An overview of Intercom server events: A 2025 guide

You know that feeling when you want to send the perfect message to a customer at exactly the right moment? Like when their payment fails, or the first time they use that one key feature you know they'll love. That kind of proactive, heads-up communication is what separates pretty good support from truly great support.

This is the problem Intercom server events are meant to solve. They promise a way to track what users are doing in your backend systems and use that info to trigger personalized messages.

But how do they actually work in practice, and are they still the best tool for the job in 2025? In this guide, we'll walk you through what Intercom server events are, how to get them set up, and, most importantly, why their limitations might have you searching for a more modern, AI-powered way of doing things. We’ll get into the technical nuts and bolts, some practical uses, and the hidden headaches that can really slow a team down.

What are Intercom server events?

Simply put, Intercom server events are little packets of data you send from your app's backend (your server) straight to Intercom. This is all done through an API call, which makes it a secure and solid way to log important customer actions that don't happen inside a web browser.

Here’s the main difference: you're probably already familiar with client-side events, which are tracked using Intercom's JavaScript code on your website. Those are great for tracking things like page views or button clicks. But server events are for all the important stuff that happens behind the scenes. Think about a subscription successfully renewing, a big data export finally finishing, or an invoice getting paid. These are critical moments in the customer's journey that Intercom would otherwise be completely blind to.

Intercom officially calls these "Data Events," which you send over to their /events endpoint. The whole point is to build a richer, more complete picture of what each user is up to. Once you're tracking these events, you can use them to automatically send messages, add users to specific campaigns, or build out detailed customer segments.

How to send Intercom server events: A technical overview

Flipping on Intercom server events isn't a simple toggle switch, it definitely requires some developer involvement. The core of it is making a POST request to the Intercom REST API's /events endpoint. Each of these requests needs to be formatted just right and carry a few key pieces of information.

Here’s what your developer will need to include in every API call:

• Authentication: You'll need a valid Access Token from your Intercom workspace. This token has to have the right permissions to send events, so double-check that it's configured correctly in your developer settings.

• User Identification: Intercom has to know which user did the thing you're tracking. You can identify them by their unique "intercom_user_id", your own internal "user_id", or just their "email". Getting this right can sometimes be a pain, especially when you're trying to connect an anonymous visitor who later signs up, a common headache you'll see pop up in developer communities.

• Event Name: This one's required. You have to give your event a clear name, like "upgraded-plan" or "invited-friend". Intercom suggests using a past-tense, "verb-noun" format, which is a good tip for keeping things clear.

• Timestamp: The "created_at" field is a must. It’s a Unix timestamp that tells Intercom exactly when the event happened, which is crucial for keeping your user timelines accurate.

• Metadata: This part is optional, but you should almost always use it. It's a JSON object where you can stuff in extra context. For example, if you send an "ordered-product" event, the metadata could include the product name, its price, and the order ID.

Here’s a quick look at what a simple API request to create an event looks like in JSON:

// Example POST request to https://api.intercom.io/events  

{  

  "event_name": "cancelled-subscription",  

  "created_at": 1671028894,  

  "user_id": "314159",  

  "metadata": {  

    "reason": "no-longer-needed",  

    "plan_level": "Pro"  

  }  

}  

It’s also good to know that Intercom tries to de-duplicate events. If you accidentally send the exact same event (same user, name, and timestamp) more than once, Intercom will likely just ignore the extras to keep your data from getting messy.

Practical use cases for Intercom server events

Once you get through the technical setup, Intercom server events can power some really helpful automation. By linking your backend systems to Intercom, you can start conversations based on what people are actually doing, not just what they're clicking.

Here are a couple of real-world ways businesses use them.

Using Intercom server events for support and onboarding

Server events are fantastic for spotting potential problems early or guiding users through their first important steps. Instead of waiting for a customer to get frustrated and reach out, you can offer help right when they need it.

• For example: A customer's monthly payment fails. Your billing system sends a "payment-failed" event to Intercom, which instantly fires off an email with a direct link to update their card details. This one little automation can make a huge dent in churn caused by failed payments.

• Another idea: A new user successfully uses one of your core features for the first time. Your app sends a "first-feature-used" event, triggering a friendly in-app message that congratulates them and shares a quick tip for getting even more out of it.

Smarter marketing and segmentation with Intercom server events

You can also use these events to build super-targeted marketing campaigns based on real product usage.

• Imagine this: An e-commerce store's backend sends an "order-shipped" event the second a package is out the door. This triggers an email to the customer with their tracking number. Simple, but so effective.

• Or for a SaaS company: You could track a "project-limit-reached" event. When a user on the free plan hits that wall, they're automatically added to a segment that gets a campaign all about the perks of the paid plan.

These workflows turn your data from a passive list of facts into active, helpful conversations that feel perfectly timed.

Key challenges and limitations of Intercom server events

So, Intercom server events sound pretty powerful in theory. But in reality, a lot of teams run into some serious roadblocks when they try to use them at scale. Before you commit a bunch of engineering time, you should know about a few big limitations that can get in your way.

