14-day trialThe whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiersProprietaryUnited States (Chicago-headquartered)
LoopsHostedPriced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your emailCampaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactionalProprietaryUnited States
EnchargeHostedGrowth $99/mo at 2,000 subscribers ($79/mo billed yearly)None — a 14-day trialBehaviour-based flows, segmentation and broadcasts for SaaSProprietaryUnited States
BentoHosted$29/mo for up to 5,000 active users100 transactional emails a month; the marketing platform has a 30-day trialCampaigns, automations, CRM, segmentation, forms and pop-upsProprietaryUnited States
OrttoHostedPriced by contact count on annual plans; figures aren't published as a static tableNoneVisual journeys, a CDP, dashboards, SMS and in-app messagesProprietaryUnited States and Australia
KlaviyoHostedPriced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messagesCampaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and pushProprietaryUnited States
MailchimpHostedEssentials $13/mo at 500 contacts250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seatCampaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRMProprietaryUnited States
MailerLiteHostedComfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automationsCampaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websitesProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)HostedCreator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automationBroadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product salesProprietaryUnited States
GetResponseHostedStarter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)None — a 14-day trial with feature limitsCampaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and coursesProprietaryEuropean Union (Poland)
SenderHostedPaid plans are priced by subscriber count and aren't shown as a static table2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation includedCampaigns, automation, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus SMS on paid tiersProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
MauticSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay for hosting and a sending providerSelf-hosted — the software is freeFull campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoringOpen sourceWherever you deploy it
listmonkSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sendingSelf-hosted — the software is freeLists, subscribers, campaigns and templatesAGPL-3.0Wherever you deploy it

Read off each vendor's own pricing or documentation page on 2 August 2026. Where a vendor renders prices from a slider and publishes no static table, the cell says so instead of repeating a number from someone's affiliate post.

In detail

Every option, and what it's bad at

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams tired of send multipliers, seat limits and paid add-ons

Contact-priced marketing automation with the transactional API included rather than sold as an add-on. Sending isn't a multiple of your list size, seats aren't rationed, and unsubscribed contacts stop counting toward the bill.

Starts at
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing
The whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggers
Data region
United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
What it does well
  • No send multiplier. Most of this list caps you at 10–15× your contact count; sending here is uncapped under fair use.
  • Unlimited team seats on every plan, including free — seats are the quiet upsell everywhere else.
  • Unlimited sending domains, also on every plan.
  • Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop being billable, so the number you pay for is your real audience.
  • The transactional API, SMTP and inbound email are included, not add-ons.
  • A CLI, an MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
What to watch for
  • No sales CRM — no pipelines, deals or lead scoring. If you're replacing ActiveCampaign's sales side, this isn't it.
  • No SMS or WhatsApp. Email and inbound email only.
  • No landing page or form builder.
  • US-only sending; no EU data region.
  • A much smaller integration catalogue than the incumbents' hundreds of connectors.
  • The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers.
02Hosted service

Customer.io

Best for: Product teams sending lifecycle email off real product events

The technical end of this list. You pipe in events and objects, and build messaging on top of your actual data model rather than a list. Powerful, and priced for companies that already know they need it.

Starts at
Essentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figure
Free tier
None, but early-stage startups can get a full year free
Marketing
Event-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-app
Data region
United States, with an EU data centre option
What it does well
  • 1 million emails a month included on the entry plan — sending is not the constraint.
  • Data model built on events and objects, not lists and tags.
  • Extra profiles are $0.009 each, so growth is predictable.
  • The startup programme gives qualifying companies a year at no cost.
What to watch for
  • You need engineers. This is not a tool a marketer sets up alone.
  • Pricing above Essentials is a sales conversation.
  • No landing pages, forms or CRM — it assumes those live elsewhere.
  • Overbuilt for a straightforward newsletter.
03Hosted service

Userlist

Best for: B2B SaaS that needs company-level automation, not just per-user

Lifecycle messaging built around the way B2B software actually works — accounts and companies rather than individual subscribers — with in-app messages alongside email.

Starts at
Basic from $10/mo per additional 1,000 users, with 10,000 users included
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
Lifecycle campaigns, broadcasts, in-app messages and transactional email
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Company-level automation — target an account, not just a person.
  • In-app messages and notifications alongside email, from the base plan.
  • Transactional email and broadcasts included rather than sold separately.
  • 10,000 users included on Basic and Professional before the per-1,000 rate applies.
What to watch for
  • Priced on users, so a large free-tier user base costs the same as paying customers.
  • No free plan — a 14-day trial.
  • No ecommerce data model.
  • A small team and a small integration catalogue.
04Hosted service

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best for: Companies buying a CRM and getting marketing with it

Not really an email tool — a CRM platform with marketing attached. The free tier is real and useful; the jump to the tier with the automation people actually want is one of the steepest in software.

