*Intercom*
One of the biggest challenges I found with Intercom is their conversation model. While I'm expecting them to evolve, they currently have two restrictions embedded into their design: mobile messaging and threaded conversations.

In regards to the first, mobile messaging, there are a bunch of challenges outside of sending push notifications to your existing mobile app (which most small businesses don't have). I wanted to use them for a system I was testing and it turned out to be incredibly challenging to make a simple two-way Twilio <> Intercom intergration for conversations (even w/Zapier). They appear to be integrated at first but then you quickly realize it may not even be possible to have customer conversations over SMS with Intercom (let alone any other mobile channel).

In regards to the second aspect, threaded conversations, they have a very similar model to the way Zendesk, Desk.com, or any other help desk software is organized. This model is broken in the world of mobile messaging where all dialogue happens within a single thread. That's where SendSonar found an opportunity and it's why Zendesk is now completely ripping off SendSonar (https://www.zendesk.com/message/).

In regards to web chat, it's fundamentally broken. The way it exists now is you leave the web chat and typically never come back. If you happen to leave your email, you can now have an email dialogue between the business and the customer. Email however is restricted to the old threaded conversation model. On a podcast I listened to last week, the CEO of LiveChat acknowledged this pain and suggested they are likely to begin moving in the direction of products like LiveNinja.

"Oh, but I'm fine using email for chatting with businesses!" Fair enough, but you aren't the target demographic if those are the words you utter, at least not today. One person I spoke to yesterday then told me "90% of my customers are on desktop". I then asked him the average age of his customers and he said "35 - 65". The next company I spoke to said "We don't have a need to send SMS messages with customers, all of our conversations are on WhatsApp". He then showed me thousands of messages with customers. Customers are getting instant support where they currently prefer to chat. I have a growing list of real companies that are using mobile messaging as their primary channel.

IMHO this is where the market is going. All service-oriented businesses will provide highly personalized dialogue with their customers and nothing feels more personal than via mobile messaging. I also happen to think more businesses will become service-oriented.

Finally, I think the comparison of products is a fair one, especially in a place like ProductHunt. However I see this evolving the same way that the email marketing space evolved. There are multiple multi-billion-dollar companies in just sending email newsletters. The market is SOOOOO massive that companies like Curated were able to carve off a niche segment and build a business from it (Curated was acquired last week). The same thing goes for customer support.

There are countless customer support companies. Ultimately all of them tend to obtain some level of feature parity over time, but the market is so gigantic that hundreds of companies get to co-exist (with a few giants).

As for LiveNinja, I found it ironic that they discuss mobile messaging and are positioning themselves that way in the press and then promptly ask for your email when you start a chat like all other help desk providers. I'm not quite sure how they plan to evolve their product but as of today they do feel much more like Intercom. Give it a few months and I think this whole space is going to be entirely focused on mobile and email will be a secondary feature for many. That's why LiveNinja positioned themselves as focused on messaging but when it comes to execution they are actually not a mobile-messaging-first company.