Intercom pioneered the in-app messenger category, and for many SaaS teams it was the first tool that made proactive customer engagement feel native. But as the platform has grown, so has its pricing model. Per-seat fees layered with usage-based AI resolution charges, proactive messaging costs, and channel surcharges create a billing experience that many teams describe as unpredictable at best. A five-person support team can find itself paying significantly more than the sticker price once real usage kicks in.

Beyond cost, teams often discover that Intercom’s strength in chat-first workflows becomes a limitation when they need deeper product feedback loops. Connecting support conversations to feature requests, public roadmaps, and changelogs requires stitching together separate tools. Heedback was built to solve exactly this problem — a single platform where customer support, product feedback, and public communication live side by side. If you are ready to make the switch, this guide covers every step.

Before You Start

Prepare these items before migration day to keep things moving smoothly.

Intercom admin access — Data exports require an admin or owner role. Standard teammates cannot export conversation data.
Cloud storage configured (optional) — Intercom’s bulk conversation export sends data to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. If you want a full export of conversation history, you will need one of these configured in your Intercom settings.
A Heedback account — Sign up at app.heedback.io and create your organization. Takes less than two minutes.
An inventory of your Intercom setup — Document your current messenger configuration, custom bots, help center articles, and any outbound messaging campaigns. You do not need to replicate everything on day one, but knowing what exists prevents surprises.
Team member list — Names, emails, and roles for everyone who needs access to the new platform.
Messenger placement details — Note where the Intercom messenger is installed (which domains, which pages, any targeting rules) so you can replicate coverage with the Heedback widget.

Step 1: Export Your Data from Intercom

Intercom provides several export paths depending on the type of data you need.

Conversation data (bulk export):

In Intercom, go to Settings > Data Management > Export.
Choose your export destination: Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. Configure the bucket credentials if you have not already.
Select Historical export to pull up to two years of conversation data. Choose JSON or JSONL format.
Start the export. Intercom processes the data and delivers it to your storage bucket. Large accounts may take several hours.

Conversation data (individual export):

For smaller volumes or specific conversations, you can export individual conversations as text or PDF directly from the conversation view. Open any conversation, click the actions menu, and select Export as text or Export as PDF.

Help center articles:

Navigate to Help Center in the Intercom sidebar.
There is no built-in bulk article export. For each article, open it in the editor, select all content, and copy it. Save the title, body, category, and any images.
For larger help centers, consider using the Intercom Articles API to programmatically export all articles with their metadata.

Contact and user data:

Go to Contacts and use the filter and export functionality to download your customer list as CSV.
Include relevant fields: name, email, company, last seen, and any custom attributes you track.

Save all exports to a dedicated folder. You will reference this data throughout the setup process.

Step 2: Set Up Your Heedback Workspace

Log into app.heedback.io and build the foundation of your new workspace.

Organization basics:

Go to Settings > General and configure your organization name, logo, and brand colors. This branding appears across your customer portal, widget, and all customer-facing pages.
If you serve customers in multiple languages, configure your supported locales under Settings > Languages. Heedback’s multi-language support lets you translate help articles, changelog entries, and portal content natively.

Inbox configuration:

Open Inbox from the sidebar. This is your shared support inbox — it replaces Intercom’s inbox with a cleaner, three-state model: Open, Snoozed, and Resolved.
Set up conversation tags to mirror the most useful categorization from your Intercom setup. If you used Intercom’s conversation topics or tags, bring over the ones your team actually references — skip the ones that accumulated organically but add no value.

Feature boards and roadmap:

One of the biggest advantages of moving to Heedback is gaining native feature voting boards and a public roadmap. If you previously used a separate tool for product feedback alongside Intercom, you can consolidate everything now.

Go to Feature Boards and create your first board. Common setups include boards for Feature Requests, Bug Reports, and Improvements.
Under Roadmap, decide whether to make your roadmap public. A public roadmap reduces repetitive “when will you add X?” conversations — a direct win for your support inbox.

Step 3: Import Your Knowledge Base Articles

If you maintained a help center in Intercom, rebuilding it in Heedback’s knowledge base is the highest-leverage task in your migration. Articles reduce support volume and feed the AI auto-reply system.

