Hey @user2389​ you can have a custom launcher with a higher level of Intercom subscription plans as far as I know.

And before you say it - yes, I know it is a small feature to require something that would be a huge upgrade for some Intercom clients that need only that.

Personally, all my clients needing it were small to upgrade just for that, and those big ones did not care about it, so I actually never used it

We can only urge Intercom to make it available to lower plans too. @Product Wishlist​ 

There is a workaround but not fully functional as you'd like it, as you will lose that red circle with a number of messages. The half-solution is to create your own HTML object(s) that will onclick use a javascript command Intercom('show') that will pop-up the messenger. Also there should be HTML element to close it by Intercom('hide'). And do not forget to hide the native Intercom launcher in the settings

Thanks @user382!

After some experimentation (I'm not a dev but know enough to be dangerous!) I found that you can target any element in your UI by its CSS id or class and use it as your launcher. If you do this, you should hide the native launcher. You can add the banner to your UI to overlap your launcher element and you can display the number of unread messages. Here are the relevant links.

https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/2894-customize-the-intercom-messenger-technical/p>

https://www.intercom.com/help/en/articles/189-turn-off-show-or-hide-the-intercom-messenger/p>

https://developers.intercom.com/installing-intercom/docs/intercom-javascript#intercomonunreadcountchange/p>