Fin by Intercom vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Fin by Intercom
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Fin is Intercom’s AI Agent for customer service, designed to deliver high-quality answers, even for complex queries. It works with any helpdesk, or it can be paired with Intercom’s next-generation Helpdesk to get the full Intercom Customer Service Suite.
$0.99
one-time fee per 1 resolution
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered, cloud-based digital marketing platform within the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.
$1,250
per month per installation
Pricing
Fin by IntercomSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Editions & Modules
Fin with your current helpdesk
$0.99
one-time fee per 1 resolution
Copilot add-on
$35
per month per user
The Early Stage program
$65
per month (6 support seats)
Proactive Support Plus add-on
$99
per month
Fin with Intercom’s Helpdesk
from $39 + $0.99 per Fin resolution
per month per seat
Account Engagement
$1,250
per month
Engagement
$1,250
per month
Intelligence
$3,000
per month
Loyalty Management
$20,000
per month
Personalization
$100,000
per year
Data Cloud for Marketing
$108,000
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Fin by IntercomSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFin comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Here's how it works: Use Fin in at least 250 conversations within the first 90 days after trial. If you're not satisfied, you can request a refund of up to $100k. Refund requests must be submitted within 90 days of starting the subscription.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Fin by IntercomSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Considered Both Products
Fin by Intercom
Chose Fin by Intercom
We have Pardot for web forms people can submit when they go on our website, but with Intercom, we can start that conversation and qualify or disqualify the group right then and there. Being able to talk internally with our organization on these conversations is helpful in …
Chose Fin by Intercom
The only tools I've used that are remotely similar to Intercom are primarily used for email marketing. Intercom's email marketing capabilities are slimmed down (comparatively) but still effective.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud
We evaluated most other marketing automation products and Pardot was best for us because of the SFDC integration.
Features
Fin by IntercomSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Fin by Intercom
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
167 Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG email editor00 Ratings8.1118 Ratings
Dynamic content00 Ratings7.9149 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content00 Ratings7.8108 Ratings
Landing pages00 Ratings7.7117 Ratings
A/B testing00 Ratings8.2147 Ratings
Mobile optimization00 Ratings7.4107 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting00 Ratings8.3128 Ratings
List management00 Ratings8.0125 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences00 Ratings8.191 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Fin by Intercom
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8.0
121 Ratings
3% above category average
Lead nurturing automation00 Ratings7.9107 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading00 Ratings7.8108 Ratings
Data quality management00 Ratings7.9113 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks00 Ratings8.299 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Fin by Intercom
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
111 Ratings
6% above category average
Calendaring00 Ratings8.1100 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing00 Ratings7.794 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Fin by Intercom
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.5
85 Ratings
1% above category average
Social sharing and campaigns00 Ratings7.880 Ratings
Social profile integration00 Ratings7.236 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Fin by Intercom
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
121 Ratings
8% above category average
Dashboards00 Ratings8.0115 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings8.1120 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings7.797 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Fin by Intercom
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.7
121 Ratings
3% above category average
API00 Ratings7.487 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals00 Ratings7.986 Ratings
Customizability00 Ratings7.3108 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com00 Ratings8.5110 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM00 Ratings8.313 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM00 Ratings7.410 Ratings
Third-party software integrations00 Ratings7.121 Ratings
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Fin by IntercomSalesforce Marketing Cloud
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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Conversica
Conversica
Score 4.5 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Conversica
Conversica
Score 4.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
Fin by IntercomSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(340 ratings)
7.9
(324 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(21 ratings)
8.3
(114 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(249 ratings)
4.2
(35 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
9.6
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
5.9
(10 ratings)
6.9
(36 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
7.5
(2 ratings)
8.1
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.8
(5 ratings)
3.0
(17 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
7.7
(34 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Fin by IntercomSalesforce Marketing Cloud
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.
