Crisp vs Intercom for startups and small teams

Crisp charges for the workspace, however many conversations it handles. The plans are free, $45, $95 and $295 a month for 2, 4, 10 and 20 seats, and every paid plan comes with a month of Hugo credits, worth $5, $25 and $75. Crisp puts those at around 90, 450 and 1,350 automated conversations. Hugo draws on them by the token, and the model you pick, the length of the messages and each extra reply all change the cost. Crisp’s billing article puts a full Hugo conversation at around $0.05 to $0.10. The credits reset on the 4th of each month without rolling over. There’s no yearly price to compare. You switch to yearly billing in the app once you’ve subscribed.

Intercom charges for people and for results. Every teammate who replies to customers needs a paid seat, and Intercom is testing two prices for its cheapest plan on the same page. Essential is $19 or $29 a seat a month billed yearly, and $29 or $39 billed monthly, depending on which version you’re shown. We saw both within two minutes of each other. On top of the seats, Fin costs $0.99 an outcome, with none included. An outcome is counted when a customer says Fin solved their problem, when they leave without asking for more help, or when Fin completes a Procedure you’ve set up. It’s charged at most once a conversation, never when Fin can’t answer or the customer asks for a person, and refunded if the conversation is reopened.

So a growing team pays more on Intercom for each person it adds, and nothing more on Crisp until it outgrows a plan’s seats. For four people, Crisp’s Mini is $45 a month. Intercom’s Essential is $76 or $116 a month billed yearly before Fin settles anything, by our arithmetic. Intercom pricing works through the whole bill for a team of one to three, and Crisp chat pricing does the same for Crisp.

Pick Crisp if a small team shares one inbox and you want the bill to stay put as conversations grow. Conversations are unlimited on every plan, Hugo is inside the plan from Mini, and Crisp hosts your data on European servers on every plan. From Essentials, at $95 a month, ten of you get WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS and the phone in the same inbox, a help centre Hugo learns from as you write it, routing rules and round-robin assignment. If you’re new to Crisp, have raised under $1M and are under three years old, its Startup Program takes 30% off Essentials or Plus.

Pick Intercom if you run a support team, or will soon, and want the fuller helpdesk. Every plan has the Messenger, a shared inbox, ticketing and a public help centre, and Workflows, multiple team inboxes and custom reports start on Advanced. Fin is billed only when it reaches an outcome, and it can handle refunds, cancellations and account changes with data from systems like Stripe, Shopify and Salesforce. If you’ve raised up to $10M, have fewer than 15 employees and aren’t a customer yet, Early Stage makes the first year of Advanced $65 a month for 6 seats.

Both are helpdesks for a team sharing one inbox. If you answer support yourself, the AI is what you’re after, and on Crisp it comes with a workspace for four, while on Intercom it comes with a seat and $0.99 an outcome.

Deacon is the AI on its own, with nothing charged per outcome. Each reply it writes is one of your plan’s answers, and the free plan gives you 50 a month. It answers the questions that pull you off the product in seconds, at any hour, from your own docs and in the language your customer writes in, with no workflows to build first. When your docs don’t cover a question, it says so instead of guessing, and asks for the visitor’s email. You’re emailed when they leave one or ask for a person, and a reply you type in Deacon’s dashboard shows up in their chat while it’s open.

Crisp and Intercom learn from the articles and snippets you write for them. Deacon also brings you the questions it couldn’t answer, each with an Answer this button, and what you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next person who asks. Save & check asks Deacon the question again, shows you the reply it now gives and tells you how many other open questions your answer covers.

You also see what customers need while you’re still small. Every conversation is saved and searchable by what visitors asked. Deacon’s Topics group questions on their own, count how many people asked and label most of them as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on, and a topic is listed once two people have asked. Intercom’s Topics Explorer needs at least 15 questions or conversations before it forms a subtopic, and the Pro add-on it needs starts at $100 a month. Hugo’s Topics match conversations against themes you describe in advance. Deacon’s are on every plan, free included.

Every plan answers with the same model, so every answer counts the same, where the model you pick changes what a Hugo conversation costs. Every feature is on every plan, nothing is billed past a plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself.