For teams that want Answer Bot style AI without Enterprise seats
Zoho SalesIQ alternative and SalesIQ competitors with an AI chatbot priced per team
InChat is an AI chatbot for your website that learns your pages, docs and PDFs, answers visitors with a link to the source and hands sales leads and support issues to your team in a shared inbox. The AI agent is on every plan, from $24 a month billed yearly for 3 team members.
- $24/mo
- Starter billed yearly, 500 AI conversations, 3 team members
- $60 vs $24
- 3 operators on SalesIQ Enterprise yearly against InChat Starter
- 10 minutes
- from pasting your site URL to a working preview
The short answer
Zoho SalesIQ is priced per operator: $10, $17 or $25 a month on monthly billing, or $7, $12.75 and $20 billed yearly. Its generative AI agent, Answer Bot, is only on Enterprise, so an AI chatbot on SalesIQ costs $20 to $25 for every operator on the account. InChat prices the AI per team instead: $24 a month billed yearly for 500 AI conversations and 3 team members, $74 for 2,000 conversations and 10 members, $249 for unlimited. If you live in Zoho CRM and use SalesIQ's visitor tracking and lead scoring every day, stay on SalesIQ; if you mainly want AI answers and clean lead handoff on your website, InChat costs less from the third operator up.
Compare
What Zoho SalesIQ and InChat cost for an AI chatbot
Zoho SalesIQ figures use Enterprise, the only plan with the generative AI Answer Bot, at $25 per operator a month on monthly billing or $20 billed yearly. InChat is shown on yearly billing; on monthly billing InChat plans are $49, $149 and $499.
| Team | Zoho SalesIQ Enterprise | InChat (yearly billing) | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 operator, a solo founder | $25 a month, or $20 billed yearly | Starter $24, 500 AI conversations | SalesIQ is $4 a month cheaper here and adds visitor tracking |
| 3 operators, a small sales and support team | 3 x $25 = $75, or $60 billed yearly | Starter $24, 3 team members included | $36 a month less on yearly billing |
| 8 operators, SaaS support and pre-sales | 8 x $25 = $200, or $160 billed yearly | Plus $74, 2,000 AI conversations, 10 team members | $86 a month less, with email and social in the same inbox |
| 20 operators, two websites | 20 x $25 + $20 brand = $520, or $416 billed yearly | Pro $249, unlimited conversations and team members | $167 a month less, and no operator count to manage |
Zoho SalesIQ prices from zoho.com/salesiq/pricing and Zoho's US price list, checked in October 2026: Basic $10 ($7 yearly), Professional $17 ($12.75), Enterprise $25 ($20) per operator a month, extra brand $20 ($16), extra chatbot $10 ($8), 5,000 extra bot sessions $10 ($8). If you run Answer Bot on your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or DeepSeek key, that model usage is billed by the AI vendor on top. Sales tax is extra on both.
See it answer
An integration question on the pricing page, answered and passed to sales
The agent answers from your pricing page, integration docs and security notes, cites the page it used, then collects the buyer's details and hands the conversation to the rep who owns new business. The rep picks it up with the whole transcript.
- Answers come from your own pricing and docs pages
- Qualified buyers reach a rep with the context already written down
- AI conversations are part of the plan, not a per-operator upgrade
Questions about plans or setup?
AI answers from this site, a person when you need one
Quote request, handed to Priya in sales with company size and CRM noted
Why teams switch
What changes when the AI is priced per team
AI on the entry plan
Every InChat plan includes the AI agent: 500 conversations on Starter, 2,000 on Plus, unlimited on Pro. You do not upgrade every operator to an Enterprise license to get generative answers.
Trained on your site, re-crawled weekly
Paste your URL and InChat reads up to 150 pages per source on Starter, 500 on Plus and 1,000 on Pro, plus PDFs and docs you upload. It re-crawls every week, so a new price or policy shows up in answers without a manual refresh.
