Your Shop Could Answer Customers at 2 a.m.
It's 2:04 a.m. A shopper in Toronto finds the product she wants on your site, but first she needs to know if you ship to Canada. Your inbox is closed for the night. By morning she has bought it somewhere else.
A website chat tool can answer the easy questions while you sleep and hand the rest to you in the morning. We compared four popular options for small businesses, Tidio, Crisp, tawk.to and Intercom, with a focus on what they cost and how the AI part is charged.
This post may contain affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Honesty note: this is a price and feature comparison, not a hands-on test. Prices come from the vendors' pricing pages as reported by independent pricing guides (dates below), because some official pages couldn't be read automatically. Always check the vendor's page before you buy.
The short answer
Tidio: the friendliest start for a small online shop. The free plan covers 50 conversations a month, and the AI agent (Lyro) is a paid add-on.
Crisp: one flat price per workspace, with some AI credit included in paid plans. Good for a small team that wants predictable bills.
tawk.to: the cheapest way to have live chat at all. The core chat is free; you pay for extras like AI or removing the branding.
Intercom: a strong AI agent (Fin) billed per resolved conversation. Better for growing support teams than for a one-person shop.
What each tool costs
The details behind the table:
Tidio: Starter costs $29 billed monthly or $24.17 a month billed yearly, with 100 billable conversations. The Lyro AI agent starts at $32.50 a month billed yearly for 50 AI conversations. According to Rework, the AI conversations bundled with the Free, Starter and Growth plans are a one-time allowance, not a monthly one.
Crisp: the free plan includes 2 seats. Mini is $45 a month per workspace with 4 seats and a small AI credit; Essentials is $95 with 10 seats. Extra seats are $10 a month.
tawk.to: the chat itself is free with no agent limit. Removing the "Powered by tawk.to" branding costs $29 a month, and AI Assist starts at $29 a month for 1,000 AI messages.
Intercom: Essential starts at $29 per seat a month billed monthly, and the Fin AI agent costs $0.99 per resolution.
Sources: Rework's Crisp vs Tidio comparison (updated August 26, 2026, citing both vendors' pricing pages), Dupple's live chat roundup (June 2026) for tawk.to and Intercom, and Drag's Tidio pricing guide (re-checked October 14, 2026).
Which one fits your shop
Pick Tidio if...
you run a small online store and want chat working this afternoon. The free plan is enough to learn what customers ask, and you can add Lyro later if the same questions keep coming. It's available as an app for Wix, among other platforms; our guide to adding an AI chatbot without code shows the general setup.
Pick Crisp if...
two to four people answer chats and you want one predictable bill. AI usage draws from a monthly credit, so heavy AI use may push you to a bigger plan.
Pick tawk.to if...
your budget is zero and you'll answer most chats yourself. You get unlimited agents for free, as long as you're fine with the tawk.to branding on the widget.
Pick Intercom if...
support is already a team job. Paying per resolution rewards an AI agent that actually solves problems, but your bill grows with every resolved chat, so set a budget alert.
How to make any chatbot actually useful
Start with your top 10 questions (shipping, returns, opening hours, sizes). Write short, clear answers first: the bot is only as good as your answers.
Feed the AI your real pages, like your FAQ and policies, not marketing copy.
Set a handoff rule. When the bot isn't sure, it collects the visitor's email and promises a human reply by a time you can actually keep.
Read the transcripts every week during the first month and fix wrong answers.
Say it's an AI. It builds trust, and in some places (for example, under the EU AI Act) telling people they're talking to a bot is required.
Want the bigger picture? Our AI customer service guide covers email and social replies too, and our list of the best AI tools for small business shows where a chatbot fits next to the rest.
Watch out for
Conversation caps: free plans limit conversations or seats. Check what happens when you hit the cap.
Two meters: some tools, like Tidio, bill human conversations and AI conversations separately.
Yearly vs monthly: the headline price is often the yearly rate.
Privacy: chat transcripts contain personal data, so name the tool in your privacy policy.
The bottom line
Worth it if you get the same questions every day or lose sales after hours: a free plan from Tidio, Crisp or tawk.to is enough to test the idea for a month. Skip the paid AI add-ons for now if you get only a handful of chats a week; a good FAQ page and a contact form will do. Start free, count how many chats the bot resolves, then decide whether the AI upgrade pays for itself.
Get one ready-to-use automation every week: subscribe to the Blog Spotlight Weekly newsletter.
Comments