# Intercom

> Brings chat inside your own product, email, phone and help centre together in one shared inbox, and sends proactive messages, product tours and checklists to users from that same place.

- Vendor: Intercom, Inc. for orders with a US shipping address, otherwise Intercom R&D Unlimited Company, Dublin; the company has traded as Fin since May 2026
- Canonical URL: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/intercom
- Language version: https://www.convios.com/de/werkzeugkasten/intercom
- Area: Service & support · Cluster: support suite with an in-product channel
- Role: Off-the-shelf product · Origin: Established, AI retrofitted
- As of: 2026-08-13 · Reviewed: 2026-08-13 · Author: Dr. Oliver Gausmann, Convios GmbH
- Toolbox: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox — Markdown: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox.md

## Verdict

Prevents falling behind: The vendor sells the same tool to tens of thousands of companies, your competitors among them. That buys no edge. There is a case to be made for a core-product boost, since the messenger sits inside your product and carries part of new-user activation. That layer is rented and identical for every buyer, so it does not carry the verdict. Keep routing inbound requests through a shared mailbox and you lose ownership, deadlines and history, which turns into an operating risk as your customer count grows. Keeping you from falling behind describes the benefit precisely.

## Suitability by company size

- Solo: suitable with caveats — One seat is enough to start, and the entry plan Essential costs 29 USD per seat per month. European data storage carries a different price, because the EU region only begins at Advanced with 85 USD. Work on your own and still want EU storage, and you pay almost three times the advertised entry price.
- Mid-market: suitable — This is where the tool belongs. Support, proactive messages and help centre live in one place, which saves you a second purchase and the integration between them. Advanced covers EU storage and workflow automation and comes with 20 limited seats for engineering and sales.
- Enterprise: suitable with caveats — Technically sound, hard work for procurement. Single sign-on, HIPAA, service level commitments and multibrand operation sit in the most expensive plan, Expert, at 132 USD per seat per month. Then there is the choice of law. Outside the USA your counterparty is the Irish company, while the agreement selects Californian law and arbitration, expressly regardless of where the customer sits.

## Vendor staying power

Established: The company behind the product has been on the Irish register since 2014 and has more than 30,000 customer companies according to the acquirer. Salesforce signed the purchase agreement on 15.06.2026 and runs a helpdesk of its own in Service Cloud. The acquisition announcement describes the answering agent and makes no statement about the support platform. Pricing and continued development after closing therefore belong on the table before you sign.

- Company register: the counterparty for customers outside the USA is Intercom R&D Unlimited Company, on the Irish Companies Registration Office register under number 538158 since 20.01.2014, registered at 124 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 (source: https://www.northdata.com/Intercom%20R&D%20ULC,%20Dublin/CRO%20538158, as of 2026-08-13)
- Acquisition: Salesforce signed a binding purchase agreement worth around USD 3.6 billion on 15.06.2026, closing expected in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2027; the announcement names more than 30,000 customer companies and makes no statement about the support platform itself (source: https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/Salesforce-Signs-Definitive-Agreement-to-Acquire-Fin/default.aspx, as of 2026-06-15)
- Corporate name: the company renamed itself from Intercom to Fin on 12.05.2026; the product is still called Intercom, and the legal documents still name Intercom, Inc. and Intercom R&D Unlimited Company as the contracting parties (source: https://www.intercom.com/blog/today-intercom-becomes-fin/, as of 2026-05-12)
- Upkeep of the legal documents: the contract documents carry different and consistently current dates: terms of service 09.04.2025, data processing addendum 09.04.2025, additional product terms 18.03.2026, subprocessor list 25.06.2026 (source: https://www.intercom.com/legal/terms-and-policies, as of 2026-08-13)
- Certification: SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27018, ISO 27701, ISO/IEC 42001:2023, HIPAA and HDS, named in the vendor's own help documentation; the reports sit in the trust portal behind an access request (source: https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/7053674-accessing-security-and-compliance-documents, as of 2025-04-23)

## Cost of leaving

High: Conversation and contact data come out through the API and as CSV. What stays behind is described in the vendor's own guide to moving between regions: open conversations, workflows, bots, inbox settings, macros and outbound messages cannot be transferred and have to be rebuilt by hand. Add to that the messenger, which is wired into your own product code, and a help centre that runs on its own domain and has to move along with every link pointing at it. For customers with an EU billing address the Data Act addendum sets out an orderly way out, two months' notice and thirty days of transition. The remaining term of the order still falls due as an early termination fee.

