What is Intercom?
Intercom is a customer service platform with a shared inbox, ticketing and a help center. Its AI agent, Fin, answers customers in chat, email and other channels. You pay a fee per seat, plus $0.99 for each Fin outcome, such as a resolution.
Where Intercom shines
Intercom is at its best inside a software product. In-app chat, banners and tooltips come with every plan, plus paid product tours. It also offers over 450 apps and integrations, including Salesforce, HubSpot and Jira.
How Askly is different
Every Askly AI Support Agent plan comes with unlimited users, no seat fees. At Intercom, everyone who replies to customers needs a paid seat. Every new hire raises the Intercom bill; with an Askly AI plan, it doesn’t.
Toward your plan’s limit, Askly counts only conversations the AI finished without a human reply. At Intercom, a handoff Fin completes through a configured Procedure is billed at $0.99. A conversation can even be billed as resolved after a teammate steps in.
Fin also answers in many languages. The difference shows when your people reply. With Askly, your team writes in one language and Askly translates both ways, live.
Intercom’s inbox translation pauses after 10 conversations per teammate each month. After that, each teammate needs a Copilot seat, at $29 a month on annual billing.
Askly keeps one central knowledge base for every language and channel. Fix an answer once and it improves everywhere. On Intercom Essential, the help center can only be in English.
More languages need Advanced or higher. Even then, help center articles are not translated automatically.
Written conversations in Askly stay in the EEA, in Frankfurt and the Netherlands. Intercom offers EU hosting only to new workspaces on Advanced or Expert, under a contract. It also bills in US dollars only.
Pricing: what you actually pay
Take a typical team: five support people and about 500 conversations a month. Say the AI resolves half, a rate one customer reports on Intercom’s own pricing page. Prices exclude VAT and were checked on 24 September 2026.
On Intercom Essential, five seats cost $145 a month on annual billing. Fin adds $247.50 for 250 resolved conversations. Total: $392.50 a month, billed in US dollars.
Essential does not include Facebook or Instagram, and its help center is English only. For those, you need Advanced, at $85 per seat a month. With Fin, the same team then pays $672.50 a month.
Need inbox translation beyond 10 conversations per teammate a month? Copilot for all five adds $145, making $817.50 a month.
Intercom’s annual prices come with one invoice for the whole year. You can’t remove seats until renewal. Both meters keep running: each hire adds a seat, each resolution adds $0.99.
Askly AI Support Agent Starter costs €195 a month with 6-month billing. It includes up to 500 AI answers a month, web chat, Facebook, Instagram and unlimited users. Your 250 AI answers fit, with room to double.
When AI answers pass 500 a month, move to Flex at €359. It adds up to 5 domains and priority support. Optional setup by Askly is a one-time €1,500.
For this team, Askly Starter is the fit. 30+ languages are included (100+ on request), and so are unlimited users. The price stays flat until you outgrow the plan’s answer limit.
Results that speak for themselves
BusTruckParts, a used truck parts supplier, serves buyers from 100+ countries in their own language.
At Confido, a private healthcare provider, AI resolves 72% of patient questions.
At Wagenküll Castle & Resort, AI answers 91% of repeating questions.
Summary: which one should you choose?
Intercom makes sense if you run a software product and need in-app tours and deep integrations. Startups under 15 employees can get 93% off in year one, less after that.
For most European businesses serving customers in several languages, Askly is the stronger choice:
- One flat monthly price covers unlimited users.
- Translation is built in, for 30+ languages (100+ on request).
- Facebook and Instagram are included in every AI Support Agent plan.
- Written conversations stay in the EEA, and you pay in euros.
