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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Intercom

    Score10 out of 10
    N/AIntercom Helpdesk is the support workspace where human teammates handle customer conversations and tickets. Fin, the customer agent, and Copilot work in that same Inbox, so a case can move from an automated reply to a teammate with the conversation history attached.

    $39

    per month per seat

    Twilio

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/ATwilio offers a CPaaS and CCaaS solution, with the combination of its programmable Voice, Video, and Messaging APIs, as well as the Twilio Flex cloud contact center. Additional capabilities include Twilio's Elastic SIP Trunking, as well as API for WhatsApp.

    $0

    per min per participant

    Pricing
    IntercomTwilio
    Editions & Modules
    Essential
    $39
    per month per seat
    Advanced
    $99
    per month per seat
    Expert
    $139
    per month per seat
    Programmable Video
    $0.0015
    per min per participant
    WhatsApp Business API
    $0.0042
    Per WhatsApp Template message sent
    WhatsApp Business API
    $0.005
    Per WhatsApp session message
    Elastic SIP Trunking
    $0.007
    Per min for termination
    Programmable Messaging
    $0.0075
    per message sent or received
    Programmable Voice
    $0.0085
    per minute to receive a call
    Programmable Voice
    $0.013
    per min to make a call
    Elastic SIP Trunking
    $0.045
    Per min for origination
    Twilio Conversations
    $0.05
    per active user per month
    Twilio Authy
    $0.09
    per authentication
    Programmable Wireless
    $0.1
    per MB
    Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
    $1
    per active user hour (5000 hours free)
    Programmable Wireless
    $2.00
    per SIM card
    Twilio SendGrid Email API
    $14.95
    per month up to 100k emails. (Up to 40k emails free for 30 days)
    Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns
    $15
    per month for 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails. Your first 2,000 contacts are free
    Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
    $150
    per named user per month (5000 hours free)
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IntercomTwilio
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional DetailsUp to a 26% discount for annual billing.1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing without contracts. 2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as usage grows. 3. Free trial credit that includes full API access.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    IntercomTwilio
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Intercom and Twilio
    Feature
    Intercom
    8.0
    15 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets8.613 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory8.410 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation7.59 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.114 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response7.515 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Intercom and Twilio
    Feature
    Intercom
    8.4
    15 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    External knowledge base8.415 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base8.412 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Intercom and Twilio
    Feature
    Intercom
    7.9
    15 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Twilio
    -
    Ratings
    Customer portal8.013 Ratings00 Ratings
    IVR7.64 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social integration6.88 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email support8.614 Ratings00 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration8.711 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IntercomTwilio
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Telegram
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Telegram
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Telegram
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IntercomTwilio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (149 ratings)
    8.1
    (94 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (15 ratings)
    7.5
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    9.2
    (57 ratings)
    9.5
    (10 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (38 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (7 ratings)
    5.7
    (16 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IntercomTwilio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Salesforce
    Intercom is well suited to finding information that your colleague gets about one lead or User. It's less appropriate when you need some report that you can not custom, and the different categories are really not clear. Nevertheless, for the communication with your clients and feature clients, it's really perfect!
    Incentivized
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    Twilio
    I have tried other competitors. But I always end up going back to Twilio because I feel like it is dependable, easy to use, and, has competitive pricing. The only time I wouldn't recommend Twilio to someone as if they are completely inexperienced about using webhooks or APIs. Because you can't really just sign up and start using Twilio without connecting it to another platform first.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Salesforce
    • Intercom is great for tracking user engagement, support, and marketing. I love that you can see what a user is doing on your site and send messages (email or chat) based on specific criteria.
    • Intercom is simple, easy to use, and great for website chats. It is very easy for customers to interact with.
    • Makes your team very accessible, also makes the support process simple for the end users. Good integrations and useful statistics provided.
    Incentivized
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    Twilio
    • Easy to see my team in one place, when they log in and out and what call status they are in.
    • Twilio is a simple, user friendly way to log in and out of work activities.
    • Excellent services and support.
    • The omnichannel feature which allows agents to get request from all channels.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Salesforce
    • Exporting conversations - we need to do this for things like customer disputes and chargebacks, however the export is a simple unformatted text file, which is not an acceptable capture of the threads as it can be simply edited. A clean and neat PDF export would be fantastic.
    • Better/simpler spam and abusive user blocking, maybe based on IP address or sender domain
    • A lower cost - there are many free/low cost platforms now, and I feel your costs are high
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • Control panel. Often, navigating through lists is challenging. I want endless scrolling, not pagination.
    • Conversational intelligence service require a Language. I would like it to detect it.
    • We would like to have some credit on clients that chose to use their own Twilio account.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Salesforce
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    Unless we can get this handled quickly -- less than 1 week -- we will likely switch to another provider who, in my opinion, we'll have to spend close to $3,000 in development time to build a new integration for texting. Our clients need texting and I feel Twilio has failed us miserably.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Salesforce
    Customizability: Intercom is highly customizable, allowing users to tailor the interface to their specific needs and preferences. This can help to improve usability by ensuring that users have quick and easy access to the features and information they need most, this can be done by using Macros, generating custom events and etc.
    Incentivized
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    Twilio
    Twilio has well documented APIs and examples. There are several tutorials, videos and Q&As regarding their services. So, usability is very good. I must say that advanced knowledge of telephony, API/Programming and error-handling is essential to make good use of Twilio. It's not just plug-and-play unless you are integrated with a system that has all of the programming built for it.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Twilio executes what it is designed to do: send SMS messages at scale while providing very good deliverability. I believe that Twilio is very good at what we use for adding SMS messages to our comms strategy. We can see those messages get opened and replied to, which is exactly what we are looking to achieve.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Salesforce
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Twilio
    I have not had to communicate with Twilio support in the last 3 years but my past experience with them has been very positive. They replied to my previous requests promptly and kept me well informed to resolve my inquiries. With their documentation that's available, I hardly imagine why anyone would need to contact support since it's all there in a concise and easy to understand format. It would probably take you longer to type out a support ticket than to just open their doc websites.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Salesforce
    The implementation was surprisingly easy but we are having to adapt from our old process to work well with Intercom.
    Incentivized
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    Twilio
    The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Salesforce
    Intercom is much easier to use. Even though HubSpot's Support hub is a fairly new feature, it lacks so much. It is quite complicated to use and lacks many features that Intercom can offer just for the focus of customer service.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Twilio
    We evaluated many fundraising-based text-to-give programs and found the subscriptions prohibitively expensive for our small scale and uncertain first few years of development. While we may be willing to invest that kind of money after discovering how things work, we're happy with Twilio now and have no desire to start over.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Being in South Africa, direct local currency support would be nice
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Salesforce
    • Increase in demo sets and deals won by engaging with prospects that hadn't requested a demo yet.
    • Increase in efficiency for our support team to receiving tickets.
    • Boosting registration for our on going training webinars as well as those for new product announcements.
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • We found that associates who had the opportunity to respond to a survey about their assigned job were 37% more likely to return to a job site
    • We were able to reduce the number of resources required to manually respond to associates using Twilio Studio, so those resources could have more time to complete other tasks
    • We were able to scale the number of associates who received survey messages at least by a factor of 8 without increasing our resource demand
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Twilio Screenshots

    Screenshot of the “Explore Products” section, which is where to build products.Screenshot of the optional drag-and-drop visual editor and code editor.Screenshot of Flex, which is a programmable Contact Center that puts you in control.