Intercom vs Stept

Intercom is a customer messaging and support platform for businesses serving people through a website, app, or product. It combines a website chatbot and live-agent chat with a shared inbox, ticketing, a help center, and omnichannel conversations. Teams can use its visual flow builder and AI bot generation, track visitors, and connect 450 listed integrations. Fin answers free-form questions from approved knowledge and cites sources. When a conversation needs an agent, it passes along the conversation and customer history. Teams can customize Messenger’s tone, style, and design, and Fin can work with existing helpdesks including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Freshdesk. The platform and Messenger support web, iOS, and Android. Essential is $19 a month per seat when billed annually; Advanced is $85 a month per seat and includes 20 free Lite seats; Expert is $132 a month per seat and includes 50 free Lite seats. Fin AI Agent is billed from $0.99 per outcome. A 14-day trial is listed; payment begins only after choosing a plan and adding payment details. Intercom was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco.

Stept is an open-source customer-support platform with a shared inbox, AI agent, help center, product tours, and automation. Its AI agent can read company documents, guide visitors through an interface, and act on a page after the visitor opts in. Teams can select a model, configure the agent’s persona, and decide which tools run automatically, require approval, or stay off. Sensitive actions can require human approval; password fields are excluded, and actions are capped per run. Knowledge sources can be crawled, uploaded, or synced, then re-indexed on a schedule. The shared inbox includes assignment, snoozing, tags, notes, SLAs, macros, and team collaboration. Channels include email, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, LINE, a web widget, and API. Self-hosting is MIT-licensed and supports Postgres or SQLite, offline operation with a mock AI provider, and unlimited seats. Stept Cloud is free during early access; the listed Cloud and Business prices are marked as upcoming.