## Regulation and data

| Point | Finding | Evidence | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data processing agreement | yes, a data processing addendum that forms part of the agreement without separate signature — The document applies on every plan and covers subprocessors, transfer mechanisms and deletion periods. Kept separate from it is the privacy policy, in which the vendor speaks about its own controllership for the website and contract data. | evidenced | 2026-08-13 |
| Storage location | EU (AWS Ireland, eu-west-1) available, the default is the USA; Australia also offered — Three conditions come with it, and all three are stated in the vendor's own help documentation. The EU region exists only on the Advanced and Expert plans, it is set up through sales alone, and an existing workspace cannot be moved. Around twenty apps do not run on EU workspaces at all, among them Microsoft Teams, Outlook Calendar, Mailchimp, Marketo, Pipedrive, Mixpanel and WordPress. The regional hosting addendum names further exceptions of its own for account and payment data and for support access from outside the region. | partially evidenced | 2026-08-13 |
| Subprocessors | complete public list with purpose and country, kept separately for the USA, EU and Australia regions — The EU version lists AWS, Snowflake and PlanetScale in Ireland, Mailgun in Belgium, plus Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Eleven Labs and Cartesia located in the EU. Twilio appears there with a US location and only applies if you have booked SMS or telephony. Anthropic appears in the US and Australia lists alone. EU workspaces carry their own timing of ten days' notice with a thirty-day right to object and a right to terminate at no extra cost if no alternative can be found. | evidenced | 2026-06-25 |
| Third-country transfer | certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, with standard contractual clauses automatically incorporated as a fallback — The processing addendum relies first on the framework and treats modules two and three of the clauses as incorporated should it be invalidated. Transfers remain even with the EU region in place, because account data runs through US systems and support access from outside the region is possible. | evidenced | 2026-08-13 |
| Training on customer data | model providers are contractually barred from training on customer data; the vendor itself uses anonymised customer data for fine-tuning, with an opt-out available at any time — The two statements sit in different places, and the difference matters. The contractual exclusion is in the additional product terms and covers the model providers in use. The vendor's own fine-tuning appears on the trust page alone, framed as an opt-out with deletion within thirty days. Anyone who wants the use to stop has to switch it off actively, and the commitment behind that sits on a product page. | partially evidenced | 2026-03-18 |
| Retention and deletion | deletion within 30 days of a written request, otherwise automatically 180 days after the contract ends, backups a further 14 days — Do nothing after termination and your data sits with the vendor for another six months. Customers with an EU billing address additionally get thirty days of retrieval time after the termination date through the Data Act addendum. | evidenced | 2026-08-13 |
| Certifications | SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27018, ISO 27701, ISO/IEC 42001:2023, HIPAA, HDS — The standards including their versions are stated in the help documentation. The reports themselves, among them the SOC 2 Type II report and the penetration test summary, sit in the trust portal at trust.intercom.com, and access runs through a request. The scope of the certificates is not public. | partially evidenced | 2025-04-23 |
| EU AI Act, Article 50 | certified to ISO/IEC 42001; the additional product terms assign the transparency duty towards end customers to the customer — The additional product terms dated 18.03.2026 state that the customer will ensure people are informed they are interacting with an AI system, that output is marked as artificially generated and that it is not passed off as human. That puts the Article 50 duty on the operator by contract. The labelling can be set inside the product, and the management system certification supports the vendor's side. A commitment by the vendor on Article 50 itself is not public. | partially evidenced | 2026-03-18 |
| Audit logging | teammate activity logs on every plan, one year in the interface, older entries through the API, plus webhooks — Logged events include settings changes, data exports, invitations and campaigns being set live, each with a timestamp and IP address. The API lets you feed the entries into your own analysis system, which is what retention beyond one year requires. | evidenced | 2025-09-23 |

