I’ve been building Opencom, an open-source customer messaging platform - basically an Intercom alternative you can run yourself with minimal setup or infrastructure to manage. Repo + demo here:
https://github.com/opencom-org/opencom
I started working on it after years of frustration using Intercom. I love the selection of tools they offer, but not their complex and expensive pricing model or their frequent layout and UX changes. I wanted an open source alternative that was simple and cheap to run, making it accessible for projects of any size. I wanted something that was as close to Intercom's feature-set as possible, and then some. You can self host as much or as little as you like, from everything to nothing, using just the hosted frontends and backend.
What it includes
- Real-time chat via an embeddable widget, connected to a shared inbox - Tickets, campaigns/series, surveys (NPS/CSAT), segments, reports - Product tours/tooltips/checklists - Knowledge base + an AI agent with human handoff - Email channel via Resend integration - React Native SDK - with native iOS and Android SDKs planned
Hosting / deployment model
Opencom is set up so you can keep the architecture fairly simple: Backend: everything runs on Convex (the repo’s deploy guide treats Convex as the canonical backend), and email features use Resend (e.g., RESEND_API_KEY, webhook verification, etc.). Frontend: the web dashboard/widget/landing are standard Next.js/Vite apps, so you can host them on Vercel if you like (Convex has first-class docs/integration for deploying alongside Vercel).
Mix-and-match: there’s an explicit “hosted apps + your own Convex backend” profile, as well as “self-host web + your own backend” and “full self-host”.
In other words, you can either host everything yourself, or use the hosted web + mobile apps while pointing them at your Convex backend.
React Native SDK
If you want Intercom-style in-app messaging inside your own mobile app, Opencom includes a React Native SDK package in the monorepo, alongside native iOS/Android SDKs planned.
About the hosted offering
At the moment, the hosted setup is intended as a demo (so people can kick the tyres without doing a full deploy). If there’s enough demand for a reasonably priced, direct Intercom alternative, I could shift it into a proper hosted service.
Feedback I’d really appreciate
- Does the Convex-backend + Vercel-frontend split feel sensible for teams who’d otherwise buy Intercom? - Anything missing that’s a hard requirement for switching? - Thoughts on licensing / pricing expectations if this became a straightforward hosted option (no enterprise sales theatrics)? - Any other thoughts - this is my first open sourced project, and it is built heavily with AI, so I expect there to be issues / silly mistakes, and I know there are areas that need work. My hope is that others want a product like this and would be open to chipping in / fleshing out features they want or need.
Thanks for checking it out!