An Intercom migration to Gleap means importing three kinds of data, rebuilding your configuration and replacing the Intercom Messenger with the Gleap widget. Gleap has importers for Intercom contacts, conversations and help center content. This guide shows what each one brings over, what you rebuild yourself and the order that keeps your team answering customers throughout.
We checked the importers in Gleap’s product code and Intercom’s developer documentation on September 26, 2026. The company behind Intercom now calls itself Fin, and Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin on September 10, 2026 (Salesforce). If that is why you are reviewing your setup, the Gleap and Intercom comparison and Gleap pricing cover prices and features.
What the three Intercom importers bring over
| Intercom data | Where you start it in Gleap | What comes over |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts (users and leads) | Contacts, three-dot menu, Import from Intercom | Name, email, phone, language, created date, location, tags, custom attributes as custom data, email preferences and the first company’s name and company ID |
| Conversations | Inbox, three-dot menu, Data import, Intercom | Each conversation as an inbox ticket, with its messages, attachments, participants, tags, custom attributes, status and dates |
| Help center | Help center, Importer, Import from Intercom | Collections and sub-collections, articles, translations and draft status, with images copied into Gleap |
Contacts
The contact importer reads every contact in your Intercom workspace, users and leads, 100 at a time, and runs in the background once it has checked your token. It carries over email preferences: a contact who unsubscribed from emails in Intercom stays unsubscribed in Gleap, and a contact who marked your emails as spam is imported as blocked.
Conversations
The conversation importer creates one inbox ticket per Intercom conversation. It imports every conversation in the workspace, with no date or inbox filter:
- Status. Open conversations stay open, snoozed conversations stay snoozed until the same time and all others are imported as closed.
- Messages. The first message becomes the ticket description. Customer messages, teammate replies, internal notes and bot messages follow in order, with their original dates, as plain text.
- Attachments. Files attached to the first message and to later replies are copied into Gleap’s private file storage, up to 25 MB per file and 20 files per message. A file that cannot be copied is skipped, and its message still imports.
- People. Every participant becomes a contact on the ticket. The assignee is set when a Gleap teammate has the same email address.
- Tags and attributes. Your Intercom tags are created in Gleap first, and each ticket keeps the tags of its conversation. Conversation attributes come over as ticket data, except Intercom’s own default attributes.
The import runs in the background, 150 conversations per page, and the Data import dialog shows its progress. It requests each conversation and its participants from Intercom separately, so the pace depends on how many conversations and people your workspace holds. Intercom’s rate limits, accessed September 26, 2026, allow a private app 10,000 API calls per minute and a workspace 25,000, spread across 10-second windows, and private apps in the same workspace share the workspace limit. When Intercom rate-limits a request for a conversation or a contact, the importer waits and retries.
Every imported conversation keeps its Intercom ID. If the import stops, the Data import dialog says so, and starting the Intercom import again resumes where it stopped. A later full run skips conversations that are already in Gleap and adds the rest, but it does not update conversations imported before.
Help center
The help center importer first lists the help centers in your Intercom workspace, then imports the one you choose. It keeps the structure of collections and sub-collections, converts each article into Gleap’s editor format, copies images into Gleap and imports translations in the languages each collection uses. Draft articles stay drafts, and articles that are not in any collection are not imported. Check your help center languages after the import. The teammate who runs the import is set as the author of the imported articles.
Imported articles and collections also keep their Intercom IDs. Gleap’s help center finds an article by the number at the start of its address, as in /en/articles/1234-title, and Intercom’s article addresses follow the same pattern. So after you point your help center’s custom domain to Gleap, many old article links can keep working. Custom domains need Team or above. Test a sample of old links before you switch the domain.
How contacts match between the imports
The contact import, the conversation import and later runs all resolve a person the same way, so they land on one Gleap contact:
- Contacts with an external user ID in Intercom become Gleap contacts with that user ID. The Gleap SDK finds the same contact when you identify the user with that ID.
- Contacts with an email address but no user ID are matched to the Gleap contact that already uses that address, the same contact a new email from that customer would reach.
- Anonymous leads, with neither, get one guest contact each. Gleap remembers which Intercom contact it belongs to, so every conversation of that lead and every later run reuse it.
Import contacts first if you want people who never started a conversation, such as leads from a signup form, in Gleap as well. The conversation import brings every participant with it either way.