## Cost

- Entry: Three seat-priced plans: Essential 29 USD, Advanced 85 USD, Expert 132 USD per seat per month. One seat is enough to start and there is no minimum beyond that. Every plan includes the Fin answering agent, billed separately from 0.99 USD per outcome. Advanced comes with 20 limited seats, Expert with 50. Single sign-on, HIPAA, service level commitments and multibrand operation exist on Expert alone. Add-ons cost extra: Pro from 99 USD a month, the inbox copilot at 29 USD per agent per month, Proactive Support Plus at 99 USD a month including 500 messages. Email campaigns, SMS, WhatsApp and telephony run on usage. Billing is in US dollars, with a fourteen-day trial and no payment method required. (as of 2026-08-13)
- Where it gets expensive: In three places. EU data storage lifts the seat price from 29 to at least 85 USD, because it is offered from Advanced upwards, and for a German management team that is rarely a free choice. The add-ons stack up alongside the seat price, because copilot, analytics and proactive messaging are each billed separately and the SMS, WhatsApp and phone channels come on top by usage. Then there is renewal: an annual contract rolls on automatically unless you give written notice thirty days before it ends, and the vendor reserves the right to raise the price to the then-current list price at renewal. Any discount you negotiated therefore covers the first term, after which it is up for negotiation again.

## Three routes compared

### Seat-priced ticket platform, Zendesk as the named counterpart

Zendesk brings requests from email, chat, phone and social channels into one ticket base and cost, as at 30.07.2026 on annual billing, 55 EUR per seat per month on Suite Team and 115 EUR on Suite Professional. Large companies stay because the ticket system is the core system of record and moving breaks the audit trail across years. What you give up is the channel inside your own product. Anyone who wants to run activation and onboarding in-product buys a second tool for it and builds the integration.

### Answering agent on the helpdesk you already run, Fin and Plain as named counterparts

Because it comes from the same vendor, Fin also runs on third-party helpdesks, where it costs from 0.99 USD per outcome with no seat fee, as at 30.07.2026. Plain costs 35 USD per seat per month, as of 30 July 2026, and routes requests along accounts and service commitments, with an API for every step. Both routes leave your system of record in place and swap the layer above it, which makes leaving cheaper. What you give up is proactive messaging and the help centre from one supplier, since you then buy those separately.

### Self-hosted ticket system with an answer layer of your own

Self-hosted Zammad costs no licence and carries the ticket, its owner and its deadline. The knowledge base sits in Sanity, the pages run on Astro and Cloudflare Pages, the answer layer hangs off LiteLLM as a model gateway with Langfuse logging the calls, sign-in runs on Ory, and you build it with Claude Code. For a first version that holds up we budget 25 to 40 person-days, so roughly 28,000 to 44,000 EUR at a 1,100 EUR day rate, plus a low three-figure monthly running cost (our own calculation). The messenger has to work in every browser and on both mobile operating systems, queue messages when the connection drops and keep tenants apart. Then there is round-the-clock readiness for a system your customers can see, and maintenance after the person who built it has moved on.

Recommendation by size:

- Solo: Essential is enough as long as the data may sit in the USA. If it may not, self-hosted Zammad is the cheaper route.
- Mid-market: Buy, take Advanced for the EU region, and settle consent for the messenger cookie before you embed it.
- Enterprise: Buy with conditions. Before signing, put the EU workspace, the apps missing from it, the choice of law and the renewal repricing in writing.

