Customer Engagement Tools: What They Are and 9 Options
A customer engagement tool is software that helps a company reach, message, and understand its users on the channels those users already use: email, in-app, push, chat, and support. Compare tools by the channels, data, and operating tasks your team needs.
Loops is our product and appears once, at the end. We checked descriptions of all nine tools against the provider’s public documentation and pricing pages in July 2026. Pricing and plan limits change often, so confirm the current numbers on the provider’s site before choosing.
What counts as a customer engagement tool
The category splits into a few distinct jobs. A tool usually leads with one of them and touches the others.
Lifecycle and marketing email. Sends onboarding, product, and campaign email off contact data and product events. Email can reach users who are not currently in the app. See lifecycle email and marketing email for how these differ.
In-app messaging and product adoption. Shows tooltips, checklists, modals, and announcements inside the product to onboard users and drive feature use. It reaches people only while they are logged in.
Push and mobile messaging. Delivers push notifications to phones and browsers, often with SMS and email alongside. Use it when the message warrants a notification and the user has granted permission.
Support and chat. Handles inbound questions through a shared inbox, live chat, and help center, increasingly with an AI agent answering first. Engagement here is reactive: the user starts the conversation.
Product analytics. Measures what users do so messaging tools can trigger from reliable events and cohorts. Some analytics platforms also deliver in-product guides and surveys, so check whether you need analysis only or an analytics-plus-engagement suite.
9 customer engagement tools compared
1. Intercom
Intercom is a customer service platform that combines a shared inbox, live chat, help center, and in-app messaging, with the Fin AI agent answering common questions first. It reaches users inside the product and by email, so it works as an in-app engagement channel, not only a support desk.
Pricing is seat-based across three plans, Essential, Advanced, and Expert, with Fin usage charged separately by outcome, and a free trial to start. For integrated Intercom plans, model both seat fees and Fin usage. Standalone Fin on an existing helpdesk has separate pricing terms. It suits teams that want support and in-product messaging in one place.
2. Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service platform built around ticketing, with live chat, messaging, voice, and AI agents layered on top. It fits teams whose engagement is mostly reactive support at volume, where a durable ticket record and routing matter more than outbound campaigns.
Billing is per agent per month, from a basic support plan up to an enterprise suite quoted by sales, with several capabilities sold as per-agent add-ons on top. Compare routing, reporting, and channel requirements before choosing the tier.
3. HubSpot
HubSpot is a CRM-led platform whose Marketing Hub covers email marketing, automation, landing pages, and campaign reporting, all tied to the same contact database as its sales and service products. Engagement here is anchored to a CRM of record, which suits teams that want marketing, sales, and support reading from one system.
The model is freemium: a free CRM tier, then Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans that scale by marketing contacts and paid seats, with onboarding fees attached to the higher tiers. Include required seats, marketing contacts, and onboarding fees in the comparison.
4. Customer.io
Customer.io is a messaging automation platform that sends email, push, SMS, and in-app messages from journey-based workflows driven by customer data and events. It is aimed at data-led teams that want to build cross-channel sequences off their own event stream rather than off list uploads.
Pricing is profile-based, billed on the maximum number of uniquely identified people and objects in the account with separate message allowances and charges to check, across tiers from Essentials up to Enterprise. Early-stage companies under a stated funding threshold can apply to its startup program. Forecast billable profiles and message usage, then assign an owner for journey data and audience rules.
5. Braze
Braze is a customer engagement platform for orchestrating messages across email, push, in-app messages, SMS, and other channels from one place, with journey building and AI personalization. It targets larger teams that coordinate campaigns across many channels and need that orchestration to scale.
Pricing is sales-led and packaged by monthly active users across four editions, Go, Select, Pro, and Enterprise, with a credit-based model that allocates spend across channels rather than publishing per-message rates. The packaging conversation happens with their sales team, not a public calculator.
6. OneSignal
OneSignal leads with push notifications for mobile and web, with email, SMS, and in-app messaging in the same platform. It fits products where push is the primary way to bring users back, and where the other channels are useful additions.
It is freemium, with a free tier and paid plans, Growth, Professional, and Enterprise, that pair a platform fee with usage charges based on subscribers and sends per channel. That hybrid is worth modeling against real volume, since two products on the same plan can cost very differently once sends scale.
7. Appcues
Appcues builds in-app experiences such as onboarding flows, checklists, tooltips, announcements, and surveys, without requiring engineering to ship each one. It is a product-adoption tool: engagement happens inside the app while a user is active, and the goal is activation and feature use.
Pricing runs on monthly active users across Start, Grow, and Enterprise tiers, each capping the number of published experiences, with a free trial and a separate program for small teams. Forecast MAUs, installations, and published experiences. Each can affect the package you need.
8. Amplitude
Amplitude combines product analytics with in-product Guides and Surveys. It can deliver tooltips, modals, walkthroughs, checklists, announcements, and surveys targeted from behavioral data. It is not an outbound email, SMS, or push platform, but it can message users inside the product.
Amplitude offers free and paid plans with monthly tracked user (MTU) and event-volume (EV) limits. Check which billing model and product allowances apply to the proposed plan. Qualifying startups can apply for a free year on a paid plan. Forecast both tracked users and event volume, plus the Guides and Surveys usage you expect.
9. Loops
Loops is an email platform for SaaS that keeps marketing, transactional, and lifecycle email in one product, sending off a single contact record with shared events and properties. It covers the email side of engagement for SaaS teams. It is not a push, SMS, in-app messaging, or support tool, so a team that needs those channels pairs Loops with one of the tools above.
Pricing is based on subscribed contacts. Transactional sending is available on the free and paid plans. Check the current contact limits and sending terms on the pricing page. For the broader email-automation comparison, see the best email marketing automation platforms.
How to choose
Choose a concrete journey to test, such as helping a new user finish setup or answering a billing question. Identify which channels it needs and shortlist tools that cover those channels.
Compare the full cost at your expected usage: contacts or users, events, sends, seats, add-ons, and implementation work. A combined platform may reduce integration work. Separate tools may give each team the features it needs. Price both configurations using the same assumptions.
Check how the tools identify a user, receive events, and synchronize preferences. Run the test journey through the proposed setup and verify that its audience and messages change when a user upgrades, opts out, or contacts support.
FAQ
What is a customer engagement tool?
What is the difference between customer engagement and marketing automation?
Do I need a separate tool for each channel?
Which customer engagement tool is best for a SaaS product?
Related: our guides to marketing email and lifecycle email.