Ask HN: Any open source alternatives to intercom.io?

Serious question: What would you be willing to pay for Intercom? Which features would you use the most?

Intercom is a cross between a CRM, Marketing Automation, Support and Live chat. There are open source alternatives for each of these product lines

Particularly the Support (collaborative inbox) and Live chat

For Live chat, there are a couple of options like LiveHelperChat/Livezilla. In the end, I ended up using Olark, since I didn't want to maintain one more service.

For support - It really depends upon your use case and volume. One non-open source alternative is Google Groups - You can configure a Google Group as a Collaborative inbox

I'm looking for a cheaper automation system. Startup with not many customers. Starting point seems to be $49 for most of these companies. Drip, ConvertKit, Intercom etc

Intercom does a lot. Any part in particular you're looking to use?

Check chat.center

Alternative for intercom: https://userengage.io Have a free plan.