For teams that want AI answers without a $4,800 yearly commitment
Olark alternative and Olark chat alternatives with an AI website agent at a flat price
InChat is an AI chatbot for your website that learns your pages, service descriptions and FAQ, answers visitors in seconds and hands real leads and hard questions to your team in a shared inbox. The AI is part of every plan, starting at $24 a month billed yearly for 3 team members.
- $24/mo
- Starter billed yearly, 500 AI conversations, 3 team members
- $288
- a year for AI chat on Starter, against $4,800 for Olark's AI plan
- 10 minutes
- from pasting your site URL to a working preview
The short answer
Olark now sells two things: human-only live chat at $29 per agent a month, and a Standard AI Website Agent at $400 a month billed annually ($4,800 a year) with one human seat included and $29 for each extra agent. The AI plan has unlimited conversations, which suits a busy site, but it prices out a small team that has a few hundred chats a month. InChat puts an AI agent trained on your website on every plan: $24 a month billed yearly for 500 AI conversations and 3 team members, $74 for 2,000 and 10, $249 for unlimited. If you need enterprise procurement, accessibility paperwork and a named account manager, Olark is the stronger pick; if you want AI answers on a small-business budget, InChat costs a fraction.
Need help with heating or plumbing?
AI answers from this site, a person when you need one
Booking request, handed to Dana in dispatch with address and phone
See it answer
A furnace question at 10pm, answered and turned into a booked call
The agent answers from your service pages, pricing notes and service area list, names the page it used, then collects the visitor's details and passes the lead to your dispatcher. Nobody had to be online, and the conversation did not cost extra.
- Answers come from your own service and pricing pages
- Leads reach a person with contact details and context attached
- AI conversations are part of the plan on every tier
Compare
What Olark and InChat cost in four common setups
Olark figures use the prices on olark.com/pricing: $29 per agent a month for human-only live chat, and $400 a month billed annually for the Standard AI Website Agent with one human seat, plus $29 for each additional agent. InChat is priced on its yearly plans; on monthly billing InChat plans are $49, $149 and $499.
| Setup | Olark | InChat (yearly billing) | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 people, human chat only, no AI | 2 x $29 = $58 a month | Starter $24, 3 team members, 500 AI conversations included | $34 a month less, and the AI answers when nobody is online |
| 1 person plus AI, about 300 chats a month | AI Website Agent $400 a month, paid as $4,800 for the year | Starter $24, paid as $288 for the year | About $376 a month less for the same job at this volume |
| 5 people plus AI, about 1,500 chats a month | $400 + 4 x $29 = $516 a month | Plus $74 for 2,000 AI conversations and 10 team members | About $442 a month less, with email and social channels in the same inbox |
| 15 people plus AI, 6,000 chats a month | $400 + 14 x $29 = $806 a month | Pro $249 for unlimited AI conversations and unlimited team members | About $557 a month less, and no seat count to manage |
Olark prices from olark.com/pricing, checked in October 2026: Full-featured Live Chat without AI at $29 per agent a month with a 14-day trial, Standard AI Website Agent at $400 a month billed annually ($4,800 a year) with unlimited conversations and one human agent seat, additional human agents at $29 each, and custom packages quoted by sales. Olark's own examples put two agents with AI at $429 and three at $458. Older reviews mention yearly and two-year seat discounts and paid PowerUps; those are not on the current pricing page, so confirm them with Olark before you budget on them.
Why teams switch
What you get when the AI is part of the plan
Answers from pages you already wrote
InChat reads your website, help articles and uploaded PDFs, then answers from them and links the source. You do not script flows or maintain a list of canned replies for common questions.
AI on the $24 plan, not behind a $400 one
Every InChat plan includes the AI agent: 500 conversations on Starter, 2,000 on Plus, unlimited on Pro. You pick the plan by how many visitors you talk to, and move up only when you outgrow it.
Team pricing, not agent seats
Starter includes 3 team members, Plus 10 and Pro unlimited. Adding the office manager or a weekend dispatcher does not add $29 a month each.
