[gozmike]

Hey everybody! Co-founder of Smooch.io here.

Really like what what you've built here, a lightweight and open source web messaging system is definitely a useful component that a lot of websites could leverage.

Wanted to clear up a common misconception that Smooch.io and Intercom are solving the same market need. Although Smooch began life as a mobile-focussed Intercom, as we've learned about our industry we've pivoted to address a need lower down in the stack.

Essentially, we've discovered that the biggest impediment to having more businesses taking advantage of messaging as a channel is the lack of software that can provide rich access to the channels coupled with a powerful CRM and deep integration capabilities. Most businesses didn't want to rip and replace their current CRM and contact center investments, nor did they want to invest in connector middleware. They expected messaging to be a first-class feature of the products they already use and have trained their support teams on.

That's why we now focus on selling our technology as an API that can be used by software vendors to add a complete messaging, customer profile and conversation orchestration stack to their products. It's been adopted by some of the biggest vendors in the customer-service space because it helps them focus on the differentiated features (like workflow) that help them succeed in market, while ensuring they can trust the "plumbing" to an enterprise-grade, highly reliable platform like Smooch.

So we don't view Minimalchat as an alternative to Smooch. We view it as another messaging channel to which Smooch can allow a business to connect. Similarly, we don't view Intercom as an alternative to Smooch - we view it as a (prospective) customer.

Finally, just noticed that you're in Toronto. If you like building Minimalchat and care about messaging - we're hiring: https://smooch.io/about/#op-196776-software-developer :-)

[ukulele]

> Essentially, we've discovered that the biggest impediment to having more businesses taking advantage of messaging as a channel is the lack of software that can provide rich access to the channels coupled with a powerful CRM and deep integration capabilities.

I'm an Intercom customer and presumably also a potential Smooch customer, and I have no idea what this means.

[gozmike]

Thanks for asking for the clarification Eran. Definitely could use some here!

Essentially, we discovered that while in certain segments (like SaaS apps), using messaging to communicate with customers is commonplace, greatly due to companies like Intercom that provide great tools for these types of companies to successfully communicate.

However, the tools Intercom provides just don't exist in a format that works for most other businesses who use anything from traditional helpdesk software like Zendesk to full-blown contact center suites like those provided by Genesys and Oracle.

Since we believe in a future where every business is available over messaging channels, we needed to ensure that the systems they use can provide access to these channels. We had two choices:

1. Build middleware that a business could purchase that would allow them to connect a messaging channel (like a web messenger, Facebook or WeChat) to their existing software. 2. Open up our platform so that incumbent software providers could adopt it to add messaging capabilities to their product.

For a host of reasons, we quickly determined that option 2 was the best path towards making sure that a wide variety of businesses can communicate with users over messaging. We've been hard at work making sure that this happens ever since.

[mihok]

Hey, really appreciate and honored you took the time to write a comment!

I think that our concept of operator transports and your API technology definitely have some parallels. We don't plan on marketing towards enterprise as we generally believe that they have money to burn on large sophisticated products like Smooch (or build it themselves).

We're taking it one step at a time, first build a good base, then figure out where to head from there. Again really appreciate you taking the time to comment and your feedback!