Trengo alternatives for small teams, with prices

Trengo puts WhatsApp, email, Instagram, Facebook and your website chat into one shared inbox, and it’s priced for a team. Its smallest plan, Boost, is €299 a month billed yearly, or €349 month to month, with 10 users and a fixed number of conversations. The five Trengo alternatives below are respond.io, Crisp, Help Scout, Front and Tidio, each worth a look if you’re fewer than ten people or want the AI priced another way. We read every price on the vendor’s own page on 13 October 2026, and each one links to where we read it. Trengo sets its prices in euros, so we quote them in euros. The others are in US dollars.

Deacon, which we make, isn’t a shared inbox at all. It’s an AI customer support agent for a founder who handles support alone. It answers the questions people ask on your website in seconds, from your own docs, and shows you what they keep asking about. You can start on its free plan without a card.

Trengo and five alternatives, plan by plan

Each row gives the cheapest paid plan and what comes with it, with Trengo at the bottom to read the rest against.

What Trengo costs, and where the bill grows

Trengo has three plans, all on its pricing page. Boost is €299 a month on a yearly contract, with 6,000 conversations a year, or €349 month to month, with 500 a month. Both come with 10 users. Pro is €499 a month yearly, with 18,000 conversations a year, or €599 monthly, with 1,500 a month, for 20 users. Enterprise is priced on request. The plan cards lead to Book a demo, and a 7-day trial with no card is on its sign-up page.

Trengo counts a conversation as “any reply to an inbound or outbound message with a customer that occurs within a 7-day window”, and anything outside that window starts a new one. Past the plan’s number, 100 more conversations cost €18 on monthly billing or €15 on yearly. Each extra user is €30 a month on Boost and €50 on Pro, or €25 and €40 billed yearly.

HelpMate, its AI agent, is on every plan, and the page describes it as an assistant that “suggests and sends responses automatically”. It’s priced through the add-ons table, which charges €0.30 for each “conversation with an AI surcharge” on monthly billing, or €0.25 on yearly, and the page adds that WhatsApp, voice and SMS with an AI surcharge through HelpMate are billed at their own rates. AI actions that call other tools’ APIs start on Pro, and Voice and Broadcasting are add-ons on Boost and Pro.

The dollars need a word of their own. The pricing page has a $ USD tab, but its script takes the euro figures and converts them at that day’s exchange rate when you click it. So a US dollar price for Trengo moves with the exchange rate, and the euro figure is the one Trengo sets.

For a small company, that adds up in four places.

• Ten users is where it starts. Boost includes 10 users, so two people pay the same €299 a month billed yearly as ten.
• Conversations are rationed. Boost on monthly billing covers 500 a month, and a customer who writes again after a week counts twice.
• The AI is charged per conversation. Each conversation with an AI surcharge through HelpMate costs €0.25 or €0.30 more.
• The price is in euros. If you pay in dollars or pounds, the bill moves with the exchange rate.

respond.io, for WhatsApp first

respond.io is the nearest match if WhatsApp is why you chose Trengo. Its pricing page says it’s an official WhatsApp partner that connects the WhatsApp Business Platform directly, with no usage markups. Meta’s own WhatsApp fees aren’t in any respond.io plan, and you can top them up inside the app.

Starter is $79 a month billed yearly, or $99 monthly, for 5 users, with more at $12 a month each billed yearly, or $15 monthly. It has AI Assist and AI Prompt, but AI Agents start on Growth, at $159 a month billed yearly or $199 monthly, for 10 users, where respond.io says AI usage costs nothing extra under a fair use policy. Each plan comes with AI credits, and past them more cost $15 per 1,000, up to a cap of twice the allowance.

respond.io bills by monthly active contacts, anyone you talked to by chat or call in the billing month. Growth starts at 1,000, and if you go over, it doesn’t stop you. It charges $12 per 100 extra contacts on Growth at the end of the cycle. The 7-day trial opens Growth for 5 users with no card. respond.io suits a team that sells and supports mostly on WhatsApp and wants the AI included in the plan.

Crisp, a small workspace with a free start

Crisp also sells a plan with seats included, but it starts smaller and has a free plan. Free gives 2 seats, a website chat widget and a shared inbox, with no AI credits. Mini is $45 a month for the workspace, with 4 seats, a shared email inbox and $5 of AI credits, which Crisp puts at around 90 automated conversations.

