Betting on the future of frontend at Intercom

At Intercom, we’ve never been afraid to make big, pragmatic bets in pursuit of building the best products and the best environment for our engineers to thrive.

Over the past two years, we’ve made one of the most significant shifts in our frontend engineering practice: moving our core frontend from Ember to React.

This wasn’t a decision we took lightly. When Intercom rebuilt its main application in 2014, Ember was the perfect choice. Its strong opinions and “batteries-included” approach aligned beautifully with how we liked to build: move fast, make decisions once, and focus our energy on solving customer problems rather than endlessly debating architecture. Intercom went on to become one of the largest active Ember applications in the world, with more than two million lines of code and 100,000+ pull requests merged.

But by 2023 local builds stretched beyond 90 seconds, and we were stuck on older framework versions, which subsequently blocked us from adopting the new build tools. We loved being part of the Ember community, working with all its talented people, and contributing to the Embroider Initiative. But something had to change for us.

Choosing a new path

We approached the problem with the same discipline we bring to product decisions. We convened workshops, ran health checks, and set explicit trigger conditions. By mid-2023, too many of those triggers had fired and we had to consider what was best for us. So, we committed to finding a new path.

We first set out a clear vision for what we wanted in a framework, aligning on criteria that matched our engineering principles because after all, we weren’t changing the tech stack for the sake of it, but to accelerate our organization. We called this project “The Future of Frontend.”

After evaluation and experimentation, React quickly emerged as the right choice. It wasn’t about hype. React was already a core technology at Intercom (powering Messenger, Help Center, and our marketing site), it has an enormous ecosystem, strong documentation, and widespread familiarity internally and across the industry. Most importantly, it integrates seamlessly with the AI-driven developer tools that are central to our future.

Where we are today

Fast forward to today, and our “Future of Frontend” project is well underway. React is now the default for new UI development at Intercom. The results speak for themselves:

• Blazing fast feedback loops: React builds in under 10 seconds locally, with sub-1s rebuilds – much faster than our Ember app’s 90+ seconds.
• Higher developer velocity: Engineers consistently report being faster, happier, and more effective, particularly when paired with AI tools like Cursor, Augment, and Claude Code.
• Wider adoption: Since March 2025, 10+ Product teams have shipped React features, contributing over 840 pull requests.
• AI synergy: React just “clicks” with modern AI tooling. Designers and engineers are using agents to write code, generate components from Figma, and even build design playgrounds themselves.

The productivity gains are tangible. As one engineer put it: “The work I had predicted would take me a week to achieve took me two days”.

Why this matters

This move isn’t just about frameworks. It’s about setting ourselves up for the next decade of innovation at Intercom.

As our CTO Darragh recently wrote in his “2x” blog post, the goal for our R&D org is to double our productivity over the next 12 months. Achieving that requires removing friction, leaning into AI, and giving our engineers world-class tooling. React is a crucial enabler for that journey.

Our engineering culture has always been about high standards and high ambition. Moving our core frontend from Ember to React is a bold change, but it’s the kind of decision we make to ensure we keep shipping fast, raising our quality bar, and enabling our teams to focus on what really matters: solving meaningful problems for customers.

Come build the future with us

“The Future of Frontend” project is being driven by Team Frontend Tech, a small but mighty group working hand-in-hand with Product teams across Intercom to shape our new tech stack, build our design system, and accelerate adoption.

We’re hiring, and we’re looking for engineers who want to work at the intersection of world-class product development and cutting-edge developer productivity.

If you want to work in an environment where we make bold calls, hold ourselves to incredibly high standards, and embrace the future of engineering, come join us.