Starts at
Starter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contacts
Free tier
Free Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chat
Marketing
Campaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRM
Data region
United States, with EU hosting available
What it does well
  • The free CRM is genuinely free and genuinely useful.
  • Starter at $7/mo per seat is the cheapest entry on this page.
  • One system for marketing, sales, service and content.
  • The reporting and attribution an executive team will ask for.
What to watch for
  • Professional is $800/mo with a $3,000 mandatory onboarding fee. Enterprise is $3,600/mo plus $7,000 onboarding.
  • Unlimited workflows — the actual automation — start at Professional.
  • Additional core seats are $45/mo each.
  • Marketing contacts are billed separately from CRM contacts, which surprises people.
05Hosted service

Brevo

Best for: Large lists you email infrequently, and teams that want EU-based billing

Formerly Sendinblue. The structural difference from almost everything else here is that Brevo meters emails sent rather than contacts stored — so a big dormant list costs nothing to keep.

Starts at
Paid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume
Free tier
300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousands
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pages
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • Priced on emails sent, not contacts stored — the cheapest way to hold a large, rarely-mailed list.
  • French company with EU data handling, which settles a lot of procurement reviews.
  • SMS, WhatsApp, CRM and landing pages included in the platform rather than bolted on.
  • The free plan is genuinely usable for a small list.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 300-a-day ceiling is a hard daily wall, not a monthly allowance.
  • Breadth over depth — the automation builder is less capable than ActiveCampaign's.
  • Deliverability on shared infrastructure gets mixed reports; warm up carefully.
  • The interface carries the scars of a product that has absorbed a lot of modules.
06Hosted service

ActiveCampaign

Best for: Teams that need marketing and sales automation in one system

The deepest automation builder in the mid-market, with a CRM alongside it. Four tiers, priced on contacts, with sending capped at a multiple of your list and most of the interesting parts sold as add-ons.

Starts at
Priced per tier and contact count; no static price table is published
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
The whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiers
Data region
United States (Chicago-headquartered)
What it does well
  • Automation depth that most of this list doesn't match.
  • Marketing and sales in one system, with custom objects on Enterprise.
  • Over 1,000 integrations.
  • Free migration and onboarding, and no setup fees.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at a multiple of your contacts: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise.
  • Seats are rationed — 1 user on Starter and Plus, 3 on Pro, 5 on Enterprise.
  • Starter limits automations to 5 actions each.
  • CRM, transactional email and SMS are paid add-ons on top of the plan.
  • No free plan, and the price scales with contacts whether or not you email them.
07Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced, opinionated, and quick to set up, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Less configurable than ActiveCampaign by design.

Starts at
Priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing
Campaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactional
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Transactional sending included rather than billed as a second product.
  • Genuinely fast to set up — hours, not a fortnight.
  • The free plan runs a small product.
  • Clean, modern interface with no legacy modules.
What to watch for
  • Free adds Loops branding and caps you at 10 emails/second.
  • Paid pricing sits behind a slider, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Automation is deliberately simpler than ActiveCampaign's.
  • No CRM, SMS or landing pages.
08Hosted service

Encharge

Best for: B2B SaaS running behaviour-based onboarding at a mid-market price

Built specifically for SaaS lifecycle email — flow builder, behavioural triggers, Stripe and Segment integrations — with unlimited flows and unlimited team members on every paid plan.

Starts at
Growth $99/mo at 2,000 subscribers ($79/mo billed yearly)
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
Behaviour-based flows, segmentation and broadcasts for SaaS
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Unlimited flows and unlimited team members on every paid plan.
  • Native Stripe, Chargebee, Segment, HubSpot and Salesforce integrations.
  • Free email verification included.
  • Premium adds transactional email, API events and custom objects.
What to watch for
  • $99/mo at 2,000 subscribers is expensive against general-purpose tools.
  • Sending overages are $100 per 100,000 emails.
  • No free plan — a 14-day trial.
  • Transactional email and custom objects need Premium at $159/mo.
09Hosted service

Bento

Best for: SaaS and store teams who want marketing and transactional at a very low flat price

A small, opinionated platform with unusually blunt pricing: $29/mo for up to 5,000 active users with unlimited sends, automations and seats, and transactional email metered separately at cents per thousand.