## Context

- Implements method: [Service Blueprinting](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/service-blueprinting) — A blueprint draws the line of visibility between what the customer experiences and what runs behind it, and Intercom fixes exactly that line, with the messenger in front of it and the inbox behind.
- Implements method: [Activation as the Retention Lever](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/activation-as-retention-lever) — The method looks for the moment a user first experiences the promised value, and Intercom supplies the tools that aim at that moment inside the product: product tours, checklists and proactive messages.
- Implements method: [First-Win Coupling](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/first-win-coupling) — An early measurable win decides whether a customer stays, and because support and onboarding messages sit in the same place here, the conversation history shows you which customer has reached that point.
- Alternative: [Zendesk](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/zendesk)
- Alternative: [Plain](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/plain)
- Alternative: [Zammad](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/zammad)
- Alternative: [Fin](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/fin)
- Displaces: Shared support mailbox in the mail client, Chat widget bought separately alongside the ticket system, Home-built help centre in your own content system

## Evidence

- Plan prices per seat, minimum of one seat, included limited seats, allocation of single sign-on, HIPAA and service level commitments to the Expert plan, add-on prices — https://www.intercom.com/pricing (as of 2026-08-13)
- EU region only on the Advanced and Expert plans, set up through sales alone, no migration of an existing workspace — https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/6124430-regional-data-hosting (as of 2026-08-13)
- List of apps that do not run on EU workspaces, and the list of what has to be rebuilt by hand when changing region — https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/5778275-additional-details-on-intercom-regional-data-hosting (as of 2026-06-19)
- Contracting party depending on shipping address, Californian law with arbitration regardless of the customer's location, automatic renewal with thirty days' notice, repricing to list price at renewal — https://www.intercom.com/legal/terms-and-policies (as of 2025-04-09)
- Transparency duty towards end customers assigned to the customer by contract, model providers barred from training on customer data — https://www.intercom.com/legal/terms-and-policies/additional-product-terms (as of 2026-03-18)
- Processing addendum part of the agreement without separate signature, deletion periods of 30 and 180 days, backups 14 days, standard contractual clauses modules two and three as a fallback — https://www.intercom.com/legal/data-processing-agreement (as of 2025-04-09)
- Subprocessors with purpose and country, separate lists for the USA, EU and Australia, ten days' notice and thirty days to object for EU workspaces — https://www.intercom.com/legal/subprocessors-list (as of 2026-06-25)
- Regional hosting exceptions for account and payment data and for support access from outside the region — https://www.intercom.com/legal/regional-data-hosting-addendum (as of 2024-03-08)
- Switching right under the EU Data Act with two months' notice and thirty days of transition, the remaining term still due as an early termination fee, thirty days of retrieval after the termination date — https://www.intercom.com/legal/eu-data-act-addendum (as of 2026-03-02)
- Target availability of 99.8 percent on commercially reasonable efforts, the only remedy being termination after two consecutive months below target with a pro-rata refund, no service credits provided for — https://www.intercom.com/legal/service-level-agreement (as of 2025-07-11)
- The messenger sets the Intercom-id identifier when it loads on the customer's page, regardless of any interaction, stored for nine months; the local storage entry is perpetual — https://www.intercom.com/legal/product-privacy-notice (as of 2025-09-10)
- A consent banner in the help centre requires your own domain and your own script; without a custom script the messenger and analytics load as before — https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/12009774-add-a-cookie-consent-banner-to-your-help-center (as of 2026-07-13)
- Acquisition by Salesforce for around 3.6 billion USD, signed on 15.06.2026, closing expected in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2027, more than 30,000 customer companies — https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/Salesforce-Signs-Definitive-Agreement-to-Acquire-Fin/default.aspx (as of 2026-06-15)
- Registration of the Irish company under number 538158 since 20.01.2014, registered at 124 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 — https://www.northdata.com/Intercom%20R&D%20ULC,%20Dublin/CRO%20538158 (as of 2026-08-13)