Intercom chatbot for website features

Let’s be real, if your website doesn’t have a chatbot in 2025, you’re probably missing out on connecting with customers the second they land on your page. As you start looking around, you’ll quickly run into Intercom, a big name in the customer communication space. It’s a powerful platform, for sure, but is it the right tool for your team?

This guide will give you a straight-up, no-fluff look at the key Intercom chatbot for website features. We’ll break down what its tools actually do, try to make sense of its pricing, and point out a few common limitations. The goal is to give you everything you need to decide if it’s the right fit for your business.

What is the Intercom chatbot?

So, what exactly is the "Intercom chatbot"? It’s not just one thing you install. Think of it more like a toolkit with a couple of main tools that work together within Intercom’s larger customer service platform.

First up is Fin AI Agent, which is Intercom’s smart AI chatbot. It’s powered by some serious tech (like GPT-4) and is built to give customers real answers. It does this by digging through your help center articles and other organized info to have a surprisingly natural conversation.

Then you have Custom Bots and Workflows. This is the more traditional, build-it-yourself side of things. It uses a visual flow builder where you can map out conversation paths. You can use it to ask visitors specific questions, figure out if they’re a good lead, and send them to the right person on your team.

When you put them together, these tools automate your frontline support, keep visitors engaged around the clock, and help you line up qualified leads without anyone having to lift a finger.

A screenshot of the Intercom AI Chatbot, which is one of the main Intercom chatbot for website features discussed.:

Core Intercom chatbot features

When you start poking around in Intercom, you’ll see its chatbot tools are spread across three main areas: AI and automation, proactive engagement, and its app ecosystem.

AI and automation capabilities

The star of the show for Intercom’s automation is Fin, its AI Agent. Fin is designed to figure out what a customer is actually asking and give them a conversational answer by looking through your knowledge base. It’s a huge improvement over older bots that just looked for keywords. Besides Fin, you can use the workflow builder to map out custom conversation flows. For instance, you could build a bot that asks a new visitor if they’re "thinking of buying" or "just browsing" and then guides them down a different path depending on their answer.

A screenshot of the Intercom workflow builder, illustrating one of the core Intercom chatbot for website features for creating custom conversation flows.:

And when the bot gets stumped or a customer just needs a human, it can pass the conversation smoothly over to a live agent. This makes sure customers don’t get stuck in a frustrating loop and can always get the help they need.

But here’s a potential snag: Intercom’s AI really needs clean, well-organized help articles to work well. If your most valuable knowledge is buried in thousands of old support tickets and random internal docs, you’ve got a big content-writing project ahead of you before the AI can do its job. That’s a different approach from a tool like eesel AI, which can actually learn from all that messy, unstructured data from day one. It gets up to speed by reading your team’s past conversations, picking up on their voice and solutions without forcing you to build a new knowledge base from scratch.

Proactive support and engagement tools

Intercom isn’t just about sitting back and waiting for questions. It’s also built to reach out and engage people on your site proactively. You can set up bots that pop up based on specific rules, like how long someone has been on your pricing page, how many times they’ve visited, or even what country they’re in.

It’s not just chat messages, either. You can create pop-up Banners, share updates with Posts, or even build interactive, step-by-step Product Tours to help new users get started. One of the most common and effective ways to use these tools is for lead qualification. You can build a bot that automatically asks visitors questions, like their name, company, and team size, to qualify them as a lead before they ever talk to a sales rep.

A look at Intercom's Product Tours, a key part of its proactive engagement and one of the Intercom chatbot for website features.:

Integrations and the app ecosystem

One of the big draws for Intercom is its massive app store, which has over 450 integrations with popular tools. This lets your chatbot do more than just chat; it can actually get things done. For example, you can connect it to Google Calendar to book sales demos, create a new lead in Salesforce, or even handle payments through Stripe, all without leaving the chat window.

You can also put the chatbot on your website, in your mobile apps, and even connect it to channels like Facebook and WhatsApp. While these integrations are great, they tend to keep you inside Intercom’s world. Getting it to talk to your own internal tools or databases can get complicated and might mean you need a developer to help out. For teams that need a bit more wiggle room, eesel AI offers a simpler way to connect to your data with custom API actions. This lets your bot look up real-time info, like an order status or specific account details, from any system you use, and you can set it all up yourself from a simple dashboard.

