Intercom Fin vs Acquainto for lead qualification
Fin, formerly Intercom, now qualifies sales leads as well as answering support questions, and it does both well. Acquainto does one narrower job: it asks the questions you need answered and hands your team one complete, respondent-reviewed record per person.
The short answer
- Fin is the better choice if you want one AI agent for support and sales, across every channel your customers use.
- Acquainto is the better choice if the job is collecting a complete set of answers from each person — a lead, an intake, a quote brief — and nothing else.
Where Fin is better than Acquainto
- Channels. Fin runs on chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, Slack, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, with voice for some customers. Acquainto runs on your site, by link or by QR code.
- Support and sales in one agent. Fin answers customers’ questions from your content and qualifies leads in the same conversation. Acquainto only asks your questions.
- Sales follow-through. Fin can book a meeting, route the lead to your sales inbox and sync to Salesforce or HubSpot. Acquainto delivers by webhook.
- Certifications and data location. Fin lists SOC 2 Type II, several ISO certifications and HIPAA, with hosting in the US, EU or Australia. Acquainto has no such attestation yet and stores customer data in the United States.
- Scale. Fin says it resolves over two million conversations a week.
What Acquainto does differently
Both ask follow-up questions in conversation, so that is not the difference. The difference is what the conversation is for, and what comes out of it:
- A record, not a chat. Every question you need answered comes back as one clean value, delivered by webhook the moment the conversation ends.
- The person answering reviews every answer before it is sent, with an Edit on each, and is told who gets them before the first question.
- It is not a support widget. You can send it by link or QR code to someone who has never been on your site, for an intake or a quote as well as a lead.
- Plans count completed conversations, not outcomes. Fin bills each lead qualification as an outcome, priced per qualification.
Fin and Acquainto side by side
| Fin | Acquainto | |
|---|---|---|
| Who makes it | Fin, the company formerly called Intercom, acquired by Salesforce in September 2026 (source: Fin, checked October 11, 2026) | Acquainto, an independent company |
| Free plan | No free plan; a 14-day trial (source: Fin, checked October 11, 2026) | No free plan. A 14-day trial that includes 75 completed conversations |
| Pricing | Per outcome, over chat and email with Intercom: "Resolutions, Procedure handoffs, disqualifications, and self-serve routings are $0.99 each. Qualifications are $9.99 each." (source: Fin, checked October 11, 2026) | Solo: $24 a month billed annually, 75 completed conversations a month |
| Lead qualification | "You define your qualification criteria through a playbook, and Fin applies them conversationally, asking the same discovery questions your SDRs would." (source: Fin, checked October 11, 2026) | The whole exchange is a conversation: it asks again when any answer is incomplete, and offers a choice where precision matters |
| Channels | Voice, email, Messenger, Slack, WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and API (source: Fin, checked October 11, 2026) | On your site, by link or by QR code. No phone or voice channel |
| Security and compliance | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, 27701, 27018 and 42001, HIPAA, GDPR and CCPA; data hosted in the US, EU or Australia (source: Fin, checked October 11, 2026) | No SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA attestation. Customer data is held in the United States |
Facts about Fin come from Fin’s own pages, on the date shown in each row. Prices and plans change; if one of these is out of date, tell us at support@acquainto.com and we will correct it.
Which should you choose?
Choose Fin if:
- you want one AI agent to answer support questions and qualify leads;
- you need WhatsApp, SMS, social or voice, or you already run Intercom or another help desk;
- your security review requires SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA, or EU or Australian hosting.
Choose Acquainto if:
- the job is getting a complete set of answers from each person, and you would rather not deploy a support agent to do it;
- you need the same thing for client intake or quote requests, not only leads;
- you want each conversation to arrive as a structured, reviewed record.
For lead qualification in detail, see what a B2B software company’s lead form should ask. To try it, see how it works or compare plans.