HiQBot is an AI customer conversation platform. Website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram and LINE land in one inbox, an AI agent answers from your own documents, and a person takes over in the same thread. Intercom is a strong product and this page does not pretend otherwise. The two differences that decide it are ownership and gating: Intercom registers your WhatsApp number to its own business account and bills messages through its own credit line, and Instagram does not work below its Advanced plan. HiQBot connects the number to the account you already own and includes Instagram on the $49 entry plan.
Weighing more than one tool? See how the alternatives compare.
Two corrections before we start. Several pages ranking for this term say Intercom cannot do WhatsApp or Instagram natively. It does both, plus Telegram, and inbound WhatsApp is free on every plan. Others say Fin bills unpredictably when it works. It does not. We go through what Fin actually charges for further down, including the parts that favour Intercom. Every figure here was read from Intercom’s own pages on 28 August 2026.
Worth knowing first
Salesforce announced a definitive agreement on 15 June 2026 to acquire Fin, formerly Intercom, for approximately $3.6 billion. It is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s 2027 financial year. The company now trades as Fin, and intercom.com/fin redirects to fin.ai.
Salesforce distribution may well make the product stronger, and plenty of acquisitions leave a product alone. What changes is timing. Pricing, packaging and roadmap all tend to be revisited after a deal this size, so the next two quarters are a sensible window to know what else exists rather than to find out when a renewal quote arrives.
Check it on Salesforce’s own newsroom rather than taking our word for it. We mention it because none of the other pages comparing tools to Intercom do, which tells you how recently most of them were actually written.
We publish this page. The right-hand column is longer than the left because Intercom is a much broader product, and a list that pretended otherwise would be no use to you.
The part that decides it
Intercom does WhatsApp well. Inbound is free and unlimited on every plan and Fin answers on it. The question worth asking is what happens to your number when you connect it.
Their documentation says the number is registered exclusively to Intercom’s own WhatsApp Business Account, that all message charges are billed through Intercom’s credit line, that you cannot add your own payment method, and that you cannot use the same number with Meta’s API directly while it is connected.
It also says that if the number is currently on the WhatsApp Business app you must delete that account first, and that all chat history and account data associated with it will be permanently lost.
HiQBot connects through Embedded Signup against your own business account, and provisions coexistence, so the number runs on the API and in the WhatsApp Business app at the same time. Your team keeps answering on the phone they already use and the agent handles the rest. The setup page walks through it.
It matters most on the day you leave, because a number on your own account moves to another provider while a number on someone else’s has to be released to you first.
The channels
Intercom’s help centre states that Instagram is available on the Advanced or Expert plan, and their own feature comparison leaves Social unticked on Essential. So a team on the entry plan cannot answer an Instagram DM at all. Moving up to get it takes a seat from $29 to $85 a month on annual billing, which is where Workflows and multiple team inboxes also live.
| HiQBot | Intercom | |
|---|---|---|
| Website chat | All plans | All plans |
| WhatsApp, inbound | All plans | All plans, free and unlimited |
| All plans, from $49 | Advanced and up, from $85/seat annual | |
| Facebook Messenger | Starter and up | Advanced and up |
| Telegram | Starter and up | All plans |
| LINE | Starter and up | Not offered |
| Phone, SMS and email | Not offered | Yes, billed by usage |
| Instagram post comments | Comment rules on all plans | Not received |
| WhatsApp number ownership | Your own business account, through Embedded Signup | Registered to Intercom’s account, billed on their credit line |
| Number also usable in the WhatsApp Business app | Yes, through coexistence | No. Their doc says delete the app account first |
Two rows deserve a note. Intercom does not receive comments on Instagram posts, which is the trigger most Instagram automation is actually built around and which HiQBot runs as comment rules on every plan. And Intercom has phone, SMS and email, which we do not. If those decide it, the rest of this page is academic.
Setting the record straight
Nearly every page comparing a tool to Intercom says the same thing: that Fin bills unpredictably and punishes you when it works. Having read Intercom’s own outcomes documentation, that is not right, and repeating it would tell you more about us than about them.
Fin charges at most once per conversation and you can set hard usage limits. The one thing worth watching is what Intercom calls an assumed resolution: a customer who reads the answer and leaves without asking for anything more is billed as resolved. That is a real edge, and it is the only one of the usual complaints that survives reading the documentation.
The number that actually surprises people is the other one. A resolution is $0.99. A qualification is $9.99, and booking a call, starting a trial or routing someone to self-serve onboarding are each billed at that rate. If the job you are buying for is qualifying inbound leads, that is the meter to model, and no comparison page we read mentions it.