In the Heedback sidebar, go to Knowledge Base and create your collections. Map these to the categories or sections you used in Intercom’s help center.
For each article, create a new entry in the appropriate collection and paste the content from your export.
Heedback’s editor supports rich formatting, images, code blocks, callout blocks, and tables — so most Intercom article formatting transfers cleanly.
Add translations using the locale tabs if you maintain multilingual help content.
Publish articles as you go. They immediately become available on your portal and start being indexed by the AI auto-reply engine.

Prioritize your most-viewed articles. Intercom’s help center analytics (if you noted them before migration) will tell you which 20 articles handle 80 percent of your traffic. Migrate those first, then backfill the rest over the following week.

The Heedback widget replaces the Intercom messenger. It is a lightweight embed that gives customers access to support chat, help articles, and feature request submission — all in a single interface.

Widget setup:

Navigate to Settings > Widget.
Customize the widget appearance: colors, position (bottom-right or bottom-left), welcome message, and which modules to show (support, knowledge base, feature boards).
Copy the embed snippet — it is a single script tag with no dependencies.
Add it to your staging environment first and verify that it renders correctly and conversations flow into your Heedback inbox.

Portal setup:

Go to Settings > Portal to configure your customer portal.
The portal gives customers a full-page experience to browse help articles, view your roadmap, read your changelog, and track their conversations.
Customize the URL, branding, and enabled sections.

The portal is particularly valuable if you used Intercom’s help center as a standalone destination. Customers who bookmarked your Intercom help center URL can be redirected to the new portal.

Step 5: Invite Your Team

With the workspace ready, bring your team on board.

Go to Settings > Team and click Invite Member.
Enter each teammate’s email. They receive an invitation link to join.
Assign appropriate roles: Admin for full workspace control, or Member for standard support capabilities.

Intercom teams transitioning to Heedback often notice the learning curve is significantly shorter. The interface is intentionally focused — there are no complex bot builders, custom workflows, or nested automation trees to configure out of the gate. A 15-minute walkthrough covering the inbox, knowledge base, and widget is typically enough for your team to feel confident.

If you relied heavily on Intercom’s custom bots or outbound campaigns, discuss with your team which automations were genuinely valuable versus which existed because Intercom made them available. Migration is a natural moment to simplify.

Step 6: Go Live and Redirect

Plan the cutover for a quiet period — early morning or a weekend works for most teams.

Resolve or document open Intercom conversations. Close what you can. For open conversations that need follow-up, note the customer details and recreate them in Heedback so nothing falls through the cracks.
Swap the messenger embed. Remove the Intercom JavaScript snippet from your production site and replace it with the Heedback widget snippet.
Redirect your help center. If your Intercom help center had a custom domain or a URL that customers bookmarked, set up redirects to your Heedback portal.
Communicate the change. Send a brief email or in-app message to your customers explaining that you have upgraded your support platform. Keep it positive — emphasize faster responses, better self-service, and the new ability to vote on features.
Cancel Intercom billing. Once you have confirmed that conversations are flowing correctly and the widget is working on all pages, downgrade or cancel your Intercom subscription.

Post-Migration Checklist

Run through this list during your first week to catch anything that needs attention.

All team members can log in and access the inbox
The widget loads correctly on every page where the Intercom messenger previously appeared
Knowledge base articles are published and visible on the portal
AI auto-reply is enabled and returning relevant answers
Customer-facing URLs redirect from old Intercom help center to new portal
Conversation tags and workflows match your team’s needs
Notifications are configured for each team member (email digests, push notifications)
Feature boards are set up and accepting submissions (if applicable)
Intercom subscription is downgraded or cancelled

What You Gain After Switching

The move from Intercom to Heedback is about more than cost savings — though the simpler pricing model is a welcome change. It is about consolidating your customer-facing tools into a single, coherent platform.

Your support inbox now lives alongside feature boards where customers vote on ideas. When a support conversation reveals a feature request, you can link it directly to a board post — creating a real feedback loop instead of a dead-end ticket.

Your public roadmap shows customers what is coming, and your changelog shows them what shipped. Together, they eliminate a category of repetitive support questions and build trust through transparency.

The AI auto-reply system draws from your knowledge base to handle common questions automatically. Unlike usage-based AI pricing, this capability is included in your plan without per-resolution surcharges.

For a full feature comparison, see our Intercom vs Heedback breakdown.

How to Migrate from Intercom to Heedback: Complete Guide