Intercom vs Tidio: Which Is The Better Conversational Support Solution?

Intercom and Tidio are two popular software tools for customer service teams. But which one is superior? We take a look.
Published on: Nov 20, 2023
Last updated: Nov 20, 2023

TL:DR

  • Conversational support platforms are vital; 65% of customers expect immediate responses.
  • Tidio and Intercom are both conversational support apps helping companies provide instant customer responses.
  • Tidio specializes in sales and support, offering AI-powered conversion and live chat widgets.
  • Tidio features customizable templates, rapid responses, and preview typing for efficient communication.
  • Tidio's pros include a free plan, cost-effective AI conversation, and a dedicated implementation team.
  • Tidio's cons involve limited integrations, basic reporting, and a lack of cobrowsing functionality.
  • Intercom serves as a one-stop shop for sales, marketing, and customer service communication.
  • Intercom offers detailed insights, 250+ integrations (including Fullview for cobrowsing), and process automation.
  • Intercom's cons include higher pricing, complexity in setup, and occasional latency issues.
  • Choosing between Intercom and Tidio depends on factors like industry, enterprise size, and specific needs.

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A conversational support platform is crucial for businesses. As per Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer Report, 65% of customers expect an immediate response when contacting a company.

If you're considering adding a chatbot to your website, we've compared two renowned platforms, Tidio and Intercom, to help you make an informed choice.

Tidio vs Intercom: At a Glance

Both Tidio and Intercom are conversational support apps offering instant responses to avoid customer wait times. However, there are key differences between them, which we go into more detail about below.

What is Tidio?

tidio

Tidio specializes in sales and support, offering businesses full access to consumer data, from lead generation to e-commerce website behavior. It also features an AI-powered conversion platform and live chat widgets for real-time customer engagement.

With Tidio, you can create chatbots and tailor messages to your visitors' needs and interests. Businesses can maximize profitability by efficiently and swiftly responding to clients through email, chatbots, and live chat.

Tidio features

As a live chat alternative, Tidio boasts several remarkable features. Some are similar to other customer support helpdesk solutions, like Zendesk, for example. We’ve listed them below:

  • Customizable templates: You can build a workflow from scratch or utilize the user-friendly chatbot with numerous templates. A simulation feature shows how workflows operate from the visitor's perspective. These templates help boost sales, resolve issues, and capture leads.
  • Rapid responses: When communicating with visitors, 'quick responses' or 'scripted responses' are preset chat shortcuts that save agents time. Clients can use '/' to access and create unlimited quick answers for use in chats.
  • Preview Typing: Agents can answer questions quicker because they can see what a visitor is typing in the chat widget before it's submitted.

Tidio pros

Let’s see what benefits Tidio provides when comparing Tidio vs Intercom:

  • Offers a free plan: Smaller firms can try Tidio's features with a free-forever plan and later switch to premium options. The platform offers customization through a combination of plans and add-ons to meet specific needs.
  • Cost-effective AI conversation: Intercom charges $0.99 per successful AI resolution. In contrast, Tidio charges per conversation, not per correct response. With Tidio, repeat customers resuming previous conversations don't affect your monthly conversation limit.
  • Dedicated implementation team: Tidio's customer success managers help identify optimization opportunities and develop automation to achieve business goals. They'll help configure Tidio and integrate it into your platform or website.

Tidio cons

Like any other customer support solution, Tidio has shortcomings, such as:

  • Limited integrations: While Tidio provides integration with Zapier for connections to almost any software, it doesn't support direct integrations like Intercom, nor does it allow for custom API calls.
  • Basic reporting capabilities: For more comprehensive visitor metrics, you may need to integrate a third-party application, as the reports generated by Tidio are basic.
  • Cobrowsing: One of the most useful features customer support teams use for level 2 & 3 support is cobrowsing, which allows the agent to get screen control of a user’s browser window and resolve an issue in real time. However, Tidio doesn’t have any particular features or integrations that allow this, unlike Intercom, which is a big drawback.

Tidio pricing

Pricing is important when comparing Tidio vs Intercom. As previously stated, Tidio offers a free basic plan that doesn't require a credit card. It includes all channels, three operators, 100 chatbot triggers, unlimited chats, and basic analytics. In addition to Tidio’s free plan, all premium plans have a 7-day free trial.

Tidio user reviews

Tidio has a 4.7 out of 5 stars rating on G2 with 1,410 reviews. Satisfied users praise the chatbot app's notification management, user-friendly interface, and free features. On the other hand, some complaints mention that it might not be suitable for those with complex queries.

Tidio use cases

With over 510 million users viewing their chat widget monthly, Tidio is a live chat platform perfect for companies of any size, especially for new ones aiming to boost client engagement without exceeding their budget.

What is Intercom?

Intercom

Intercom is a one-stop shop for communication between sales, marketing, and customer service departments to satisfy the growing demands of their clientele.

