Appcues is online software for creating in-product experiences such as user onboarding, feature announcements, etc. without writing any code. (The vendor believes it's the non-technical people who oftentimes have the best information about a software user's needs and desires.) The goal of using Appcues is to improve product engagement within the user's own customer base.
$299
per month/billed monthly
Intercom
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Intercom is an AI-first customer service platform that enhances the customer experience and improves operational efficiency, built on a single AI system with three major components: AI Agent, AI Copilot and AI Analyst (coming soon) to deliver customer service.
$39
per month per seat
Pricing
Appcues
Intercom
Editions & Modules
Essentials
$299
per month/billed monthly
Growth
$879
per month/billed annually
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Essential
$39
per month per seat
Advanced
$99
per month per seat
Expert
$139
per month per seat
The Early Stage program
From $65 for 5 support seats
per month
Proactive Support Plus add-on
from $99
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Appcues
Intercom
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
AI customer service features included in every plan.
Intercom integrates Help desk, AI Chat bot, and Proactive support.
Appcues is much more affordable than WalkMe and Pendo from our research. We were previously using Intercom, however Intercom was designed more for purely in-app messaging rather than actually providing flows and cues guiding users throughout an app. We also received lots of …
Intercom is right in the middle of HubSpot and Drift. It would work well for a business just starting out, but you'd want something a little more robust later down the line.
If you want an all-inclusive marketing automation tool and have the budget, HubSpot is still my favourite …
It is well suited for SaaS products or services that have a highly complex user interface. Through Appcues, you can ensure that people discover all the existing and new features and make them understand the value of your product as soon as possible to address the evergreen issue of churn. But if your user interface is really messed up, you should change the product itself instead of using a tool like Appcues to explain everything on the screen.
Intercom is well suited for connecting internal personnel with external individuals and those externals to specific individuals or teams within the organization. Intercom also does a good job at allowing multiple resources to direct communication in the right direction, whether that be a transfer internally or directing initial communication requests to the appropriate resources. Intercom is not always the best-suited platform for reaching out to external individuals because of the inability to know the availability of who you are trying to reach.
In-app communication: I can deploy tours, banners, checklists, tooltips, posts, and surveys in a matter of minutes.
Knowledge Hub: I can write and publish a help article that can then be used to train the Fin AI agent to deliver accurate answers to our customers.
Communicating in context with service/sales agents and customers: the Help Desk makes it simple for sales and service agents to pull me into a conversation with a customer to resolve product-related issues.
We were extremely surprised that there are not any Appcues used in Appcues. The app is pretty easy to use, once you figure out how to use it. There were not any type of tutorials when we logged in that quickly walked through how to setup a flow.
Appcues has lots of support articles, however they are almost so numerous that it was hard to find simple onboarding documentation that we found useful.
The different tooltips and product actions are great, but being able to customize the different cues a little bit more by changing sizes and aspect ratios could be an improvement.
We have been and will be continuing our journey with Intercom and nothing too concerning has happened that I have experienced or heard of that has us on the edge yet. If it ever happens it will be something along the lines of "Outgrowing" the use of need of the platform.
Intercom is one of the most user friendly tools I've used. Its vast array of features can make it a bit complex to use, or keep up with, at times. However, the customer support team is brilliant and always answers my queries fast and with easy-to-follow instructions.
Intercom is the premier customer support/engagement model and it definitely has one of the top tier customer support teams as well. I don't think I have ever waited more than 5 minutes to get the information I need or get help with an issue. They are incredible and I aim to model our customer service department after them.
It has a much, much better user interface, better customer care, and of course better pricing. This along with the fact that they were very accommodating for our use case ensured we went ahead with Appcues.
The product was too focused on "tickets," and we wanted to focus more on "conversations." Intercom shows that thinking across the whole app was a no-brainer for us. Zendesk's pricing is a bit higher for what they deliver, but the ease of integration with our platforms was key, too.
Faster customer onboarding: When we identified our biggest conversion factors, we were able to set up an onboarding sequence that helped people get started and converted faster.
Adoption: It's much easier to showcase a new software feature. We build out a post and a tour for any new software features and prompt it to show up the first time they log in, all through Intercom.
Money: It's saved us money in the long run considering how many softwares we would have needed to use in order to get the same features offered in Intercom.