NiCE CXone pricing, and what a founder needs instead

NiCE CXone is a contact centre platform. Its five suites cost $110 to $249 per agent a month, and its AI agents for customers are an add-on below the top suite. Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who answer support themselves. It answers your customers in seconds from your own docs, with no agents to schedule, and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. There’s a free plan, and it needs no card.

NiCE’s prices read on nice.com/pricing on 23 September 2026

Deacon or NiCE CXone, which one you need

Choose Deacon if

  • You answer customers yourself, and nobody works support shifts
  • You want to sign up and go live today, without a quote or a sales call
  • You want answers in seconds from your docs, and an honest “I don’t know” when they don’t cover it
  • You want to see what customers ask about on every plan, not from a higher suite
  • You want one plan price with seats included, and a free plan with no end date

Choose NiCE CXone if

  • You run a contact centre, with agents on the phones and in chat
  • You need to forecast, schedule and score your agents’ work
  • Voice matters to you, with IVR, routing and outbound calling
  • You need recording and compliance built into every interaction
  • You want AI agents that act across your systems, over chat and voice

Try Deacon for free

Install Deacon

Deacon and NiCE CXone, feature by feature

Built for

Deacon
Founders and small teams who answer support themselves
NiCE CXone
Contact centres with teams of agents, with packages for banking, insurance, healthcare, retail and government

What you get

Deacon
An AI agent on your website, every conversation saved, topics and website analytics
NiCE CXone
A contact centre platform, with voice and digital channels, omnichannel routing, recording and compliance

Getting started

Deacon
Sign up on the free plan, with every feature, no card and no end date
NiCE CXone
Request a quote or contact sales. The pricing page has no sign-up

How it’s priced

Deacon
A plan price with its seats included. Nothing is billed past the plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself
NiCE CXone
Per agent a month, from $110 on the Omnichannel Suite to $249 on Ultimate, which also lists $0.25 per session. Billed monthly in arrears

An AI agent for your customers

Deacon
Included on every plan, the free one too
NiCE CXone
AI Agents for Self-Service, an add-on on four suites and included on Ultimate

Going live

Deacon
One script tag, or a prompt your coding agent follows to add the tag and check it’s live
NiCE CXone
Agents built in AI Agent Studio, connected to knowledge and your systems, shaped with the Flow Editor or agentic tools, then tested on chat and voice

Answers

Deacon
In seconds, at any hour and in the visitor’s language, from your website, files, pasted text and the answers you write
NiCE CXone
Over chat and voice, from knowledge you plug in through Knowledge AI and the systems you connect

When it can’t answer

Deacon
Says it doesn’t know, asks for the visitor’s email, and emails you when they leave it
NiCE CXone
Hands over to a human agent when the conversation reaches the escalation points you set

Getting better

Deacon
Each answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, and Save & check shows the reply it now gives
NiCE CXone
You monitor results and refine the agents with its omnichannel analytics

What customers ask about

Deacon
Topics group questions, count who asked and label most of them, on every plan
NiCE CXone
Interaction Analytics and Voice of the Customer, included from the Complete Suite and add-ons below it

Tools for staff

Deacon
None needed. You reply from Deacon’s dashboard
NiCE CXone
Workforce, quality and performance management, screen recording, and copilots for agents, supervisors and leaders

Website analytics

Deacon
Included, from the same script, with visitors, sources, goals, funnels and JavaScript errors
NiCE CXone
Prebuilt dashboards and BI reports on the contact centre

Channels and actions

Deacon
A chat widget on your website. It answers questions and hands the rest to you
NiCE CXone
Voice and digital channels, with outbound calling as an add-on, and AI agents that act across your systems

NiCE’s figures and which suites include what are from nice.com/pricing, and how its AI agents are built is from its AI agents page, both read on 23 September 2026.

Why a founder is better off with Deacon

A price per agent, when you’re the only one answering

Every CXone suite is priced per agent a month, from $110 on Omnichannel to $249 on Ultimate, and the AI agent that answers customers is an add-on until you reach Ultimate. That makes sense for a room of people working shifts, and a founder answering customers between releases isn’t one. Deacon charges a plan price with its seats included, and every feature is on every plan. The free plan needs no card and has no end date, and nothing is billed past your plan’s answers.

Sign up today, not after a sales call

CXone’s pricing page leads to Request a quote and Contact Sales. Its AI agents are built in AI Agent Studio, connected to your knowledge and systems, shaped with a Flow Editor or agentic tools, and tested on chat and voice before they go live. With Deacon, you sign up, point it at your help pages or upload a file, and paste one script tag into your site, or hand your coding agent the prompt that does it. There are no flows or decision trees to build.

