According to Gartner, nearly 50% of organizations claim they can track the financial benefits of customer experience projects, and 80% expect to compete with other companies mainly on the basis of their CX. These statistics clearly show how paramount customer communication management (CCM) is to businesses, which is why many invest in CCM tools. 

MessageBird is a name that often comes up in this context, and it’s a solid communication platform, but some alternatives are just as good, if not better. Here’s our list of the six MessageBird alternatives to consider in 2024.

6 best MessageBird alternatives & competitors

Glassix

Glassix is a truly omnichannel, AI-enhanced customer communication management platform. It uses the considerable potential of the GPT-4 engine to help teams provide excellent customer support and experience. The solution offers powerful features like communication across all business channels/apps, a unified inbox, a chatbot flow builder, templates and more. 

The platform's true power lies in its comprehensive AI suite. You can access one-click conversation summaries and auto-suggested replies and use automatic tagging and generative AI chatbots to improve your customer experience and support while reducing your team's time on repetitive, menial tasks. 

Features

• AI-powered unified inbox – Access an AI-powered centralized inbox for communications across multiple channels, such as SMS, Messages for Business, email, social media and WhatsApp widget.
• Conversational AI with GPT-4 – Use the power of the GPT-4 engine to quickly and effectively respond to customer inquiries in a human-line fashion.
• Drag-and-drop chatbot flow builder – Create chatbot flows with an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface to quickly deploy automated responses and interactions without coding. 
• One-click chatbot deployment – Deploy chatbots across various communication channels with a single click. To learn more about this topic, check out our omnichannel chatbot guide.
• Auto-suggested replies – Use real-time suggestions for replies based on customer interaction context to make creating effective, accurate responses easier.
• Automatic conversation tagging – Categorizes and tags conversations automatically to help your support teams manage customer interactions.
• One-click conversation summaries – Generate summaries of customer conversations to understand issues and requests and respond to them swiftly.
• Generative AI chatbots – Deploy powerful generative AI chatbots to automate the handling of varied customer interactions.
• Omnichannel integration – Ensure consistency and quality in customer interactions on social media, messaging apps, email and SMS messaging.
• Template-based automation flows – Leverage templates for automation flows to optimize customer support mechanisms for your specific business needs and customer scenarios.
• Human-to-bot and bot-to-human handoff – Transition communications from human agents to bots or the other way around to maintain them without disruption, optimizing customer support while ensuring the proper quality of service needed for any specific scenario.
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Pricing

Glassix has three pricing plans:

• Starter – $49/user/month. For small companies.
• Growth – $65/user/month. For growing businesses.
• Enterprise – Custom pricing. An enterprise solution.
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Both Starter and Growth packages offer a 30-day free trial. You can save up to 20% if you choose annual billing.

User ratings

G2: 4.8 (157 reviews)

Capterra: 5 (6 reviews)

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Intercom

Intercom is a customer service platform that takes an “AI-first” approach. It focuses on AI tools and enhancements to quicken and optimize customer support. The platform also provides a solid list of features and integration options.

See also: Glassix vs Intercom

Features

• Fin AI Agent – Instantly resolve up to 50% of support volume with the help of a powerful AI chatbot.
• Omnichannel – Find your customers where they are and reroute messages to one inbox.
• Knowledge hub – Access a central library for every content source.
• Help center – Allow users to find answers to their problems on their own or look for community support.
• Tickets – Use tickets to streamline collaboration and efficiently resolve complex issues by ensuring everyone is on the same page.
• Inbox – Access an AI-enhanced inbox for all your communication efforts.
• AI insights & reporting – Use a reporting module to generate insights and inform your customer support efforts. 
• Workflows – Use a no-code, drag&drop builder to build and automate workflows.
• Outbound messaging – Reduce inbound volume by sending proactive messages to get ahead of problems.
• Integrations – Connect to Slack, Stripe, Jira Cloud, HubSpot, Salesforce and many other tools. The solution also offers a Zapier integration.
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Pricing

Intercom offers three pricing plans:

• Essential – $39/seat/month. The option for individuals, small companies and startups.
• Advanced – $99/seat/month. For growing teams, it offers access to automation and AI features.
• Expert – $139/seat/month. For large support teams, it provides access to collaboration, reporting and security tools.
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There’s also a 14-day free trial.

