A complete 2025 guide to Intercom in product messages

In-product messaging is your secret weapon for talking to users when they're already paying attention, right inside your app. It's how you can guide them through a new feature, share some exciting news, or offer a helping hand at the perfect moment. One of the biggest names in this space is Intercom, which gives you a whole toolkit for sending these kinds of messages.

But what does that actually mean for you and your team? Let's break it down. In this guide, we'll walk through everything you need to know about Intercom in product messages. We’ll look at the features, how people use them, what it costs, and, importantly, where it falls short if you're looking for real automation, not just another way to send messages.

What are Intercom in product messages?

So, what exactly are Intercom in product messages? They’re basically targeted messages that pop up while someone is actively using your website or app. You've probably seen them before: little pop-ups, banners, or guided tours that show up at just the right time to help you out.

An example of an Intercom in-product message engaging with a user on a website.

The whole point is to make the user's life easier by giving them info when it’s most relevant. You can use them to onboard less painfully, announce cool new updates, offer help before someone even has to ask, or even float a special offer, all without interrupting their flow.

Just to be clear, these aren't the same as push notifications. Push notifications try to drag you back into an app from your phone's home screen. In-product messages are for engaging people who are already logged in and active.

Intercom gives you a few different ways to do this:

• Chats and Posts: Simple pop-ups or banners for quick announcements.

• Mobile Carousels: A series of swipeable cards, great for mobile apps.

• Product Tours: Step-by-step guides that walk users through your interface.

• Surveys: Quick ways to get feedback right inside the app.

Key features and use cases for Intercom in product messages

Intercom's messaging tools are pretty flexible, so you can set up campaigns for just about anything. Let’s look at a few common ways teams are using them.

Onboard new users with product tours

You know how it is, if an app is confusing right at the start, you're probably not sticking around. Intercom’s Product Tours are built to solve that problem by walking new users through your app, one step at a time. By pointing out the key features, you can help them get to that "aha!" moment a lot quicker.

For instance, you could set up a tour to launch as soon as someone signs up, showing them the first three things they need to do. The video platform Livestorm does this and has seen some tours completed by 95% of users. That’s pretty impressive. But keep in mind, these tours don't build themselves. Every single one has to be manually created and kept up-to-date, which can turn into a real headache every time your product changes.

Announce new features

You just launched an awesome new feature. Now what? You need to make sure people actually see it. In-app messages like Banners or Posts are great for this. You can pop up a message on the main dashboard to announce the update and include a button that takes people right to it. It’s a straightforward way to let your most active users know what's new. The catch? It's good for a simple announcement, but it's not a support tool. If a user has questions after seeing the banner, this system can't help them.

Collect user feedback with surveys

We all know how important user feedback is, but we also know how often those feedback emails get ignored. Intercom lets you put surveys right inside your app, so you can ask for feedback while people are actually using the product. This usually means more people respond, and the feedback is more relevant.

The collaborative doc tool Coda uses in-app surveys to get feedback during their onboarding flow. You could do something similar, like setting up a quick survey that pops up after someone has used a new feature five times. It's a smart way to get specific insights from the right people.

Convert and retain users

These messages can also be a big help when it comes to sales and retention. You can set up triggers to nudge trial users toward upgrading or to convince a customer to stick around.

For example, you could send a message to someone whose free trial is about to end, reminding them of all the cool premium features they'll lose. The retail platform Vend switched from email to this approach and saw their trial-to-paid conversion rate jump by 30%. In a similar vein, the gaming engine Unity discovered that sending proactive messages helped them stop 10% of their customers from leaving.

Customization, targeting, and setup

Getting these messages to the right people at the right time is what makes them work. So, let’s see how Intercom handles that, and where things can get a little tricky.

Creating and styling your messages

Intercom makes it pretty easy to jump in. You can create a new message, pick a format like a Chat or a Post, and tweak the design to match your brand's colors and fonts. You can also drop in images, GIFs, and buttons to make your messages stand out.

The Intercom interface for configuring the tone of voice and styling for in-product messages.

Target users with rules

The really cool part of Intercom is its targeting. You can get super specific about who sees which message based on all sorts of data, like:

• User info: Things like their country, when they signed up, or their current subscription plan.

• What they do: When they were last active, how many times they've logged in, or if they've used (or ignored) a certain feature.

An example of the rule-based targeting system for Intercom in-product messages.

For example, you could set up a message that only shows up for users who’ve been around for a month but haven't touched your new reporting feature. This kind of detailed targeting helps make sure your messages are helpful, not just annoying.

