Intercom for Product Adoption: Features, Pricing, and Review
Looking for an effective product adoption tool and wondering if Intercom is the best option for your SaaS company?
With numerous Intercom alternatives, it can be challenging to make a final decision.
In this article, we’ll delve into precisely that – helping you determine whether Intercom is the ideal choice for your product adoption needs. We’ll explore its features, pricing, and offer a comprehensive review to aid in your decision-making process.
Let’s get started!
TL;DR
- Intercom is a good choice for product adoption and it comes with features such as user segmentation, interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, and onboarding checklist.
- While Intercom is a flexible and popular solution when it comes to customer service, there are certain use cases where it will likely fall short compared to other options.
- If you’re in any of these scenarios, you should look for an alternative platform for your needs:
- Onboarding and Adoption: If onboarding new users and driving product adoption are your primary use cases then Intercom may not be the best choice. Its Product Tours add-on is quite limited compared to dedicated adoption platforms (and costs almost as much).
- Budget Constraints: Early-stage SaaS companies with a limited budget should be wary of Intercom’s pricing model. Its entry-level plan starts at an affordable $74/month but getting the Product Tours add-on and extra team seats could lead to your subscription cost skyrocketing.
- Mobile Apps: While Intercom’s core features like the live chat messenger work on mobile apps, its product tours add-on is only compatible with desktop platforms.
- If you’re looking for a better option for product adoption, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to Intercom.
- Ready to see Userpilot in action? Schedule a demo today to explore its powerful product adoption capabilities firsthand.
Looking for a Better Alternative for Product Adoption? Try Userpilot
What is Intercom?
Intercom is a customer service platform. It offers customizable live chat widgets, omnichannel support capabilities, and integrations with over 300 apps. While Intercom is primarily a support solution, it does have add-ons that offer other functionalities such as product tours.
The Product Tours add-on contains features that aid onboarding, adoption, and feature discovery. Intercom’s product tours can include UI patterns like modals and tooltips as well as other media formats such as microvideos.
Must have features of product adoption tools
When exploring product adoption tools, look for ones that are user-friendly and integrate well with your existing tech stack. Here’s what you should look out for:
- In-app resource center: A searchable knowledge base with resources like FAQs, video demos, and user manuals can help answer user questions.
- User segmentation: Personalize onboarding experiences by segmenting users based on company size, behavior, roles, and use cases to increase product adoption rates.
- User analytics: Effective user analytics features provide data on user behavior – revealing user activities, popular features, and potential drop-offs in the customer journey.
- Feedback collection: Tools that allow customization of surveys and feedback widgets can help you understand your users’ feelings and guide product improvements.
- Integrations: An ideal product adoption tool should integrate smoothly with other tools and systems in your tech stack, ensuring a cohesive experience and uninterrupted data flow.
Intercom features for product adoption
Intercom helps you track/optimize product adoption through its add-ons and third-party integrations (but falls short in its base feature set).
Here’s an overview of Intercom’s add-ons and integrations that can help with product adoption:
- Product Tours (Add-On): Intercom’s product tours can be triggered based on in-app events, scheduled for a specific date/time, and appear at custom frequencies. You can also choose from a wide variety of UI patterns like checklists, tooltips, banners, and multi-step tours.
Note: To use Intercom’s product tours, UI patterns, and targeting settings, you’ll need to get the Product Tours add-on (which costs an additional $199/month on top of your current subscription price).
- Intercom Analytics (Add-On): Intercom’s analytics add-on lets you track segment data, user attributes, support conversations, and other metrics to gauge product adoption. The Analytics for Intercom add-on costs $50/month to $200/month depending on which tier you choose.
- Amplitude Integration: Intercom’s integration with Amplitude helps you sync product adoption and user behavioral data. This makes it possible to target your in-app messaging to users from custom Amplitude segments and retarget at-risk customers to boost their adoption rates.
Intercom’s user segmentation
User segmentation lets you divide customers based on their needs and use cases then deliver a personalized experience to each one. Intercom has three pre-defined segments, AND/OR filtering, and detailed company profiles that lets you analyze your entire user base.