Intercom's built-in bots and live chat enable real-time interactions through social media, email, and chat. It also helps send targeted, personalized emails, push notifications, and in-app messages to your users, which can help build a loyal customer base.

Intercom features

Whether it’s Zendesk vs Intercom or Tidio vs Intercom, Intercom’s features shine through:

  • Effective lead generation: Intercom's chatbots collect valuable business data during customer interactions. Its robust targeting features allow for fine-tuning the messaging experience. With granular control, you can use criteria like client spending and business type to tailor your approach to different customers.
  • Advanced reporting: Intercom’s dashboards let you monitor your team's workload, enhance support effectiveness, and identify time-consuming issues based on the conversation data tracked.
  • Responsiveness at any time: With Intercom, you can send clients relevant information using automated messaging and trigger-based interactions based on their activity. The Conversations inbox lets you manage client inquiries from one place. Plus, Intercom’s modern live chat functionality offers real-time assistance to customers.

Intercom pros

  • Better visibility over data: Intercom provides detailed insights into consumer interactions across all channels, helping you understand their preferences and behavior. This allows you to send customized messages based on customer activity.
  • Offers multiple integrations: With over 250+ third-party integrations such as Fullview, you can customize your Intercom setup to meet your unique requirements. For example, with Intercom’s Fullview integration, companies can add cobrowsing to their arsenal and solve complex customer issues through zero-download screen control of a user’s computer. This cuts out all the back-and-forth that typically occurs when trying to resolve tricky technical support problems over chat or email. The Fullview integration even includes session replays and console logs so customer support agents can review a user’s latest sessions in their app (links to which are automatically inserted into every support ticket that is created), watch those recordings to see what a user clicked on, what pages they visited, whether they showed signs of frustration like rage clicks, etc., and then check console information to effortlessly diagnose and troubleshoot technical issues and bugs.
  • Easily automates processes: Intercom allows the use of macros or pre-written responses to maintain a consistent customer experience, even when live agents are unavailable. It automates tasks like assigning, amending, and tagging tickets for multiple conversations simultaneously.

Intercom cons

When considering Intercom vs Tidio, a few drawbacks of Intercom should be noted:

  • Expensive: Intercom's starter plan begins at $74 per month, which can be costly for small businesses and startups. Packages for larger businesses start at even higher price points.
  • Complex set-up: Intercom is fairly simple but has many features and a steep learning curve. So it’s not the most user-friendly solution out there.

Intercom pricing

Intercom lets you use the basic free plan for a 14-day trial and then upgrade to a subscription plan. Here are the plans available:

  • Essential: This is priced at $39 per seat per month and is intended for individuals, small businesses, and startups.
  • Advanced: This plan costs $99 monthly per seat and includes powerful AI technologies and automation options.
  • Expert: This costs $139 per seat per month and is better suited for large support teams with their reporting, security, and collaboration needs.

Intercom user reviews

With a 4.5 out of 5 stars review on G2, Intercom is deemed a useful chatbot solution. Users report that Intercom's user-friendly interface and overall convenience are its highlights.

However, some users have been unhappy with their latency issues, and other issues have been raised, such as the need for better data or reporting panels.

Intercom use cases

Intercom is the perfect conversational support tool for B2B companies optimizing their customer support, marketing, and sales procedures.

Customer care teams from over 25,000 worldwide companies like Atlassian, Amazon, and Lyft Business use Intercom for more effective and customized client experiences at scale. Plus, the platform facilitates communication with over 600 million monthly active end users and delivers over 500 million messages monthly.

Tidio vs Intercom: The main differences

  • With the help of chatbots, product tours, email campaigns, automated responses, and other features, Intercom offers a complete platform for managing communications and boosting engagement. Conversely, Tidio offers email marketing capabilities, a live chat feature, an infinite number of chatbots with customizable workflows, and limited reporting capabilities.
  • Intercom is more established and has accumulated a lot of user feedback over time. According to its reviews, this trustworthy platform has improved itself over time. Whereas, Tidio comparatively offers some basic functionalities.
  • As mentioned, Intercom offers many integration opportunities with tools such as Fullview, which can also be integrated with Zendesk. However, Tidio is unable to have too many third-party integrations.
  • Intercom can offer cobrowsing features with Fullview, similar to its Salesforce integration. This can reduce the time spent on resolving problems and free up agent time to make a more efficient system.

Intercom and Tidio have their own strengths and weaknesses. However, depending on your industry or enterprise size, pick what best suits your needs as a conversational support tool.

When Should You Be Using Intercom or Tidio?

When evaluating conversational support platforms, Tidio and Intercom are natural competitors in the market.

Intercom, while popular for client communications, primarily focuses on sales, customer support and marketing. It has expanded from a simple chat widget to include features like chatbot automation and live chat. It's recommended for large firms seeking an effective lead-generation tool.

Tidio is a great choice for smaller organizations seeking a user-friendly and flexible live chat app.

Author

Shifa Rahaman

Content Marketing Manager

Contributor

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