A developer's alternative to Intercom for product notifications

Courier positions itself as a developer-focused alternative to Intercom for transactional and lifecycle product notifications, arguing that Intercom’s support-oriented API lacks direct push and SMS sending, reusable template references, delivery-status tracking, and campaign automation APIs. The post links this distinction to Intercom’s AI-support focus, its 2026 renaming to Fin, and Salesforce’s pending $3.6 billion acquisition, while clarifying that Intercom has not announced plans to discontinue outbound messaging. Courier claims to provide a unified API and interface for email, SMS, push, in-app, and chat notifications, with customer-owned provider accounts, cross-channel preference enforcement, delivery history, templates, broadcasts, and multistep Journeys for campaigns. It contrasts Courier’s flat per-message pricing and 10,000-message free tier with Intercom’s seat-based, add-on, and channel-specific pricing, estimating that 2,000 monthly push notifications would cost $223 on Intercom and nothing on Courier’s free tier. The post recommends retaining Intercom for help-desk functions, AI support, and product-guidance tools, while migrating notification workflows gradually by moving transactional sends first, mapping opt-outs and profiles, rebuilding campaigns as Journeys, and collecting push tokens directly through applications.

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