Apollo.io vs Intercom
Both are sales & crm tools. Here is what separates them.
What Apollo.io is
Apollo.io is a business-to-business sales platform that combines a contact database with the tools used to reach those contacts. Prospect records and outbound email sit in the same product, so a list built inside Apollo can be worked without exporting it to a separate sending tool first. The platform covers lead generation and sales enablement. Email automation runs prospecting sequences, and contacts are engaged from one place rather than from a spreadsheet plus a separate mailbox. A Chrome extension brings the same records into the browser while working elsewhere. Website visitor identification names the companies behind site visits, at up to 100 companies a month. Apollo integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, SalesLoft, Marketo and Sendgrid, and with more than 800 apps in total for automation. An API is available for data enrichment and other features, so records held elsewhere can be enriched without anyone opening the Apollo interface. The integration list is the main route for keeping Apollo and a CRM in step, since both hold records about the same companies and people. Paid access is sized in credits, granted per seat. The free plan includes 900 credits per seat per year, released monthly. Basic costs $49 per seat per month billed annually and includes 30,000 credits per seat per year, granted upfront rather than in monthly instalments. Professional costs $79 per seat per month billed annually with 48,000 credits per seat per year, also granted upfront. Organization costs $119 per seat per month billed annually and requires a minimum of three seats. The practical difference between the tiers is therefore both how many credits arrive and how quickly they become available. Apollo.io was founded in 2015 and reports use by more than 500,000 companies. The product is closed source and runs as a hosted service. Because the database and the sending tools share one subscription, the same seat that finds a contact is the seat that emails them, and credit allowances rather than separate licences set the ceiling on how much prospecting a team can do.
What Intercom is
Intercom is a customer support platform built around a shared inbox, a help centre and an AI agent called Fin. Email, chat, phone, WhatsApp and social channels all feed into the same inbox, so an agent works a single queue rather than watching several tools. Seats are sold on three tiers. Essential, at $29 per seat per month, covers the Messenger, the shared inbox, ticketing, pre-built reports and a public help centre. Advanced, at $85, adds multiple team inboxes, workflow automation, round robin assignment and a private or multilingual help centre. Expert, at $132, adds single sign on and identity management, HIPAA support, SLAs and a multibrand Messenger and help centre. Advanced also bundles 20 Lite seats at no extra cost and Expert bundles 50. A Lite seat is limited to internal collaboration and cannot send outbound messages, so it suits engineers or account managers who need to read and comment on a conversation but will never reply to the customer. Fin, the AI agent, is charged at $0.99 per resolved outcome on every plan, so the bill follows the number of conversations it closes rather than headcount. It can also be bought on its own with no seat cost, subject to a minimum monthly commitment, which makes it possible to run the AI agent without buying support seats at all. Copilot is the assistant aimed at the agent rather than the customer. It answers from help centres, articles, URLs, PDFs, macros and connected tools such as Notion, Guru and Confluence, and costs $29 per agent per month on annual billing or $35 on monthly. Copilot and AI auto translation each include 10 free conversations per agent per month. A Proactive Support Plus add on costs $99 per month and covers 500 messages. More than 350 integrations are listed, among them Salesforce, Stripe and Jira. Customer data can be hosted in the United States, the European Union or Australia, and customers who opt out of fine tuning have that data deleted within 30 days. Intercom holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27018, ISO 27701 and ISO 42001 certifications, and publishes a 99.8% uptime SLA covering both the AI agent and the core platform. Single sign on integrates with Okta, Azure AD and OneLogin, and two factor authentication, SCIM provisioning and IP restrictions are available.
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