Crisp alternative for support teams that want AI answers
Crisp alternative: a Crisp chat alternative with AI answers included in one flat price
InChat is an AI chatbot for your website that trains on your pages, docs and FAQ, answers visitors on its own and hands the chat to your team when a person is needed. AI conversations are counted in the plan, so you are not buying Hugo credits on top of a workspace fee and watching them run out before the month ends.
- $49/mo
- 3 team members and the AI agent
- 500
- AI conversations on Starter
- 0
- AI credits to top up
The short answer
Crisp charges per workspace ($45 Mini, $95 Essentials, $295 Plus a month) and pays for AI answers with monthly credits that cover about 90, 450 or 1,350 automated conversations. After that, Hugo AI stops answering unless you turn on pay-as-you-go. InChat is a Crisp alternative that includes the AI in the plan: $49 a month for 3 team members and 500 AI conversations, $149 for 10 people and 2,000 conversations, and $499 for unlimited.
Compare
Crisp vs InChat: what a team with AI answers pays each month
Three common setups priced from each vendor's public pricing page. The Crisp column adds pay-as-you-go AI at about 5.5 cents a conversation, which is Crisp's own ratio ($5 of credit for about 90 conversations). Longer conversations cost more, so treat the Crisp totals as a floor.
| Setup | Crisp (workspace + AI usage) | InChat | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 agents, about 500 AI conversations a month | Mini $45 includes about 90 AI conversations; the other 410 add about $23, so roughly $68 | Starter: $49 for 3 team members and 500 AI conversations | About $19 less, and no top-up to watch |
| 8 agents, about 2,000 AI conversations, email and WhatsApp in one inbox | Essentials $95 includes about 450; the other 1,550 add about $85, so roughly $180 | Plus: $149 for 10 team members, 2,000 AI conversations and an omnichannel inbox | About $31 less, with 2 spare seats |
| 25 agents, about 10,000 AI conversations a month | Plus $295 plus 5 extra seats at $10 ($50) includes about 1,350; the other 8,650 add about $476, so roughly $821 | Pro: $499 for unlimited team members and unlimited AI conversations | About $322 less, and the bill stops tracking volume |
Crisp prices checked on crisp.chat/en/pricing in September 2026: Free $0 for 2 seats with no AI credits, Mini $45 a month (4 seats, $5 AI credit, about 90 automated conversations), Essentials $95 (10 seats, $25, about 450), Plus $295 (20 seats, $75, about 1,350), extra seats $10 a month, Enterprise quoted. InChat yearly billing is $24, $74 and $249 a month.
Why teams switch
What changes when you switch from Crisp
AI conversations are in the plan
Starter includes 500 AI conversations, Plus 2,000 and Pro unlimited. There is no credit balance to top up, and the agent does not go quiet on the 20th because a busy week used the allowance.
Answers from your own content
InChat reads your pages, help docs, PDFs and policy pages and answers from that content with the source page attached, so a visitor can check the answer and your team can see where it came from.
Human handoff with the full transcript
When a visitor asks for a person or the agent is not sure, the chat moves to your shared inbox with the conversation, a short summary and a suggested reply.
Proactive triggers on every plan
Open the chat after a set time on page, a scroll depth or on exit intent. Crisp puts chat triggers on Mini and up; InChat has them from Starter.
Knowledge base and omnichannel on Plus
A public help center, a no-code workflow builder and email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram in one inbox come with Plus at $149, alongside 2,000 AI conversations.
Unlimited sites on Pro
Agencies and multi-brand companies run unlimited domains from one account, each agent trained only on that site's content, at one monthly price.
How it works
Move from Crisp in one afternoon
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1
Paste your website URL
InChat reads your public pages, FAQ and help center. Upload PDFs such as return, warranty or onboarding guides too. If your Crisp knowledge base is public, point InChat at it.
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2
Test the answers
Ask the ten questions your team answers most often. Where an answer is thin, add a page or a short instruction and test again.
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3
Swap the widget script
Remove the Crisp snippet or plugin and paste the InChat script tag before the closing body tag. It is one line on any site.
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4
Invite your team
Your agents handle handoffs in the shared inbox from day one, with canned responses, routing and chat history.
What is the best alternative to Crisp?
The best alternative to Crisp depends on how much of your chat you want AI to answer. If the answer is most of it, pick a tool that includes AI conversations in the price: InChat covers 3 team members and 500 AI conversations for $49 a month. If your chat is mostly human and you want a free tier, Crisp itself is a reasonable choice.
