Intercom versus OpenWidget

Intercom has some of the world’s largest tech companies among its clients. As an industry-leading provider of live chat and in-app messaging, they have an impressive amount of features and an unrivaled level of customizability.

Intercom’s conversational support funnel is set up to efficiently filter support requests. Support tickets trickle through from proactive support to self-serve support via their knowledge base, to actual human support. Inbox automation can be set up to quickly prioritize tickets. Team efficiency and customer experience metrics are an integrated part of the platform.

Intercom leaves no matter to chance and knows that live chat needs to connect seamlessly with your existing software stack. For this purpose, an incredible number of integrations and apps in multiple categories can be found and installed through their app store.

OpenWidget is a free eCommerce widget launched in November 2022 by LiveChat.inc. It is not a real-time live chat but has 4 important features.

• Contact form (email)
• Product cards to promote deals
• FAQ section
• Widget customization

It is easy to set up but offers limited customization options, as can be expected for such a free tool. There is no option to upload images, they have to be linked to a URL. All changes are applied to the widget on your website in real time without the need to replace the script.

It has plugins for popular eCommerce platforms like:

• BigCommerce
• Google Tag Manager
• OpenCart
• Shopify
• Squarespace
• Woocommerce
• WordPress