Here are the types of user segmentation you can use on Intercom:
- Pre-Defined Segments: Intercom has three built-in segments. The “Active” segment is for any users who have been active in the last 30 days, “New” includes anyone who has signed up in the past 24 hours, and “Slipping away” is for those who haven’t been active in the past 30 days.
- Segmentation Filters: Intercom lets you create custom segments using AND/OR rules to combine attributes. Do note that overly complex segments may take longer to display results (or in some cases fail altogether and ask you to simplify your filter settings).
- Company Profiles: Intercom’s segmentation capabilities also let you view users on a company level. You’ll be able to view all the people from a certain company, see their email, monitor engagement metrics, and review all conversations that they’ve been a part of.
Intercom’s interactive walkthroughs
To create interactive walkthroughs with Intercom, you’ll need to get the Product Tours add-on which costs an additional $199/month on top of your current subscription fee.
Here’s how you can use Intercom’s interactive walkthroughs to improve onboarding:
- UI Patterns: When building interactive walkthroughs with Intercom, you can choose from a myriad of UI patterns such as banners, tooltips, checklists, surveys, and announcements. There are also mobile-specific features like carousels, push notifications, and SMS messages.
- Targeting Settings: Intercom’s targeting settings let you adjust when interactive walkthroughs will appear, how often, and to which users. You can use its event tracking capabilities and frequency/scheduling options to make sure walkthroughs only appear contextually.
- Walkthrough Analytics: When you build an interactive walkthrough within Intercom, you’ll be able to see how its performance changes over time. Tracked metrics include total view count, completion rate, percentage of goal accomplishment, and frequency of issues encountered.
Intercom’s tooltips
Tooltips are the most contextual way to teach users about specific features without interrupting tasks or cluttering the UI. To use tooltips (and other UI patterns) you’ll need to get the Product Tours add-on which costs $199/month on top of your existing Intercom subscription.
Here’s how you can use Intercom to create tooltips:
- Builder: Intercom’s no-code tooltip builder lets you create tooltips, target specific audiences, adjust scheduling settings, and add goals to track. While it’s possible to build and edit tooltips, you won’t be able to publish them without first getting the add-on.
- Templates: Intercom has a classic tooltip template that you can use to save time when adding tooltips to your website. You also have the option to create tooltip groups with multiple tooltips to make tracking performance easier.
- Analytics: Intercom’s tooltip analytics help you see which tooltips get the most interactions from your users. When creating tooltip groups, you’ll be able to dive in and see the engagement rate for each individual tooltip (as well as which user engaged with it).
Intercom’s onboarding checklist
User onboarding checklists are the best way to guide new users towards the next step of their journey and encourage them to try core features. Intercom has a no-code checklist builder, multiple targeting rules, and two templates to get you started.
You’ll need to get the Product Tours add-on which costs $199/month on top of your existing Intercom subscription, to use checklists.
Here’s how you can use Intercom to create onboarding checklists:
- Intercom’s no-code checklist builder lets you add tasks, add completion time estimates for users, and set the criteria for certain tasks to automatically be marked as completed. You can also add a seemingly unlimited number of tasks (our testing exceeded 100 tasks).
- Intercom’s targeting rules let you adjust when your checklists will appear based on the page a user is on, which segment they’re in, and other attributes such as company, country, signup date, etc. You can also trigger checklists by embedding the code snippet in a webpage.
- When building Intercom checklists, you have the option of starting from scratch or using one of the pre-built templates. There’s one template for onboarding new users and another template for feature discovery.
What are the pros and cons of Intercom?
Intercom’s pros
- Robust Live Chat: Intercom’s live chat widget is the most popular feature on the platform. You’ll be able to style the widget in accordance with your brand colors, choose which support options customers will see, and insert apps to create a self-serve experience.
- Product Tours Add-On: In addition to Intercom’s customer service capabilities, its Product Tours add-on offers support to new users during the onboarding and adoption phases. Features include a no-code builder, audience targeting, analytics reporting, and more.