Understanding the complex pricing model

This is where things can get a little confusing. Intercom is a powerful tool, but its pricing can be a dealbreaker for some businesses. Your final bill isn’t just one number; it’s pieced together from a few different things.

First, you have the seat-based costs. You pick a plan (Essential, Advanced, or Expert) and pay a monthly fee for every support agent who needs access.

On top of that, there’s a resolution-based fee for the AI. Intercom charges $0.99 for every single conversation that its Fin AI Agent resolves on its own. This is a usage-based cost, meaning your bill could jump around a lot from one month to the next. If you have a busy month, your bill goes up, which can make budgeting a real challenge.

Finally, a lot of the fancier features are sold as paid add-ons. For example, Proactive Support (for things like Product Tours) is an extra $99 a month, and Copilot (an AI helper for your human agents) costs another $29 per agent per month.

Plan	Base Price (Per Seat/Mo, Annual)	Fin AI Agent Fee	Key Features Included
Essential	$29	$0.99 / resolution	Shared Inbox, Fin AI Agent Access, Basic Automations
Advanced	$85	$0.99 / resolution	Multiple Inboxes, Workflow Builder, Social Channels
Expert	$132	$0.99 / resolution	SLAs, Multibrand Help Center, SSO

This model can be a major headache for growing teams. In contrast, eesel AI’s pricing is built to be simple and predictable. Plans are based on a set number of AI interactions per month, and there are absolutely no per-resolution fees. This means you can handle more customer conversations with AI without worrying about a surprise bill. Budgeting stays simple and straightforward.

Key limitations and setup considerations

While Intercom has a ton of features, it also comes with a few common challenges that users often run into.

First, there’s a steep learning curve. The interface can be a lot to take in at first, and setting up anything more than a basic workflow takes a good amount of time to learn all the platform’s quirks. It’s powerful, but it’s not exactly plug-and-play.

Second, Intercom works best when you go all-in on its ecosystem. To really get your money’s worth from the AI and automation, you need to be using their help desk, inbox, and other tools. This "rip and replace" approach is a huge hurdle for teams who are happy with their current helpdesk, like Zendesk or Freshdesk, and don’t want the pain of switching everything over.

Finally, it can be tough to test your bots properly. Intercom has a preview function, but there isn’t a great way to see how a new bot will handle thousands of your actual past conversations. This makes it hard to know what your automation rate will be and roll out changes without worrying about creating a bad experience for customers.

This is actually why tools like eesel AI exist, to tackle these specific headaches:

• Get up and running fast: eesel AI is built to be incredibly self-serve. You can connect your helpdesk and knowledge sources in a few clicks and have an AI agent working in minutes, not months.

• No "rip and replace": It plugs right into the helpdesk you already use, whether that’s Intercom, Zendesk, Gorgias, or another platform. You get to improve your current setup without being forced to change it.

• Test without risk: eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode that lets you test your AI on thousands of your own past tickets. You get a clear picture of how it will perform before it ever talks to a single live customer.

The verdict: Is Intercom right for you?

So, what’s the bottom line? The Intercom chatbot is a powerful, all-in-one solution that can be a great choice for businesses that are ready to invest the time and money to commit to a single system. Its proactive marketing and sales tools are especially strong, making it a good pick for teams focused on generating leads.

However, the tricky pricing, steep learning curve, and the fact that it locks you into its ecosystem can be major downsides. For teams that value flexibility, predictable costs, and a tool that works with their existing software, it might not be the ideal choice.

If you like your current helpdesk but want to add a more powerful, flexible, and affordable AI layer on top, a tool like eesel AI could be exactly what you’re looking for. It’s made to enhance the tools you already have, not make you replace them.

Add powerful AI to your existing helpdesk

With eesel AI, you get a smarter, more adaptable AI solution without having to change how your team already works.

• Plays nice with your current tools: It plugs seamlessly into Intercom, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Slack, and more.

• Learns from your actual data: It trains on your past tickets, internal docs, and help center to give accurate answers that sound like your team.

• Puts you in control: Easily tweak workflows, see how it will perform on your real data, and roll out new automations confidently.

• Offers clear pricing: No hidden fees or surprise per-resolution charges. Just simple plans that make sense.

Ready to see what a truly flexible AI agent can do for your team? Start your free trial of eesel AI or book a demo to see it in action.