WhatsApp comes on Essentials, at $95 a month, with Instagram, SMS, Line and Viber, 10 seats and $25 of AI credits, which Hugo, Crisp’s AI agent, spends as it answers. The “We run on Crisp” watermark comes off on Plus, at $295 a month, and every plan can be tried free for 14 days. Crisp chat pricing shows how Hugo’s credits get spent, and Crisp chat alternatives looks at it from the other side. Crisp suits a team of two to four whose customers mostly write through the website.

Help Scout, email first with WhatsApp on Standard

Help Scout is a shared inbox built around email, and its first paid plan takes in the messaging apps too. Standard is $25 a user a month billed yearly, for up to 25 users, and its card lists live chat and SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Plus is $45 a user, and Pro is $75 a user for 10 users or more.

The free plan covers up to 5 users, 1 inbox and 1 Docs site, with 100 contacts a month. AI Answers, its AI agent, costs $0.75 a resolution once a 3-month free trial ends, and you can set a monthly cap that switches it off when it’s reached. Standard and Plus come with a 15-day trial and no card. Help Scout pricing works out the bill for one, three and five people, and Help Scout alternatives sets six other tools beside it. Help Scout suits a team that answers mostly by email and wants WhatsApp without a bigger plan.

Front, a shared inbox priced by the seat

Front charges for each person, and its cheapest plan takes a single kind of channel. Starter is $25 a seat a month billed yearly, for up to 10 seats, and its FAQ says that one channel type is email, Front Chat or SMS. Professional is $65 a seat and connects email, SMS, social and WhatsApp together.

Native WhatsApp is an add-on on Professional and Enterprise, billed at Meta’s WhatsApp costs plus a 20% admin fee. Autopilot, Front’s AI agent, is an add-on from $0.05 a conversation, and Copilot, which drafts replies for your team, is $20 a seat a month on Starter and Professional. The 14-day trial has Professional’s features and needs no card. Front pricing prices one to five seats, and Front alternatives compares it with six other tools. Front suits a team that works email together all day and will move to Professional for its other channels.

Tidio, live chat with WhatsApp on the free plan

Tidio is live chat and a helpdesk, and even its free plan connects WhatsApp and email. Free gives 10 seats and 50 billable conversations a month. Tidio bills a conversation only once someone on your team sends a message in it, so replies from Lyro, its AI agent, or from Flows don’t count. Starter is $24.17 a month billed yearly, for 100 billable conversations, and Growth starts at $49.17 billed yearly, for 250.

Lyro is bought apart. Every account gets its first 50 Lyro conversations free, once, and after that Lyro starts at $32.50 a month billed yearly for 50. A 7-day trial of every plan needs no card, and the account drops back to Free when it ends unless you upgrade. Tidio pricing prices each plan and Lyro package, and Tidio alternatives prices eight rivals with their AI switched on. Tidio suits a small shop or startup that wants WhatsApp and website chat in one place without paying first.

Deacon, for a founder who answers the questions alone

Trengo is built for a team sharing one inbox across every channel. Deacon is built for the founder who is the team. It answers the people who ask on your website, so the inbox has less in it.

A plan sized for one person. The free plan has 1 seat, Starter 3 and Growth 10, and the seats are part of the plan’s price. Nothing is held back for a dearer plan, so Free has the same features as Growth. What changes between plans is the number of answers, the knowledge Deacon can hold, the pages it can fetch from your website each month and the seats.

One meter, and the AI is the product. There’s no surcharge for the AI, because answering is what every plan sells. Each reply Deacon writes on your live site is one of the plan’s answers, and a conversation takes about 2. Chats in the Playground and on a development address such as localhost never count. Nothing is billed past the plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself. If a month’s answers run out, visitors are asked for their email, unless they already left it in that conversation, and you can still read and answer every conversation in the dashboard.

The free plan holds 50 answers a month for 1 seat. It asks for no card, it doesn’t run out after a trial period, and a quiet account isn’t deleted. Starter costs $50 a month, or $40 a month on yearly billing, and brings 1,000 answers a month, enough for about 500 conversations, and 3 seats. Growth, for up to 10 seats, costs $150 a month, or $120 a month on yearly billing, with 4,000 answers a month.

Answers from your docs, in seconds. Deacon goes on your site as one script tag, and there are no flows or journeys to build first. It learns from your website, PDFs, Word files and pasted text, and answers at any hour in the language each visitor writes in. If the answer isn’t in what you gave it, Deacon tells the visitor so instead of making something up, and the chat offers them a field for their email so you can reply.