What customers need, on every plan

CXone’s Interaction Analytics and Voice of the Customer come with the Complete Suite, at $209 per agent a month, and are add-ons below it. Deacon keeps every conversation, groups the questions into topics, counts how many people asked, and labels most of them as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on. It’s on every plan, the free one included, and the same script shows your visitors, where they came from and which goals they reach.

It answers at 2am, and gets better each time you do

Deacon answers from your own docs in seconds, at any hour and in the visitor’s language, with nobody on shift. When your docs don’t cover a question, it says it doesn’t know and asks for the visitor’s email, and you get an email when they leave it. The question waits for you with an Answer this button. Every answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next person who asks and needs you less as time goes on.

When NiCE CXone is the better choice

If you run a contact centre, CXone does a great deal that Deacon doesn’t attempt. Every suite carries voice and digital channels, omnichannel routing, and recording and compliance. Higher suites add workforce management, quality and performance management, interaction analytics and copilots for agents and supervisors. Its AI agents work over chat and voice, and NiCE says they can hold up to 25,000 conversations at once. Deacon answers on your website and hands the rest to you.

Its billing suits a large team too. NiCE’s pricing page says it bills monthly in arrears with no prepay, and it publishes all five suites, from $110 to $249 per agent a month, along with packages built for banking, insurance, healthcare and retail.

If people on your team take calls and chats in shifts, choose CXone. If you answer your customers yourself, Deacon is the one built for you.

Questions about Deacon and NiCE CXone

NiCE’s pricing page lists five suites, each priced per agent a month. Omnichannel is $110, Essential $135, Core $169 and Complete $209. Ultimate is shown as $249 / $0.25, labelled per agent per month and per session. Banking, insurance, healthcare and retail packages are listed at the same figures as Ultimate, and government starts at $2 per consumer per year. NiCE bills monthly in arrears, with no prepay. Many features are add-ons on the lower suites, including the AI agents that answer customers, and the page’s buttons lead to a quote. Deacon has a free plan with every feature, no card and no end date, and each paid plan is one price with its seats included. Deacon’s figures are on the pricing page.

NiCE AI Agents for Self-Service work over chat and voice inside CXone. You create them in AI Agent Studio, plug in knowledge and system connections, shape them with the Flow Editor or agentic tools, test them and publish them to your channels, and they hand over to your human agents. Deacon is one AI agent for your website. You add your docs and it answers in seconds, says so when it doesn’t know, and leaves the rest to you. Both are a kind of customer self-service, where customers get their answer without waiting for a person.

No. Deacon answers on your site by itself, with nobody on a rota. When a visitor leaves their email or asks for a person, you get an email, and you reply from Deacon’s dashboard. There are no queues or schedules to manage, and nobody has to staff the chat.

Open it in the dashboard and write your reply. Deacon stops answering in that conversation. If the visitor still has the chat open, your reply shows there under your first name and your company’s, and if they’ve left, it goes to them by email, provided they gave an address in that conversation. One button hands the conversation back to Deacon.

No. Deacon is a chat widget on your website, with no phone line, IVR or outbound calling, and no email, WhatsApp or SMS channel. Every CXone suite carries voice and digital channels with routing, and outbound calling is an add-on.

No. Deacon answers questions from your content and hands everything else to you. It takes no actions in other systems, and it always declines questions about a visitor’s own account, invoice or data. NiCE sells AI agents for process automation that act across your systems.

Each answer is written from the passages Deacon finds in your own content for that question, rather than from whatever the model picked up in training. If nothing it finds covers the question, it tells the visitor it doesn’t know and asks for their email. When an answer comes from a page on your site, it usually links that page, so a customer can read the source.

Once you have people answering customers in shifts, a platform that schedules, routes and scores their work starts to earn its price, and CXone is a serious one. Until then, Deacon answers your customers, tells you when one needs a person, and shows you what they ask for. If you’d rather pay people to answer for you before then, customer support outsourcing costs sets out what freelancers and agencies charge.

Yes. The free plan needs no card. Add your docs, then put your customers’ real questions to Deacon in the Playground, which is the real widget and never counts against your answers. The free plan has no end date, and nothing on it is deleted for inactivity.

Try Deacon for free

Add your docs and try Deacon on your customers’ questions in the Playground before it goes live. There’s no contact centre to set up, and the free plan needs no card.

See what Deacon does, compare it with Five9 or Zendesk, or read the plans and prices.

READ NEXT

  • Deacon vs Fin AI

    Fin is an AI agent that works inside a helpdesk. Deacon answers your customers in seconds with no helpdesk, shows you what they need, and has a free plan.

  • Chatbase vs Intercom

    Chatbase sells AI replies as credits priced by model. Intercom adds a fee for each Fin outcome to its seat price. How each bill grows, and where Deacon fits.

  • Tidio vs Intercom

    Tidio gives 10 seats away and sells its AI agent in packages. Intercom charges for each teammate who replies and bills Fin per outcome. Which fits a small team?