Replace Intercom
The chat bubble in the corner, the inbox your support team lives in, and the in-app messages you send from it.
Why teams move off Intercom
Intercom is billed per seat and grows into the most expensive line on a small company's invoice. The chat bubble and the agent inbox are what teams actually open; the rest is a marketing automation suite most never configure.
What you give up
Routing rules, SLAs, multi-channel inboxes and the reporting built on top of them.
This directory says so when an engine only covers part of the job. A replacement that needs a caveat is still worth knowing about — it just should not surprise you in week three.
2 Rails engines that replace Intercom
-
Livechat
Drop-in replacement Customer supportThe chat bubble and the agent inbox. Not the marketing automation suite bolted onto them.
Intercom → livechat
5.0 · 3 ratings → -
Chatwoot
Covers the core of Customer supportFeature for feature the closest open replacement — but it is a separate deployment, which is exactly the cost this directory is about.
Intercom → chatwoot
No ratings yet →
Questions
- Is there an open-source alternative to Intercom for Rails?
- Yes — Livechat and Chatwoot. Both mount into an application you already run, so there is no second deployment and no second database.
- What do I give up by replacing Intercom?
- Routing rules, SLAs, multi-channel inboxes and the reporting built on top of them.
- How do I replace Intercom in a Rails app?
- Add livechat to your Gemfile, mount it in config/routes.rb at /livechat, and run its migrations. The whole integration is two lines and a migration.
- How much does replacing Intercom save?
- Intercom is priced from $39/seat/mo. The engines here are open source, so the cost becomes the time to mount one and the resources it uses inside your existing application.
Same category