Lead capture with human handoff
The agent collects name, email, phone and what the visitor needs, then routes the chat to the right person with the transcript, live during your hours or by email after.
One inbox for chat, email and social on Plus
Website chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram arrive in one shared inbox with assignment and internal notes, so a lead that starts in chat does not get lost in someone's mailbox.
Proactive prompts
Open the chat when a visitor lingers on a pricing or service page, scrolls most of the way down or moves to leave. Triggers are set per page, without code.
How it works
Move from Olark to InChat in an afternoon
-
1
Paste your website URL
InChat crawls your public pages. Upload a price list, policy document or your saved Olark shortcuts as a PDF if you want them in the knowledge base.
-
2
Replay your real questions
Open your Olark transcripts, take the 20 questions that come up most and ask them. Fix a weak answer by editing the source page or adding a short instruction.
-
3
Set handoff rules
Quotes, complaints, billing and anything urgent go to a person. Add team members, their hours and who owns which topic.
-
4
Swap the chatbox
Remove the Olark snippet and add the InChat script tag. Export the Olark transcripts you want to keep before you close the account.
What is the best alternative to Olark?
The best alternative to Olark depends on which half of Olark you use. For AI answers on a small or mid-size website, InChat is the lower-cost fit: an AI agent trained on your pages from $24 a month billed yearly, against $400 a month for Olark's AI Website Agent. For human-only live chat with a large agent team, LiveChat and Zendesk are the closer like-for-like tools.
The teams that move to InChat tend to share a profile. They installed Olark years ago for a simple chatbox, have 1 to 15 people answering it, and now want an AI agent to take the repeat questions and catch visitors after hours. The $400 annual plan is more than their whole support software budget, so they look for the same idea priced by volume instead.
If you are comparing other per-agent chat tools at the same time, our LiveChat alternative page prices seats plus a separate AI agent, and the Crisp alternative page covers per-workspace plans with AI credits.
Who are Olark's competitors?
Olark's main competitors are LiveChat, Tidio, Crisp, Intercom, Zendesk, Freshchat and tawk.to on the live chat side, and AI-first website chatbots such as InChat on the AI agent side. They differ mostly in how they charge: per agent seat, per workspace, per AI resolution, or one flat plan.
| Tool | Entry price for chat | How AI is billed | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olark | $29 per agent a month | $400 a month billed annually, unlimited conversations | High-traffic sites and buyers who need procurement and accessibility support |
| LiveChat | $19 per agent a month, yearly | Separate AI agent subscription per user, with a resolution allowance | Larger human chat teams |
| Tidio | $29 a month | Lyro add-on from $39 for 50 AI conversations | Small stores on Shopify |
| Crisp | $45 per workspace a month | Monthly AI credits, then pay as you go | Startups that want chat and a knowledge base together |
| Intercom | $29 per seat a month, yearly | $0.99 per Fin outcome | SaaS with in-app messaging and product tours |
| InChat | $24 a month yearly for 3 team members | Included, 500 to unlimited AI conversations | Small and mid-size teams whose support and leads come through website chat |
Per-tool cost math sits on our Tidio alternative, cheaper alternative to Intercom and Freshchat alternative pages.
How much does Olark cost?
Olark costs $29 per agent a month for human-only live chat, and $400 a month billed annually ($4,800 a year) for the Standard AI Website Agent, which includes unlimited AI conversations and one human agent seat. Each additional human agent on the AI plan is $29 a month, so two agents with AI come to $429 and three to $458.
There is also a custom tier, quoted by sales, with regional routing, multiple teams, custom workflows, SLAs and SSO. Our Olark pricing breakdown works through four team sizes and explains which older prices you may still see quoted in reviews.
Is Olark free?
Olark is not free. Its pricing page lists a 14-day free trial of live chat with no credit card, and a free preview of the AI agent on your own site, but no permanent free plan. After the trial, human-only chat is $29 per agent a month and the AI Website Agent is $400 a month billed annually.
Some review sites still describe a free Olark tier limited to 20 chats a month. It is not offered on the current pricing page, so treat it as historical unless Olark confirms it for your account.
