Crisp alternatives for a team that wants answering without the inbox

Crisp sells live chat support, a shared inbox with a chat widget on the front of it. Most people who go looking for an alternative only ever wanted the widget.

It matters before you compare prices. A shared inbox earns its money when two or three people work in it every day. One founder answering questions between other work will use the widget and never open the inbox.

This page starts with every Crisp plan and which one the AI actually runs on. After that come the tools that sell you the answering on its own, and then the ones that bring an inbox with them in case it turns out you do want one.

Every figure was read from the vendor’s own pages on 17 September 2026, and each section links the page it came from.

What Crisp costs, and which plan carries the AI

All of Crisp’s plans are per month, per workspace. The last column is Crisp’s own estimate of what the included credits buy.

The free plan is a live chat widget and nothing else. Hugo, the AI, is included by default starting from the Mini plan, and the free plan has no credits at all. So the real entry price for automated customer service on Crisp is $45 a month.

There is no yearly figure to compare against, either. Crisp publishes none. Yearly billing is switched on inside the app after you subscribe, so you find out what it saves you once you are already paying. The trial is fourteen days with all features and no card.

Figures from crisp.chat/en/pricing.

How Crisp meters the AI

Credits are spent by tokens rather than by the message, so one conversation costs what it costs however many times the visitor writes back. Crisp says a full Hugo conversation runs around $0.05 to $0.10, and its AI page makes the point that you will not be paying a dollar per resolved conversation. That is a fairer shape than most.

Plan for the end of the month. When the credits run out and pay-as-you-go is switched off, Hugo stops answering and new conversations go to your operators until the credits reset. If you have no operators, nobody answers.

Crisp trains Hugo on a crawl of your website, on PDFs and CSVs you import, and on knowledge base articles you write. On not knowing, Crisp says the AI will say so and your team follows up. Figures from the Crisp help centre.

The tools that answer without an inbox

These sell you the widget and the knowledge base behind it. Some can hand a conversation on when they are stuck, but none of them expects anybody to sit in a queue.

Chatbase

Chatbase gives one member 50 message credits a month and 1 MB of content. Hobby is $40 a month for 700 credits. Handing a conversation to a person is an AI Action and the free plan has none, so the free tier answers and stops there. Chatbase also deletes an agent after 14 days of inactivity on the free plan. Figures from chatbase.co/pricing.

Chatling

The free plan is one seat and 200 AI credits a month. Starter is $25 a month, or $21 billed annually. A reply costs between 0.5 and 25 credits depending on the model, so the 200 goes further or not at all depending on what you pick. Human handover is on every plan including the free one, which most of this group puts behind a paid plan. Figures from chatling.ai/pricing.

Dante AI

One seat and 100 messages a month, no card. Starter is $40 a month, or $33 billed yearly, for up to 2,000 messages. Read the plan rows before you buy, because the inbox a person takes over in, and lead capture, both start on Advanced at $120 a month. Figures from dante-ai.com/pricing.

DocsBot AI

You get one bot, 50 source pages and 100 AI credits a month for nothing. Personal is $49 a month, or $41 billed annually. It takes the widest range of sources of anything here and says every answer links to the source documents. When the credits run out the bot stops responding and shows an error. Figures from docsbot.ai/pricing.

Denser.ai

The free plan is thin at 20 queries a month on one bot. Starter is $39 a month, or $32 billed annually, for 1,500 queries. Denser says every answer links to the exact source passage it came from, which is the strongest citation claim in this group. It does have a helpdesk, and escalation to a person starts on Standard at $119 a month. Figures from denser.ai/pricing.

Deacon

Ours, and it is the answering on its own by design. There is a dashboard behind it, with no queue to work through.

It goes on your site with one line of HTML, answers from the documentation you have already written, and keeps every conversation for you to read when you have a minute. There are no seats to buy and nobody to roster.

The free plan is 50 answers a month on one seat, with no card and no time limit. The AI answers on it, which is the whole point of a free plan and is the one thing Crisp’s does not do. Handing a conversation over works on it too, rather than starting two plans up. Above that there is one flat price a month with the team’s seats included, and the meter counts answers, every reply Deacon writes. The figures are on the pricing page.

When nothing in your documentation covers a question, Deacon says so, takes the visitor’s email and hands you the conversation. You reply from the dashboard when you are next at your desk and the visitor gets it by email.

Every answer is written from the passages it found for that question, and when the answer came from a page on your site it links to it.

The tools that bring an inbox with them

If it turns out you do want the inbox, these are the closer swaps for Crisp.

Tidio

Ten seats on the free, Starter and Growth plans, and Starter is $24.17 a month billed annually. Lyro, the AI agent, is a separate add-on from $32.50 a month for 50 conversations, or $0.50 each. The free plan carries 50 conversations a month and a one-off quota of 50 Lyro conversations that never renews. Figures from tidio.com/pricing.

Gleap

Per workspace like Crisp, with no free plan at all. Starter is $59 a month, or $49 billed annually, and the AI usage is charged on top by tokens, which Gleap puts at roughly $0.17 a conversation. The trial is fourteen days with $25 of AI credit, and it asks for a card at checkout. Figures from gleap.io/pricing.

Intercom

The heaviest option here by some distance. Essential is $29 a seat a month on annual billing, with no free plan, and Fin is $0.99 an outcome on top of the seat. We have worked that bill through in Intercom alternatives for startups. Figures from intercom.com/pricing.

What to check before you move

Find out which plan the AI is actually on. Crisp’s free plan looks like an AI plan until you read the credits row, and several tools here put the handover two plans above the answering.

Crisp counts tokens, Tidio counts conversations, Chatbase counts credits by model, and Intercom counts outcomes. Conversations are the only one of those you can estimate from last month’s traffic.

Then be honest about the inbox. If two people are going to work in it every day, Crisp is a good buy and this page has not talked you out of it. Deacon is built for the founder who answers customers between other work, from an email and a dashboard.

One more thing to check is what happens when the meter runs out. Crisp stops the AI and sends conversations to your operators. DocsBot stops answering and shows an error. Both of those need somebody there when it happens. Deacon takes the visitor’s email instead and puts the question in your dashboard, so it still reaches you.