Answers with sources, not flow trees
Visitors ask in their own words and the agent replies from your content with a link to the page it used. You write short instructions for tone and limits instead of building button flows in a bot editor.
Lead capture and handoff
The agent asks the qualifying questions you set, collects name, email and company, and routes the chat to the right person with the transcript, live during working hours or by email after.
One inbox on Plus
Website chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram land in one shared inbox with assignment and internal notes, so a lead that starts in chat does not get lost.
Webhooks and API for any CRM
On Plus and Pro, every new lead and conversation can go to your CRM, Slack or data warehouse through webhooks and the REST API, whether you use Zoho CRM, HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce.
How it works
Move from Zoho SalesIQ to InChat in an afternoon
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1
Paste your website URL
InChat crawls your public pages. Upload the price sheets, security notes and articles from your SalesIQ resource library as PDFs if they are not on your site.
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2
Replay your real questions
Export recent SalesIQ chat transcripts, pick the 20 questions that come up most and ask them. Fix a weak answer by editing the source page or adding a short instruction.
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3
Set qualification and routing
Decide which questions the agent asks before handing a buyer to sales, who owns support, billing and partnerships, and what the agent should never promise.
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4
Swap the code snippet
Remove the SalesIQ widget code from your site or tag manager and paste the InChat script tag before the closing body tag. Point a webhook at your CRM so leads keep flowing.
What is the best alternative to Zoho SalesIQ?
The best alternative to Zoho SalesIQ depends on what you use it for. If you want an AI chatbot that answers visitors from your own website and hands leads to your team, InChat is the lower-cost fit from three operators up: $24 a month billed yearly for 3 team members, against $60 for three SalesIQ Enterprise licenses. If you mainly need human live chat with a large agent team, LiveChat and Zendesk are the closer like-for-like tools.
The teams that switch tend to have the same story. They added SalesIQ because it came with Zoho or because human chat was cheap at $7 to $17 an operator. Then they wanted the AI agent, found out it is an Enterprise feature, and realized the upgrade applies to every person on the account, including the ones who answer three chats a week.
For the plan-by-plan numbers, our Zoho SalesIQ pricing breakdown lists every tier, the add-ons and totals for four team sizes.
Who are Zoho SalesIQ's competitors?
Zoho SalesIQ's main competitors are LiveChat, Tidio, Freshchat, Intercom, Zendesk, Crisp and HubSpot's chat on the live chat and visitor tracking side, and AI-first website chatbots such as InChat on the AI agent side. The real difference between them is how the AI is billed: per operator, per AI resolution, per session, or included in a flat plan.
| Tool | Entry price for chat | How AI is billed | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho SalesIQ | $7 per operator a month, yearly | Answer Bot on Enterprise only, $20 per operator yearly, own AI key usage extra | Zoho CRM users who want visitor tracking and lead scoring |
| 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 Shopify stores |
| Freshchat | $19 per agent a month, yearly | Freddy AI sessions, $49 per 100 after a one-time 500 | Teams already on Freshdesk |
| 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 leads and support come through website chat |
We run the same cost math for Freshchat alternatives, LiveChat alternatives and Tidio alternatives.
How much does Zoho SalesIQ cost?
Zoho SalesIQ costs $10 per operator a month for Basic, $17 for Professional and $25 for Enterprise on monthly billing, or $7, $12.75 and $20 billed yearly. A free plan covers 3 operators and 100 operator chat sessions a month without chatbots. Only Enterprise includes Answer Bot, so an AI chatbot starts at $20 to $25 per operator.
Two add-ons move real invoices: an extra brand at $20 a month ($16 yearly) for a second website, and visitor tracking packs from $100 a month for 100,000 more visitors once a busy site passes Enterprise's 200,000 allowance. If you bring your own AI key, the model usage is a second bill from that vendor.
Does Zoho SalesIQ have an AI chatbot?
Yes. Zoho SalesIQ's Answer Bot is a generative AI agent that answers from your resource library and can be trained on your website URLs, running on Zoho's built-in Zia or on your own key from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or DeepSeek. It is an Enterprise feature, along with hybrid bots and AI self-help.