Starts at
$29/mo for up to 5,000 active users
Free tier
100 transactional emails a month; the marketing platform has a 30-day trial
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, CRM, segmentation, forms and pop-ups
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • $29/mo covers 5,000 active users with unlimited marketing sends, automations and seats.
  • Transactional at $5/mo to 12,500 emails, then $0.09 per 1,000 — among the cheapest anywhere.
  • A 30-day trial with no charge during it.
  • Deliverability tooling and analytics included rather than upsold.
What to watch for
  • Small company; fewer integrations and less public track record.
  • Bento Chat is a separate $30/mo add-on and requires the marketing platform.
  • Marketing and transactional are metered separately rather than as one plan.
  • Less polished than the established names, which is the trade for the price.
10Hosted service

Ortto

Best for: Teams who want a customer data platform and journeys in one product

Formerly Autopilot. A CDP, journey builder and analytics suite with email attached, aimed at teams who want their data and their messaging in the same place.

Starts at
Priced by contact count on annual plans; figures aren't published as a static table
Free tier
None
Marketing
Visual journeys, a CDP, dashboards, SMS and in-app messages
Data region
United States and Australia
What it does well
  • A genuine CDP rather than a contact list with fields on it.
  • Analytics and dashboards built in, so reporting doesn't need a second tool.
  • SMS and in-app messages alongside email.
  • Visual journey builder that non-engineers can operate.
What to watch for
  • Included sends are 4× your contact count — the tightest multiplier in this comparison.
  • Sending past that allowance is billed at $1 per 1,000 emails.
  • No free plan, and plans generally require an annual commitment.
  • Prices aren't published as a static table.
11Hosted service

Klaviyo

Best for: Ecommerce, where revenue attribution per email is the point

The ecommerce standard. Deep Shopify and store-data integration, segmentation built on purchase behaviour, and reporting that ties sends to revenue better than anything else here.

Starts at
Priced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published
Free tier
250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages
Marketing
Campaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and push
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Best-in-class ecommerce data model — orders, products and browsing drive segments directly.
  • Revenue attribution per flow and per campaign, out of the box.
  • SMS and push in the same platform as email.
  • Predictive analytics on customer lifetime value.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 profiles and 500 sends a month.
  • Priced on active profiles, and the definition of active is broader than 'subscribed'.
  • It gets expensive fast as the list grows; that's the standard complaint.
  • Overkill, and overpriced, if you aren't an ecommerce store.
12Hosted service

Mailchimp

Best for: Teams who need the name procurement already recognises

The default answer for a decade, now part of Intuit. Enormous integration catalogue, and a pricing model built around send multipliers and seat counts that gets expensive at the top.

Starts at
Essentials $13/mo at 500 contacts
Free tier
250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat
Marketing
Campaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRM
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The largest integration catalogue in the category.
  • Template and content tooling that non-marketers can use without training.
  • Predictive segmentation and reporting on Standard and above.
  • Every agency and freelancer already knows it.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 sends — a demo, not a plan.
  • Send multipliers apply: 10× on Essentials, 12× on Standard, 15× on Premium.
  • Seats are rationed at 1 / 3 / 5 until Premium, which is $350/mo at 500 contacts.
  • You pay for unsubscribed contacts unless you archive them yourself.
13Hosted service

MailerLite

Best for: Small teams who want a clean builder and a cheap entry price

The most consistently recommended ActiveCampaign alternative for people who found ActiveCampaign too much. Well-designed, inexpensive, and the Power plan drops the send multiplier entirely.

Starts at
Comfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo
Free tier
250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automations
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websites
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Power removes the send cap entirely — unlimited monthly emails and unlimited seats.
  • $12/mo entry is among the cheapest real plans in this category.
  • The editor and templates are genuinely pleasant to use.
  • 24/7 support even on the cheaper paid tier.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 subscribers and 3 active automations — small.
  • Comfort caps you at 50 active automations and a 10× send multiple.
  • Automation logic is shallower than ActiveCampaign's; complex branching gets awkward.
  • No sales CRM.
14Hosted service

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Best for: Creators, newsletters and anyone selling their own digital products

Built for individual creators rather than marketing departments, and it shows in the best way: unlimited sending, a free tier that goes to 10,000 subscribers, and commerce built in.

Starts at
Creator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)
Free tier
Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automation
Marketing
Broadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product sales
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The most generous free tier here by subscriber count — 10,000, not 250.
  • Unlimited email broadcasts on every paid plan; no send multiplier.
  • Sells digital products and subscriptions natively.
  • Pro includes unlimited users, which most competitors reserve for their top tier.
What to watch for
  • The free tier allows one basic automation — the sequences are the paid product.
  • Creator is $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers, well above MailerLite or Mailchimp at that size.
  • Commerce takes a transaction fee on product sales.
  • Built around a creator's mental model; a B2B lifecycle team may find it thin.
15Hosted service

GetResponse

Best for: Course creators and anyone who needs webinars in the same tool

An all-in-one that includes things nobody else bundles — webinars, course hosting, a website builder — with unlimited sending on every plan.

