Top 7 Alternatives to Intercom for Sales Teams (Internal)

Drift is a conversational marketing platform that focuses on turning website visitors into qualified leads. It offers a live chat widget, chatbots, and automated email sequences that can be triggered by visitor behavior. Drift’s primary value proposition is its ability to schedule meetings with sales representatives directly from the chat window, thereby shortening the sales cycle. The platform also integrates with major CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics, ensuring that conversations are tracked and actionable. Drift’s chatbot builder uses a visual flow editor, allowing marketers to design conversational paths without coding. The system also supports dynamic content and personalization based on visitor data. Additionally, Drift provides a reporting dashboard that tracks engagement metrics, conversion rates, and user intent. While Drift excels at meeting scheduling and intent‑based routing, it does not offer a dual knowledge‑base architecture or persistent memory for anonymous visitors. Pricing for Drift is tiered, starting with a free plan that includes basic chat features. The Starter plan begins at $400/month, followed by the Growth plan at $800/month, and the Enterprise plan at $1,500/month. Custom pricing is also available for larger organizations.

HubSpot Conversations is part of HubSpot’s inbound marketing ecosystem, combining live chat, chatbots, and automated messaging into a single interface. The platform is tightly integrated with HubSpot CRM, allowing sales teams to see chat histories alongside contact records, deal stages, and email sequences. HubSpot’s chatbot builder uses a visual editor where users can create conversational flows, set triggers, and define lead capture forms. One of HubSpot’s strengths is its ability to route conversations to the appropriate sales rep or team based on predefined rules. The platform also offers canned responses, knowledge‑base integration, and the ability to schedule meetings within chat. However, HubSpot does not provide a dedicated dual knowledge‑base system or long‑term memory for anonymous visitors; persistence is limited to authenticated users within the HubSpot ecosystem. HubSpot offers a free tier with basic chat and chatbot features. The Starter plan starts at $45/month, the Professional plan at $800/month, and the Enterprise plan at $1,600/month. Pricing is based on the number of contacts and the level of automation required.

Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) is a customer engagement solution that offers live chat, proactive messaging, and chatbot functionality. It is part of the Zendesk suite, which includes ticketing, knowledge‑base, and CRM tools, making it a good fit for organizations that already use Zendesk for support. Zendesk Chat’s strengths lie in its real‑time monitoring, customizable chat widgets, and the ability to trigger chat invitations based on visitor behavior. The chatbot feature uses a visual flow builder where users can create simple decision trees, though it lacks the advanced AI capabilities found in newer platforms. The system also integrates with Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell, allowing agents to see chat transcripts alongside tickets and sales data. Pricing for Zendesk Chat includes a free plan with limited features. The Basic plan starts at $14/month, the Team plan at $19/month, and the Professional plan at $49/month. Enterprise pricing is available on request.

Ada is an AI‑powered chatbot platform that emphasizes self‑service and automation. It allows companies to build conversational agents that can answer common questions, process orders, and route users to human agents when needed. Ada’s interface is designed for non‑technical users, offering a visual builder that supports branching logic and conditionals. Ada’s key differentiators are its advanced natural language understanding capabilities, which enable it to interpret user intent and provide contextually relevant responses. The platform also supports integration with major CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk, ensuring that conversational data is captured in existing workflows. However, Ada does not provide a dual knowledge‑base architecture or persistent memory for anonymous visitors; it relies on session‑based memory. Ada offers a free trial, but pricing is custom and typically starts around $500/month for small teams, scaling up for larger enterprises.

ManyChat is a chatbot platform primarily known for its marketing automation across Facebook Messenger, SMS, and email. It offers a visual drag‑and‑drop builder that allows users to create conversational flows, broadcast messages, and segment audiences. ManyChat also supports integration with e‑commerce platforms like Shopify, enabling product recommendations and purchase confirmation. While ManyChat excels at outbound marketing and lead generation, its real‑time chat capabilities are limited to messaging apps rather than live chat on websites. The platform does not provide a dual knowledge‑base or persistent memory for anonymous visitors, and its AI features are less advanced compared to newer AI chatbot providers. Pricing includes a free tier with basic features. The Pro plan starts at $10/month (billed annually) and offers additional integration and automation capabilities.

Tidio combines live chat and chatbots into a single platform that can be embedded on websites. It offers a visual workflow builder for creating automated conversations and supports integration with popular e‑commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Tidio also includes email marketing automation and basic AI responses powered by a proprietary engine. The platform’s strengths are its ease of use and the ability to run chat on both the site and mobile apps. However, Tidio does not provide a sophisticated dual knowledge‑base, and its AI model is limited to simple keyword matching and rule‑based logic. Persistent memory is session‑based for anonymous visitors. Tidio offers a free tier with limited chatbot functionality. Paid plans start at $18/month for the Grow plan and $29/month for the Premium plan, both billed annually.