You can control which customers are allowed to upload attachments in the Messenger. By default, your customers can send attachments (including images) via the Messenger, email, API, and Facebook.
How do attachments work?
When uploaded, attachments become linked attachments, which is standard treatment for email and message deliverability purposes. By default, linked attachments are not indexed by search engines and are not predictable. However, you should take care not to share linked attachments publicly.
While uploading, attachments are scanned for harmful viruses, and if one is detected, then the file is quarantined and will not be accessible.
Note: If using Microsoft and forwarding emails to Intercom, in some cases embedded attachments may not be appearing due to how Microsoft sometimes packages attachments which is called Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF). They will be part of an attachment called Winmail.dat. You can read more about that here.
Attachment size limits
The size limit on individual attachments is 100mb for uploads via Messenger and there is currently no limit on the number of attachments that can be uploaded.
For incoming emails, there is a size limit of 20mb including attachments. Any email larger than 20mb will be rejected.
Attachment URL expiry and external access
Previously all uploads were publicly accessible for 30 days if you had the URL. This had a potential to become a security risk, and to address that risk we have updated the expected behavior.
The expiry time for customer uploads is now 30 minutes.
For teammates, the URLs that expire can be regenerated by simply reloading the page. For customers, they can get a new URL by hitting the back button in the Messenger, and then clicking into the conversation again or by reloading the page.
This expiry affects any external system that stores or references the attachment URL — such as a data warehouse, BI tool, or third-party integration. Once the 30-minute window has passed, the URL will no longer load the image or file, even if the link was valid at the time it was saved.
If you need to access the attachment from an external system, the safest approach is to make a REST API GET call to retrieve the attachment immediately before accessing it. This generates a fresh signed URL that is valid at the point of access.
Note: External Report Sharing does not provide access to conversation attachments. That feature shares static snapshots of analytics reports (charts and metrics only) and is unrelated to conversation attachments.
How do I control who can send attachments?
Go to Workspace > Security > Attachments. There you can:
Toggle off "Allow leads and users to send attachments" to disable uploads for all users.
Add audience rules using predicate conditions based on any user attribute (such as role, plan, or custom data) to restrict uploads to specific segments only.
When audience rules are configured, users who don't match the conditions will be silently blocked from uploading — the upload button, drag-and-drop, and paste options will all be unavailable to them.
If no audience rules are configured, the toggle controls access for all users as before.
If you disable attachments, the Messenger will not allow files to be dragged and dropped into the conversation, and will remove the attachments option:
If a customer sends you an email with an attachment, the attachment will not be processed. You'll receive a notification in the conversation that an attachment wasn't processed:
Delete attachments
If you'd like to delete an attachment you've received, just click 'Delete' in the attachment's options:
If you would like to export attachments, you can do this individually.
Choose how files are sent in emails
By default, any files you send with emails will be hosted by Intercom and sent as links.
There is no limit to file size. We recommend this option for improved deliverability.
If your customers use firewalls, or cannot access linked attachments for a similar reason, you can choose to send your files inline. 👍
Keep in mind that there is a 20MB size limit for an email and its attachments.
Under Settings > Channels > Email > Email settings, under Sending files select "Attached":
Admins might stumble upon an error state in some cases. This is because there’s a limit on the total size of the attachment. There is a 20MB limit, it is the total size of all the files attached. The limit is NOT on a per-file basis.
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