The 120 active event limit

This is one of the biggest "gotchas." Intercom has a hard cap of 120 unique active event names per workspace. An "active" event is just one that you haven't archived. Once you hit that number, Intercom just stops accepting new event types.

For a tiny startup, 120 might sound like a lot. But as your product grows, you'll quickly realize you want to track more and more specific actions. This limit forces you into tough decisions about what's important enough to track and often leads to annoying workarounds, like having to manually archive old events to make room.

Heavy developer dependency

Every single server event you want to track needs a developer to write, test, and ship code. Want to know when a user exports a report? That's a ticket for the engineering team. Want to log when a trial is about to expire? Get in line.

This creates a massive bottleneck. Your support, marketing, and product folks can't move quickly. They come up with great ideas for engaging customers, but they're stuck waiting for developer time. This dependency makes it slow and expensive to try out new communication strategies.

Clunky and complex automation

Even after you have your events set up, building the workflows you want can be surprisingly complicated. For instance, a user in the Intercom community learned the hard way that you can't even use Intercom's own Series webhooks to create a custom event. The suggested solution involved setting up a whole separate server just to listen for the webhook, make another API call to find the user's ID, and then make a third call to finally create the event. It’s a messy, roundabout process for what should be a straightforward task.

On top of that, events are passive. They tell you something already happened, but they don't help you with what's happening right now. If a customer asks, "Where's my order?" you can't just rely on an old "order-shipped" event. You need live data. And as Intercom's own status page sometimes shows, APIs can have delays, meaning your event-driven messages might not always be as instant as you'd like.

Intercom pricing overview

Alright, let's talk about cost. Intercom’s pricing is based on how many seats you have, with different plans unlocking more features. It's also really important to know that their AI features are an extra add-on.

Here’s a quick look at their main plans:

Plan	Starting Price (Billed Annually)	Key Features
Essential	$29/seat/mo	Fin AI Agent, Messenger, Shared Inbox, Help Center
Advanced	$85/seat/mo	Everything in Essential + Workflows, Multiple Inboxes
Expert	$132/seat/mo	Everything in Advanced + SLAs, Multibrand support

A huge detail buried in their pricing page is how they charge for AI. The Fin AI Agent costs an extra $0.99 per resolution on top of your monthly seat cost. This pay-per-resolution model can lead to surprisingly high bills that spike when you're busiest, making it a real challenge to predict your support budget.

eesel AI: A smarter way to automate support workflows

Relying on pre-defined server events feels like a 2010s solution to a 2025 problem. Instead of depending on rigid events that a developer has to code for you, what if your support system could react to what customers need in real-time, with full, secure access to your backend data?

This is where a tool like eesel AI offers a more modern approach. It’s an AI platform built to connect to your existing tools and automate workflows without all the technical heavy lifting.

Go beyond events with real-time AI actions

Instead of your team trying to predict and code an event for every single thing a user might do, eesel AI’s AI Agent can perform live lookups using APIs.

For instance, when a customer asks, "What's the status of my order?" you don't need a pre-logged "order-shipped" event. eesel AI can securely ping your Shopify store or internal order system in that moment, get the current status, and give an accurate answer instantly. It’s a much more flexible and powerful way to operate than relying on a static list of past events.

An example of an AI agent using real-time data to answer a customer query about an order status, a modern alternative to static Intercom server events.

Get set up in minutes, not months

One of the best things about eesel AI is how ridiculously simple it is to set up yourself. You can connect your Intercom helpdesk with a single click. No more waiting for developers or getting stuck in an engineering backlog. You can actually build powerful, data-driven automations yourself, without having to write a line of code.

Unify all your knowledge, including past tickets

Context is everything in support. eesel AI trains on your historical Intercom tickets, your help articles, and all your other knowledge sources like Google Docs or Confluence. This gives it a deep understanding of your customers' common problems and your team's best solutions, providing much richer context than simple event metadata ever could.

This diagram shows how modern AI tools can unify various knowledge sources, providing deeper context than Intercom server events alone.

Test with confidence and enjoy predictable pricing

With eesel AI’s simulation mode, you can test your AI agent on thousands of your past tickets to see exactly how it will perform before you flip the switch for live customers. Best of all, eesel AI offers predictable, flat-rate pricing. You'll never get hit with extra per-resolution fees for providing great automated support.

Moving from passive Intercom server events to active AI

Intercom server events are a decent tool for some basic user tracking, but they come with some serious baggage when it comes to flexibility, scale, and the sheer effort of implementation. The strict event limits, heavy reliance on developers, and clunky automation workflows make them a tough solution for any team that wants to move fast.

The future of great support isn't just about tracking what users did yesterday; it's about understanding what they need right now. Tools like eesel AI are making this shift possible, giving teams an intelligent, flexible, and accessible way to automate customer support without being held back by the limits of older, event-based systems.

Ready to build support automations without the developer bottleneck? Try eesel AI for free and see how you can connect your knowledge and tools in just a few minutes.