If you've ever stared at an Intercom invoice and wondered where your budget went, you're not alone. Intercom is a great product — but it's built for enterprise teams with enterprise budgets. FloatChat was built for US small and mid-size businesses that want professional customer support without the $500/month minimum.
Pricing at a glance
Intercom's Essential plan starts at $29 per seat per month. Add the AI Fin add-on ($0.99 per resolution) and a 5-agent team handling 1,000 AI resolutions per month is looking at $1,135/month before taxes. FloatChat's Lite plan is $9.99/month flat — AI included, no per-resolution fees, no seat fees on top.
What Intercom does better
Intercom has a more mature enterprise feature set: advanced custom bots, product tours, and deeply configurable SLAs. If you're a 200-agent enterprise with complex routing and escalation workflows, Intercom's breadth is hard to match. Their app store is also larger, with 300+ integrations.
What FloatChat does better
FloatChat bundles voice, SMS, WhatsApp two-way messaging, and email in every plan — including the free tier. Intercom charges extra for each channel. FloatChat's capacity pricing (pay per team, not per seat) means scaling from 3 agents to 25 doesn't multiply your bill by 8x. And FloatChat's free migration team will move your Intercom data, conversations, and contacts over in 48 hours.
The AI comparison
Intercom Fin is powered by GPT-4 and is genuinely impressive. FloatChat's AI Captain is also built on frontier models and handles order lookup, FAQ answering, and handoff to human agents. The key difference: Intercom charges per resolution. FloatChat bundles AI replies into the monthly plan. At 2,000 resolutions per month, FloatChat saves you $1,980.
Verdict
If you're a US SMB paying more than $100/month for customer support software, FloatChat will almost certainly save you money while giving you more channels. If you're a large enterprise needing advanced SLAs, custom bots, and Salesforce sync, Intercom is the safer choice. For everyone else: start free on FloatChat and compare.
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