Starts at
Starter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial with feature limits
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and courses
Data region
European Union (Poland)
What it does well
  • Unlimited monthly email sends on every plan, including the $19 entry tier.
  • Webinars, courses and a website builder in the same subscription.
  • Polish company, so EU data handling comes as standard.
  • Abandoned-cart recovery and sales funnels on Marketer.
What to watch for
  • Starter allows exactly 1 automation workflow — the automation is really on Marketer at $59/mo.
  • No free plan.
  • Users are capped at 3 on Starter and 5 on Marketer and Creator.
  • Breadth means some modules feel less finished than the email core.
16Hosted service

Sender

Best for: The most generous permanent free plan in marketing email

Free forever at 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 monthly emails — with automation, landing pages, forms and transactional sending included rather than held back for paid tiers.

Starts at
Paid plans are priced by subscriber count and aren't shown as a static table
Free tier
2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with automation included
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus SMS on paid tiers
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • 2,500 free subscribers and 15,000 free monthly emails — the largest free allowance in this comparison.
  • The free plan includes automation, which most competitors reserve for paid tiers.
  • SMS on paid plans, with free credits on Standard and Professional.
  • Transactional sending is part of the platform.
What to watch for
  • Paid prices weren't rendering on their pricing page when we checked, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Smaller company and integration catalogue than the well-known names.
  • Automation depth is closer to MailerLite than ActiveCampaign.
  • A very generous free tier means a broad shared sender base — warm up carefully.
17Open source

Mautic

Best for: Owning your marketing automation stack outright

The largest open-source marketing automation project — campaigns, segmentation, landing pages, lead scoring — running on your own PHP and MySQL. Free as software, expensive in attention.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay for hosting and a sending provider
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Full campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoring
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • No per-contact pricing, ever. The list can be any size.
  • Feature coverage close to the commercial platforms, including lead scoring.
  • Your data stays on your infrastructure, which answers most privacy requirements.
  • Over 10,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
What to watch for
  • PHP, MySQL and correctly configured cron — this is a system you administer.
  • Upgrades are known to be involved.
  • You bring your own sending provider and own the deliverability.
  • The interface feels its age next to the commercial tools.
18AGPL-3.0

listmonk

Best for: Newsletters at volume, on hardware you already pay for

A single Go binary and a Postgres database that will push millions of newsletters through whatever SMTP you point it at. Mature, fast, and list-first by design.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Lists, subscribers, campaigns and templates
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • Over 22,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
  • One binary plus Postgres — no queue broker, no Redis.
  • Handles very large lists on modest hardware.
  • No per-contact cost at any size.
What to watch for
  • No automation builder. It sends campaigns to lists.
  • Bring your own SMTP and your own deliverability.
  • No CRM, no ecommerce data, no landing pages.
  • The admin UI is functional rather than beautiful.
FAQ

Intercom alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best Intercom alternative?

It depends which half you use. For the support desk, HubSpot Service Hub, Crisp, Front or Zendesk are the comparisons to make — none of them are on this page, because this page is about email.

For the outbound messaging half: Userlist for in-app plus email, Customer.io for event-driven messaging at depth, or almost anything here for campaigns and flows at a fraction of one Intercom seat.

Why is Intercom expensive for email?

Because you pay for the platform per seat and then pay again per bulk email sent. A dedicated email tool charges once, on contacts or sends, and doesn't need the support desk underneath it.

If you're sending campaigns through Intercom mainly because the customer data is already there, syncing that data to an email platform is usually much cheaper than the marginal send cost.

Is there a free Intercom alternative for email?

For the email side, plenty. Email Bump gives 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails with flows, segments and a transactional API. Sender gives 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails. Brevo gives 300 a day forever. HubSpot's free tier includes a CRM and basic email.

For the support side there's no free equivalent of the Messenger and Fin.

If it was only the outbound

No seats, no per-email charge

Campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and a transactional API on one contact-priced plan, with unlimited team members. 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free.

Start free Read the API docs

Keep reading

Email Bump vs IntercomThe head-to-head, including where Intercom is the better buy.Every comparisonAll the platforms we've priced and compared, in one index.Email Bump pricingWhat contact-based pricing costs at every list size.