Does Olark have AI?
Yes. Olark's Standard AI Website Agent, which the company says runs on its Aiden engine, answers visitor questions from your website, captures and qualifies leads, starts conversations proactively and hands off to a human in the same thread. It is sold as its own plan at $400 a month billed annually and is not part of the $29 live chat seat.
That is a real product with unlimited conversations and hands-on account management. The question for a small team is whether the volume justifies the price. At 300 AI conversations a month, Olark's plan works out to about $1.33 per conversation, and InChat Starter to about 8 cents.
Where Olark is still the better choice
Olark wins in a few clear cases. A site with very high chat volume gets unlimited AI conversations for $400 a month, which is below InChat Pro's $499 on monthly billing (InChat Pro billed yearly is $249). Olark has sold live chat since 2009 and supports buyers who need security reviews, VPATs, WCAG 2.1 AA documentation, purchase orders and a named account manager, which matters in government, education and large enterprise purchasing.
A single operator who wants human-only chat on a month-to-month basis also pays less with Olark at $29 than with InChat Starter on monthly billing at $49. If that is you and you do not want an AI agent, stay where you are. InChat is the better deal when you want the AI answering first and you would rather not commit $4,800 up front to find out whether it works on your site.
A $4,800 decision for a business that gets 300 chats a month
Unlimited conversations are worth paying for when you have tens of thousands of them. A plumbing company, a law office or a 12-person software firm usually has a few hundred, most of them the same ten questions. Those owners want the after-hours visitor answered and the lead written down, and they want to try it without signing a yearly contract first. That is the gap InChat's Starter and Plus plans are priced for.
Who it is for
Teams that replace Olark with InChat
Home and local services
Service areas, visit fees, availability and financing questions come in after hours. The agent answers from your service pages and passes booking requests to dispatch with the address and phone number.
Agencies and professional firms
Prospects ask what you charge, whether you take their kind of work and how soon you can start. The agent answers from your site and sends qualified inquiries to the right partner.
Online stores and small SaaS
Shipping, returns, plan limits and integrations repeat every day. Answers come from your policies and docs, and order problems or bug reports go to a person.
FAQ
Olark alternatives, common questions
Olark is live chat software for websites. Businesses use it to answer visitor questions in real time, capture and qualify sales leads, and support customers, with human agents in a chat console and, on the $400 a month AI plan, an AI agent that answers first.
Yes. InChat includes an AI agent trained on your website on every plan: Starter is $24 a month billed yearly with 500 AI conversations and 3 team members, and Plus is $74 with 2,000 conversations and 10 team members. Olark's AI Website Agent is $400 a month billed annually.
No. InChat plans include a team: 3 members on Starter, 10 on Plus and unlimited on Pro. Olark charges $29 per agent a month, including each additional agent on its AI plan.
Yes. InChat is $49, $149 or $499 a month on monthly billing, or $24, $74 and $249 a month billed yearly. Olark's AI Website Agent is listed only on annual billing at $4,800 a year.
Yes. When a question needs a person, InChat collects the visitor's details and routes the conversation to your shared inbox with the full transcript. Your team replies live during working hours, and after hours the visitor gets a reply by email.
Most teams switch in an afternoon. Paste your site URL, test the agent on your most common questions, set handoff rules, then replace the Olark snippet with one InChat script tag. Export any Olark transcripts you want to keep first.
Keep comparing
Olark pricing, worked out
Live chat seats and the $400 AI plan totaled at four team sizes.
LiveChat alternative
Per-agent seats plus a separate AI agent, compared.
Crisp alternative
Workspace plans with AI credits against a flat plan.
Tidio alternative
Lyro, Flows and branding add-ons against a flat plan.
Drift alternative
A B2B website chatbot with lead capture after the Drift sunset.
AI chatbot pricing
Every InChat plan, what it includes and the yearly price.
Put an AI agent on your site without a $4,800 contract.
Paste your website URL, test the agent on your own pages and go live with one script tag. Plans from $24 a month billed yearly with 500 AI conversations, 3 team members and human handoff included.