Intercom vs. Pure Chat by Ruby

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Intercom
Score 8.6 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
Pure Chat by Ruby
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Pure Chat is a live chat tool with a free version for limited usage or paid versions with unlimited chat, developed by the company of the same name in Scottsdale, Arizona, and acquired late in 2020 by Ruby. Pure Chat is now a Ruby brand.
$10
per month
Pricing
IntercomPure Chat by Ruby
Editions & Modules
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
Additional Users - Pro
$10
per month
Additional Users - Growth
$15
per month
Growth
$49
per month
Pro
$99
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IntercomPure Chat by Ruby
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAI customer service features included in every plan. Intercom integrates Help desk, AI Chat bot, and Proactive support.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IntercomPure Chat by Ruby
Features
IntercomPure Chat by Ruby
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Intercom
8.2
184 Ratings
0% above category average
Pure Chat by Ruby
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets8.3171 Ratings00 Ratings
Expert directory7.9110 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.4115 Ratings00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation8.1125 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission8.9174 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response8.7181 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Intercom
7.8
188 Ratings
2% below category average
Pure Chat by Ruby
-
Ratings
External knowledge base7.9186 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base7.8157 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Intercom
8.3
184 Ratings
4% above category average
Pure Chat by Ruby
-
Ratings
Customer portal9.1145 Ratings00 Ratings
IVR7.359 Ratings00 Ratings
Social integration7.3104 Ratings00 Ratings
Email support9.2175 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.8134 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IntercomPure Chat by Ruby
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Gist
Gist
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IntercomPure Chat by Ruby
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(340 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(21 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(248 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.8
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IntercomPure Chat by Ruby
Likelihood to Recommend
Intercom
We started using Intercom five years ago, and it is probably the best decision we made. It is without a doubt the best investment in our startup journey. It is rock solid, with constant innovation and product improvements. We are a fully remote team, and it helps keep all the customer conversations and interactions in one place. So, we can seamlessly collaborate and ensure that nothing drops.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
Chat is nothing new but the ease of use and functionality is key, that being said Pure Chat nails it across the board. We use the chat across our website and ad pages. Don't see a situation where this effective tool would be less appropriate, consumers want instant information and instant connection, chat provides both without being tied up on the phone
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Pros
Intercom
  • Great UI - everyone has their own inbox but can still see all incoming messages.
  • Fin AI - we love the AI functionality, it saves tons of time of the team.
  • Automated emails - we configured Intercom in a way that it uses a lot of information we have about our users (e.g. their subscription, date of upgrade, etc.) so that we can use it to automate communication.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
  • Online chat
  • Multiple websites, multiple users
  • Supervisor feature
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Cons
Intercom
  • There was a report of active chats per hour that helped us a lot to organize the team schedule, understand hours of greatest flow, nowadays there is only this report for new chats, but if we have chats that started at other times but were not closed, it ends up giving a false impression that the service was empty at a certain time.
  • Not being able to group users by platform, only by API, we have a small team and having to send a developer to do this all the time is unthinkable.
  • Unable to determine what is a lead and a user based on our criteria, today Intercom assumes that just because a user exists on our platform then they are a customer, but this is not true for us, as our platform allows free trials, so this function of separating leads and users is completely useless for us.
  • When we create a user manually, I either have to provide an email or manually provide an ID, since nowadays you have integration with WhatsApp, so I often register a user with just a name and phone number. So the tool should allow me to consider the phone number as an ID as well, or at least generate an ID automatically for me, as it does when we receive a conversation via WhatsApp started by a customer who was not previously registered in the tool.
  • The attendant can record audio directly through the Intercom, it has been integrated with WhatsApp for some time, and until today we need to use other platforms to record a simple audio that is so common when using WhatsApp.
  • Sometimes the attendant is busy and the customer sends an audio message on WhatsApp. It would be nice to be able to transcribe the customer's audio message as an internal note to help the attendant be more agile.
  • The AI ​​marks many calls as resolved even though the agent has taken over the conversation, just because the customer hasn't clicked on anything, but that doesn't make sense, most customers don't bother to respond to the AI, sometimes they don't even remember to respond to us, I understand that if there are more than 2 messages sent by our agent after the AI's response, it should already be considered that the AI ​​didn't resolve the service.
  • In cases of users with many companies, it should be possible to send via API the information about which company the customer is logged into at the time of the conversation. Nowadays, we have to ask the customer which company they are talking to because all of them appear on the Intercom and we cannot know which one they want support from.
  • Being able to place hierarchy in tags, today we use tags to categorize conversations and there is a hierarchical level in this classification, for example: Usability > Fiscal > Rejection, but as there is no way to define hierarchy, we cannot do analysis by tags through the platform, we have to do the part in Excel