What does not move
| Item | What to do |
|---|---|
| Message formatting | Conversations are imported as plain text. Keep Intercom available if you need the original formatting |
| Conversation priority and ratings | Every imported ticket gets Medium priority; ratings are not imported |
| Fin AI Agent, workflows, custom bots and macros | Set up Kai Support with your help center and rebuild the workflows and saved replies you still need |
| Outbound messages, series and product tours | Rebuild the ones you still send with Gleap’s outbound tools, which need Team or above |
| Teams, inboxes and assignment rules | Recreate them in Gleap before you switch channels |
| Reports | Export the reports you want to keep before you close Intercom |
| Help center links in other formats | Links that do not follow the /en/articles/ID pattern, such as search or section pages, need redirects on your side |
| Articles outside a collection | Add them to a collection in Intercom before you import the help center |
Before you start
- An Intercom access token. Intercom’s authentication guide explains where to find it: create an app in the Developer Hub, then open Configure and Authentication.
- Your Intercom region. Intercom hosts workspaces in the US, Europe or Australia, with a regional API endpoint for each: api.intercom.io, api.eu.intercom.io and api.au.intercom.io. Gleap’s import dialogs ask for it. The contact and conversation imports try the other regions when the token is rejected; the help center import needs the right endpoint.
- Your Gleap account and hosting region. You choose EU or US hosting when you sign up for Gleap.
- Your team. Invite teammates with the same email addresses they use in Intercom, so assignees map to the right people.
- Your plan. Email, the help center, custom domains, outbound messaging, product tours and a second seat need Team or above. Live chat and Kai Support are available on every plan.
Step by step
- Create the Intercom app and copy the access token.
- Import your help center first. In Gleap, open Help center, click Importer and choose Import from Intercom. Enter the token and the endpoint, pick the help center and start the import. Kai Support can then answer from these articles.
- Import contacts. Open Contacts, click the three-dot menu and choose Import from Intercom. Enter the token and the endpoint.
- Import conversations. Open the Inbox, click the three-dot menu at the top of the inbox, choose Data import and then Intercom. Enter the token and the endpoint and start the importer. The menu is visible to teammates with access to the project settings. This first run brings your history.
- Set up the Gleap widget. Install the Gleap SDK and identify logged-in users with the same user ID you used in Intercom, so new conversations attach to the imported contacts.
- Rebuild what you still need. Set up Kai Support, routing and workflows, and rebuild product tours, checklists, news and surveys where you use them.
- Switch channels. Replace the Intercom Messenger with the Gleap widget and forward your support email address to Gleap.
- Run the conversation import again right after the switch. It adds the conversations created since the first run and skips the ones already in Gleap.
- Check a sample and keep Intercom read-only. Open ten tickets of different ages and compare their threads and attachments with Intercom. Keep Intercom available for anything you did not move.
Because a later run does not update conversations it imported before, replies written in Intercom after the first run do not come over. Finish open conversations in Intercom before the switch, or copy the last reply by hand.
Common problems and how to avoid them
| Problem | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The import says Intercom did not accept the token | The token is incomplete or no longer valid | Copy the token again from Configure, then Authentication, in the Developer Hub |
| The help center import cannot load your help centers | The endpoint does not match your workspace’s region | Enter the endpoint for your region: US, Europe or Australia |
| A reply shows no teammate | The teammate’s Gleap email differs from their Intercom email | Invite teammates with their Intercom email before the import |
| The conversation import stopped | An error from Intercom, such as a rate limit | Start the Intercom import again from Data import with the same token; it resumes where it stopped |
| Every imported article has the same author | The importer sets the teammate who ran it as the author | Change the author on the articles where it matters |
| A file is missing from a message | It is larger than 25 MB or the message has more than 20 files | Keep Intercom available, read-only, for reference |
Migration checklist
| When | Task |
|---|---|
| Before the switch | Access token and region noted; teammates invited with their Intercom emails; help center imported and checked; contacts imported |
| Before the switch | First conversation import run and a sample checked; Gleap SDK installed and users identified with their Intercom user IDs; Kai Support, routing and workflows set up |
| At the switch | Messenger replaced with the Gleap widget; support email forwarded to Gleap; custom help center domain moved and old links tested |
| Right after the switch | Conversation import run again for the newest conversations; a sample of tickets checked |
| Afterwards | Intercom kept read-only for reports and anything you did not move, until you no longer need it |
After the move: what changes for your team
Conversations, bug reports and feature requests share one customer record in Gleap. On every plan, bug reports from the widget carry a screenshot and technical details. On Team, Pro and Enterprise, the feature request board collects votes, Kai Resolve investigates technical tickets, Kai PM recommends priorities for feature requests and Kai Code prepares pull requests your engineers review.
AI usage works differently from Fin AI Agent’s price per outcome. Gleap bills AI usage separately from the subscription: Kai Support costs $0.29 per resolution on every plan, and the other agents bill for the work they do. The Intercom comparison and Gleap pricing explain the difference and what each plan includes.
