Software Alternatives & Reviews

Discourse VS Intercom

Compare Discourse VS Intercom and see what are their differences

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

Intercom logo Intercom

Intercom is a customer relationship management and messaging tool for web businesses. Build relationships with users to create loyal customers.
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13
  • Intercom Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-05

Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

Intercom videos

Intercom Review & Tutorial - How to Use Intercom for Websites

More videos:

  • Review - Intercom Software Review, Engage, Respond, Educate
  • Review - BTI V6 1200m Bluetooth & Intercom Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Discourse and Intercom)
Forums
100 100%
0% 0
Customer Support
0 0%
100% 100
Forums And Forum Software
CRM
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Discourse and Intercom. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Discourse and Intercom

Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Intercom Reviews

  1. An essential communication tool

    Intercom provides a lot of value to us. From live chat to email marketing and even helping us to create support documentation, Intercom handles a lot of key moving parts that are essential to keeping customers happy.


9 Best ManyChat Alternatives & Competitors in 2024
Intercom’s main features are its helpdesk interfaces and chatbots. But it also includes lead qualification and nurturing functionalities. It offers product tours and resolution bots that can solve many customer concerns at once, freeing your reps’ time for the most complex queries. You can also make use of its Messenger integration and a provided chatbot to improve your...
Source: www.tidio.com
15 best user onboarding software you need to try in 2023
With a focus on conversation, Intercom personalizes more of the user tour experience, including the use of mini-avatars of your employees and chatbot integration to deliver FAQs in a more interactive way. Intercom aim to bring more two-way dialogue back into onboarding, something that can be neglected in other systems.
10 best Manychat alternatives in 2024 (free & paid)
Intercom is a solution that provides a customer experience across automation and human support. You can use it to automate some repetitive customer questions and tasks, send proactive messages, free up your team, and save resources. Intercom lets you respond to customer inquiries in the channel they arise or the channel that they prefer.
Source: chatfuel.com
8 Best Usetiful Alternatives and Competitors That Are More Professional
But I have to point out that the features that Intercom does provide are very user-friendly and easy to use. If you are currently using Intercom’s messaging widget already, it is really easy to implement and use Product Tours and start decreasing churn rates.
Source: userguiding.com
Top 10 Lead Generation Agencies In 2023
Intercom is not like other lead generation companies; it provides a Conversational Relationship Platform to manage dealings with current and prospective customers. This is an exceptional instrument for connecting with website guests and transforming them into leads. Utilizing Intercom’s live chat and other tools, you can generate leads from your website.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Discourse should be more popular than Intercom. It has been mentiond 23 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
View more

Intercom mentions (6)

  • I started affiliate marketing, but with a twist
    Use chatbots to automate customer service: Chatbots use natural language processing to communicate with customers and answer their questions. By integrating chatbots into your affiliate marketing strategy, you can automate customer service and increase engagement with potential customers. This can lead to more sales and higher commissions. (Crisp, Intercom). Source: about 1 year ago
  • How to embed a web application into another website via API?
    I am trying to create an application that will work on a customer's website. Much like tawk.to or intercom.com. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Here's how I'd figure out the go-to-market for a Customer Support SaaS
    My way of doing marketing starts with figuring out what my overall project will (or will not) be. In this case, I looked at the vendors like Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, or Help Scout. They all have whizbang features such as live-chat, collaboration stuffs, automations and workflows. They bill per contact and addons. I’d emphasize a straightforward, fuss-free angle instead. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Chat widget with react.js
    I wanted to know the best practices of developing a widget. So I went through the popular implementations of it. I liked Intercom's widget very much. It is written in React. I analyzed how it works. The minimal javascript is loaded async on the webpage. It is injecting an iframe with id intercom-frame. That iframe has a script in it's head with a source URl. Obviously it is React bundle. Source: about 2 years ago
  • What PRODUCT TOUR software do you like for an early SaaS?
    If you're looking at it to guide new users through onboarding, Intercom is pretty good. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Discourse and Intercom, you can also consider the following products

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Zendesk - Zendesk is a beautiful, lightweight help-desk solution.

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

Freshdesk - Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software that lets you support customers through traditional channels like phone and email, social channels like Facebook and Twitter, and your own branded community

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.

Drift - A messaging app that helps you grow your business.