  • Being able to make calls to other countries like Brazil
  • Report of customers and users who call the most by period, today I can even get a list of customers who haven't called for a long time, but customers who call support a lot is also very relevant information and I don't have it on the platform.
  • Tinha um relatório de chats ativos por hora que nos ajudava muito a organizar escala de time, entender horas de maior fluxo, hoje em dia só tem esse relatório para novos chats, mas se temos chats que começaram em outros horários mas não foram encerrados, acaba dando uma falsa impressaão que o atendimento estava vazio em determinado momento
  • Não poder agrupar usuários pela plataforma, somente por API, temos uma equipe pequena e ter que toda hora passar um desenvolvedor pra fazer isso é impensável
  • Não poder determinar o que é lead e usuário mediante nossos critérios, hoje o Intercom assume que só porque um usuário existe na nossa plataforma então é um cliente, mas isso não é verdade pra nós, pois nossa plataforma permite testes gratuitos, sendo assim essa função de separação de lead e usuário pra gente é completamente inútil
  • Quando criamos um usuário manualmente ou tenho que informar e-mail ou informar manualmente um ID, sendo que hoje em dia vocês tem integração com o whatsapp então muitas vezes vou cadastrar um usuário só com nome e número de telefone, então a ferramenta deveria me permitir considerar o telefone como ID também ou no mínimo gerar um ID automaticamente pra mim como faz quando recebemos uma conversa pelo whatsapp começada por um cliente que não estava previamente cadastrado na ferramenta
  • O atendente poder gravar áudio diretamente pelo Intercom, já tem integração com o whatsapp a tempos, e até hoje precisamos usar outras plataformas pra gravar um simples áudio que é tão corriqueiro no uso do whatsapp
  • As vezes o atendente está ocupado e o cliente manda um áudio no whatsapp seria bacana poder transcrever o audio do cliente como uma nota interna pra ajudar o atendente a ter mais agilidade
  • A IA marca muitos chamados como resolvidos mesmo o atendente tendo assumido a conversa, só pelo cliente não ter clicado em nada, só que isso não faz sentido, a maior parte dos clientes não se preocupa em responder a IA, as vezes não lembra nem de responder a gente, entendo que se tiver mais de 2 mensagens enviadas pelo nosso agente após o atendimento da IA, já deveria contar que a mesma não resolveu o atendimento.
  • Em casos de usuários com muitas empresas, deveria ser possível enviarmos por API a informação de em qual empresa o cliente está logado na hora da conversa, hoje em dia temos que perguntar para o cliente de qual empresa ele está falando pois no Intercom aparecem todas e não conseguimos saber pra qual ele quer atendimento
  • Ter como colocar hierarquia nas tags, hoje usamos tegs para categorizar conversas e tem um nivel hierarquico nessa classificação, exemplo: Usabilidade > Fiscal > Rejeição, mas como não tem como definir hierarquia, não temos como fazer analises por tags pela plataforma, temos que fazer a parte no excel
  • Ter como fazer ligações por outros países como o Brasil
  • Relatório de clientes e usuários que mais chamam por período, hoje até consigo pegar uyma lista de clientes que não chamam a muito tempo, mas clientes que acionam demais o suporte também é uma informação muito relevante e não tenho pela plataforma
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
  • Transcripts that could generate in a PDF or Word doc rather than .txt file, option would be nice
  • Chat is straight forward so not much room for improvement, we're happy with the service, functionality, and ease of use.
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Likelihood to Renew
Intercom
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.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
No answers on this topic
Usability
Intercom
I'm giving it an eight since certain items are self-explanatory and intuitive, depending on where you are in the suite. In contrast, other features, such as copying/duplicating workflows, are not prominent (nor available). I have worked with different platforms, such as Sprinklr, Engagor, and Zendesk, and given my experience, I know my way around these quite well. I love Intercom, but there is room for improvement.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Intercom
always there
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
No answers on this topic
Performance
Intercom
works perfect
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Intercom
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.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Intercom
Easy to know the learning path
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Intercom
The implementation was surprisingly easy but we are having to adapt from our old process to work well with Intercom.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Intercom
Odoo was, in my opinion, terrible - a jack of all trades and master of none, which is why all teams in the business moved away to bespoke software. Freshdesk - an easier and more organisable way of creating and managing tickets. Although Intercom now has tickets, we're still using Freshdesk due to ease of use after 5 years, and our development team is also using it, so more cross-team collaboration happens there.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
Didn't see much pros and cons comparing Pure Chat and Olark. They all do the job. However, Pure Chat is free to use on basic functions.
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Return on Investment
Intercom
  • Intercom has allowed Frayt to improve customer satisfaction by ensuring any active issues are addressed immediately to ensure effective service for their needs.
  • Has decreased the time for response when addressing contractors due to the ability to reach out through various means to individuals.
  • Has increased visibility for specific issues to multiple team members for things to be addressed appropriately.
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Ruby Receptionists, Inc
  • Instant connection with our clients and prospects
  • Expanded our ability to increase client contact efficiency
  • Allows us to stay up to date with the ever changing demand of consumers
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ScreenShots

Intercom Screenshots

Screenshot of Fin AI Agent is designed to resolve 50% of support volume.Screenshot of Fin taking actions. It delivers instant answers in 45 languages from order updates to exchanges and returns.Screenshot of the omnichannel inbox - AI-enhanced to increase productivity.Screenshot of Fin for Intercom - works natively on Intercom - no integration requiredScreenshot of Fin for ZendeskScreenshot of Fin for Salesforce