Seats, then outcomes, then channels
Per seat, per month, annual billing, plus usage. Verified 2026-08-22.
| Charge | Amount | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Intercom Essential | $29 | Per seat, per month, annual |
| Intercom Advanced | $85 | Per seat, per month, annual |
| Intercom Expert | $132 | Per seat, per month, annual |
| Fin AI resolution | ~$0.99 | Per resolved conversation |
| SMS, WhatsApp, phone | Varies | Per message or minute |
| Moorline | $9 | Flat, per month |
The comparison people get wrong is the seat. $29 against $9 looks like a normal software price gap. The gap that matters is between a fixed number and a number that grows with the thing you are trying to grow.
Work the arithmetic on your own volume
Say you answer 150 conversations a month and Fin resolves half of them. That is 75 resolutions at roughly $0.99, so about $74, plus $29 for the seat: near $103 a month. At 400 conversations it is closer to $227.
Moorline is $9 in both cases, and at 4,000 conversations. It does not resolve anything for you, which is exactly why nothing meters. The trade is explicit: you keep answering your own customers, and you keep a fixed cost.
These are not the same category
- Intercom is messaging-first. The chat widget in your product is the centre of it, and email hangs off the side.
- Moorline is email-only. It reads the support address you already publish, over IMAP, and replies over your own SMTP.
- Intercom holds your conversation history. Moorline holds nothing: the mail stays on your mail host and the local database is a file on your Mac.
- Intercom answers customers for you. Moorline makes sure you remember to.
Questions people actually ask
What does Intercom actually cost per month?
The seat is the floor, not the bill. Essential is $29 per seat per month on annual billing, Advanced is $85 and Expert is $132. On top of that, Fin AI resolutions are charged at roughly $0.99 each, and SMS, WhatsApp and phone carry their own per-message fees. A quiet month and a busy month produce very different invoices.
Why is per-resolution pricing a problem for a small product?
Because it prices the thing you want more of. Every customer who gets a good answer is a line item, so growth in support volume and growth in cost are the same curve. For a business with a large support team that is a rational trade against salary. For a founder answering ten emails a day it turns a fixed cost into a variable one with no ceiling.
Does Moorline have a chat widget?
No. Intercom is messaging-first: the in-app chat widget is the product and email is a secondary channel. Moorline is email-only and works with the support address you already publish. If a chat bubble on your site is the channel you need, Intercom is the right tool and Moorline does not compete with it.
Does Moorline use AI, and what does it cost?
One optional feature drafts a reply from your notes using Apple Intelligence, which runs on the Mac itself. There is no API key, no per-reply charge and no usage meter, because nothing is sent to a server. It is not an AI agent answering customers on your behalf, it is a drafting aid you edit before sending.
Prices are from Intercom’s own pricing page and current published breakdowns, read on 2026-08-22.