Basic and Professional include chatbots too, but those are codeless or programmable bots built in a flow editor. They are good at collecting a lead's details through buttons and forms. They do not read your pages and write an answer to an open question, which is usually what buyers mean when they say they want an AI chatbot.
Can I keep Zoho CRM and use a different chatbot?
Yes. Many teams keep Zoho CRM and move only the website chat. InChat sends each new lead and conversation through webhooks and the REST API on Plus and Pro, so the contact, company and transcript can be created in Zoho CRM, or in HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce if that is where your pipeline lives.
What you give up is SalesIQ's native visitor timeline inside the CRM record: pages viewed, time on site and the lead score Zoho builds from them. If your reps work from that score every morning, weigh it before you switch. If they mostly read the chat transcript and the contact details, the webhook route covers it.
Where Zoho SalesIQ is still the better choice
SalesIQ wins in clear cases, and we would rather you pick the right tool once. For a single operator on yearly billing, Enterprise at $20 a month is $4 cheaper than InChat Starter at $24. Human-only chat on Basic at $7 an operator is about as cheap as live chat gets. SalesIQ also tracks every visitor, not just the ones who chat, scores leads, enriches company data on Enterprise and writes it all into Zoho CRM without a connector, and it has a mobile SDK for in-app chat.
InChat does not try to match visitor tracking or lead scoring. It is the better choice when the job is answering buyers and customers from your own content, handing the right conversations to a person, and paying one price for the team whether three people answer chats or ten.
Who it is for
Teams that replace Zoho SalesIQ with InChat
B2B software and SaaS
Pricing, integration, security and plan-limit questions arrive all day. The agent answers from your docs and pricing page and passes buyers who ask for a quote to the right rep.
Agencies and professional services
Prospects ask what you charge, whether you take their kind of project and how soon you can start. The agent answers from your service pages and sends qualified inquiries to a partner.
Online stores
Shipping, returns, sizing and stock questions repeat every day. Answers come from your policies and product pages, and order problems go to a person with the order number attached.
FAQ
Zoho SalesIQ alternatives, common questions
Yes, from three operators up. 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. Three Zoho SalesIQ Enterprise licenses, the plan with Answer Bot, cost $60 a month billed yearly.
No. InChat plans include a team: 3 members on Starter, 10 on Plus and unlimited on Pro. Zoho SalesIQ charges per operator license on every paid plan, and Enterprise applies its rate to each operator on the account.
InChat shows the page a visitor started the chat on and keeps the full transcript with the lead, but it does not track or score every anonymous visitor the way SalesIQ does. If your sales team relies on that visitor feed, SalesIQ is the better fit.
Yes. InChat is $49, $149 or $499 a month on monthly billing, or $24, $74 and $249 a month billed yearly. Zoho SalesIQ Enterprise is $25 per operator on monthly billing or $20 billed yearly.
Yes, through webhooks or the REST API on InChat Plus and Pro. Each new lead can create or update a contact in Zoho CRM with the transcript attached. There is no native Zoho sync, so set the webhook up once during the switch.
Most teams switch in an afternoon. Paste your site URL, test the agent on your most common questions, set routing rules, then replace the SalesIQ widget code with one InChat script tag. Export the SalesIQ transcripts you want to keep first.
Keep comparing
Zoho SalesIQ pricing, worked out
Every plan, the add-ons and totals for four team sizes.
Freshchat alternative
Per-agent seats plus Freddy AI sessions against a flat plan.
LiveChat alternative
Per-agent seats plus a separate AI agent, compared.
Drift alternative
A B2B website chatbot with lead capture after the Drift sunset.
Drift pricing in 2026
What Drift cost, what renewals look like and what replacements cost.
AI chatbot pricing
Every InChat plan, what it includes and the yearly price.
Put an AI agent on your site without upgrading every operator.
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.