Teams usually start looking for a Crisp alternative for one of three reasons:
- AI credits run out. Mini includes about 90 automated conversations a month. A store that gets 20 chats a day uses that in under a week, and Hugo then needs pay-as-you-go switched on to keep answering.
- The bill moves with usage. Pay-as-you-go is fair, but finance teams dislike a support line that changes every month. A sale, a shipping delay or a product launch can double it.
- Key features sit on the top tier. Ticketing, white labeling and the 100+ integrations are Plus features at $295 a month.
How much does Crisp cost per month?
Crisp costs $45 a month for Mini, $95 for Essentials and $295 for Plus, billed per workspace rather than per agent. Those plans include 4, 10 and 20 seats, and each extra seat is $10 a month. AI answers are paid with included credits worth $5, $25 and $75, then pay-as-you-go. A free plan covers 2 seats with no AI.
The workspace pricing is genuinely good for a human team: ten people on Essentials cost $95. The cost question only gets harder once you rely on Hugo for volume. For a full breakdown with four setup totals, see our Crisp pricing guide.
What happens when Crisp AI credits run out?
When the included AI credits are used up, Crisp's Hugo agent stops answering automatically unless you have enabled pay-as-you-go billing, which charges for each additional automated conversation. Chats still reach your human team through the inbox, so nothing is lost, but visitors wait for a person instead of getting an instant answer.
That is the moment most teams notice the difference between credits and an included allowance. With InChat, the plan limit is a number of AI conversations (500, 2,000 or unlimited), and you choose the plan that fits your traffic once, instead of managing a balance.
Where Crisp is still the better choice
We would rather you choose the right tool once. Crisp is the better pick if you want a free plan for two people, or a human-only team of four on Mini at $45, which is cheaper per seat than our Starter plan. Crisp also connects SMS, Line and Viber on Essentials, includes ticketing and white labeling on Plus, and offers a 14-day trial of any plan with no card.
InChat is the better fit when a large share of your chats are repeat questions about shipping, pricing, setup or policies, and you want software to answer them all month at a price you know in advance. If you are comparing more vendors, our LiveChat alternative and Tidio alternative pages run the same cost math against those tools.
Who it is for
Who switches from Crisp to InChat
Ecommerce stores
Order status, shipping times, returns and sizing get answered from your policy pages at 2 a.m. and through Black Friday week, without a credit balance that empties on the busiest days.
SaaS support and sales
Trial users get setup answers from your docs, and pricing questions from qualified buyers reach a person with the whole chat attached.
Agencies with several client sites
Pro runs unlimited domains from one account, each agent trained only on that client's content, for one monthly price.
FAQ
Crisp alternative: common questions
Crisp has a free plan for 2 seats with a chat widget, a shared inbox and up to 100 customer profiles. It includes no AI credits, so the Hugo AI agent does not answer visitors on the free tier. Paid plans with AI start at $45 a month for Mini.
Yes. Crisp's AI agent is called Hugo. It answers from your knowledge base and past conversations, and it is paid with monthly AI credits included in each paid plan ($5, $25 or $75), then pay-as-you-go. The free plan has no AI credits.
For a small human-only team, no: Crisp Mini at $45 covers 4 seats. Once AI answers a few hundred conversations a month, InChat is usually cheaper, because 500 AI conversations are in the $49 Starter plan and 2,000 are in the $149 Plus plan.
Yes. Your agents still get a shared inbox, canned responses, routing and chat history. The AI answers first and passes a chat to a person with a summary when it should, so agents see fewer repeat questions.
Yes. InChat installs with one script tag on Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace or any HTML site, and it trains on your product, shipping and returns pages as well as your blog and help docs.
Yes. Paste your website URL above and InChat trains an agent on your content so you can ask it your own customer questions. Create an account to get a one-time pool of test conversations, then pick a plan when you are ready to go live.
Keep comparing
Crisp pricing
Crisp plans, Hugo AI credit costs and four real setup totals.
LiveChat alternative
Per-agent seats plus a separate AI product, compared with one flat plan.
Tidio alternative
Tidio plus Lyro, Flows and branding add-ons compared with one flat plan.
AI chatbot pricing
Every InChat plan, what it includes and the yearly price.
AI answers all month, at a price you know in advance.
Paste your URL, test the agent on your own content and go live with one line of JavaScript. Plans from $49 a month with 3 team members and 500 AI conversations included.