You step in when it matters. When a visitor leaves an address or asks for a person, the conversation shows up in your dashboard straight away, and the owners get an email about three minutes later if nobody has seen it. Type your reply there and it lands in their chat under your first name and your company’s. While they wait for you, their chat is kept open for up to three days. Human handoff follows one handoff minute by minute.

It needs you less each week. A question your content didn’t cover waits in Conversations with an Answer this button. Write the answer, press Save & check, and Deacon asks itself the question again and shows you the reply it now gives, along with the other open questions your answer also covers.

You see what customers want. Deacon keeps every conversation, and you can search them all for what visitors asked. Topics groups the questions, counts how many people asked each one, and marks a group as a feature ask, a bug report or a how-to when one kind leads. The same script runs your website analytics, with visitors, sources, goals and funnels, and there’s no “powered by” line to pay to remove.

What Trengo does that Deacon doesn’t

Trengo is an inbox for a team that talks to customers on many channels, and Deacon doesn’t try to be one. Check which of these you rely on before you move.

• Trengo brings email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook into one shared inbox. Deacon answers in a chat on your website only, with no email inbox and no WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS or phone.
• Trengo assigns and forwards conversations to the right teammate. Deacon has no tickets and doesn’t share work out between people, by rota or by rule.
• Trengo can send broadcast campaigns over messaging apps as an add-on. Deacon never starts a conversation. The widget opens only when a visitor clicks it or your site opens it.
• Trengo adds phone calls as an add-on, and its AI can call other tools’ APIs from Pro. Deacon has no voice agent, takes no actions in other systems and connects to no helpdesk.
• Deacon always declines a question about a visitor’s own account, invoice or data, whatever your content says.

The split that works is by channel. If your customers write on WhatsApp and Instagram, keep Trengo or one of the inboxes above for those. Deacon can answer the questions on your website at the same time, as a separate tool, since nothing connects the two.

Which Trengo alternative to choose

Start with where your customers write to you, and how many of you answer.

If it’s WhatsApp first and you sell there too, respond.io is the closest swap, with AI Agents included from Growth. If your customers mostly use your website chat and you’re two to four people, Crisp starts free and charges one price for the workspace. If you answer mostly by email and want WhatsApp on the first paid plan, Help Scout’s Standard has both. If a team works email together all day, Front is built for that, though WhatsApp means Professional. If you want WhatsApp and live chat without paying first, Tidio’s free plan has both, with 10 seats. If this is your first support tool, the best customer service software for startups ranks eleven.

If you answer support yourself and most questions come through your website, start with Deacon’s free plan. It answers from your docs in seconds, brings you the visitors who need a person, and shows you what they’re asking for, with no card.

Questions about Trengo alternatives

Is there a free alternative to Trengo?

Yes, four of the tools here have a free plan. Tidio’s gives 10 seats and 50 billable conversations a month, with WhatsApp connected. Help Scout’s covers up to 5 users, 1 inbox and 100 contacts a month. Crisp’s has 2 seats and a chat widget, with no AI credits. Deacon’s gives you 50 answers a month and 1 seat, with every feature and no end date, though it isn’t a shared inbox. Trengo, respond.io and Front offer trials of 7 to 14 days.

Which Trengo alternative is best for WhatsApp?

respond.io, if WhatsApp is most of your support. It connects the WhatsApp Business Platform directly as an official partner and includes AI Agents from Growth. Tidio connects WhatsApp on all its plans, Free too, Help Scout from Standard and Crisp from Essentials. Front sells native WhatsApp as an add-on from Professional. Deacon has no WhatsApp channel.

How does Trengo count a conversation?

By a 7-day window. Trengo’s pricing page counts any reply to a message with a customer within 7 days as one conversation, and a message after that starts a new one. Its FAQ puts it the other way round, as an outbound message sent from Trengo, whether the first contact with a customer or a reply to one. Boost covers 6,000 a year on yearly billing or 500 a month on monthly billing, and more cost €18 per 100 monthly or €15 yearly.

Why are Trengo’s prices in euros?

Because Trengo sets them in euros. The $ USD and £ GBP tabs on its pricing page convert the euro figures at that day’s exchange rate, so a dollar price for Trengo changes from day to day. Its own FAQ quotes Boost at €299 a month billed yearly and €349 month to month.

Can Deacon replace Trengo?

For a founder whose customers mostly ask on the website, Deacon can take the questions that keep coming back and bring you the ones that need a person. It can’t replace an inbox that several people share across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and email. It has no email inbox, no messaging apps, no phone and no assignment, so a team that works those channels together still needs Trengo or one of the tools above.