Botensten Inbox
Every customer conversation in one inbox. At a fraction of the price.
Live chat on your website, your support email and a help center, answered together by your team: 5 seats for $29 a month, where Intercom charges $145. Open source.
One Botensten account for every app.
Live chat on your site
One line of code adds a chat bubble in your colors. Visitors who leave get your reply by email.
Your support email, shared
Connect the mailbox you already use. The team sees every thread, assigns it and replies from one place.
A help center
Publish answers to common questions with categories and search, so customers find them before they ask.
Work as a team
Assignment, private notes, labels, saved replies, office hours and reports on response times.
Half the price, or less. Every plan, every time.
Each plan is compared with what Intercom, Zendesk, Help Scout, Crisp and Chatwoot Cloud charge for the same number of seats. Past the month's conversations, new chats wait until next month or a bigger plan.
$99 /year
Chatwoot $38 · Help Scout $50 · Intercom $58 · Crisp $45
- 2 seats
- 3 inboxes: chat widgets, email addresses
- 1k conversations a month
- 1 help center
- 5 GB for attachments
$319 /year
Chatwoot $95 · Help Scout $125 · Intercom $145 · Crisp $95
- 5 seats
- 10 inboxes: chat widgets, email addresses
- 5k conversations a month
- 2 help centers
- 25 GB for attachments
$759 /year
Chatwoot $585 · Help Scout $675 · Zendesk $1,035 · Crisp $295
- 15 seats
- 25 inboxes: chat widgets, email addresses
- 20k conversations a month
- 5 help centers
- 100 GB for attachments
$1,639 /year
Chatwoot $1,560 · Intercom $3,960 · Zendesk $2,760 · Crisp $495
- 40 seats
- 60 inboxes: chat widgets, email addresses
- 60k conversations a month
- 10 help centers
- 250 GB for attachments
What a plan costs us
Botensten Inbox runs on hardware and a network we already pay for. What grows with every member is card processing, the emails the inbox sends (replies to visitors who left the chat, notifications, transcripts) and backup storage. Here is the most each plan can cost in a month, with every allowance used every day.
Prices read October 21, 2026: Stripe 3.6% + 30¢ per charge, Resend $0.90 per 1,000 emails, R2 $0.015 per GB-month.
| Plan | Price | Card fees | Storage | Kept | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $9 | $0.62 | $2.70 | $0.10 | 61% |
| Team | $29 | $1.34 | $8.10 | $0.51 | 65% |
| Business | $69 | $2.78 | $21.60 | $2.04 | 61% |
| Scale | $149 | $5.66 | $54.00 | $5.37 | 56% |
| Plan | A month | 2 seats | 5 seats | 15 seats | 40 seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatwoot Cloud Startups | $19 a seat | $38 | $95 | $285 | $760 |
| Chatwoot Cloud Business | $39 a seat | $78 | $195 | $585 | $1,560 |
| Intercom Essential | $29 a seat | $58 | $145 | $435 | $1,160 |
| Intercom Advanced | $99 a seat | $198 | $495 | $1,485 | $3,960 |
| Zendesk Suite Team | $69 a seat | $138 | $345 | $1,035 | $2,760 |
| Help Scout Standard | $25 a seat | $50 | $125 | $375 | $1,000 |
| Help Scout Plus | $45 a seat | $90 | $225 | $675 | $1,800 |
| Crisp Mini | $45 for 4, then $10 | $45 | $55 | $155 | $405 |
| Crisp Essentials | $95 for 10, then $10 | $95 | $95 | $145 | $395 |
| Crisp Plus | $295 for 20, then $10 | $295 | $295 | $295 | $495 |
Each vendor's price billed monthly, from its own pricing page: intercom.com, zendesk.com and helpscout.com on October 22, 2026, chatwoot.com and crisp.chat the day before. AI agents are charged on top by Intercom ($0.99 an outcome) and Help Scout ($0.75 a resolution). Crisp Mini has no help center.