User ratings

G2: 4.5 (2974 reviews)

Capterra: 4.5 (1051 reviews)

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Freshdesk

Freshdesk is yet another customer communication system that focuses on AI-enabled features. Companies can use this messaging platform to automate various redundant tasks and optimize customer support operations across several channels (social media, phone, chat, email). It also provides collaboration features and analytics.

Features

• Custom objects – Customize objects to simplify workflows and tailor Freshdesk to your needs.
• Freddy AI – Access AI-based self-service features, insights etc.
• Messaging – Reach users through channels they prefer, such as SMS, email, social media (Instagram) and messaging services.
• Collaboration – Enable context-driven and native team collaboration across different channels.
• Analytics – Access a low-code analytics engine to generate insights, boost customer satisfaction and maximize efficiency and productivity. 
• Neo admin center – Control access, secure data and manage subscription billing from one place.
• Developer portal – Create scalable, secure integrations and apps using a powerful developer portal.
• Unified data – Personalize experiences to drive customer engagement by leveraging context and behavior data.
• Marketplace – You can customize the solution and extend its functionality using over 1,200 public apps available in the Freshdesk marketplace.
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Pricing

The entire Freshdesk customer service suite has three pricing plans:

• Growth – $35/agent/month. The option for growing businesses.
• Pro – $83/agent/month. The plan for high-performance teams.
• Enterprise – $131/agent/month. For companies that require enterprise-grade support.
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If you opt for annual billing, you can save around 20%. You can also buy some modules – Freshchat, Freshdesk and Freshcaller – separately.

User ratings

G2: 4.4 (3123 reviews)

Capterra: 4.5 (3283 reviews)

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Front

Front is a Freshdesk alternative that aims to take customer service to the next level via automation, collaboration and a suite of useful features – including several AI enhancements. You can also integrate it with your existing systems (CRM, project management tools etc.).

Features

• Omnichannel inbox – Access shared inboxes for all channels in one place.
• Live chat with AI enhancements – Use live chat and AI chatbots to help your customers in real time. Automatically delegate simple inquiries to AI.
• Collaboration – Improve alignment and enhance your support team’s coordination to never leave a customer without help.
• Knowledge base – Offer your customers knowledge they can use to self-service and resolve their issues without your input.
• Workflow automation – Improve efficiency and organize communication better via workflow automation.
• Analytics – Generate actionable insights and measure performance to optimize customer experience efforts.
• Integrations and APIs – Connect to other systems (including Jira, HubSpot, Salesforce etc.) to sync data, channels and context. 
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Pricing

Front has four pricing plans:

• Starter – $19/seat/month. For small teams.
• Growth – $59/seat/month. Allows you to streamline support workflows and optimize performance.
• Scale – $99/seat/month. Offers total workflow flexibility and advanced user management options.
• Premier – $229/seat/month. The most advanced package with enterprise-level services.
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The above mentioned prices are when you use annual billing (the Starter package’s page mentions a monthly plan but doesn’t disclose its price).

User ratings

G2: 4.7 (2084 reviews)

Capterra: 4.5 (256 reviews)

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Help Scout

Help Scout is an omnichannel communications platform that helps businesses optimize and improve customer service. It’s also one of the best Intercom alternatives on the market. While it doesn’t focus on AI as much as other tools on our list, it offers a compelling feature set nonetheless.

Features

• Inbox – Get various messages (email, live chat, social media, voice calls) and everything you need to manage responses in one place.
• Help center – Create a help center your customers can use to try solving their problems before contacting you.
• Messaging – Help Scout offers the Beacon messaging tool that consumers can use to contact you via several channels. You can use it to get feedback from them.
• AI – Summarize conversations, streamline operations and improve replies using AI.
• Automations – Customize and automate workflows to reduce response times. 
• Collaboration – Help your team organize and collaborate with assignments, mentions and a collision-free inbox.
• Customer data – Keep key customer details in one easily accessible place to personalize approaches and make everyone feel like VIPs.
• Reporting – Track productivity and satisfaction and create comprehensive reports.
• Integrations – Connect to 50+ other tools, including Jira, HubSpot, Salesforce etc.
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Pricing

Help Scout offers three pricing plans:

• Standard – $25/user/month (up to 25 users). The basic option.
• Plus – $50/user/month. The option for growing teams.
• Pro – $60/user/month, but only available with annual billing. This plan is for large teams and offers better security options and hands-on service.
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You can save 20% with annual billing.

