Fin alternative (formerly Intercom)

A Fin alternative that does not meter your support

Intercom became Fin in May 2026, Salesforce agreed to acquire it in June, and the deal closed on 10 September 2026. If that has you re-examining what your support stack costs and where your conversations live, DChat is the other shape of answer: a self-hosted chat and email inbox with an AI assistant, running on your own server.

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A cost you can forecast

Fin's published pricing is $0.99 per outcome - an outcome is mostly a resolution, or a handoff at the end of one of its Procedures - and $9.99 per sales qualification, with a 50-outcome monthly minimum when Fin runs on another vendor's helpdesk. It is a defensible model, but it is a variable cost that rises exactly as your support succeeds. DChat's live chat is free with unlimited agents, and we do not meter AI at all - the assistant is part of Premium, $19 per covered seat per month whether it answers ten conversations or ten thousand.

Bring your own brain

The assistant answers from a knowledge base you write and your help-center articles, and hands over to a human with the transcript attached. You pick the model: Ollama on your own hardware, or OpenAI or Anthropic with your own API key, paid directly to them. DChat takes no cut of either.

Conversations that stay put

Transcripts, visitor records, ratings and uploaded files live in your own SQL Server database. With a local model, the AI never sends a prompt off your network either; with OpenAI or Anthropic keys, the assistant's prompts go to that provider. Messages on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, SMS and voice pass through Meta or Twilio on the way, as they would with any tool. There is no DChat-operated service in the middle, because there isn't one.

What actually changed in 2026

Two things happened in quick succession, and both are worth understanding before you make a decision either way.

Intercom renamed itself Fin

On 12 May 2026 the company took the name of its AI agent, keeping Intercom as the name of the helpdesk. That is more than branding: it signals that the AI agent, not the messenger, is now the product. If you bought Intercom for team inbox and messaging and are less interested in paying for AI outcomes, you are no longer the centre of that roadmap.

Salesforce bought Fin

On 15 June 2026 Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fin for approximately $3.6 billion, and it completed the acquisition on 10 September 2026. Fin now operates as part of Salesforce AI Labs. The completion announcement said nothing about pricing, packaging or smaller customers, so what the deal means for them is still not announced, and anyone claiming otherwise is guessing.

We would rather say that plainly than sell you a prediction. The reasonable response is not panic; it is to know what your alternative looks like before you need it.

Two different models, honestly compared

Fin is a capable product with a proprietary support model and a large customer base. It is not the wrong choice for everyone. These are the axes where the two genuinely differ.

	Fin (formerly Intercom)	DChat
Where it runs	Hosted by the vendor	Your server, Windows or Linux
What you pay	Subscription plus $0.99 per AI outcome ($9.99 per sales qualification)	Free live chat; Premium $19 per agent per month; no metering
Cost as you grow	Rises with volume and headcount	Flat; agents are not billable units
AI model	The vendor's own model	Yours: local Ollama, or OpenAI/Anthropic on your key
Where conversations live	Vendor infrastructure	Your SQL Server database
Breadth	Chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, voice and Slack	Free: web chat, email inbox, help center, contacts with segments, website campaigns. Premium: WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, LINE, SMS and API inboxes, Twilio voice, two-way Slack
Building and testing the AI	Procedures for multi-step tasks, simulated test conversations, resolution-rate reporting	A system prompt, knowledge sources (website crawl, PDF, DOCX, CSV) with cited answers, a test bench of saved questions to re-run after every change, and AI resolution metrics. Since 2.0.9: AI actions that call your systems with agent approval or visitor confirmation, and visual bot flows with AI steps and a simulator that steps through a draft. No simulated customer conversations, and not a copy of Procedures
Mobile	A mobile app for agents (Intercom Conversations)	No native apps; the dashboard installs as a web app with push notifications
Setup effort	Sign up and paste a snippet	Install a server and a database, then paste a snippet
If the vendor changes	Their roadmap and pricing apply to you	Your install and your data stay on your server

The honest summary: if you want the AI operated for you, with tooling to build multi-step procedures and simulate customer conversations before they go live, and you are comfortable with usage-based cost, Fin is a strong product and you should probably stay. If you want predictable cost, a chat and email inbox on your own server, and the option to keep AI processing on infrastructure you control, that is the case for DChat.

Working out what you would actually pay

Per-outcome pricing is not expensive at low volume; that is the point of it. It becomes a budgeting question at scale, so it is worth doing the arithmetic with your own numbers rather than ours.