The manual work problem

While the targeting is powerful, it's also a ton of manual work. Every single message, tour, and survey has to be brainstormed, built, and maintained by your team. You basically sign yourself up to be a full-time campaign manager, and that can drain a lot of time and energy.

But the bigger issue is that the whole system is reactive. It just follows the rules you set up. It can't actually understand what a user is trying to do in that moment. If a customer has a question that doesn't fit into one of your pre-made flows, they're out of luck. It's a platform for sending messages, not for providing smart, on-the-fly support.

Pricing and limitations

If your team is thinking about moving past manual campaigns, you need to know what you're getting into with Intercom's pricing and its limits for real support automation.

How Intercom's pricing works

Let's be honest, Intercom’s pricing can be confusing and it adds up fast, especially as your team gets bigger. Important features are often sold as add-ons, and its AI tool has a usage-based fee, which can make your monthly bill a bit of a guessing game.

Here's a simplified look at their plans:

Feature	Essential Plan	Advanced Plan	Expert Plan
Starting Price	Starts at $29/seat/mo	Starts at $85/seat/mo	Starts at $132/seat/mo
Core Features	Messenger, Shared Inbox, Help Center	Everything in Essential + Workflows, Multiple Inboxes	Everything in Advanced + SLAs, Multibrand Support
Proactive Support Plus Add-on	$99/month extra	$99/month extra	$99/month extra
Fin AI Agent	$0.99 per resolution	$0.99 per resolution	$0.99 per resolution

The key takeaway here is that the tools for Product Tours and Surveys aren't included by default, they're part of the Proactive Support Plus add-on, which tacks on an extra $99 a month. On top of that, their AI agent, Fin, will cost you $0.99 for every single conversation it resolves. That pay-per-resolution model means your bill goes up as your support volume grows, making it really tough to budget accurately.

Where Intercom falls short for automated support

If you're trying to actually lower your ticket count and automate support, you’ll hit a few walls with Intercom pretty quickly:

• It's all manual and rule-based. At the end of the day, Intercom is a messaging tool, not an independent AI. It relies completely on scripts and rules you write. It can't think on its own or figure out an unexpected question without a human taking over.

• Its knowledge is stuck in a silo. Intercom mostly pulls answers from its own help center. It doesn't automatically tap into the goldmine of information you already have, like past support tickets, internal guides in Confluence, or your team's notes in Google Docs.

• It can't actually do anything. It's great at sending messages, but it can't take action. It can't sort a ticket, check on an order status in Shopify, or send a tricky problem to the right person. It's a messenger, not a problem-solver.

An alternative: Bring all your knowledge together with eesel AI

For teams that need more than just a slick messaging tool, there’s eesel AI. It’s a platform built for real support automation that works with the helpdesk you already use, including Intercom, so you don’t have to switch tools.

This workflow shows how a tool like eesel AI can connect to multiple knowledge sources, unlike the siloed approach of some built-in helpdesk AIs.

Here’s what makes it different:

• Get started in minutes. eesel AI is designed so you can set it up yourself. Connect your helpdesk, let the AI learn from your data, and go live, all without having to talk to a sales rep.

• Connect all your knowledge, instantly. Instead of being limited to one help center, eesel AI learns from everything. It scans your past tickets, internal wikis, and docs to give accurate answers right away.

• Test it out risk-free. Before you turn it on, eesel AI can run a simulation on thousands of your past tickets. This gives you a clear picture of your potential automation rate and lets you decide exactly which types of questions to automate and which to send to your team.

• Clear, predictable pricing. eesel AI has straightforward pricing plans. There are no hidden per-resolution fees, so your bill is always predictable, even when you have a spike in support tickets.

Should you use Intercom in product messages or aim for automation?

To sum it all up, Intercom in product messages are great for running targeted campaigns to engage your users. If your goal is to build onboarding tours, announce features, or send out surveys, it’s a solid, rule-based tool that gets the job done.

But those rules are also where it hits a ceiling. The system depends on a lot of manual work and just can't deliver the kind of smart, independent support that growing teams need.

So it really comes down to this: if you just want to send better messages, Intercom is a fine choice. But if you want to actually automate your support, cut down your ticket queue, and give customers fast, accurate answers around the clock, you’ll need a platform built for AI.

Ready for real AI automation?

If you're tired of the endless cycle of building manual messaging campaigns and want an AI that learns from your team's knowledge to solve tickets by itself, it might be time to check out eesel AI.

You can connect your tools with a single click and run a simulation to see exactly how much time and money you could save, before you even commit.

Get started with eesel AI for free and see what true automation can do for your support team.