Free Alternative to Intercom

Tawk.to is a live chat tool that is 100% free with no limits on agents, chat history, or features. It is one of the only business tools that is genuinely, completely free to use.

How Is It Free?

Tawk.to makes money through optional paid services: removing the "Powered by Tawk.to" branding ($19/month) and hiring chat agents ($1/hour). The live chat platform itself, including all features, is free forever.

What You Get

• Unlimited agents - Add as many team members as you need
• Unlimited chat history - All conversations saved permanently
• Ticketing system - Convert chats into support tickets for follow-up
• Knowledge base - Build a help center for self-service support
• Chat pages - Create standalone chat pages you can link to from anywhere
• Canned responses - Save and reuse common replies
• File transfer - Share files directly in the chat
• Visitor monitoring - See who is on your site in real time

What to Know

The main trade-off is the branding badge on the chat widget. Removing it costs $19/month. The interface is also less polished than competitors like Crisp or Intercom, but the feature set at zero cost is hard to beat.

Crisp is a customer messaging platform that combines live chat, a shared inbox, and a knowledge base in one tool. The free plan covers 2 agents, making it an excellent starting point for startups that want to talk to their first users.

Talk to Your Users from Day One

Adding Crisp to your site takes one line of code. Once installed, visitors can message you in real time, and you can respond from the web app or Crisp's mobile apps. The shared inbox means your co-founder sees the same conversations.

What You Get on the Free Plan

• 2 agent seats - Enough for a founding team
• Website chat widget - Customizable chat widget with online/offline modes
• Mobile apps - Respond to customers from iOS and Android
• Shared inbox - All conversations in one place for your team
• Contact form - Collect messages when you are offline
• Notifications - Get alerted when new messages arrive

Beyond the Free Plan

The free plan does not include chatbots, automations, or integrations (Slack, email, etc.). These require the Pro plan at $25/month per workspace. But for a new product with a small team, the free tier covers the essentials.

Erxes is an open source experience operating system that bundles CRM, marketing automation, help desk, and more into a single platform. Self-host the entire suite for free.

All-in-One Open Source

Instead of paying for separate CRM, email marketing, live chat, and help desk tools, Erxes combines them all. The trade-off is complexity: setting up and maintaining a self-hosted instance requires technical expertise.

What You Get

• CRM - Contact management, deal pipelines, and activity tracking
• Marketing automation - Email campaigns, SMS, and automated workflows
• Help desk - Ticketing system with SLA management
• Team inbox - Shared inbox for customer conversations
• Forms and popups - Lead capture tools for your website
• Knowledge base - Self-service help center for customers
• Segments - Group contacts and companies by behavior and properties

What to Know

Erxes is powerful but complex. Documentation has gaps, and the learning curve is steep. It is best suited for technical teams who want to replace multiple paid tools with a single self-hosted platform.

Chatwoot is an open source customer engagement platform that serves as a free alternative to Intercom. It supports live chat, email, social media, and API channels in a single shared inbox.

What You Get

• Live chat widget - Add a chat widget to your website
• Shared inbox - Manage conversations from chat, email, and social media in one place
• Social media integration - Connect Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and more
• Chatbot - Build simple automation flows
• Knowledge base - Create help articles for self-service support
• Canned responses - Save and reuse common replies
• Team collaboration - Assign conversations, add notes, and mention teammates
• Reporting - Track response times, resolution rates, and agent performance

What to Know

Self-hosting is free with no limits. The cloud version has a free tier with limited agents. Chatwoot is actively developed and has a growing community. The feature set is competitive with paid tools like Intercom and Zendesk.

Freshdesk by Freshworks is a help desk platform with ticketing, a knowledge base, and team collaboration tools. The free plan supports up to 2 agents with basic ticket management.

What You Get on the Free Plan

• 2 agents - Two team members can manage tickets
• Email ticketing - Convert customer emails into trackable tickets
• Knowledge base - Create help articles for self-service
• Ticket dispatch - Route tickets based on rules
• Team collaboration - Internal notes and mentions on tickets
• Reporting - Basic ticket analytics and trends

What to Know

The free plan is limited to email-based ticketing (no phone or chat). Automations, SLA management, and advanced reporting require paid plans starting at $15/agent/month. For a small team handling customer emails, the free plan covers the basics.

Tidio combines live chat, chatbots, and email marketing in one platform. The free plan includes 50 live chat conversations per month and unlimited chatbot interactions.

What You Get on the Free Plan

• 50 live chat conversations per month - Handle up to 50 customer chats
• Unlimited chatbot conversations - Automate common questions
• Email marketing - Send up to 500 emails per month
• Visitor tracking - See who is on your site in real time
• Shopify and WordPress integrations - Easy installation on popular platforms
• Mobile app - Respond to customers from your phone

What to Know

The 50 live chat conversation limit means Tidio's free plan is best for low-traffic sites. The chatbot feature is the real value: set up automated responses for common questions to handle unlimited inquiries without counting against your live chat quota.