1. Take your monthly conversation volume, then apply a realistic AI resolution rate. Fin publishes a 76% average across its customers on its homepage (its capabilities page says 67%), so if you expect Fin to perform as advertised, plan with a rate in that range; a lower rate means a smaller Fin bill but more work for your agents.
2. Multiply resolved conversations by the $0.99 outcome price, add qualifications at $9.99 if you use Fin for sales, and add your seat subscription.
3. Project it forward for the growth you are planning, then compare against $19 per AI agent per month plus whatever you would pay your own model provider, which is zero if you run Ollama locally.

Checked 26 September 2026. Fin pricing - $0.99 per outcome, $9.99 per qualification and the 50-outcome monthly minimum on other helpdesks - is from fin.ai/pricing and Fin's help article on outcome pricing. The resolution rates are from fin.ai and fin.ai/capabilities. The rename is from Intercom's 12 May 2026 announcement, and the acquisition from Salesforce's press releases of 15 June and 10 September 2026. Competitor pricing changes; check the current figures before you rely on this comparison.

For a small team with modest volume, hosted usually wins on convenience. The crossover arrives sooner than most teams expect once volume grows, and the difference is not only the total but the predictability.

Moving across

1. Export your history first. Pull your transcripts out of Fin while your account is still active. From 2.0.9, DChat can import Intercom conversations in the JSON form Intercom's REST API returns them, plus a contacts CSV, as closed history; keep your own export either way as the archive of everything before the cutover.
2. Evaluate locally. The download is the full product, free for production use with unlimited agents and domains. One command creates the demo database and starts the server, and a verification checklist proves the install is sound.
3. Recreate your setup. Agents, departments, canned responses, operating hours and widget appearance. Usually an afternoon, not a project.
4. Run both in parallel. Put the DChat widget on a few low-traffic pages while Fin keeps serving the rest. Real conversations surface workflow gaps that a feature checklist never will.
5. Cut over, then cancel. Swap the remaining pages, confirm conversations and offline messages arrive and transcripts are stored, keep the old tool a day or two as a fallback, then cancel.

Questions we get asked

Is Fin the same company as Intercom?

Yes. Intercom renamed the company Fin on 12 May 2026, taking the name of its AI agent; Intercom is still the name of its helpdesk product. Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fin for approximately $3.6 billion on 15 June 2026 and completed the acquisition on 10 September 2026. Fin now operates as part of Salesforce AI Labs.

Should I switch because of the acquisition?

Not on its own. Fin is a capable product and an acquisition is not by itself a reason to move. It is a reasonable moment to check your assumptions: what your support stack will cost in two years, whether your conversation data could live on your own infrastructure if that became a requirement, and how quickly you could move if the answer changed.

Can DChat keep AI conversations inside our network?

With a local model, yes. Point the assistant at an Ollama server you run and no prompt, transcript or customer detail goes to an AI provider. If you use OpenAI or Anthropic keys instead, the conversation text the assistant works with is sent to that provider under your account. Having that choice is the part a hosted platform structurally cannot offer, and it matters because data-protection scrutiny has moved from where data is stored to where it is processed and who can access it.

What does DChat not do?

Less than it used to. Web chat and an email inbox are free on every edition, alongside a help center, a contacts CRM with segments, website campaigns and a first-response SLA target. Premium, $19 per agent per month, adds WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, LINE, SMS and API inboxes, voice calls through your own Twilio number, and two-way Slack. What it does not do: there are no native iOS or Android apps (the dashboard installs as a web app), no visual flow builder, no importer for another vendor's history, no product tours or outbound email marketing, and nothing that matches Fin's Procedures for multi-step tasks or its simulated customer conversations. Since 2.0.8 the assistant does answer from your website and documents with cited sources, has a test bench of saved questions, and reports its resolution rate.

What happens after the first year?

Live chat is free and never expires. The AI assistant is part of Premium, $19 per agent per month; if you stop paying, the paid features stop and live chat keeps running.

Try it before you decide anything

The download is the complete product, free with unlimited agents and domains, so you can validate the workflow, the AI handoff and the install on your own machine before talking to anyone.

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Self-hosted customer support software

Deploy live chat on your own terms, not on someone else's pricing model.

DChat gives you the installable server, web dashboard, website widget, and desktop agent tools in one self-hosted product, with live chat free to run, and an AI agent that answers, acts with the approvals you set and hands off to your team when you want one. Run it on infrastructure you trust, on the model you choose.

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Deployment

Install on Windows or Linux, behind IIS or Nginx, in a VM, or in Docker if that fits your stack.

Commercial model

Live chat is free with unlimited agents. Premium, with the AI agent, is billed per agent per month, never per conversation.

AI Flexibility

Run the AI agent on a local Ollama model, or connect OpenAI and Anthropic with your own provider accounts.