- Extensive Integration Gallery: If Intercom’s built-in support/onboarding features aren’t enough, you can expand its native functionality using third-party integrations. Intercom’s App Store has over 300 tools to choose from with new solutions being added regularly.
Intercom’s cons
- Buggy Search Function: Searching through support tickets is a core task for Intercom users but this process is often laggy or refuses to work altogether by freezing the page. Intercom’s searchability shortcomings have been present for years with no fixes released.
- Confusing Navigation Interface: While Intercom does have a wide array of features, its user interface isn’t intuitive and it’ll take a lot of memorization (or trial-and-error) to figure out where everything is. There are many features that can (and should) be combined into one page.
- Support Response Times: Intercom is a customer service platform which is why it’s ironic that their support team isn’t able to reliably respond in a timely manner. Numerous customers have noted slow response times from support representatives when reviewing Intercom.
What do users say about Intercom?
Intercom users were impressed with the interaction features such as emojis, GIFs, and avatars:
“I really like the fact that you can send emojis, have an avatar, interact with the client and know what their tastes are as such, it is very interactive to the point that you can jump between chats recognizing each of the clients/agents.”
Of course, other customers were upset by the lack of transparent billing, inadequate support experience, constant upsells, and restrictive feature limitations:
“Purposely opaque and dishonest billing systems.
Incompetent staff.
Once you have it installed they exploit you for CONSTANT fee hikes.
Constant pitches to upgrade plans and required extra fees.
Unnecessary limitations on features”
Intercom’s pricing
Intercom’s plans start at $74/month on the entry-level plan and use custom pricing for the Pro tier or higher. There’s no free version available, but Intercom does offer a 14-day free trial that lets you test all features on the Starter tier before upgrading to a paid subscription.
Intercom has three paid plans to choose from and different add-ons priced separately:
- Starter: Starts at $74/month and includes two team seats, and features like the messenger widget, automated chatbots, shared inbox, real-time tickets, help center, macros, and basic analytics reporting capabilities.
- Pro: Custom pricing based on the number of team seats and MAUs. It includes features like multiple inboxes, assignment rules, ticketing systems, localized help centers, and advanced automation/analytics.
- Premium: Custom pricing based on the number of team seats and MAUs. It includes features like a real-time dashboard, custom analytics, workload management, and a service level agreement.
In addition to the base subscription cost, you’ll need to pay an additional $199/month if you want to use the Product Tours add-on. This means that, even on the Starter plan, you’d still be paying almost $300/month in total if you get the Product Tours add-on to go with it.
3 Reasons why you might need a Intercom alternative
While Intercom is a flexible and popular solution when it comes to customer service, there are certain use cases where it will likely fall short compared to other options.
If you’re in any of these scenarios, you should look for an alternative platform for your needs:
- Onboarding and Adoption: If onboarding new users and driving product adoption are your primary use cases then Intercom may not be the best choice. Its Product Tours add-on is quite limited compared to dedicated adoption platforms (and costs almost as much).
- Budget Constraints: Early-stage SaaS companies with a limited budget should be wary of Intercom’s pricing model. Its entry-level plan starts at an affordable $74/month but getting the Product Tours add-on and extra team seats could lead to your subscription cost skyrocketing.
- Mobile Apps: While Intercom’s core features like the live chat messenger work on mobile apps, its product tours add-on is only compatible with desktop platforms.
Userpilot – A better alternative for product adoption
Product adoption is when users become repeat users of your product. It covers the entire journey spanning from the awareness stage to trial signup and finally full-on adoption. As a product growth platform, Userpilot has advanced analytics capabilities for tracking adoption over time.
Here are the Userpilot features that can help you measure and improve product adoption:
- Product analytics: Userpilot lets you create trend reports to track adoption over time by feature or segment, funnel reports that show you which steps of the process most users get stuck on, and integrations with third-party analytics providers so you can sync data between tools.
- Feature engagement: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you see how often a feature is used and by how many people. You’ll also be able to see the top 20 events for a certain time period or create custom events that group multiple features together for clearer insights.