User ratings

G2: 4.4 (403 reviews)

Capterra: 4.7 (213 reviews)

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Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a comprehensive, cloud-based customer service platform and a Help Scout alternative. It can serve as a voice API platform and offers various tools companies can use to streamline processes and optimize and personalize customer support operations.

See also: 11 Ways AI Can Help You Identify and Fix Your Customers' Pain Points

Features

• Ticket management – Manage tickets and conduct omnichannel (email, phone, social media, live chat, instant messaging apps) communication in one place.
• Zia – AI bots and features, such as auto-tagging tickets, sentiment analysis, notifications, reply assistance, field predictions etc. 
• Self-service – Let customers find answers on their own quickly by using an embeddable self-service platform.
• Agent productivity – Help your agents communicate and collaborate with work modes, a reply editor, accessibility controls, mobile apps etc.
• Automation – Automate and manage processes to save time.
• Insights and impacts – Generate reports and get actionable insights to better understand your team’s performance.
• Customization – Customize the look and behavior of your desk with branding, layout, templates, domain mapping etc.
• Security – Ensure the privacy and security of your customers’ data.
• Extensibility – Connect to other apps (Zoho-made and third-party, such as Salesforce, G Suite, Jira, Slack, HubSpot etc.) using built-in integrations and APIs.
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Pricing

Zoho Desk offers three pricing plans:

• Standard – €20/user/month. Offers essential features.
• Professional – €35/user/month. It’s the plan for fast-growing teams. It offers simplified process automation and collaboration features.
• Enterprise – €50/user/month. It’s the option for enterprises. It provides additional customization options and advanced AI capabilities.
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You can save up to 35% with yearly billing.

User ratings

G2: 4.4 (5528 reviews)

Capterra: 4.5 (2151 reviews)

MessageBird alternatives & competitors for CCM: What to look for

Here are the selection criteria we used to choose solutions for our list.

Key features

There are several key features a good MessageBird alternative simply needs to have: 

• Unified, omnichannel inbox – One of the essential features is a unified inbox. You should aim to have truly omnichannel software for customer service, allowing you to communicate with your clients using various methods. You should also build comprehensive strategies for omnichannel customer support.
• Chatbots – Chatbots play an essential role in modern customer support, and the best tools allow your customers to transition smoothly between AI bots and human support specialists, depending on the nature and severity of their problems.
• Automation and AI enhancements – AI is taking the world by storm, and customer support solutions are no exception. The prevalence of AI is currently one of the most important customer service trends, so a good tool of this kind must offer useful automation features and AI enhancements to stay competitive in today’s market.
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See also: Practical Tips for Integrating Unified Communications: An Expert Guide to Boosting Customer & Agent Satisfaction

Integrations

A good MessageBird alternative should allow you to integrate with various other systems, especially CRMs, communication apps and channels and project management tools. An open API (e.g., chat API) that makes it easier to connect to any other tool of choice is another potential boon.

Pricing

Feature sets and possibilities always have to be considered in the context of price. Also, some solutions have hidden costs (for example, they limit useful features to pricier subscription plans), so a transparent, easy-to-understand pricing policy is always nice to have.

Best MessageBird competitors & alternatives: Comparison table

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Ready to transform your customer communication management?

MessageBird is a decent customer service tool, but it has its share of issues, such as limited and unreliable integration options, and especially the often critiqued customer support. If you’re looking for alternatives to MessageBird, you should try our Glassix. It’s an agile, autonomous and truly omnichannel platform with a flexible pricing model that doesn’t charge you for growing your message volume. Plus, it has a dedicated team behind it! Interested in checking it out? Sign up right now!

FAQs

Here are answers to some common questions regarding MessageBird.

Who uses MessageBird?

Many companies use the MessageBird omnichannel automation platform, including well-known brands such as H and R Block and Vodafone.

How much does MessageBird cost?

MessageBird prices start at $45/month.

What are the pros and cons of MessageBird?

Here are the pros and cons based on reviews posted on Capterra.
Pros:

• Good feature set
• Solid price considering the features
• Easy implementation
• Good documentation

Cons:

• Several users criticize customer support
• Unreliable API
• Bad overview screen