The price
Intercom quotes each plan twice and its pricing page defaults to annual. Essential is $29 a seat on annual billing and $39 monthly. Every comparison page we read quotes one of those without saying which. Both are below.
| HiQBot | Intercom | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Solo · $49/mo · 1 seat · 2,500 credits | Essential · $39/seat monthly, $29/seat annual |
| Plan where Instagram works | Solo, $49 | Advanced · $99/seat monthly, $85/seat annual |
| Upper plan | Growth · $229/mo · 5 seats · 10,000 credits | Expert · $139/seat monthly, $132/seat annual |
| What the price scales with | Nothing. The plan is the plan | Seats, plus AI outcomes |
| AI billing | 1 credit per reply, $20 per 1,000 | $0.99 per resolution, handoff or disqualification. $9.99 per qualification |
| Free trial | 7 days | 14 days, no card |
| Free plan | None | None |
The units do not compare, so here is the honest version. Intercom bills per outcome, at most once per conversation. HiQBot bills per AI reply, at two cents a reply. One conversation would have to run about fifty AI replies before our metering costs more than a single $0.99 outcome, and around five hundred before it costs more than one qualification. For most support and sales conversations we come out lower, but the shape of the bill is different rather than simply cheaper.
Intercom also runs an Early Stage programme at 93% off the first year for companies under a funding threshold. If you qualify for it, it beats us on price and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The thing to check is what year two costs, because the discount steps down.
Intercom prices read from their plans article and pricing page on 28 August 2026. Their pricing page was running a live experiment on the entry price during that read, so check it yourself before budgeting. HiQBot prices from our own plans API the same day.
Switching
Upload the articles your Intercom help centre already answers from and the agent works off the same material. That part is quick.
The WhatsApp number is the step to plan, and it is more involved leaving Intercom than leaving most platforms, because the number sits on their business account rather than yours. Start the release with their support before you schedule anything, and expect a window where neither side is answering. Once it is on your own account you can turn coexistence on and take WhatsApp on the app again as well.
If you rely on phone, SMS, email campaigns, the API or the proactive tours, do not move. Those have no equivalent here, and swapping a working setup for a page’s argument is a bad trade.
Yes. Salesforce announced a definitive agreement on 15 June 2026 to acquire Fin, formerly Intercom, for approximately $3.6 billion, expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s 2027 financial year. Intercom now trades as Fin, and intercom.com/fin redirects to fin.ai. Read the announcement on Salesforce’s own newsroom before taking anyone’s word for it, including ours.
Yes, and well. Inbound WhatsApp is free and unlimited on every Intercom plan and Fin answers on it. Pages claiming Intercom cannot do WhatsApp are out of date. The difference is not availability, it is ownership: Intercom registers the number to its own WhatsApp Business Account and bills messages through its own credit line.
On HiQBot yes, through coexistence. The number runs on the API and in the app at the same time. Intercom’s documentation says you must delete your account in the app first, and that all chat history and account data associated with it will be permanently lost.
Advanced. Intercom’s help centre states that Instagram is available on the Advanced or Expert plan, and their feature comparison shows Social unticked on Essential. That is $85 per seat per month on annual billing against $29 for Essential, so adding Instagram is a 2.9x jump. HiQBot includes Instagram on Solo at $49 a month.
Fin bills per outcome. A resolution, a procedure handoff and a disqualification are $0.99 each. A qualification is $9.99, and booking a call, starting a trial or routing to self-serve onboarding are each billed at that rate. Fin charges at most once per conversation.
No, and this is worth saying plainly because most comparison pages get it wrong. Intercom does not bill when a customer asks for a human, when Fin escalates because it cannot answer, when a procedure fails, for spam, or for abandoned conversations. You can also set hard usage limits. The one case worth watching is what they call an assumed resolution: a customer who reads Fin’s answer and leaves without asking for more help is billed as resolved.
Usually, but the units are not comparable and we would rather say so. Intercom bills per outcome, at most once per conversation. HiQBot bills per AI reply, at $20 per 1,000 credits. The crossover is roughly 50 replies inside a single conversation before our metering costs more than one $0.99 outcome, and roughly 500 against the $9.99 qualification. Intercom’s Early Stage programme also takes 93% off the first year, which beats us outright for funded startups.
A public REST API and outbound webhooks, phone as a channel with IVR and call recording, SMS and email as channels, SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA, data residency in three regions, 450+ integrations, and a proactive engagement suite of tours, checklists and surveys. Fin also runs on top of Zendesk, Salesforce and HubSpot, so it can be adopted without replacing your inbox. HiQBot cannot.
Seven days, your own documents, your own Instagram. Keep Intercom running while you do it and compare the same week of conversations on both.