Read full review
Salesforce
I rated this a seven because I love Salesforce, and it is excellent on the sales side. However, the marketing side has some pros and cons. It is terrific for keeping track of lead, customer, and dealer information, but it is not easy to automate workflows, integrate other software, or create well-designed emails. It is also straightforward to generate reports, which is very helpful in keeping track of lead progression to better market those leads and turn them into customers.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • Filter relevant content so you can priorize those that are more relevant and resolve it first
  • Measure the traffic in the different social networks, as well as the response rate, average response time and other relevant metrics
  • Configure automation rules to order the work of those who must interact with the customer
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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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Salesforce
  • The email builder does not offer any way to catch/check bugs across different email service providers
  • Creating SQL is not as easy as drag-and-drop; a lot of technical knowledge is required
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud is sold as a marketing tool, but to be honest, you need a LOT of technical IT support to run the tool
  • Einstein metrics are across the board; if you have multiple audiences in one instance of Salesforce Marketing Cloud you can't segment the data.
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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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Salesforce
As of right now we have not seen any other program that integrates as seamlessly into our Salesforce platform. We have barely scratched the surface of all the features and use cases. It would be irresponsible to make a move to another platform in the near future. We have not come up against any limitations that would prompt a need to switch
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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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Salesforce
You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.
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Reliability and Availability
Intercom
always there
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Salesforce
Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.
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Performance
Intercom
works perfect
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Salesforce
Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.
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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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Salesforce
They are really responsive and more than not solve the problem or give you insight to how you can manage the solution yourself. I do find however sometimes a long delay on the more complex issues when they need to loop in other departments. but overall a good experience with support
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In-Person Training
Intercom
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
The trainers at the Pardot user conference (Elevate and Connections) were very knowledgeable and presented the material well. Again, the content was targeted to more of a new user audience, and was not really relevant for folks who had been using the product for 2+ years.
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Online Training
Intercom
Easy to know the learning path
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Salesforce
Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.
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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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Salesforce
From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.
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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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Salesforce
I think that all of the marketing platforms I have evaluated and used in the past serve different markets and purposes. Salesforce Marketing Cloud was more palatable to our team because of our existing tech stack where we had Salesforce CRM already deployed and in use. Compared to Marketo and Hubspot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a bit dated in terms of the UI/UX and the overall experience but still meets the needs of our organization. Mailchimp, however, isn't even playing in the same arena and is meant for small organizations and companies that don't have a need for a full fledged offering that SFMC brings to the table.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Intercom
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
was not involved with this part but i have not heard about clompaints
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Scalability
Intercom
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Prior to this, we had no solution and literally were doing things on paper in a world where technology is outpacing paper. Having this process optimized has made it easier for the sales and marketing people to change information. From the training perspective, it has allowed us to see holes in where we could create additional support training, so the ROI here has been a lot more than just the optimization of a process.
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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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Salesforce
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to more efficiently reach out to a higher number of prospects.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to nimbly communicate important messages in a timely fashion to facilitate conversion.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to track who is opening our messages so that we can stop sending to those not interested and focus on the most engaged audiences.
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ScreenShots

Fin by Intercom Screenshots

Screenshot of Fin, delivering conversational support experience to customers.Screenshot of where to monitor, analyze, and optimize Fin by spotting trends, filling content gaps, and fixing quality issues topic by topic.Screenshot of where to customize Fin's tone of voice, teach it support knowledge and policies, and configure how it handles complex tasks in over 45 languages.Screenshot of where to test answers, review the sources and settings that shape them, and get tailored recommendations to optimize performance.Screenshot of Fin, as it appears across email and live chat to phone, SMS, and social. Fin can answer any question, across any channel, any time.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Pardot Analytics - Pardot's reporting and analytics can be used to perform true revenue impact analysis and closed-loop reporting.Screenshot of Pardot Email Analytics - The reach and impact of  email marketing efforts are displayed in real-time with advanced reporting and analytics by device, and email client.Screenshot of Pardot Forms and Landing Pages - Pardot's form and landing page builders are used to turn online traffic to leads with targeted offers and content marketing.Screenshot of Pardot Email Marketing - Lead nurturing flows are defined via an interface that enables definition of the simplest or most complex segmented and targeted campaigns.