- Feedback collection: Userpilot has a no-code survey builder with 14 templates to choose from. You’ll be able to collect quantitative data like CSAT, CES, or NPS ratings and qualitative feedback on the strongest/weakest parts of your product straight from your users.
- User insights: The Insights dashboard lets you monitor user activity based on which segment they’re in and which company they’re from. You’ll also be able to choose from daily, weekly, and monthly time periods to see if user activity is shifting towards full product adoption over time.
Userpilot’s user segmentation
User segmentation is essential for creating a personalized and contextual onboarding experience. Userpilot can segment users based on demographics, product usage data, NPS scores, and more. You can then trigger flows or filter analytics based on segments.
Here’s an overview of Userpilot’s customer segmentation capabilities:
- Segment conditions: Userpilot lets you form segments by adding different conditions like user data, company data, features and events, etc. You can then use these segments as analytics filters or flow triggers later on.
- Analytics filters: Userpilot’s product analytics and user insights dashboards can be filtered to only display data from specific segments (or companies). This will help you extract insights from certain cohorts and compare how adoption or activation varies from one segment to the next.
- Flow triggers: Userpilot’s audience settings let you trigger flows for specific segments or target users that meet certain conditions. You can combine this with page-specific or event-occurrence triggers to show relevant flows to the right users at the most contextual moments.
- External data: Userpilot integrates with tools like Amplitude, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Segment using a one-way integration. This means you can use the data inside Userpilot to build advanced segmentation and trigger contextual experiences. For more advanced use cases, the two-way integration with Hubspot lets you send and receive data, unlocking a full set of use cases.
Userpilot’s interactive walkthroughs
Interactive walkthroughs are better than linear product tours because they let new users learn by doing instead of dumping a ton of information on them all at once. Userpilot’s no-code features let you build advanced interactive walkthroughs and create personalized flows for each segment.
Here are the Userpilot features you can use to create interactive walkthroughs:
- No-code builder: Installing the Userpilot Chrome extension makes it possible to build interactive walkthroughs with zero coding needed. You’ll be able to use every UI pattern — such as modals, slideouts, tooltips, and driven actions — regardless of which plan you’re on.
- Welcome surveys: Userpilot lets you create welcome screens that survey users on what their primary use cases, roles, needs, etc., are. You can create different walkthroughs depending on their responses to ensure that there’s a personalized experience for all.
- Audience settings: The audience settings on Userpilot flows help you trigger or hide walkthroughs from specific users and segments. This makes it possible to create interactive walkthroughs that target a particular segment or trigger a flow when certain conditions are met.
Userpilot’s tooltips
Tooltips are the most straightforward way to offer contextual information to users without interrupting their workflows. Userpilot lets you create tooltips as part of your in-app flows, attach standalone tooltips to individual features, and leverage the power of AI to streamline the process.
Here are the ways you can use Userpilot to create tooltips:
- Tooltip flows: Tooltips are one of the UI elements you can utilize when creating in-app flows. You’ll be able to edit the size, placement, and behavior of your tooltip as needed. You could also toggle the option to continue or dismiss the flow if a tooltip’s element can’t be located.
- Native tooltips: Userpilot spotlights let you create native tooltips that expand when users click on an element or hover over a feature. Since these tooltips are attached to the features rather than specific pages, they’ll show up anywhere that the element is present.
- AI assistance: Userpilot’s AI-powered capabilities help you create better tooltips in less time. You could use the writing assistant to create, shorten, or extend the content of tooltips and leverage automated localization to translate your flow’s tooltips to any of the 32 languages available.
Userpilot’s onboarding checklist
Onboarding checklists help new users learn about a product and reduce their time-to-value (TTV). Userpilot checklists can be created using the no-code builder, used to trigger specific actions, and tracked using the analytics dashboard to gauge overall engagement.
Here’s how you can use Userpilot to create an advanced onboarding checklist:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s checklist creator lets you edit the content of checklists, add tasks, style icons, and configure the triggers for when your checklist should appear. You’ll also be able to choose from five widget icons (or upload your own) and recolor the widget to match your UI.
