Migration guide
Intercom → Crisp
Intercom prices per seat ($29 / $85 / $132 per seat per month). Crisp prices per workspace, flat ($45 / $95 / $295 per site per month, regardless of seat count). A 5-person support team on Intercom Advanced pays $425/mo. The same team on Crisp Essentials pays $95/mo flat, plus features for that price include unlimited shared-inbox seats. The right migration when your support team has grown faster than your Intercom budget.
Published · By the TierGauge editorial team
When this migration makes sense
- You're a 3+ seat support or success team paying Intercom Essential / Advanced / Expert and the per-seat math has crossed a budget threshold.
- Your primary use of Intercom is live chat + shared inbox + basic outbound; you're not deeply using product tours, Series, or Fin AI Agent for ticket deflection.
- You'd accept a smaller feature surface in exchange for predictable per-site billing.
- You operate one or two main websites; Crisp's per-site model favors fewer, higher-volume sites over many small ones.
When it doesn't
- You're actively using Fin AI Agent and getting real ticket-deflection economics from it. Crisp's MagicReply is simpler and won't replace Fin's outcome-based deflection.
- Your B2B SaaS depends on Intercom Series, product tours, and behavioral outbound messaging as a marketing surface, not just support.
- You have deep Salesforce / HubSpot lookup-routing and contract-locked Intercom Enterprise pricing.
- You run many small properties (10+ sites); Crisp's per-site billing flips against you at that distribution.
What you lose by leaving Intercom
- Fin AI Agent: Intercom's outcome-priced AI ticket-deflection layer. Crisp's MagicReply is rule-and-template based, not outcome-based.
- Intercom Series: sophisticated multi-step outbound messaging with branching and behavioral triggers.
- Product Tours: Intercom's in-app guided experiences. Crisp doesn't ship a tour product; if you need this you'd add Userpilot, Appcues, or similar.
- Intercom's larger integration ecosystem (deep Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Slack workflows beyond the basics).
- The Intercom Messenger UX, which your customers may already recognize from many other SaaS products.
What you gain with Crisp
- Per-workspace pricing means every seat you add is free. A growing support team doesn't trigger a budget conversation each quarter.
- Free tier with 2 agents and basic chat: useful as a soft cutover staging environment before you commit.
- Native multi-channel inbox (chat, email, Twitter, Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, LINE) included on Mini at $45/mo flat. Intercom's omnichannel is gated higher in the plan ladder.
- Self-hostable plugin marketplace and a more transparent pricing page; no 'contact sales' walls until the very high end.
- Shared inbox + basic CRM + chatbot in one tool at $95/mo flat for the workspace; Intercom Advanced is $85/seat, so three seats already exceeds Crisp's whole-workspace cost.
- Strong privacy posture (GDPR-first, EU-hosted option) that some teams need without paying Intercom Enterprise's residency add-ons.
Plan mapping at the entry paid tier
The lowest non-free, non-custom tier on each side. Use this for the "if I'm on $X with Intercom, what's the equivalent on Crisp?" gut check.
| Limit | Intercom (Essential) | Crisp (Mini) |
|---|---|---|
| Team seats | 1 seat (per-seat pricing) | 4 agents |
Step-by-step migration
- 01
Export your list from Intercom
Pull a fresh CSV of every active subscriber. Capture the fields you actually use downstream: email is required, name is standard, signup date and tier (free/paid) are useful when Intercom provides them.
- 02
Provision Crisp
Sign up, set sender identity, and verify your sending domain (DKIM, SPF, DMARC). Do this before importing the list; sending from an unverified domain is the single fastest way to land in spam at the moment of cutover.
- 03
Import the list and map fields
Upload the CSV. Map email + name + any custom fields. Decide whether to import as one list or split into segments/tags. Intercom-style organization rarely maps 1:1, so plan the split before the upload, not after.
- 04
Rebuild automations and templates
Crisp's automation builder is structurally similar but won't import Intercom's flows directly. Rebuild only what you actively use; the move is a chance to delete the unused ones rather than lift-and-shift dead infrastructure.
- 05
Send a test broadcast
Pick a small segment and send a real broadcast (not just a preview). Verify deliverability, link clicks, and unsubscribe flow. If anything's off, you find it before the announcement, not after.
- 06
Announce the move and cut over
Send your last broadcast from Intercom announcing the new sender domain and what to expect. Cut over DNS and sending from Crisp on the same day, not staggered. A dual-send week creates more confusion than it prevents.
Intercom-to-Crisp specific gotchas
Universal steps cover most of the work. These are the failure modes unique to this exact pair.
-
#1
Intercom conversations export as JSON via the API; Crisp's import wizard accepts a structured format. Plan a freeze window of 24 to 48 hours where both inboxes are watched, then point new conversations at Crisp once the historical import settles.
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#2
Intercom user segmentation is event-property-driven; Crisp's segmentation is simpler (tags, last-seen, location). Audit which Intercom segments are load-bearing before assuming they translate.
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#3
Intercom's Resolution Bot / Fin AI Agent ticket-deflection logic does NOT translate. If you've built deflection workflows, expect to either rebuild simpler versions in Crisp's MagicReply or accept higher human-handled ticket volume post-migration.
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#4
Webhooks and integrations are vendor-specific. Slack, Zendesk Sell, HubSpot, and Salesforce all need to be reconnected on the Crisp side. Test critical handoffs (lead-routing, ticket-creation) before cutover.
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#5
Mobile SDKs differ. If you ship the Intercom Messenger inside an iOS or Android app, swap to Crisp's mobile SDK well before the cutover; SDK migration is the slowest part of any chat-tool move.
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#6
Subscription cancellation: Intercom contracts often have annual commitments. Match the migration date to the renewal cycle to avoid paying both tools simultaneously for an extended period.
Common questions
- Is Crisp cheaper than Intercom?
- At the entry tier, yes: Crisp starts at Free while Intercom starts at $29/mo. Pricing scales differently above that, so check the side-by-side plan grid for your specific contact count.
- Will I lose subscribers in the move?
- Email lists transfer as raw addresses; subscriber relationships transfer with you because the addresses haven't changed. What you can lose: re-engagement (some readers won't notice the new sender domain immediately), paid subscriptions if Intercom handles billing differently from Crisp (the gotchas above call out the specific cases), and any "engagement" or warmth signals that Intercom's deliverability inferred from your sending history. Plan a clear announcement and a deliverability warm-up week.
- How long does the migration take?
- For a list under 10,000 subscribers, a clean migration is one focused week: domain setup and verification, list import, automation rebuild, test broadcast, announcement, cutover. Larger lists or complex automations can stretch to 2 or 3 weeks. The constraint is rarely the import itself; it's the deliverability warm-up and the time to rebuild flows you actually depend on.
Sources
- Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/pricing
- Crisp: https://crisp.chat/en/pricing/
Pricing verified . Migration mechanics are based on the public pricing pages and standard ESP migration patterns; verify destructive steps (DNS cutover, paid subscription transfer) against the vendor's current docs before executing.