- Smart tasks: Checklist tasks can be set to trigger specific actions upon being completed, such as redirecting a user to a different page, launching an in-app flow, or running a custom JavaScript function. You can also set the conditions for when a task and action will be marked as complete.
- Checklist analytics: The Checklists dashboard shows you all relevant metrics. These include the number of live checklists you have, how many views they’ve gotten, and how many have been completed. You can also sort these analytics by segment or time period to identify trends.
What are the pros and cons of Userpilot?
Userpilot pros
As a full-suite digital adoption platform, Userpilot has all the features you need to onboard users, track analytics, and gather feedback from customers without writing a single line of code. Here are a few pros of using Userpilot as your product growth solution:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s Chrome extension lets you build flows, add UI elements, and tag features without writing a single line of code.
- UI patterns: There are plenty of UI patterns to choose from when using Userpilot, such as hotspots, tooltips, banners, slideouts, modals, and more!
- Startup-friendly: Userpilot’s entry-level plan gives you access to all available UI patterns so you can hit the ground running.
- Walkthroughs and flows: Build engaging interactive walkthroughs and personalized onboarding flows that target specific segments of your user base.
- Self-service support: Build an in-app resource center to help users solve problems, customize its appearance to align it with your brand, and insert various types of content (videos, flows, or chatbots) to keep your customers satisfied.
- A/B testing: Userpilot’s built-in A/B testing capabilities will help you split-test flows, iterate on the best-performing variants, and continually optimize based on user behavior.
- Feedback collection: Userpilot has built-in NPS surveys with its own unified analytics dashboard and response tagging to help you retarget users. There are other survey types to choose from and you can even create your own custom survey.
- Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from so you can gather feedback on specific features or run customer satisfaction benchmarking surveys like CSAT and CES.
- Advanced analytics: Userpilot lets you analyze product usage data, monitor engagement on all in-app flows, and use the data to create user segments that are based on behaviors instead of demographics.
- Event tracking: Userpilot’s no-code event tracking lets you tag UI interactions (hovers, clicks, or form fills) and group them into a custom event that reflects feature usage.
- Third-party integrations: Userpilot has built-in integrations with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Segment, Heap, HubSpot, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager so you can share data between all the solutions in your tech stack.
Userpilot’s cons
Of course, no tool is perfect and there are a few cons to consider before choosing Userpilot as your user onboarding or product growth solution:
- Employee onboarding: Currently, Userpilot only supports in-app customer onboarding.
- Mobile apps: Userpilot doesn’t have any mobile compatibility which could make it difficult for developers with cross-platform applications to create a consistent user experience for both versions of their product.
- Freemium plan: There’s no freemium Userpilot plan so those bootstrapping their startup and need sub-$100 solutions should consider more affordable onboarding platforms like UserGuiding or Product Fruits.
What do users say about Userpilot?
Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:
I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.
What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.
Source: G2.
Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:
“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”
Source: G2.
Userpilot’s pricing
Userpilot’s transparent pricing ranges from $249/month on the entry-level end to an Enterprise tier for larger companies.
Furthermore, Userpilot’s entry-level plan includes access to all UI patterns and should include everything that most mid-market SaaS businesses need to get started.
Userpilot has three paid plans to choose from:
- Starter: The entry-level Starter plan starts at $249/month and includes features like segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, user feedback, and customization.
- Growth: The Growth plan starts at $499/month and includes features like resource centers, advanced event-based triggers, unlimited feature tagging, AI-powered content localization, EU hosting options, and a dedicated customer success manager.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and includes all the features from Starter + Growth plus custom roles/permissions, access to premium integrations, priority support, custom contract, SLA, SAML SSO, activity logs, security audit and compliance (SOC 2/GDPR).
Conclusion
There you have it.
It should be easier now to make an informed decision whether Intercom is your go-to option for Product adoption. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.
If you’re looking for a better alternative to Intercom for Product adoption, book a Userpilot demo today to experience firsthand how it can enhance your user experience and drive product growth!
Looking for a Better Alternative for Product Adoption? Try Userpilot
